from Hacker News

The construction of the mafioso social capital and the Sack of Palermo (2023)

by saturn5k on 4/24/24, 9:32 PM with 72 comments

• by xrd on 4/26/24, 10:07 AM

  One of my favorite books is Excellent Cadavers. It's about two Italian judges that systematically root out corruption in Sicily, and pay for it with their lives. It is an incredible history of the path of fascism to the modern day Mafia. And the most interesting thing for me was how connected the Mafia are to the top levels of Italian government. Andreotti was definitely complicit.

• by lifestyleguru on 4/26/24, 11:16 AM

  My favorite part about Italy is how most sought for mafia bosses are "hiding" for their entire lives in their home regions and villages. The degree of "ignoring the obvious" is only comparable with the worst religious extremist, but also every country has is own equivalent of "ignoring the obvious".

• by AlbertCory on 4/26/24, 4:36 PM

  A different take from a non-Italian. I'm curious what actual Italians think of this:

  I'm reading a book on how Spain gained and lost a world empire (I'd had it on my shelf forever and never read it):

  https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Spain-Became-World-1492-1763/d...

  It said that many northern Italians believe that a big reason the Mafia is so dominant in southern Italy and Sicily is that it was ruled (loosely) by Spain a long time ago. True?

• by Simon_ORourke on 4/26/24, 6:44 AM

  Both in Palermo and in Naples, the business activities of the mafia can be categorized as extremely short-sighted profit squeezing, which I suppose is all you might expect from organizations operating mostly outside the law but with a firm grip on their respective societies (a bit like Google/Meta/Tesla I suppose).

• by davedx on 4/26/24, 6:52 AM

  Oh no, they built tons of cheap affordable housing. How terrible of them!

  I’d be interested to hear the viewpoints of Sicilians on this one