Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone, and welcome to All In The Familia, a family history podcast. I'm Chloe. And I am Guy.
Speaker: And today we're finally going to touch on some history that happened less than a century ago from the year of our gods and goddesses, uh, 2023. Uh, I'm talking about the lead up to World War II. Now, last we left off, we changed gears from following our great grandfather's journey to following the plight of the a dragoness. Um, and they are,
Speaker: our great -grandmother's side of the family, just for reference. um At this point, they had fled to Sicily to escape the wrath of the Black Hand. Little did they know, they jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. As they were getting to the homeland, the fascist movement would go full swing, and infamous Italian dictator Benito Mussolini would take over the nation along with his paramilitary black shirts.
Speaker: So this is going to be dark out of... Yeah. Yeah. i I have read through Uxlini's writing for some of this, mostly his manifesto.
Speaker: Don't read it, by the way, very poorly written. I was like half drunk by the time I finished it and I wanted to kill myself, but you know, that's how it is.
Speaker: Sometimes. So don't condone suicide on this podcast. where where It's a prank in Minecraft. Yeah. Just so you know. It it was merely a thought and it went away after I realized that I want to live longer than Mussolini. So that's what I'm doing. Hopefully have a less horrible death than Mussolini. Yeah. Yeah. Easy to do. Easy to do.
Speaker: So, and we'll touch on that and Morey's, and Morey, we'll introduce later, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anywho, Mussolini, absolute bastard. Let's go, but what led to Mussolini? Let's go over what happened in Italy after great -grandfather Gaspare and his mother left for the U .S. So after 1918,
Speaker: um Well, no, before 1918, the majority of Europe was wrapped up in World War I except for Italy, who decided to abstain to the delight of the socialists and the dismay of the nationalists. That February in 1915, Italy joined a secret alliance with Britain, Russia, and France in the top -secret Treaty of London. In it, Britain would give Italy land along the Adriatic Sea in return for their allyship. One problem.
Speaker: modern Italy was bad at war. Really bad at war. By the end of World War I, 300 ,000 Italians were dead, 950 ,000 were injured, with 250 ,000 of those being permanently, permanent intergeries, basically permanently disabled. And to rub salt in the wound, Italy didn't get those sweet, sweet land deals they were promised.
Speaker: Feeling betrayed and humiliated by their so -called allies, Italian nationalists reeled in the lack of action on behalf of the Italian government to stand up for their own interests. As we all know, political mistrust can cause some pretty bad outcomes for society as a whole. This is where Mussolini enters.
Speaker: Now I don't want to get too in the weeds with his upbringing, especially since this is already going to be a very, very long episode anyhow, but I do want to note a few things. Notably, he was always a very moody and a cruel yet intelligent kid who grew up in his parents' footsteps to become a hardcore socialist.
Speaker: Then World War I came around, he was initially against it, before, quote -unquote, realizing that it was the fight of a century. ahha Oh boy, did he know. And then started advocating for Italy to join in the war effort. This led to him being kicked out of the Socialist Party and led to him enlisting in the war effort in 1915. He was discharged from the army later after getting injured.
Speaker: Now, economic hardship followed the Great War. This led to tensions rising over pay and work conditions, leading to violent clashes between the socialist -backed workers and the land -owning farmers. The middle class started to fear a socialist uprising. Then, on March 23, 1919, he formed the National Fascist Party.
Speaker: Mussolini named the party for fasces, a Roman word that stood for a bundle of elm or birch rods which typically held an axe in them and symbolized penal authority during ancient Rome. He tried to draw on a lot of um historical themes and What, the the reality, the veracity of those themes, debatable in some cases, but you know. um At the same time, he formed the Squadre di Azzione, or Action Squad, which was formed to destroy socialist organizations, particularly the ones fighting the farmers. By the end of 1920, however, the Squadre di Azzione, better known as the Black Shirts, had started to massacre
Speaker: Just about everyone, communists, Republicans, Catholics, trade unionists, and people living in cooperatives were all targeted along with socialist. The Italian government looked away from the violence. Now, before we go any further, you did comb through some of the primary sources from the time of Fascist Italy, including the manifesto. Yes, I did. This was written in 1932. So some of its views may be considered outdated.
