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Ryan Gingeras
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The 20th century saw the mafia go global. Crime groups from Japan's Yakuza to southern Italy's Camorra, capitalized on political chaos and mass migration to spread their influence around the world. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Ryan Gingeras traces the relentless rise of the Mafia, a tale that takes in Al Capone, Pablo Escobar and Don Corleone. Ryan was speaking to Spencer Mizzen.
Spencer Mizzen
Hello Ryan, thank you very much for joining us today. You've just written a book on the history of organised crime called A Global History now utter the phrase organized crime to many people. And now I guess probably think of Al Capone or the Sicilian Mafia or perhaps fictional characters such as Don Corleone or Tony Soprano. However, as you're book makes abundantly clear, this is a story that sort of goes back centuries, a lot further than the 20th century, and has involved numerous groups from all over the world, not just Sicily and America. So with that in mind, I wonder if you could start by defining what exactly we're talking about when we use the word Mafia. What to you, Ryan, defines a Mafia? What, in your opinion, sort of distinguishes a genuine Mafia group from other crime groups?
Ryan Gingeras
Yeah. Thank you, Spencer. I'm really glad that you were kicking it off with that question because, yeah, the book isn't really about organized crime in and of itself, because if you think about organized crime, it involves people in and beyond just the criminals who may be purveyors of certain types of crime or illicit industries. You know, you have the consumers, you have people who abet crimes, who otherwise are legitimate people, let's say, bankers or lawyers or something like that. This is a book about mafias. And the way I define it is actually far more, let's just say colloquial than it is a clinical or scholarly kind of definition. Because the truth of the matter is scholars and practitioners, whether they're criminologists or people involved in investigating crime, tend to not use mafias as a kind of critical or scholarly term. Because it's a really loaded phrase that I think, which is, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book is that it's a phrase that has so much power and is of such profundity that it's a. It's found in languages throughout the world, but doesn't need translation. It doesn't necessarily need explanation, usually for the people who often use it, regardless of the context. But for me, what I wanted to write about were groups that, as I would define a mafia, that are conspiracies. They're criminal conspiracies, but they're enduring criminal conspiracies. Conspiracies, they go on for extended period of times. In some cases, you know, if you're going to use the example of something like, say, the Mafia of Sicily or the Yakuza of Japan or say, certain triads, these are criminal conspiracies that are now decades and centuries in the making. And what makes those groups so unique is that they're not just organizations. They are cultures or subcultures that endure despite the passage of time, despite. Right, let's say leaders, members or conspirators going in and out of the conspiracy, either due to death or imprisonment or what have you. And not only that, a mafia tends to have a kind of mythos around it. It has a sort of legendary status that's rooted in its history. It's rooted in culture, it's rooted in where it's from. It's rooted in this sense that it has a really distinct and profound identity. And so the truth of the matter is, the groups I talk in this book, many of them are quite different from one another. They have different origins, they have different trajectories. But the thing that they all have in common is that sense that they share a really distinct place within the evolution of modern history, specifically within the context which they're found, the times and places they're found, but also because they come to reflect really important trends in history. And so this is really the guts of the book.
Spencer Mizzen
And you contend there are four mafias that endure to this day. You've already mentioned two or three of them. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about those four organizations, please. I mean, you mentioned that they differ, but what characteristics as well do they share?
