Ideological profile of twentieth-century Italy Book

Alexander Stille's masterfully written and researched story of brave and innovative Italian anti-mafia officials in the police, judiciary and for a brief period, the ministerial offices. The principle figures are the investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone, and Paolo Borsellino. Falcone had the media spotlight and was the driving force in the Palermo anti-mafia group of magistrates.

After the initial success of the 'maxi-trial' where 500 mafiosi where tried at once, Stille describes the systematic weakening of the anti-mafia group from top political forces from Rome. This included most importantly I think, the sabotage perpetrated by Supreme Court Judge Corrado Carnevale, called the 'sentence-killer'. It was decided that all organized crime cases would go to his section of the court. He freed a great many mafiosi,often on flimsy technicalities. In one instance he freed 100 of 120 convicted members of a criminal ring, 26 of whom had life sentences. The decision to give one section of the court, of which Carnevale was president, all the cases is enough to cast serious suspicions on who made that decision. Carnevale's subsequent performance should prove any doubts. Many considered him, and whoever gave him his powers, to be the fifth column of the mafia, and to be the real godfathers.

Stille focuses much detail on the connections of the mafia with political power. The name at the top is always Giulio Andreotti, who had held all of the most important positions since right after WWII, including prime minister on several occasions. Another person whose name appears in many suspicious instances is that of Bruno Contrada, a Palermo police official who went on to a high position in the Intelligence Services. Falcone voiced his own suspicions about Contrada after a failed attempt on his life, believing that only someone deep inside the Intelligence network could have known about his highly specific plans for the day.

Stille's central purpose in this book is--aside from giving a history of the first anti-mafia prosecutions--to also give us an idea of how deep the problem is. We must ask the question of why so many political figures would risk their reputations to protect heroin dealers and extortionists? Naturally some were getting money but the lion's share was going to the criminals and I doubt that Andreotti was in it for the money. Such a powerful figure in Italian politics had everything he could want from the state expense accounts no doubt. The mafia was able to get votes in Sicily but again if they dismantled the mafia, people would still vote, and at least they could vote without being told who to vote for. Normal political advertising and propaganda could probably get just as many votes, so I don't think those factors were a large enough influence to permit the power and rampant chaos from such a large group of deeply ignorant and destructive people, as the mafia.

Stille avoids this subject but I think we need to look at Italy's role in the geopolitical picture. Geopolitics is principally about the ideologies and power struggles of super powers. Italy had a very strong Communist Party that had been influential in establishing its social safety net of pensions, job security, free health care, education etc. The drug epidemic exploded in Italy in the 1980s as well as in the US, coinciding with the need to fund the Contras and many other proxy wars such as the Islamist anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan. Also many wars in Africa, e.g. Angola. Douglas Valentine's seminal works: 'The Strength of the Wolf' and 'The Strength of the Pack' as well as other seminal work on the subject like Gary Webb's 'Dark Alliance', exposes US government complicity in protecting the sources, major suppliers and networks of heroin and cocaine(see my review of Valentine's 'Wolf').

Valentine and others show that these sources cannot and do not operate without the protection of the US, and especially not on the massive level in which they do. While money may not be the prime motivator behind Italian collusion, it is with US involvement because they are using the massive subversive power of the money generated to create a state of controlled chaos and menace, through bribery, to pay proxy armies all over the globe to fight socialism or merely to fight the most basic social advances. The fight is always portrayed as a fight against communism. So while drug rings, especially mid-low level ones are continuously busted, the raw material sources and their political protectors remain untouched.

Monopoly finance capitalists are opposed to publicly funded social programs or anything that gives workers security and more pay. They have nothing to offer except uncertain work terms and debt. Their only method of survival is complete control of political systems, to perpetuate their fraudulent schemes; one of the principle scams being health insurance. Any political system that attempts to destroy that scheme is a mortal enemy.

Tax breaks are of course another central way in which they loot treasuries to bail themselves out of fraud, and so any system that proposes the use of taxes for social safety is their enemy. Productive capitalist enterprises like manufacturing are subservient to finance and expendable, ownership will simply be bought out and factories re-located at will. A company's very existence is useful mainly for its stock value. It doesn't even matter that the company is an American one. None of this is possible without laws that permit such behavior.

The highly corrupt mafia state functions on intimidation and fosters a sense of hopelessness. It is also a system of pure crony capitalism where you take what crumbs are thrown to you and keep your mouth shut. There is no union organizing in mafia-controlled 'legitimate' businesses. The drug money is laundered into all aspects of the economy and in this manner they get a grip on the populace, through complex inter-dependencies, which are in themselves a very effective obstacle to reform. They are allowed to keep their turf and expand into some legitimate businesses while the major corporations and their financial overseers thrive from having essentially co-opted the State.

So we must see Andreotti for what he was--an American puppet. It is a fact that his party, the Christian Democrats, was created by the CIA as a specific anti-communist entity. He was not protecting the mafia out of a deep admiration for them but because he was serving the American foreign policy that used brutal proxy armed groups to keep the populace in a state of fear and confusion. Even though not as overt as a para-military death squad like the Contras, the mafia intimidated the population just as effectively. Indeed, if it ever came to it, I'm certain they would have transformed themselves into a uniformed para-military, for the right price and for the promise of their continued survival.

Stille convincingly shows that the mafia was protected from the very top, despite the honest, courageous efforts of many officials, who mostly all paid for their honesty with their lives.