Speaker: outdated is a very, very, very, that's a very cutesy way of putting it like, Oh, it's a bit outdated. That's, I don't know. That's just, that's such a cutesy way of putting it guy. Oh, it's outdated. It's just outdated. Well, you know, I don't know what else to say. He, well, but okay. So, so Mussolini and the fascist manifesto, you can just look it up.
Speaker: like everywhere. You don't have to buy it, thankfully. So he views human experience as both a material thing and a spiritual thing, but that the material experience is selfish, undesirable, not good. And he thinks that the spiritual being is much better and that the spiritual like life, I guess,
Speaker: the spiritual state of humans is put forward by, not by any religious movement or not by the people themselves, but by the state itself. And the state and should basically control ah everything. It should come first, essentially. A person is supposed, to it's inherently anti -individualistic, so you're supposed to basically give yourself over to the state completely what it demands you to and says that this is a very good thing and that the city is like one big family but also a religion but also a family that dying for is good so you know like if let's just say a war happens it's good that you die for the state because it's good for you and the state it's good for the state it's good for everyone ah so it seeks to
Speaker: strangle out like any sort of like class struggle or class consciousness because those like ideas like you know like trade unions or or like religious movements they're those are all bad if they're not inherently part of the state already and those like class loyalties or conflicts within classes can you know, disrupt the state apparatus and divert loyalty from the state. And that's bad. So it seeks. So what I'm trying to explain here is that state is good. Trade unions, corporate interests, religions should all be beholden to the state. And anything like else that diverts loyalty from the state is bad and should be eliminated. So
Speaker: Mussolini does claim that like this is supposed to fix fix like the problems that gave rise to socialism and other sorts of weird ah well not weird but normal ideas today, but but he uses that to like how do i explain it. It kind of reminds me of Machiavelli's The Prince a little bit. I think he does ah quote that at some point.
Speaker: because he's a fucking weirdo but uh but uh but i guess you can get like the point of it uh like this is like the f like the ethos of fascism uh this is a direct quote from muslinie uh the fascist manifesto in 1932 anti -individualistic the fascist concept of life stresses the important of the state and accepts that the individual only insofar as its interests coincide with those of the state, which stands for the conscious and universal will of man as a historic entity, as opposed to classical liberalism, which ah ah which arose as reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the state became the expression of consciousness and will of the people. Liberalism denied the state in the name of the individual,
Speaker: Fascism reasserts the rights of the state as experiment expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to be a tribute to be a tribute of living then, and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then fascism stands for liberty. And the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the state individual and the individual within the state. Yeah, you can see that why I had a hard time reading this.
Speaker: Because this is just what he says all constantly. My mind just like right my brain went burned that moment. Like it's it's just such a dense bullshit word salad that like you can't really. um It's like make a lot of sense out of. I mean, I I did make sense of it. So it's anti individualistic in that since democracy but You know, liberal democracy that arose from like the revolutions of the 19th century is old and ineffective and outdated. It denies the state the right to function. So fascism is going to reassert the right of the state rather than the people to run the nation in that the state runs the people and the people don't run the state. And that's how it should be.
Speaker: and that liberty is for stupid people.
Speaker: yeah Liberty is for dumb bitches. yeah that It's like like individual rights don't matter. As long as there's a state, the individual will always be beholden to the state and the citizen, I guess, can have rights. So I guess that's some sort of liberty.
Speaker: but it doesn't really - What? Right! I know! This is like saying that like you - Oh, you're free because you're in a cult. Yeah. Or like, oh, your freedom is the love that I have for you in this toxic relationship. Yeah. yeah it It's, it's, it's not that free. Like, I - Oh, and the fact that he's hiding it in like the worst, most jargony, not jargony, at least jargon would say something like in the worst, like most dense, unclear writing. Can't believe this man wrote for a newspaper, but I do have one more quote that he says outside history, man is a non entity. Fascism is therefore opposed to all individual
Speaker: individualistic abstractions based on 18th century material materialism as opposed to all Jacobinist utopias and invasions. Just not believe in the possibility of happiness on earth. i He says this, like literally. Just take his happiness, you dumb bitch. Hold I'm not done. As conceived by the economistic literature of the 18th century, it's therefore and it therefore rejects the theological notion that at some future time, the human family will secure a final settlement of all of its difficulties.
Speaker: just full of no it's So ah to translate, Marx's ideology and capitalist ideology, right those are like material concepts. They're based on like you know the world as it is now.