Ryan Gingeras
I'll try to be as brief as possible, but the fact of the matter is, when you look at the Cumorah and the mafia, we don't really know exactly when they were conceived. There are strong suspicions where they were conceived in terms of the actual setting. And it's very likely that they emerged as ostensibly prison gangs in the early 19th century that eventually emerged from prison as organizations, but as organizations that end up enveloping people beyond just the conspirators who eventually became members in prison. They eventually included people who are local people of influence, whether in politics or in business, maybe bandits. And so it ends up taking on something of a subculture. Now, I mean, what's really interesting in the case of even Italy in the 19th century, when these groups begin to emerge, people really debated what these things were. They weren't entirely sure, and there was a lot of debate around it because it was also quite culturally sensitive. So, I mean, there were those who had said, well, maybe it's just a part of the mentality of people who live in the Mezegiorno in the southern parts of Italy. It's a reflection of the fact that they are not just different, but maybe a bit more backwards than people from northern Italy. And there were people who argued, no, they didn't exist. These groups don't exist at all. It's all kind of a myth now. The thing we do know now is that most definitely they do eventually become quite du jour organizations that are directly and quite specifically dedicated to. To engaging in crimes of extortion or engaging in things like smuggling. In the case of the Camorra, prostitution is really important, and so on. This is a really very different history from the case of the triads or the Yakuza. The triads are in some ways much older, but they come from a really different place. The triads emerge from a secret society that began to take shape in the 18th century in China, not necessarily as a specifically regional group, but rather as a devotional group related to, more than anything, resistance to the government, as well as a kind of Social self help group for men, specifically men who were maybe down on their luck or maybe having arrived to a new town and looking for a job or, you know, they were looking for some sort of connection. And so it doesn't. The triads don't actually start out as a ostensibly criminal organization or at least an organization dedicated to pedantic crime that we eventually associate it with, which is things like drug trafficking or extortion and things like that. It eventually becomes associated with these things because of the fact that many of its members in many of these organizations end up becoming really very influential and very much present in places where drug trafficking was present, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century in China. And so therefore they adapt or adopt certain kinds of industries, basically because that's what the members are doing. And one of the things about the triads is that as a fraternal organization and as a secret society, the structure of it, the culture of it, lends itself towards criminal conspiracy. Since it is secret, it has a kind of integrity to. To it. And very clearly there is a kind of mythos around it that develops over time. Lastly, the Yakuza is far older. We don't know exactly when the Yakuza develops. And to be quite honest, the notion of the Yakuza as a singular organization doesn't really exist until after, quite honestly, World War II. But what we do know is that going back many centuries, you do have something like professional classes that are organized around things that are either considered somewhat taboo or ostensibly criminal. So for example, gamblers tend to band together almost like a professional class or caste, kind of a caste in the classic sense of it being a level of society or people within a class structure and that over a long period of time they develop certain traits and develop a certain culture. Although this is uniformly spread across Japan, it's not as localized or as particular as say, a Camorra or mafia. It's just that by the 19th century, as Japan especially begins to evolve and takes on the traits of a more modern state and certainly a more modern nation, they become much more politically and socially prominent due to the fact that many of these members of this caste or class of criminals and sort of ne' er do wells become involved in right wing politics as assassins or as toughs. And this association with politics and association with the emerging order of Japan helps lay the foundation for what becomes a series of families or gangs after World War II that become much more distinct, much more regionalized, much more associated expressly with specific criminal industries like drug trafficking, like extortion gambling and prostitution.
Spencer Mizzen
Now, you mentioned there sort of the political element of the rise of the Yakuza. I want to broaden that out a bit, if I could, please. To what extent did political upheaval, war, revolution, supercharge the rise of these four gangs? I mean, is that kind of a common denominator in all these cases?
Ryan Gingeras
You definitely see that there is a Pre World War II and a post World War II evolution to each of these groups, and that after World War II they do become more similar to one another in the sense that all four of them become intimately tied with emerging and most importantly, increasingly globalized forms of crime, most notably drug trafficking. There is this sense that World War II as a moment of upheaval, is an important milestone in their evolution. Now, what makes World War II important in the case of all three of these groups is that World War II devastates Italy, China and Japan to the point that all three of these countries are reconstructed not just physically, but also politically and socially in its aftermath. And it's very clear that all four of the groups end up taking advantage of this period of upheaval by reconsolidating themselves and redefining themselves in many ways. So in that sense, yes, revolution upheaval definitely has an important role to play in the ways in which these four groups evolve as mafias. Now, when you look beyond that, one of the ways in which all four groups end up having a role within politics is the fact that all four end up playing something of a surrogate role to very powerful and otherwise legitimate factions in Italian, Chinese and Japanese society, either as, let's say, leg breakers and fixers within politics, or people who are, let's say, allied to important political parties as vote getters or as patricians. And lastly, and far from least, there is a kind of conspiratorial element within each of these histories of these mafias, where they're doing nefarious things on the part of politicians and governments that ultimately help solidify those governments as the reigning political factions of their times.
Spencer Mizzen
Would it be fair to say that at some points, one or other of these groups, maybe all four of them, actually rivaled the power of the state? I mean, did they present a significant threat to the political establishment when we
Ryan Gingeras
look specifically at these four Mafias? Not quite. But what they most certainly provide a model for is that it becomes a frame of reference for other groups that emerge in the wake of World War II. And so if we're going to talk about groups that genuinely emerge as rivals to, or groups in some ways even usurp the power of the state. Then you have to talk about cartels in Mexico or the cartels of Colombia, which are altogether new in comparison to these four canonical, old or traditional mafias. In some ways, they are inspired by, at the very least, the mythos around these groups. There is a connective tissue to them, even though they come out of very, very different contexts.
