I have always loved this movie, and Godfather II even more. Watching it again these days though, all I could think about was the turbulent moment we are living through. As Robert Ebert notes in this review, this movie is so absorbing that we actually romanticized organized crime in the US.
Ebert: “During the movie we see not a single actual civilian victim of organized crime. No women trapped into prostitution. No lives wrecked by gambling. No victims of theft, fraud or protection rackets. The only police officer with a significant speaking role is corrupt.”
Organized crime affects every single one of us in the form of higher taxes and fewer social services as our law enforcement agencies work to combat the violence, financial crimes, cybercrimes, and corruption. And it’s global now. Our national security apparatus has long deemed Transnational Organized Crime as a national security threat and a threat to democracy around the world. All those crimes make everything more expensive for the rest of us. It endangers our health through human trafficking and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. And it corrupts local, state, and national officials, who are supposed to be working for us.
This time around, watching The Godfather got me thinking about other forms of organized crime in our history. More specifically, other times when too much power was held by too few, leading to an oligarchy of crime and corruption. I believe that this is precisely what is causing our current misery and tumult, so I wanted to look for examples of where it has happened before.
Southern Planters & Slavery
I’ve been reading a historical fiction series about the Civil War and it’s hard not to see the southern planter class through an “organized crime” lens. If oligarchy is defined as a power structure that allows a few individuals to rule in a way that benefits them to the exclusion of the rest of society, it is clear they were an oligarchy. It was an aristocracy built on slave labor and it gave them political clout that allowed them to expand their slaveholding land into Native American territories so they could cling to power as each new state was added to the Union.
If you are thinking it is too extreme to refer to southern planter/slaveholders as “organized crime”, let’s consider their behavior immediately before and after they lost the Civil War.
When Lincoln was elected, southern Democrats - the pro-slavery party - held almost half the seats in the Senate and had additional northern allies that they could control. Lincoln would have been virtually powerless on the issue of slavery, not to mention he repeatedly said he didn’t intend to focus on it. The Democrats had a majority of the Supreme Court. They had just had a decade of significant legislation and Supreme Court rulings in favor of slavery. Throughout this period, by the way, they demanded the federal government’s help in enforcing fugitive slave control OVER northern states’ rights.
They left the Union because they disagreed with northerners. Mississippi complained that northerners believed in “negro equality” and this was enough to justify secession. Texas also said they had to leave because northerners were “proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color”. Secession was illegal and shameful because they only did it to save their oligarchy.
Immediately after losing the war, the south began to institute black codes across the south. The point of these laws were to restrict the freedom of the former slaves and make sure they were still available to work on the plantations. These laws prohibited Black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax. They punished anyone who offered higher wages to a Black laborer who was already employed.
But wait there's more! Former confederate veterans formed a terrorist organization whose entire purpose was to punish Black and white Republicans with harassment, torture, and murder. The original leadership of the Ku Klux Klan included lawyers, physicians, police officers, and plantation owners.
Members of the planter class didn’t start out as gangsters like the Corleones. But when the oligarchy is threatened, they immediately morph into a criminal enterprise. They break laws and harm people to keep it.
Organized crime is described as a “continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand. Its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations.” Ding, ding, ding.
California Growers & Fair Wages
Next, I dug into the dust bowl years a little bit and the fight for fair wages. It should come as no surprise to you that this was also inspired by a novel that my book club selected earlier this year.
The dust bowl was the biggest migration of Americans in history. Many headed to California, which quickly became overrun with migrants. Most of the farms in California were corporate-owned and they used this to their advantage - repeatedly lowering wages and pocketing the profits, while using their wealth and political power to convince law enforcement and locals that the migrants were subhuman and deserved no help. The larger farms had onsite lodging and company stores for the laborers. These company stores charged high prices for goods and allowed migrants to incur debt that could only be paid off with wages, keeping them tied to their situation and ensuring they had no agency.
Again, it seems like a stretch to call this completely legal display of free market capitalism “organized crime”. But look at their actions when the subjugated people push back via a strike.