Speaker: and humans are always materialistic people types of animals, right? And rather than spiritual. So he rejects that and and says that ah happiness will never occur ever. And the struggle is eternal. Yeah, that's it. Oh, my God. The more you translate it, the more it really does sound like fascism is a cult. It I know, but, ah you know,
Speaker: Ironically enough, ah Mussolini claims that the fascist movement is a descendant of the Italian social movement, despite him being extremely anti, you know, Marxist and anti -Liff role. So and he he says like, Italian fascism is like to the Bolshevik Party, to the Russian socialist movement. And Yeah, no, no. Like, clearly not like, oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe in the fact that they're extreme, but not like not even the same, like ideological wise. Exactly. So, yeah, ah in other words, the fascists should abhor having an easy life and having an easy life is also bad.
Speaker: for reasons. He says this, by the way. like Having an easy life is um unrevolution is counter -revolutionary. Yep. So he makes some more weird claims like that socialism is dead. OK. Yeah, it's dead, apparently. And that liberalism is also dying.
Speaker: I guess he wrote this in 32 and just looked at like the Great Depression. It's like, oh, they'll never get out of this. boy and And then you can laugh at him now as he burns in hell. So violence in the fascist state is also not that bad, apparently. It's like, yeah, it could work. I guess he already proved. Yeah, I guess he can prove that with the actions of the black shirts that violence is good. And further this. Oh, I was about to say, that sounds a lot like what more ease sentiments are when it comes to. Yeah, there wasn't much room for dissension, I think. I don't think they would even want to dissent because they all believe in the same fucking thing. But, you know, whatever it's so ah violence is good.
Speaker: And therefore imperialism is good for the state. Okay. Yep. And that's just what he says. And he just moves on. It's like, please explain, but he doesn't. He just thinks it's a self -evident thing. He would never have gotten this far if he wasn't the child of like these really important hardcore socialists. Yeah. He also states that like,
Speaker: We're going back into democracy bad. He moves around a lot within like these 10 pages. He goes from democracy bad because it gives rise to quantity rather than quality. So since quantity can create creates like multiple mini tyrants in the country, it's better just to have one tyrant because he's Mussolini and, uh,
Speaker: And mainly he focuses on ethnic identity rather than a racial caste system that Hitler would create in Nazi Germany. So they're different from like, I guess you can say, uh, Italian fascism is like the moderate far right. And Hitler's fascism is the extreme far right.
Speaker: oh God, i hated that you were it I hate that it makes sense that you when you word at it like that. um And I will actually talk a little bit about, because even though like it's not like there's like a case society in terms of racism and ethnic identity um in Italian fascism, it still does some harm, particularly for the Sicilians, which I'll talk about in a bit. Yeah. it's the That's not to say that they didn't do anything bad. In fact, they did a lot bad, especially in Ethiopia. But it's like it's less like, oh, these people are inferior, not because they are black, but because they are not Italian. And then it goes from there and they're not part of the state. So therefore destroy, kill, murder, all that type of shit. So, yeah, he also uses like historical examples on like proto fascism.
Speaker: Napoleon the third or Marcus Aurelius and goes into about on like on about like all the Republic versus the king and the fascism break rages the gap between the autocrat and the oligarch or some shit like that. It doesn't really matter. Most of its whole shit. I was going to say like aren't the autocrat and the oligarchs usually on the same side but usually but it's just like Oh, my God, it's it's a lot is what I'm saying. It's rough read. I don't feel smarter at all. I just feel more sad. But after that, I was going to say my brain hurts, but, you know, it's just like it's just like 10 minutes of me just going, why would you say that? Why are you saying this? How stupid are you? Please write better anyways. ah Yeah, that's basically it.
Speaker: Uh, we are at the point where, uh, the state should succeed on everything and should be the only thing that matters. Ironically enough, he liked the Catholic church. I don't know why, but he just did. The black shirts killed Catholics. I don't look, I'm not saying that he wasn't a hypocrite. I'm just saying. That's just the wild thing. It's like he likes the Catholic church, but fuck all the Catholics.
Speaker: Look, I'm I guess you just want it's like the old timey, like, you know, feudal European desire to like the church, but also want to take things from the church. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. It's like stop trying to make sense out of it. Oh, my God. Anyways, that's that's the first book I read. Oh, God. OK.