Spencer Mizzen
Right. I'm gonna come back to those later on, Ryan, because something that really leaps out of the pages of your book is that sort of globalization and mass migration transformed the landscape. When it came to these mafias before, they were really powerful, but relatively localized. Suddenly they had these vast new horizons. And these new horizons definitely included the United States of America. When did kind of foreign born mafiosis start operating on the streets of Americ? How did the people of America react?
Ryan Gingeras
I introduce it in some ways as a testament to the emergence of the United States as a really defining force in modern history. You can't understand the makings of modern mafias without understanding the United States and its domestic evolution and its role in the world. And where we certainly can begin this story is in the late 19th century, when the United States is this place that becomes the central destination for migrants all over the world. And when we think about this period of time, we have to first of all, imagine the scale of this migration. We're talking about millions of people coming to the United States looking for opportunities. And naturally, among these many millions are people who either had been mafiosi of some kind somewhere, who basically take their culture and most certainly kind of take the sort of crimes that they're used to plying back at home, and they begin to practice them somewhere within the United States. Now this is a story I'm sure a lot of people are generally familiar with. Even if you've never read a book on the Mafia, if you've seen Godfather 2 or whatever, it's depicted so vividly and really so wonderfully on the screen. We don't really get crime families akin to, let's say, the kind of crime families that we come to think about in the United States, like say the Gambinos or Genovese or whatever, or somebody even like Capone until after the First World War, until the 1920s. Before then you do see a rather loose subculture, for example, of the so called Black Hand or Manonero, which was a term that was applied to generally Italian extortionists who victimized Italian migrant communities throughout the United States, not just in places like New York. Or Chicago or Philadelphia, but even really small towns in the middle of America, places like Kansas and so on. What is really, really fascinating is the extent to which we also see variations of the triad tradition in the United States, although within the context of the United States are often referred to as tongs, or a tong being a fratern hall or a kind of fraternal brotherhood that went by a variety of different names that tended to monopolize or operate certain types of crimes in Chinatowns and beyond. Most notably, again, things like drug trafficking. And then even you see some semblance of the Yakuza along the west coast of the United States or in Hawaii, although they're not necessarily referred to as the Yakuza. But they definitely, we definitely see something that looks something like say, gamblers and gambling gangs, things of this nature at work in places like Honolulu and even relatively small towns, including the one I'm speaking from here in Santa Cruz, California. Now, what definitely occurs by World War II is that there's a degree of maturation. And that maturation in a lot of ways has to do with the changing economic character of the United States. The United States as an economy grows by leaps and bounds after the 1920s. Yes, it definitely experiences real hardship during the Depression. But if you take the long view of the United states from the 20s to the end of the 20th century, you're talking about a really quite sustained and really impressive degree of economic growth, which contrasts quite sharply with other parts of the world, especially those affected directly by the Second World War. And that in and of itself becomes a really important focus for criminals around the world. So for example, if you're going to sell drugs in the world through the 20th century, there's really only one place you're going to really know you're going to make a killing, and that's America. Because there is stability. There are people with expendable incomes. There's an expansive and really predictable system of transport getting to the United States and within it. So it's an attractive place that comes into focus for lots of groups through the 20th century, which ultimately is the thing that makes the United States such an important place within the larger history of mafias.
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Spencer Mizzen
You've written a feature for the Marsh issue of History Extra magazine in which you discuss the history of the Mafia. And one of the figures that plays quite a prominent role in that feature is a man called Harry Aislinger, who was Washington's top narcotics official in the 1950s and 60s. Can you tell us about the tactics he adopted in fighting the Mafia and maybe give us a feel for what extent it worked?
