00:00I want to tell you a little story about my hometown in Sicily and a little
00:07encounter with a guy called Mussolini. Wait, Mussolini? One of the worst
00:14dictators in history? You saying he's actually done something good? Well I
00:19suppose he did replace an illegal corrupt and violent band of gangsters
00:23with a legal corrupt and violent band of fascists, so I guess it depends on your
00:28definition of good. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First we have to
00:33understand who the Mafia were and where they came from. They definitely didn't
00:38start out as an international criminal network with a disposition for equine
00:42decapitation, did they? Hey you, that's not funny. Just read the script. Yes, of course.
00:50That kind of reputation developed a little later. The Mafia began as little more than
00:55feudal peasants in nineteenth-century Sicily. You see, in the wake of Italian
01:00unification there was barely any rule of law in Sicily, so peasants were viciously
01:06exploited by the local elites. Many Sicilians had no option but to turn to
01:10banditry to survive. Now, with no police to turn to, the elites resorted to hiring
01:16other bandits, so-called companies at arms, to guard their property and track down
01:22these thieves. Of course, these companies were more often than not friends or even
01:26relatives of the original bandits and worked for many different landowners. So, it was a
01:32fertile field for betrayal, treachery, revenge and double dealing. And it all got a bit
01:38complicated, quite frankly. But one thing was clear. The landowners were the ones with
01:43the money. And so, these companies evolved into local protection rackets, keeping the bandits
01:50at bay, but also colluding with them, all to squeeze money and power from the elites.
01:58It was a dastardly affair. And it worked. They expanded into counterfeiting, kidnapping, ransom,
02:06murder, robbery, witness intimidation, and, of course, walking around like they own the
02:12place kind of thing. Because eventually they did. Or at least they owned the people who
02:19owned the place. By 1885, they had already come up with a name for themselves in their
02:24Sicilian dialect, mafia, which roughly translates to swagger or bravado. They went on to bully voters
02:33into electing them, and even developed their own parallel society. It involved secret signals,
02:40their own law, and a code of honour called O'Murda, which demanded silence in the face
02:46of the authorities, on pain of death. My lips are totally sealed, Your Honour.
02:51Even before Mussolini, the Italian government had tried to contain them, but all that managed
02:57to do was to alienate Sicily's population. Now, Mussolini came to power in 1922, and soon turned
03:04his eyes onto Sicily. After all, you can't be a totalitarian dictator if you can't totally
03:11dictate the entire country, can you? And so, in 1924, Mussolini paid a little visit to Sicily.
03:18Of course, he didn't go alone. He'd brought along soldiers, submarines, battleships, even
03:24his very own police force, the bare minimum for any self-respecting dictator. To the mafioso
03:30mayor, Don Francesco Cuccia, this was a grave insult, and supposedly he said to Mussolini,
03:37Hey, what do you need all of these cops for? Here you are under my protection. There's nothing
03:44to be afraid of. Needless to say, Mussolini didn't take that very well. He refused Cuccia's
03:51hospitality, and Cuccia, in return, refused Mussolini his audience. So, when Mussolini,
03:57in full regalia, walked out onto the balcony over the central square, he wasn't greeted by
04:02the round of thunderous applause he expected. No, he was gawped at by a smattering of village
04:09idiots, beggars, and bums, a crowd hand-picked by Cuccia himself. You're welcome. Yes. Mussolini
04:17was having none of that. He plotted his revenge and chose the perfect man for the job,
04:24Cesare Mori, a policeman who had spent five years fighting the mafia. Up until that point,
04:30Mori had only been successful in capturing the mafia's low-level bandits. He could never touch the
04:35real mafia dons, who were in some ways effectively his bosses. There was nothing Mori could do. That
04:42is, until Mussolini showed up and basically gave him a blank check. Cha-ching! Are there any laws
04:51getting in your way? No problemo. Es a pena. Make a new ones. In fact, Mori didn't even have to
04:58write
04:58any new laws. He just completely ignored the existing ones altogether. He tore through prefectures,
05:04police stations, ministries, and mansions, essentially engaging in a gang warfare with
05:09the mafia. Except, on his side, he had, you know, the state. In 1926, he laid siege to the hilltop
05:17town
05:17of Ganji, surrounding it with lorries and armoured cars, even cutting the telephone lines. His men went
05:24house to house, rooting out mafiosi wherever they slept. Cattle was slaughtered in the town square,
05:30wives and children were taken hostage. A town crier walked the streets, shouting that the mafiosi
05:36should hand themselves in. Hey, hand yourselves in! Quickly! And when they did, well, in the most
05:44Italian way of torturing someone, they were forced to either drink castor oil or eat live frogs.
05:50I'm not really sure which one sounds less awful. After ten days, Mori entered the town as a
05:57liberator, complete with bands, banners, and the classic balcony speech and congratulations
06:03from Edelducci himself. It was a good old-fashioned fascist fandango, one that harvested 130 mafioso
06:13arrests and 300 accomplices. Three more sieges across Sicily reaped 150 more arrests, but the
06:21fun didn't stop there. When all was said and done, Mori had arrested 11,000 people in Sicily,
06:28many of whom were probably not guilty of any wrongdoing at all. But there's innocent and
06:33then there's innocence. Capiche?
06:36Yes, capiche. Anyway, in 1929, when Mori was finally called back to the mainland,
06:43some say it was because his arrest had created enough paperwork to keep the bureaucracy busy
06:47for decades. Ah, don't we all love paperwork? But he had done his job. The mafia was broken.
06:55Or at least, that's what Mussolini would have you believe. Sicilian crimes mysteriously vanished from
07:00the front pages, and the show trials stopped. After all, it was far easier to disappear the accused,
07:08and with them all that annoying paperwork. Begone! But Mori's crackdown had done nothing to address
07:15the societal issues that had led to the mafia's emergence in the first place. All he did was to
07:21plant the seeds for a later resurgence, and while Mori arrested numerous mafiosi, many others fled to
07:28America, where the local mafia branch was rapidly becoming a new international headquarters. So,
07:34in suppressing the mafia in Sicily, Mussolini, Mori, and the fascists were really just pushing the
07:40problem elsewhere. And when the fascist government eventually fell, the reinvigorated internationalised
07:47mafia reasserted its control over Sicily, perhaps even more so than before. What a lovely happy ending.
07:53Ahem, kind of. No, I think that's kind of the end of the script. Yeah, that's the end of the
07:58script.
07:59Just walk over the black plastic over there. A little bit to your right. Just over here? Have fun?
08:05My dear friends, you may put away your violin cases now. Thank you for watching. Please like,
08:11please subscribe, and I will speak to each other again in two weeks for the next exciting episode
08:18episode of SideQuest. Bye.
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