Speaker: Oh, that hurt my brain. Anyway, so now that we've gone through the mind -bogglingly bad and upsetting fascist manifesto, let's get back on the historical timeline. In June 1919, a few months after the formation of the fascist party, the Treaty of Versailles was officially signed. Italy did not get the lands that they were promised by Britain and France, and the public was mad at them for not standing up to them.
Speaker: They were essentially screwed over, and the populace felt as if their government had failed them. The nationalists in particular were absolutely pissed that the Italian government didn't stand up to Britain, France, and the US s at the treaty conference. Between the rural violence in Northern Italy and the failure of the Italian government to secure what the people considered their fair dues, the Fascist Party no matter how absolutely stupid and upsetting, they're like, yeah, not only is their manifesto upsetting, it's also just downright stupid. The fascist party, despite its flaws, started to look more and more attractive to people. The fact they marketed themselves as a quote unquote classless movement also helped.
Speaker: Flash forward a few years. Mussolini takes power in October 1922 via the infamous March on Rome, carried out by the Blackshirts. Apparently the Prime Minister of the Italian government wanted to declare a siege of Rome against the insurrection, but Bitchface King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy refused to sign the order, and we don't really know why, but we do know he asked Mussolini to form a new government.
Speaker: This led to Mussolini waltzing into Rome on the train from Milan before the militia got there, and then they held a giant parade at celebration of them taking the whole country so easily. On February 1st, 1923, the Blackshirts became the public militia known as the voluntary fascist militia for national security. The eponymous Blackshirt was worn not just as a uniform for this now official governmental entity, but also by supporters and other fascists, particularly on patriotic a Events.
Speaker: So this is a lot of context, but it's really, really important context before getting into the family lore part of the story. By the time Mussolini came into power, the Adjournas had already booked it out of the US to escape the Black Hand. Interestingly, I couldn't really find any records from Ellis Island really backing up this story. The only records I found were for a Vito and Giorgio who came on the Giuseppe Verde on February 8th, 1924, about two years into Mussolini's reign.
Speaker: This would have been three months before Mussolini visited Italy for the first time as Il Duce, leading to the events in the family legend. The man who would become the Prefecta Palermo would have been there for at least four years at this point, doing his thing of rounding up mafia men, but it wasn't until the next year that he was appointed to be in charge of the Prefecta Palermo getting total control of the island. The worst of his reign wouldn't have even taken place yet. Now keep in mind,
Speaker: These two would have been older than they are listed on the ship manifests. The records state that Vito would have been six at the time, and George, or Giorgio as his Italian name equivalent, would have been a teenager.
Speaker: Maybe they lied about their age, although I feel like it would be hard to lie about being six years old if you're basically an adult. I don't think this is the right family for a lot of reasons, but part of what tips me off is that the father's name is different from what I gathered from other records. In other words, no real record of this happening, but obviously the story exists in the family, so maybe there's some truth to it. I mean, what do you think? um It's possible. I mean, anything's possible. There aren't some records that maybe something did happen, but It could be more or less traumatic, depending on knowing how history is. It could be like either the most boring thing that ever happened in history, or it's so fucking weird and out there that nobody would believe it. so That's true. Yeah, no, that's true. like It could have been a really weird story, or it could it's rarely just a normal -ass story that most of people would expect it to be.
Speaker: um but that's why oral history is important. Also, before we go any further, let's talk about cultural genocide. Italy throughout its history has had unique regional variations in its language, food, and customs, owing to the fact that for most of its history, it was never really a unified nation in the modern sense. Sicily, though, was the black sheep of the peninsula.
Speaker: Quite literally. For a good couple of centuries, the island was ruled by the North African Moors, which led to, and I hate saying it like this, quote on quote, race mixing, which led to other Italians considering Sicilians to basically be black.
Speaker: Additionally, there were major economic differences between Northern and Southern Italy that led to prejudice against Sicily. Northern Italy it was mostly urban and profited from manufacturing. Part of this was due to the fact that everything manufacturing related was transported from Southern to Northern Italy, leaving Southern Italian to rely on agriculture to make ends meet. When it wasn't all being destroyed by lava from volcanic eruptions, of course.