Ryan Gingeras
Yeah, thank you so much for bringing him, you know, into the conversation, because Harry Anslinger is a generally profound figure in American history and yet is so broadly unrecognized and underappreciated in terms of his role Now, I mean, just as a little backstory for people, Harry Enslinger enters into federal service in the 1920s and 30s. He's not a policeman. He has no background really, in local or national law enforcement. He actually gets a start as a diplomat. Now, amid the 1930s, in the rise of Prohibition and also obviously, the rise of bootlegging and things of this nature, he becomes more of an important player in Washington in trying to counter bootlegging. But ultimately, in the 1930s, he gets tasked with something completely different. He is given the assignment of establishing the first national body or the first national policing organization geared towards countering drug trafficking. And this is a bureau known as the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, or the fbn. Now, he's often compared to somebody like J. Edgar Hoover who established the FBI, which comes into existence around this exact same time. And like J. Edgar Hoover, Anslinger was something of a media hound. He very much appreciated the idea that. But for the FBN to really thrive as an organization and also gain some sort of relevance in Washington and among the public, you needed to engage directly with the media in all of its manifestations. Now, Anslinger, as head of the FBN by the 1940s, really embraces this idea that drug trafficking in the United States is not a random phenomenon, but rather it's something that is monopoly monopolized. And it's monopolized by what he comes to believe is a singular conspiracy. Okay, and that this conspiracy, colloquially speaking, is referred to as the Mafia. Right. I mean, it goes. You know, there are a lot of synonyms, but it's really in the 40s and 50s that the word Mafia enters into American diction as a kind of offhanded or kind of shorthand expression for what Anslinger would come to argue is this singular organization that dominates the American underworld from coast to coast, especially when it comes to drug trafficking. Now, the great turning point in Anslinger's career, and indeed, the really great turning point in the making of Mafias as a global history, comes about in the 1950s, when Anslinger gets the attention of several US senators who become equally interested in this issue of crime in the United States, and specifically organized crime in the United States. Anslinger and his bureau play a critical role in providing evidence and information to these senators who hold hearings, you know, first in the early 50s, but these hearings would continue intermittently through the 1960s. And it's through these hearings, these are public, senatorial hearings, that many people in the United States, in the world at large, really come to appreciate this idea of the Mafia, and in this case, the idea that there is this singular, clandestine, fraternal organization that dominates the American underworld, dominates drug trafficking, and is kind of this sort of secret actor in the making of American life and American politics going back to the early 20th century. There's this entire parallel history that is laid out by American senators, and that story is essentially supplied to them first and foremost by Harry Anslinger. So, in other words, why we're talking about this today is. Is really due to this rather obscure political and historical figure that, you know, comes about and plays such a. Such a distinct role during this time.
Spencer Mizzen
And we can't run a podcast on the Mafia without mentioning the Godfather, Mario Puzzo's 1969 novel, which was, of course, adapted into a spectacularly successful film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This racked up millions in the box office and won the Academy award for best picture. And there's so much we could when it comes to this film trilogy. But one thing that really jumped out at me was the impact it had on perceptions of the mafia among the mafia themselves. It was so great that actually shaped how crime groups operated. Criminals started to refer to their leaders as godfathers, and they even began to mimic the organizational structure used in the film. Why do you think the Godfather has proven so successful over the last five decades? Why did it strike such a chord with cinema goers across America and beyond?
Ryan Gingeras
This is the fulcrum of the book. Because I think when you look first and foremost at the context in which the Godfather comes out, and you look at the thesis that really drives the Godfather, it changes and it solidifies what people around the world come to think of when they think about organized crime, clandestine criminal organizations writ large, and more importantly, gives them a vocabulary and a singular point of reference that's so, so effective. So to unpack that a little bit, the early 1970s is a really critical moment in the evolution of crime groups all over the world. Mafias all over the world in the early 1970s, the Yakuza, the Camorra, the mafia in Sicily, the Triads. Even in places like Hong Kong, they're at the height of their power. And not only that, they are becoming ever more adventurous and expansive in their activities, primarily due to the rise of the drug trade. By the early 1970s, there is something like an epidemic in the United States when it comes to heroin use. And it is primarily the product of a singular organized network of producers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers that collectively comes to be known as the French Connection. Okay, now, in the early 1970s, the French connection and the trafficking around it, this becomes major news, major international news, because Richard Nixon, who comes into office in 1969, obviously, amid all the tumult that's happening in the United States and Vietnam and so on, he is the first president to declare war on organized crime and in particular, declare war on drugs. And so the French Connection mafias, this is major headlining news. So by this point in time, people around the world are paying attention. They're paying attention not only to what's happening in the U.S. but also, depending on where you are paying attention, what's happening locally. And so along comes this movie at a time in which, let's face it, Hollywood in the late 1960s is really in crisis. The movies that are coming out during the late 60s are bad. They're old fashioned. Hollywood's losing money and then steps in Coppola with the Godfather, and it absolutely just kills at the box office. People come out in large droves to see it in the United States and eventually all over the world. And I think one of the things about this movie that so speaks to the time is that, number one, it is essentially a movie that for Coppola himself, is a metaphor. Right? Coppola has always insisted Godfather's not a Mafia movie. It's a movie about American power and American capitalism. It's a movie that in some ways is a love letter to American society, specifically immigrant society. And it's a history. Right? I mean, you have to think about it as something that comes out in the early 1970s, but set in the late 40s, early 1950s. And so for a lot of people who are coming into the theaters, many of them young people, they're watching a movie about their parents and they're looking at this as a retrospective. And so the movie in many ways makes a really stark argument about who precisely is in control and what really politics is in an America. And eventually people come to see that as representative of where they are. And so to get to that point where, as you mentioned, Mafias themselves and mafiosi around the world come to draw such intimate lessons from the Godfather about what they do and where they come from and even how they talk, you have to appreciate that this film in its context really was a product of a really distinct and really profound period of time in that it becomes so important for just the way people come to talk about the phenomenon. If you, let's say, do a word search in something like a database of newspapers and you word search the word Mafia, it's very clear that post 71, mafia as a term becomes ever more common parlance, not just in the United States, but everywhere. And so it's definitely linked to this very important moment in history. And it's reflective of the fact that now people have this singular point of reference to talk about these things, which is ironic because the word Mafia is never once mentioned in the Godfather. So to get to that point, you really, again, have to understand the broader kind of context and confection around this period of time.
