I am interested to know how American people have changed their perceptions on the Mafia over time. Are they still relevant in people's thoughts? I am guessing people today generally know far less than they used too because their power has reduced. For instance in say the 70s would New Yorkers be able to name bosses and families, while today generally they couldn't name any? Hopefully Pizzaboy if he reads this can add his thoughts on this. What do current American guys on here think? Would the general public know anything about today's families and bosses?

Another interesting thing I have noticed is many Americans seem to have an almost positive view of the Mafia as loveable rogues. After the historic mob bust last year I remember reading the story on the NY times and other American papers, the comments from readers underneath were interesting to me, very few were in praise of the government or FBI. The gist of it was most thought these old men should be left alone and they should be going after the bankers, Wall St, Government officials instead. Then another view was that people are more concerned with gangs such as Black gangs and Hispanics, as they posed more immediate threat to their safety. Some were even saying they would prefer their Neighbourhoods to have a Mafia presence because other street gangs are squeezed out.

What you Americans think about all this?

You see comments like that with every mob bust. People will say they should be going after the "crooks in Washington" or the violent drug gangs. Well first, violent drug gangs get busted all the time. The recent bust in California for example. And political corruption is said to be one of the top priorities for for the FBI. But that's where you could get into an endless political debate about what is corrupt and what isn't.

I've always gotten the feeling that a lot of people who say that stuff do sort of romanticize the mob as "lovable rogues" and would like to see them left alone. Never mind they are killers, drug traffickers, etc. too.

All mobsters are scumbags, but they are interesting scumbags though.

I agree with this. It's good to see that most of the people on this forum seem to acknowledge the fact that the mafiosi aren't good guys and their concept of “honor” is false.
I still remember the senseless discussion I once had with some people (including 2 retired policemen) who genuinely admired Vic Amuso on a blog which is now gone. When I told them the life of crime is a shameful thing and Amuso can’t possibly be a honorable person since he is already a boss of a crime family (these 2 things contradict one another in my opinion), one of them said Amuso has more honor in his left butt cheek than I have in my whole body and, since I don’t know him personally and have never been to the USA, I have no right to judge him. A strange logic in my opinion, since one doesn’t have to know criminals personally to understand that committing crimes is wrong. Also, crime has no nationality, so I don’t see how I can’t dislike criminals from another country just because they are from another country. In my opinion, the fact alone that Amuso put a madman like Casso as his underboss prevents him from being considered a honorable person.

That's despicable. It just goes to show that a lot of cops (especially NYPD) are thugs at heart.

If I got what they said right, they think the other ethnic mafias (Hispanics, Russians, Albanians etc) have taken over most of the drug trade and that the street gangs are now more violent that the Italian-American mafia, they believe the Italian mafia is still being pressed by the FBI because arresting an Italian mafioso would make more headlines than arresting a member of another ethnic group. They think that, with the most charismatic mafia bosses gone, there is less order and more violence in the criminal world. By the way, is the situation described by them really like that?
Anyway, I think it’s extremely strange people with such views have chosen to work in the police. I could understand that (though not approve that, of course) if they were doing it for being paid by the mafia for passing them information, but one of them told me he can’t stand people like Eppolito and Caracappa because they dishonored the police. How is that compatible with their admiration towards Vic Amuso, I wonder.

Sounds like Eppolito and Caracappa doing their thing, not only terroryzing NY, but the net as well!

You should go on mafiatoday.com or even nydailynews comments, there all the same. You ever notice how alot of these fanboys are often racist or include racial slurs in their comments?

Is The Godfather exclusively responsible for starting (I know there's lots of romanticized media depictions) all this?

Yeah the godfather definately was the biggest factor in the romaticised image of the mob both for the public and also the mobsters themselves. It gave them a false sense of honour and family and also made them look more professional than they actually were.

I wonder why do so many people genuinely like the mobsters in the Godfather. I found the book's and the movies' plot interesting, but I felt no sympathy towards its protagonists while reading and watching them. To me, they don't deserve other than the electric chair or a life sentence. Especially Michael who hypocritically betrayed his original ideals. That scene really got me - the one in which he "renounces" his sins in the church while his hitmen are killing people. What a b#@$%&d. Yes, I know the people whom he had killed weren't really "good guys", but still...