First, they actively prevented workers from assembling to try to improve their lot. They encouraged police to raid gatherings and beat up anyone who either tried to educate pickers or tried to learn as a picker. Second, they used their wealth and power to control the public opinion, actively ensuring other community members ostracized the migrants from all of the rest of society, including little kids attending school or getting medical care. And finally, of course, they led or encouraged vigilante mobs who beat and murdered them for striking.
Again, these growers were not initially behaving like a crime syndicate. They were not all bad people any more than any group of humans has “bad” or “good” people in it. But once they had so much power in so few hands, it didn't seem to matter that they were raking in record profits, they were ready to destroy everything to keep the status quo. It’s like something switches in peoples’ brains in these situations and they lose their sense of right and wrong. What was that definition of organized crime again? Oh yeah, “its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations.” See what I mean?
Today
I have been studying how Transnational Organized Crime is affecting us right now, particularly where it has already infiltrated our government, media, and other institutions. We know, through court transcripts and indictments, that foreign groups have been actively working to divide Americans by spreading disinformation, fear, and hate for years. We also know that citizens are repeatedly banned from various social media sites for spreading disinformation. And yet.
Today, citizens are showing up at local school board and town council meetings and spewing conspiracy theories, punching each other, and harassing teachers and other officials. People are pretending that COVID precautions and the vaccine are nefarious when they absolutely are not and never have been. There’s an actual cult that has sprouted up and is being actively nurtured, with believers around the world. Members of this QAnon cult have committed crimes, deserted their children, and isolated themselves from the people they love rather than give up the ludicrous farce that the world has been taken over by a secret group of people who eat and molest children. Most alarming to me, well-known public figures are advocating for fascist dictators over our own country!
Why? Who benefits when Americans are exhausted, afraid, sick, and ready to surrender our Republic? This is much bigger than left/right politics. It is absolutely some form of organized crime like the examples I shared above. Some group of oligarchs - whether foreign, like the well-known Russian mafia, or domestic, like the Koch enterprise/Federalist Society - is threatened and they are acting exactly as the groups above acted. Or, God help us, perhaps they have joined forces. I want to know who they are. I want all of their damn names and I want them tried and sent to prison.
If this topic interests you, I encourage you to give the podcast The World Beneath a listen. It’s a rich and groundbreaking series that examines how the underworld’s criminal figures have morphed and changed as organized crime went global.
I also suggest you follow the Pegasus Project, which is an international investigative journalism initiative that revealed that governments all over the world have been using spyware developed by an Israeli tech firm to monitor people. If you enjoy spy thrillers, we’ve got one right here in real life. This software can access victims' data, messages, and photos, and can turn on the phone’s microphone, camera, and geolocation. Absolutely terrifying. A global weapon to silence truth. I expect we will learn more about the perpetrators in the future.
Times are dire, I know. But we’ve gotten out of scary moments before, and we will again, as long as most of us know how important the moment is. Pay attention, but not so much that you get discouraged and lose hope. Take care of yourself.
Be wary of those who constantly tell you that your fellow Americans are to blame. Blame elected officials? Absolutely. They literally have staff to ensure their information is as accurate as possible. Average Americans do not.
I know, I’m angry with the anti-vax crowd too, but it helps me to remember they are victims of our very first global disinformation war of the social media era and, as a country, we aren’t doing enough to fight it because it’s such a new phenomenon. They are drowning in it and it’s killing them and us.
I know, I also think they should be smart enough to understand the difference between con artists and grifters, and professional journalists and epidemiologists. Just remember there are forces actively trying to keep them confused, scared, angry, and uninformed. Actively trying to hurt them.
Talk about it with your friends and family and make sure people understand how serious this moment is.
Most of all, remember how important your actions are. Remember how vital your individual acts of kindness are to the greater world. Be kind and be a good example. Remember that most people are actually good - the bad ones just get the headlines. We are going to need each other to make it through this moment and there are more of us than we think.
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