Spencer Mizzen
Now, you mentioned earlier the cartels, to what extent was their drive risen by sort of the fact that globalization went into hyperdrive in the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century? To what extent did they benefit from the.
Ryan Gingeras
Yeah, I mean, first of all, you know, the, the name itself, cartel, is an interesting phenomenon and an interesting and important point of reference when it comes to the moment in time in which they begin to emerge and their relationship to mafias in general. The word cartel, like the word mafia, has a really unknown point of origin. It's not entirely clear who first coined it or even necessarily why. But one thing that's very, very clear is that by the mid to late 1970s, the word mafia, which is initially used for some groups in places like Mexico and Colombia, as well as for Cuban organizations that are engaging in cocaine trafficking, these groups come to be called specifically cartels. And one thing that the way they become really active is not just in dealing cocaine, but in violence. The early 1980 is a time period in which there is an extraordinary display of violence by cocaine trafficking groups to the point that cartel becomes really important as a concept because it's seen as a kind of distinct derivation of mafias. Mafias, in the minds of lots of people, are nowhere near as violent as cartels. And so this idea of them becoming a kind of knock on manifestation of mafias becomes solidified by the 1980s. I mean, we cannot explain the rise of cartels and the rise of people like Pablo Escobar without talking about global trends in commerce and in trade. And I think when we think about the late 20th century, just as a kind of meta history, this is a time in which globalization is really beginning to smack people in the face, even though the economies of the world has been increasingly more knit together going back to the 19th century, but it's being symbolized more and more by things like Pizza Hut or Michael Jackson or Nike or things of that nature. And cocaine in some ways comes to be representative of this because it is a mass produced product that emerges rather dramatically on the scene as a commodity in the late 70s, early 80s, in the same way that other mass produced, and often really somewhat stylish or trendy, you know, sorts of products are coming onto the scene writ large in the world now, needless to say, we're still living in the shadow of this. The problem of cocaine distribution and production is far larger, far more widespread than it ever was in the early 1980s. But one thing that's really very much enduring is the mythos of the people who still are associated with its origins. Your Escobars, your Carlos Leders. So in this sense, you can't tell the story without the wider context of the time period of the 80s.
Spencer Mizzen
You mentioned Escobar there a couple of times. Anybody with Any sort of passing interest in the cartels will know that name. What made him so spectacularly successful?
Ryan Gingeras
You know, in some ways, he was a direct beneficiary of the post Godfather era, in the sense that when Pablo Escobar becomes a noted personality, you know, first in Colombia, but then internationally in the late 70s, early 80s, we've already had several years of people thinking about the existence of powerful, clandestine criminal empires that are managed by these rather mysterious Godfather like figures. And Pablo Esquire seemed to fit the bill. The fact of the matter is, he himself held, helped create this mythos. He was very much a product of the legend that began to develop around the Godfather. And after seeing the Godfather many, many times, he would mimic the role of Vito Corleone in terms of his speech patterns and his mannerisms. And so he's both the engineer and the beneficiary of this kind of reverberation that occurs after the release of the Godfather.
Spencer Mizzen
And what about the future of mafias? I think a lot of people would agree that we're living in a sort of more chaotic, uncertain, polarized world than has been the case in recent decades. Is that good news for criminal gangs?