This quote is partially the reason I joined, the rest being that it seems to be the general thought here.

I suppose I've always been interested in crime. I ended up researching a lot into serial murder when I was younger and I've come to appreciate organized crime history later in life. I suppose I just like to know what human beings are actually capable of doing to one another.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of interesting posts on here, many of which actually seem plausible. I stumbled across this place looking at pictures of the DeMeo crew. Enough for my introduction.

So what does everybody here think of LCN now? Clearly, they don't hold the gross amount of power they did until the late 70s and early 80s... but is it a joke now? A shadow of once they were, do they they still wield significant power. Just nothing like what it had before?

The family in the godfather is portrayed as a group of people who are being attacked rather than the attackers which makes them more sympathtic to the viewer and also their shunning of the drug trade. It was needed for the movie to work though.

I don't know about the American one, but as for the Italian one, I think that, even though they are still strong in Sicily, they are being gradually substituted by other organizations, especially the 'ndrangheta, on the international level. At least, that's what I understood from what I watched on TV and read about the Cosa Nostra. I don't know if the information is correct though. Even the experts can't be 100% sure since the mafia is secretive and has kept rather quiet since the arrest of Totò Riina and his goons. At least, no more terroristic attacks.


I understand that, but even though they were attacked it's not really like ALL the crimes they committed were because of self-defense. Also, if I got it right, they didn't like drugs not because they are killing people but only because the risks drug dealers face are too high. Also, even though it may seem funny to somebody, I have great personal hatred towards people who are cruel to animals and that episode with the cut-off head of the horse...

Welcome to the forum Bill d

My opinion on them is that theyve always been a street gang. The only thing that put them a cut above the rest was their union and labour activities and perhaps their structure. But at the same time theyve always been involved with drugs, prostitution, extortion and robbery like every other gang their is.

I'm with you on that, they are still just gangsters. Not saying that some of them didn't act classy. I read this book, "Mafia Princess" a few years back... I was stuck in a situation with less else to do. It was written by Sam Giancana's daughter, and was more of a cry for attention that anything I'd believe to be accurate... but she sure loved to go on about how classy of a gangster Paul Ricca was. Like I said, some gangster's crazy daughter revering some other gangster.

I think The Godfather's portrayal of LCN to heavily influence the romanticizing image they often get. I'd be far more likely to believe the accusation they "banned" drugs because of the heavy penalties they accrued, to decrease snitching. I say "banned" cause we all know it's allowed if it's kept swept under the rug. What family didn't immensely profit off of trafficking and distribution?

Whatever drug ban that was agreed upon back then---yet hardly enforced---certainly wasn't for moral reasons. It was for practical reasons (the public's perception, long prison sentences, etc.).

'ndrangheta is of no competition to Cosa Nostra. They are surely not taking over in Sicily. They do their thing and the Sicilians do theirs. The only thing happening in Sicily right now is they are re-grouping amongst themselves and as of recently, La Stidda has been doing business with Cosa Nostra as the younger generation has put aside their honor (yes, they have their honor, even though it conflicts with your definition of honor) and pride for the almighty dollar. It's a disgrace but it is what it is.

As far as drugs go, in Italy, compared to the US..there are bosses that will not allow drugs to be sold or even TAKEN in their hometown, purely because they don't want that garbage in their town. I know of young people that have caught a severe beating from a mafioso for being caught doing dope in a town where it's prohibited by the boss.

GF romanticized gangster life, but was far from exclusive. Hollywood has been making gangster films since at least the 1930's (Cagney, Bogart, Raft etc).

I think Goodfella's was one of the first to shatter a lot of the myths and public perceptions surrounding the mob.

Heres a good article about how the mafia has changed over the years.
http://www.bunker8.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/orgcrim/3802.htm

from mafia to gangster?

We can now turn to the second question. The rapid expansion of the Mob based on the economic criminality of the Prohibition era and subsequent decades raises the question of how far Italian-American organised crime moved away from the Sicilian model in which the organisation continues to seek not only wealth but political control, legitimacy and a role in settling disputes in the community from which it emerges, and becomes, simply a form of illegal wealth accumulation-- crime as a form of "forced entry" into the ranks of the wealthy.

The German sociologist Henner Hess (1998) Mafia and Mafiosi: Origin, Power and Myth argues that the American Mafia began to move away from this community mediation role. This would be expected as the Italian-American community achieved upward social mobility and moved out of the ghetto and as the mafia widened its economic activities outside the local community. The mafiosi thus loses status and legitimacy and becomes a criminal pure and simple:

“because he has no necessary protective or mediatory function to fulfil within the social system he also possesses no legitimacy in popular morality; that is, he is no longer a mafioso but a criminal... He grants no audiences and nobody calls on him. He is... to the general public an anonymous big-city criminal, with no resemblance to the universally known and respected mafioso of the Sicilian village.” (Hess 1998: 172-3)

The bureaucratic-corporate model portrayed by Cressey would be quite consistent with a criminal organisation that lost its community roots and functions and became simply a money-making machine. But then so would the more decentralised family-oriented structure portrayed by the Iannis. There are plenty of small 'family firms' in modern organised crime. But they tend to concentrate on money-making rather than gaining status and respect through sorting out conflicts in the communities within which they operate.

But if we return to the opening scene from the first Godfather movie, even if it is rather a caricature of the Mafia, we see, even in the period after the Second World War, the American Mafia as still very much rooted in the Italian-American immigrant community. Here the activities of mediation, settling disputes, helping individuals, giving 'justice' to Mr Bonasera, are still very much alive, though not quite in their old Sicilian form. That is to say it is less a question of the weakness or absence of the legitimate state and law enforcement agencies than it is a desire to keep things out of sight of the law enforcement agencies and within 'our' community and impose 'our' values and standards of justice. Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) says to Mr Bonasera "But why didn't you come to me in the first place? Why did you go to the police?" Mr Bonasera, it will be recalled, only came to the Don 'for justice' because he didn't get what he regarded as justice from the state. It was not a question of the weakness of the state.

As we shall see in more detail later the traditional Mafia in both its Sicilian and American versions, by retaining its orientation to prestige and status (through the respect that comes from fear) in its own communities, found itself at a disadvantage in relation to other more modern organised crime groups when it came to taking advantage of illegal money-making opportunities. This is broadly the argument of the Italian sociologist Letizia Paoli in her book: Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style . (Oxford University Press, 2003) She argues that the Mafia, both in Italy and the US, clings to its traditional focus on the retention of a local political power base. She argues that this has been to a considerable extent at the expense of opportunities to engage in a more modern purely entrepreneural criminality. The latter would require in the present period a more flexible shifting form of organisation and the ability to operate globally rather than be tied too closely to local communities and family networks. She argues that this was the basic cause of the decline of the old Mob during the 1980s.

This is subjective. Everyone is allowed to have their own concept of honor. What may not be seen as honor by you, could be seen as honor by someone else.

One of the few things I do admire of some mafiosi, is their perception of honor, or at least how it used to be.

No.

Gotta agree.

I'm old enough to remember Italian American life in the Bronx before the movie came out. There were always young guys who looked up to the wiseguys in the neighborhood. But I have to say that after the movie came out it became a lot more blatant (everything from dressing like them to quoting the movie verbatim).

So it was always there for certain guys (we always just called them wannabes), but I think the films exacerbated it a little bit.

But that's because it was such a good film.

No one's arguing that. But the Cadillacs and slutty broads didn't hurt, either .

Did The Godfather create slutty broads? Except for Lucy, the film only shows ladies.

I wasn't talking about the movie, Sonny. I was talking about what attracted some of the neighborhood guys to the life (cars, clothes, and in some cases a certain type of woman).

I see. But if I was such a neighborhood guy inspired by The Godfather, I would not be interested in slutty broads either, except if Sonny was my role model.

Yeah, I think Sonny would have had a field day on Mob Wives .