Speaker: Italian urbanites also saw Southern Italians as less intelligent due to their lack of formal education, even as they were literally relying on them for the very food that they needed to survive. Northern Italian the urbanites were also being fed Italian futuristic entertainment in the movie theaters, which were much more plentiful in the urban north than in the rural south. Futurist films were littered with themes such as militarism, colonialism, and nationalism.
Speaker: They also placed an emphasis on speed, once again pitting the urban north versus the rural south. Thankfully, we were never screwed over as badly as Ethiopia, which, I mean we talked about it earlier, it was invaded by fascist Italy in 1935, and whose pleas for justice but went basically ignored by the League of Nations.
Speaker: We did, however, have issues with cultural erasure. You see, as you mentioned in Mussolini's manifesto, ah he desired a quote unquote unified Italy. Not legally, but culturally. So like you said, the whole one ethnicity, you have to be one singular version of Italian to be Italian. And ah this erases a lot of cultural nuances within the whole of the nation.
Speaker: Sicilian was outlawed as a language, and the Tuscan dialect of Italian was used around the country as an official language. Sicilian to this day is considered a vulnerable language with only a few thousand native speakers left. Between being seen as too dark for White Italy The island's impoverished state due to the lack of industrialization and the neglect from the rest of the country in terms of cultural and infrastructural development, we were seen as these dirty brown folks who lived in abject poverty and were all no good gangsters. Very racist! I mean, at one point Sicily was a cultural capital in the Mediterranean. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a video on how c Sicily ended up the way it is, and it's upsetting.
Speaker: We had to turn to farming and butting up with gangs for basic survival. So with all of this anti -Cecilian bias and unification motivation in mind, I'm sure the fascists had no qualms doing what we're going to talk about next. Enter a man by the name of Cesare Amore, later known by his nickname, the Iron Prefect.
Speaker: He had been in Sicily for the last 14 years at this point fighting the mafia and the Sicilian civilians against their banditry and cattle w rustling. These were the thousands of draft dodgers from World War I, the latter of these at least. He laid sieges against villages and led patrols across the island. He was appointed about five years after he returned to the mainland to serve as a senior police officer in Turin and later as a high -ranking politician in Bologna. Now, Mussolini appointed Cesare to become the prefect of Palermo in 1925.
Speaker: He was perfect for the job of supposedly demolishing the Sicilian Mafia once and for all. Mussolini himself told Morey, you have carte blanche. The authority of the state must absolutely be reestablished in Sicily. If the law still in force hinder you, this will be no problem. We will draw up new laws. It gets worse from there. Of course. So Cesare Morey, you know, the Iron Prefect, he did write a book ah because of course he did. Apparently he felt very proud of his actions. He has a very dramatic title for his memoir. It's called The Last Struggle with the Italian Mafia. I think it was written like years after the fact. So, you know, ah just to compare it this book to a secondary source I found called ah Fascism in the Mafia by Christopher Dugan.
Speaker: ah published by Yale University in 1989. So I read those two just to compare like, you know, the idea versus the reality of the situation. So to start with Maury's memoir, it starts off with him ah wafting on about the failures of the previous Italian administration of the region, you know, claiming that it's a mix of, you know, the government not doing enough, and the culture of honor among the Sicilians. So it's both the Sicilians and the liberal government's fault. And it's only he that can fix this, basically. He goes on, he goes on about like a pacification. I have a quote here. It says that, not that I am against pacification, quite the contrary. The only piece for me was a true piece, a parody of peace or grotesque, temporary expedient.
Speaker: based on doubtful grounds of policy, obtained by acquiescence and compromise, and of an efficacy as limited as the horizon of the opportunists. Peace that I have in mind can only be attained by assuring the individual and to the mass, especially to those in the state of a social inferiority, to the indispensable minimum of security below which too often honesty is apt c to seem vain heroism.
Speaker: So he is out to get the mafia, basically. He's very out to repression, basically. And he compares, you know, like this mafia system, of course in Austria, as like a pseudo state, although he would call it a potential state. So he's already trying to make it like seem like this, like this shadow government in Sicily that controls everything.
Speaker: and can, you know, basically just, like, it's a rival to the already state, Epiraz, that's in control of Sicily at the time, so he's, that's what he's calling it, and fascists don't like shadow states that aren't the state already in control. All the power needs to be on me! I need to be the one in control of everything! Yep. Essentially. And, uh, he also seems acutely aware that he caught some flak,
Speaker: for his uh policies and uh and to counteract this he calls everyone who criticized him as either misguided or made their arguments in bad faith or ignorant so stupid it's the classic playbook it's like uh they don't know if they do know then they hate me and if do if they do hate me they're stupid it's like oh great okay we're back to this and Jesus. And he was very, you know, to go on about like the failure of like the liberal government before this, he always said that it was that any time they prosecute, managed to actually prosecute a mafia member, it didn't destroy the apparatus already in place. It just caused a gap, which was quickly filled in his words and on mine. But he also makes some like
Speaker: give some examples as to why the Sicilians... Any time he writes in this, barely tryly he really tries hard to like not say that this it's all the Sicilian's fault. But it is! Because he had this sort of... He's definitely saying that, but he's trying not to say that because he is under the belief that ah the Sicilian peasantry love him. Oh my god. And that they like what he's doing.
Speaker: And so he's like, well, so he gives off like a story of like, Oh, uh, you know, if a man loses his cattle, then if he goes to the carabinery, then he only has like a 15 % chance of getting his cows back. But if he goes to the mafia, then he has a 95 % chance of giving him back and only losing 30 % of the cattle. And it's just like, because the mafia, I guess was more.
Speaker: direct in their action. In fact he makes some like very weird like connections between like his fascist ideology in the mafia as in that they're direct and they're a little bit arbitrary and it really doesn't matter because he although he does state of one difference between the fascist state in the mafia in which case if a crime is committed the state catches the criminal to prevent damage, but the mafia only seeks damage. And that's the only difference he gives. And it falls very deaf onto me for reasons I will get onto very soon. But he also lays out like a plan of action. ah You can call it a eight, a nine step program. So one, he must succeed against the mafia in some form to gain trust of the Sicilian Pete.
Speaker: Two, involve the Sicilians by committing these actions in their name. Three, give the cowardly bravery, for example. Four, appeal to the Sicilian sense of honor. Five, reassert authority and justice. Six, distinguish the mafia from normal criminals. Seven, to reestablish agriculture production. Eight, create a spiritual connection between the stay in the Sicilians and nine,
Speaker: establish a new consciousness in Sicily's youth. Now, we go to the question, did he succeed in any of this? Well, on to Dugan's book. you One could claim that, you know, Maury wants to make like the mafia seem like this huge, like myopic monolithic organization that secretly controls all of s Sicily's functions. In reality, though, it's probably a horrible misunderstanding of like Sicilian culture at the time yeah where it's like all these individual bands of like villages just have their own like guys that they go to and you know if they have like a crime if there's like something to happen they could just go to these guys rather than the state because they distrust the state state and they just believe that well I could just do it myself why would I go to this guy you know
Speaker: And it's like a horror, and it's just like a misunderstanding of just how Sicilian culture operated at the time. So in reality, it's just all these like small group bands of like marauders that just have power in like this tiny local community. And that's it. They don't really talk to each other. There's no like capo and like sperlimo that's like rubbing his hands maliciously, like on like, yes, I have killed 10 people today. Very good. It's not like that. And it's like and the Sicilians were already just distrust of the state even before the fascist party. They just don't like it. They never liked it. They're very suspicious of any state power outside of their local community.
Speaker: which I mean understandable, and like considering the amount of times they've been invaded and taken advantage of. Yeah, you know. Yeah, they just they're just distrustful of it. Also, Maury claimed that the people loved him ah constantly. This is lies. He did not like him because he was part of the state and they don't like him. That's it. Yeah.
Speaker: ah It's also more like political reasons for like being like trying to ah subjugate sici Sicily. And one of these is that like Mussolini had was worried about the birth rate in Italy at the time. And he. Yeah, let's get. Yeah, let's get into this. So it's giving so to school. Oh. So he wanted more children. He wanted a bigger birth rate in Italy because he believed
Speaker: and like this battle of the births, this is what he called it, ah that nations that have more children can wield, can have a bigger economy and therefore dominate other nations. And he was also under the belief that ah that rural peasants were much better like citizens than urbanite citizens, like because they mostly due to this like weird Roman idea that the farmer is the most noble of all professions. So it's like ah the rural peasant loves the state, they love working, they love having children. And so Southern Italy and Sicily was basically the focal point of this you know higher birth weight birth rate he wanted to achieve.
Speaker: This was started it just tolin just to remind all of you. This movement literally started in urban northern Italy. And they're literally romanticizing these like dirt poor farmers that they pick on and consider dirty and undeducated. And anyway, keep going. Yes. But I guess to another moreism that didn't work out.
Speaker: is that he tried to appeal to like since there was ah to the Sicilian sense of national honor as many of them fought in World War I this was also probably ineffective as the Sicilians who fought in the military did not see much honor in it in fact the war was always unpopular in fucking Italy in Sicily like any because you know you're just like conscripting like It's like, why would I fight all the way up there? But I'd insist, you know, I don't give a shit. And then, you know, they just conscript them and send them off to die. And then it's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, that wasn't fun. But, you know, we were kind of forced to be in it. Yes. So eventually, Maury does like start like prosecuting like mafia members. And often the trials he like established were essentially a gang of reports. They were.
Speaker: ah Pursued en masse so usually that means it Usually that means that instead of like each individual gets like a trial or there's like 10 to 12 people to a trial It's all of them it's every single person so that could be like upwards of like a thousand people at once just on trial and these were very quick ah because more you wanted a quick victory you wanted to establish that like yes, I am the boss and I can take care of the Sicilians. So there's like no time to cross examine. There's no time to consider evidence. There's no time to pick a jury. There's no time of any of that. It's it was arbitrary. They more often complained about ah lack of evidence for non guilty verdicts. So he threw out lack of eavit evidence for evidence of not guilt. like um ah
Speaker: And often, uh, these, the conviction rates were insanely high. So anyone who was innocent innocent or guilty, it didn't matter. You were put on trial. They, they questioned you and then said, you are part of the mafia. And when you say, what's the evidence? They go, who cares? And then they throw you in and they give you a prison sentence, which can go between, uh, 10 months to 30 years, depending on how severe the crime you did or did not commit was. Oh my god. Maury justified this arbitrary behavior by saying that the mafia was also arbitrary, so they don't serve any rights. ah Torture was also also you. Oh my god, that's literally being like, well, they're bad, so I'm going to be even worse. like Yeah, essentially. They also use torture to extract confessions sometimes. We'll talk about that.
Speaker: Oh, you can be as arbitrary yeah you can be as arbitrary as you want, I guess, to criminals. It doesn't matter. There was multiple of these trials and, you know, Mussolini and Maury were very happy about this. But, you know, and essentially all mafia activity stopped because they arrested everybody. Or they escaped, which we will also talk about. Or they escaped. he we Yeah, they either ran away or they got thrown in jail for 30 years and then everything stopped and people could, and then land owners could collect taxes again and you know, everything was running. possible But you had to throw in everyone and their mother into jail in order to achieve it. So it's like. And the rest and how well that actually worked is somewhat debated just based on a tertiary source that I got, but again,
Speaker: and we'll talk about that again and this ah long. Yeah, of course. So that's all horrifying. And to kick off the kink reports, the smear campaigns and like throwing just about everybody into jail, whether or not they actually had evidence behind them. Maury started off the year of 1926, literally on the 1st of January with the 10 day long siege of Gangi, quoting an article by Jonathan Gordon on historyanswers .co .uk.
Speaker: Police established a tight cordon with roadblocks of lorries and armored cars, lorries being like delivery trucks, and this combined with the freezing snowy cold kept the mafia bandits from leaving their hilltop town. Police and blackshirts cut the telephone and telegraph wires and crashed through their homes, rooting out criminals and hiding, cattle belonging to suspected defenders were slaughtered in the town square, women and children were taking hostage as a ruse to flush out their unwanted husbands and fathers, and some policemen even took to occupying bandits' as houses and sleeping it in their beds. Rumors of rapes were widespread.
Speaker: A town crier walked the streets banging a drum and declaring an ultimatum that all refugitives from justice should hand themselves over to the authorities. The Blackshirt's much reported interrogation techniques included forcing prisoners to drink castor oil or eat live frogs.
Speaker: One particularly famous case was that of Antonio Ortoleva. He was a local lawyer and politician who was accused of steal of stealing a donkey after the Blackshirts followed a shady paper trail. And even though the documents didn't really show anything besides, you know, he kind of did some political chicanery to steal a donkey, Mori pinned him for being a mafia man and imprisoned him with no chance to defend himself a la kangaroo court style. And not in addition to the kangaroo courts and smear campaigns, some public rallies and show courts would specifically be set up to force people to declare their allegiance with the fascists.
Speaker: Often they would tell a bunch of people that their presence was requested at a ceremony, only to show up and be forced to show allegiance to the Fascist during Catholic Mass. That is whor - isn't - I - I have no words. I only have upset noises. Anywho, this is probably when our great -uncles got caught up in all of this madness.
Speaker: We're not entirely sure which uncles went through this, but two of our great uncles got arrested by the black shirts. They were tied to chairs, and Mussolini's black shirts poured castor oils down their throats using a funnel.
Speaker: Castor oil torture, along with being force -fed live frogs, as I mentioned earlier, were two of the most common methods of quote -unquote interrogation by the Blackshirts used to get confessions out of suspects. They didn't die from the torture, thankfully. The family member that they were living with, cousin or uncle again, were not sure entirely sure who, ended up going to the police station in the middle of the night, bribed the guards, and got the two brothers out of there.
Speaker: Then they hopped on the next ship back to the US. And by 1929, Mussolini had officially declared victory over the Cosa Nostra, forcing Moria to end his reign of terror. ah Quite literally, like you said, guy everyone was and their mother was arrested and thrown into prison. And the official narrative was that the Sicilian Mafia had been defeated, with any reporting on crime in Sicily being banned in order to keep up the narrative.
Speaker: And like you said, there wasn't truth to it. Murder had gone down, but the mafia weren't exactly gone, per se. Sure, they were disempowered, but they existed, particularly in the United States, where they would take a foothold and become even stronger than they had been in Sicily before Mussolini. Even after Mussolini, they got their footing back and became even more powerful than before fascist Italy came about.
Speaker: Thankfully for the great uncles, it wasn't just torture and forced shitting though. They made a decent amount of friends and connections while they were there. And those connections our great uncles made would allow them to get their foot in the door to mafia politics in the US and beyond. And that is where we'll leave off. That was intense.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Love European fascist politics. Oh, God. They're always so nutty. They really are. It's like the Sicilians love me because they love their honor. And if we get them, wrap them up in their honor. And they're like, we literally just don't trust anybody outside like these three guys who like steal cows for us. It's like you're just lucky that We don't have to talk about like weird German fucking mysticism. Oh my God. guess so
Speaker: Because if we had to talk about Hitler, then I would have to go into that. And it's like mildly infuriating. Oh, my God. Literally not even like a lot of my friends are pagan. And at the biggest thing about that, like German Nazi mysticism is not even based in reality. Like they literally believed in a conspiracy theory that they were like the children of Atlantis. And it literally reminds me so much so much of QAnon. It's like yeah it's.
Speaker: I could go on about how 18th and 19th century Germans just believed that Slavic nations don't have a future because they're Slavic. It's like what? book It's like even like Frederick Engels even said that. fucking angles He said that Russia doesn't have a future. russia have it would Ah, Russia has no future! We will kill them all and but put them in burning bonds before we let them have a future! Ah, Hans, give me my bra twist.
Speaker: cause yeah Yeah, that's a lot. And this is gonna be a monster to edit too, so i'm not I'm not looking forward to that. Hi, it's Chloe from the future. Spoiler alert! This did end up taking forever to edit, so my apologies for that. um We recorded this back in, oh, beginning of the year, January, February, and I am editing this at the beginning of August.
Speaker: um a lot of life happened. So again, my apologies for not getting to this sooner. So hopefully things will settle down now and pray, pray that uploads will be regular. Okay, interruption over. Back to the episode. Well, good luck then.
Speaker: Thanks, I appreciate it. Well, anyway, thank editing aside, thank you all again for listening. Please show this podcast to all of your friends, your families, your loved ones, your enemies, your enemies loved ones.
Speaker: your your wives, your mistresses, europe with benefit everyone your your toddler, show this podcast to your toddler. Please make the sheer amount of editing that I'm gonna have to do for this episode worth it. As for plugins, you can find me at chloeadamo .com. The links to all my stuff are on there. Guy, any last words before we sign off?
Speaker: Uh, if anyone says that you should follow them because they're much more moral than you, do not trust them. That should be obvious. Again, fash is a cult. It's all a cult. Okay, so, uh, well, have a nice day, everybody. Bye! Bye.