Ryan Gingeras
I think we have to set aside first of all the idea of mafias, and again, the idea of organized crime. I think one thing that the 21st century has reinforced, although I think that lesson has always been there for people to appreciate, although perhaps people have tended to ignore it, is that organized crime is the province of lots of actors in and beyond mafias. I think, for example, in the post September 11th world, people become more conscious of the fact that terrorist organizations often behave like mafias. Ideal drugs, they engage in extortion. And they're criminal groups ostensibly that behave in clandestine and almost Masonic kind of ways. They have rights, they have ranks, they have a kind of, again, sort of mystery and mythos around them. And I think that as a phenomenon has helped reinforce the idea that it's not just mafias that are the problem when it comes to organized crime. You can have states that behave behave like mafias. I mean, it is so often said that Putin in himself kind of governs Russia like a mafia don. And in some ways he is a mafia don in the ways in which he has utilized mafiosi of various types in his own foreign policy and in his own management of Russian affairs. In other words, this kind of phenomenon is something that emphasizes that when it comes to organized crime, mafias are not really the only thing one has to pay attention to. Now, the truth of the matter is the moniker Mafia is not going away. And the idea that criminal groups are not only here to stay, but they seem to be metastasizing and growing in their diversity. That's very real. And I think what to me is so important about mafias, and really one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book, is that now more than ever, what's demanded of us is to appreciate that they are big components in the making of modern life and modern politics and modern economy in various places around the world. Even though groups like, let's say, the American Mafia are somewhat of a shadow of what they used to be, or that the Yakuza has certainly shrunk numerically in terms of the number of groups or their influence, the idea of it still so relevant to us, and it's relevant in terms of just, again, the pervasiveness of crime, but also because I think it's an evocative representation of certain tropes that really are meaningful to people. And I think the things that mafias represent now are things that are in beyond just the issue of crime, let's say in the case of the Sopranos of the United States or Peaky Blinders, about the making of Britain during this really critical period of time between the war and. So when we talk about mafias as a phenomenon today, we're really talking about a lot of things that I think are so important and really relevant.
Spencer Mizzen
Thanks for that, Ryan. Now, if you'd like to learn more about this subject, then why not check out Ryan's article on the relentless rise of the Mafia in the March issue of History Extra magazine. Or you can head over to the History Extra website where you'll find Ryan's fascinating 2022 article on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. You'll find the link to that article, the podcast description,
Narrator/Podcast Host Intro
that was Ryan Gingeras speaking to Spencer Mizzen. Ryan is a professor at the National Postgraduate School in California, and you can read more about the relentless rise of crime groups in his new book, A Global History.
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Ryan Gingeras
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Date: March 25, 2026
Host: Spencer Mizzen
Guest: Prof. Ryan Gingeras, author of A Global History
In this insightful episode, Spencer Mizzen interviews historian Ryan Gingeras about the complex, centuries-spanning story of the mafia. Going far beyond the familiar icons of Al Capone and Don Corleone, Gingeras discusses the evolution of mafia groups around the world, their distinct characteristics, mythologies, interactions with states and politics, and ongoing influence in shaping the world’s criminal landscape. Special attention is paid to how mafias transcended borders through migration and globalization, the impact of cultural phenomena like The Godfather, and what the future may hold for organized crime.
[02:53]
[05:58]
Spencer Mizzen asks Gingeras to describe the four major mafias that have endured.
Sicilian Mafia & Camorra (Italy):
Chinese Triads:
Japanese Yakuza:
[11:59]
[14:36]
[15:44]
[22:31]
[27:17]
[33:21]
[36:43]
[38:06]
| Timestamp | Topic | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 02:53 | Defining 'Mafia' and its distinction | | 05:58 | The Four Enduring Mafias | | 11:59 | Political upheaval and mafia growth | | 14:36 | Mafias vs. the power of the state | | 15:44 | Migration, globalization, and American mafias | | 22:31 | Harry Anslinger and the 'Mafia' narrative in America | | 27:17 | The Godfather’s cultural and criminal impact | | 33:21 | The rise and meaning of drug 'cartels' | | 36:43 | Pablo Escobar’s myth-making | | 38:06 | The modern evolution and future of mafias |
Ryan Gingeras offers a panoramic view of how mafias are not only crime organizations but also powerful cultural forces, shaping and reflecting the worlds they inhabit. From their shadowy origins to global infamy, their mythology now resonates even in the behavior of states and terrorists, evolving alongside society. Yet, through myth, media, and new criminal forms, the mafia’s story continues to both trouble and fascinate the modern imagination.
Further resources: