Italy has a long history of organised crime: The Mafia. The Mafia that helped the sccessful landing in Sicily and once was a poor mens' resistance group against feudalism. The Mafia that distributes that white powder for the rich filthy. The Mafia was always several different organizations reflecting the old competition and disputes between the major Italian Towns dating back to the Mid Ages.
Just Rome hasn't got a Mafia. Like Bogota and for the same reasons. It is the capital of the civilized Republik. For the Mafiosi, the other Mafia, so.
No other system or organization is as close as it gets to that dark future known as Cyberpunk, no other renegades or gangster run that deep in the shadows of society than todays N'drangheta.
These Calabrians appear to be different than the e.g. Cosa Nostra that helped U.S. forces land and liberate Italy from Mossulines fashism. The Cosa Nostra fought using terrorist methods against the Italian authorities in the 80ies pretty much as IRA or UDP in Ireland and is quite off the news today.
The Calabrians got strong during the Mid 70ies a time of civil unrest in Italy when Brigado Rossos and Brigado Neros, Socialists and Fashists fought over the course of the Italian nation just a decade later than the Irish struggle.
Today's news on Mafia activity is dominated by the activities of the Calabrians that took Milano and are in an active assassination war with the Camorra of Naples and therefore lead as the first into of what I see as the 4th world war, in Europe.
Wars like in Syria or Afghanistan in which two super powers battle on others soil will be soon part of history, I guess and instead Mexican Kartell style conflicts will hit the forces of our developed first world in a Small Arms African War manner that will become dominant in warfare soon.
In the 70ies it was all about politics and I assume that the early bosses of Calabrian origin clearly had a site they fought for as much as IRA and UDP had an organised crime wing to support their gunshops and bomb making facilities along with intelligence and reconnaissance activities.
Cocain made that way more fuzzy. Cocain does not know politics - it uses politics. Pablo Escobar was a socialist that threw Dollar bank notes he had no use for straight at the poor farmers while the most dominant Mexican Kartell calls itself the Templers and keeps burning down everything it strides through just as those Crusaders that were in for profit instead securing free pessage of the faithful as poor knights owning personally no more than armor, weapon and horse while their order adopted the Arabic numbers we use today, set base for our modern banking system and gained a religious mystical understanding of this world which is most unfortunately today lost again. Those other bad and greedy knights already shadow running in the midages managed to have the entire Templer order forbidden and stripped the catholic church of armed knight monks for ever today they already cracked Mexico into being a Narco Nation.
Instead of fighting for a political agenda as in WW2 and in WW3's indirect wars, it is now all about the Cocain High and MTV gangsta rap video clip fast cash; it's Fast Life taking over more and more. The Mafia members became younger and their lifes shorter since the 80ies. Those that rise and survive in that powerful and contemporary dysantrop society, that is way off the origins of those Mafia organizations that created the myth glorified in the "God Father", have potential to turn themselves into creators of an Al-Qaeda or ISIS of Organised Crime ruling the shadows of society in a near and dark and ugly real future.
There is no OC boss version of Osama Bin Laden or Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed around as of today who try to create and profit from a falling chaotic society in constant fear under arms and mass surveillance, but also no Pablo Escobar or El Capone sharing with the poor by supporting the parties of the rich and filthy instead of exploiting both poor and party heads. Two styles of criminals - yet so different. Like Yin and Yang of the shadows of society. These styles reflect into all of society and take their influence from night life to office space and beyond right into warfare.
Tragically, we are closer to the dark future utopias of Cyperpunk's anarcho capitalism than the old tales of glorious renaissance resistance groups fighting feudalism like the mystified storyteller figures of Zorro or Robin Hood, I was all in as a little child. A proud "All for one and one for all" full of pathos over a rhetoric "dogs, do you wanna live for ever" facing commando to leave the trench into an open battle field death guaranteed - anytime. Be aware: I did not change, I did not grew up...I just do strange electronic music and have way too much imagination for my own good.
And so ... some already live that dark futur, now, every day.
