by B. » Sat Mar 01, 2025 12:41 pm
PTown wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2025 7:57 pm
You've clearly one of those folks who's never left the U.S, I'll bet, and never been to Sicily. Even today, traveling between these mountain towns is not easy, and in the 1800s, the local bosses didn't even leave their own villages.
But in your mind, they all took private jets to each other's houses in the 1890s and hung out and came up with New York regionalisms like, "put an associate on the record."
And your imaginary "had to be Sicilian" "rule" / based on "existing relationships in Sicily" is laughable. Just ask Johnny Torrio, who built the Chicago Outfit starting in 1909. He was born in Basilicata -- not even Naples or Calabria. If you tried telling him there was a rule he needed to follow, he'd laugh as hard as I am now, and probably reach for a baseball bat.
Western Sicilian mafiosi were well-acquainted with other mafiosi throughout the island even as far back as the 1800s. Yes, travel was more difficult in the Sicilian interior but that did not stop them from visiting other towns and networking. These weren't cripples but extremely enterprising men who knew how to make and sustain connections to their mafia peers regardless of time and place.
There is compelling evidence Torrio and Colosimo were part of the Camorra, itself already a well-organized branch of the Italian underworld, and it's an outdated view that they "created the Outfit." The Chicago Family evolved to include a variety of Sicilian and Italian underworld networks, including Torrio/Capone's network and existing Sicilian mafiosi, much like we see around the United States. What were once Sicilian-centric Families did become pan-Italian but it was a gradual development and the Families were originally highly formal branches of the Sicilian-rooted mafia.
And did you even read the rest of this thread and posts today? Others on this forum have posted extensively about how major families, notably several in New York, started as completely independent affiliations of criminals, who happened to be Italian, and then overtook rackets and adopted what we would think of as traditional "mafia" structure. This has been showed time and time again. Examples abound. Get a clue.
Where has anyone on this forum claimed several New York Families, or any of the Families, started as "completely independent affiliations of criminals, who happened to be Italian" and "overtook rackets and adopted" the mafia structure? Not only is this completely untrue, I have no idea where you're seeing this on the board.
I highly recommend the May 2014 issue of Informer Journal (authored by several board members here) for a comprehensive education on the roots of the NYC Families.
Who enforced your conception of this uniform paradigm? Do you have some fantasy of a strong national commission with a separate group of enforcers? NATO peacekeepers perhaps? A Boss of All Bosses spending blood and money to keep the nation uniform?
Again, as shown on other threads here, there widely disparate regional differences, and different rules. It was indeed only after things seeped into national culture, via pop culture, that you started to have more uniform "rules."
Again, as other posters have documented extensively, as have turncoats themselves, the idea of a "strong" commission and a boss of all bosses is largely nonsense.
If you think some proud regional boss in 1910, who was a boss back in the old country and became a boss here - if you think he was going to let some dude in Chicago or Jersey tell him how to run his family, then you are high. You haven't even read the basics (Luciano, Bonanno, etc.)
My understanding comes from extensive research and collaboration with other detail-oriented researchers. I've spent over 20 years consuming every source available to me and comparing notes with others who have done the same.
Your repeated claim that Families around the country adopted uniform "rules" (why the scare quotes?) through pop culture is bizarre, baseless, and I can't imagine where you got it to begin with. Same with the idea that the core mafia rules were arbitrary and disparate.
The Commission was created in 1931 to act first and foremost as a national mediation board. It was incredibly strong and influential. Before 1931, there was a Gran Consiglio and capo dei capi as well as Assemblea Generale meetings where leaders around the country voted and discussed issues / policies of national concern. Nicola Gentile talked extensively about this and even Giuseppe Morello made reference to these bodies in a 1909 letter to a Chicago leader.
No, these national bodies were not designed to micromanage bosses and Families around the country, but if they did issue a directive or ruling it was law.
"Universal rules". OMG
In another thread, you tried to claim "the rules were uniform from Day 1" and then I posted about a dozen rules that were NOT uniform. You had no reply.
Like your silly rule you posted here that "it was a rule that all mob families were Sicilians and many were part of a highly organized group in Sicily in the 1800s."
If you think some dude fresh of the boat from Naples in 1915 was using terms like "shelved" and "got his button" and such, you are high.
If you think every family pre-1930 even followed the paradigm of "boss, underboss, consigliere," you are simply ahistorical.
The non-uniform examples you gave were either general guidelines (i.e. facial hair) or circumstantial (i.e. the drug rule), nothing that proved "they had no universal rules" early in their history.
No, fresh immigrants weren't using the English terms "shelved" or "button" and if you've followed my argument you'd know a Neapolitan in 1915 wouldn't be using Sicilian mafia-centric terminology even in his native tongue (although if he was a Camorra affiliate he would have his own terms/framework). Sicilian mafiosi coming here in 1915 however absolutely had figures of speech and terminology for shelved/posato and membership. Since you mentioned "button", Dr. Melchiorre Allegra who was made in Palermo in the 1910s even used the term "bottone" to refer to mafia membership so they've been using "button" for a considerable amount of time even in Sicily.
--
If you're wondering why I'm being a bit more aggressive with you than I otherwise would be with a new poster, it's because you registered an account here to shamelessly promote your e-book and constantly steer discussions toward the same bullshit conclusions the book presents. Your intentions are impure, you've done poor research, and your understanding of this subject is a mash-up of crackpot nonsense.
[quote=PTown post_id=290246 time=1740711442 user_id=8706]
You've clearly one of those folks who's never left the U.S, I'll bet, and never been to Sicily. Even today, traveling between these mountain towns is not easy, and in the 1800s, the local bosses didn't even leave their own villages.
But in your mind, they all took private jets to each other's houses in the 1890s and hung out and came up with New York regionalisms like, "put an associate on the record." :roll: :roll:
And your imaginary "had to be Sicilian" "rule" / based on "existing relationships in Sicily" is laughable. Just ask Johnny Torrio, who built the Chicago Outfit starting in 1909. He was born in Basilicata -- not even Naples or Calabria. If you tried telling him there was a rule he needed to follow, he'd laugh as hard as I am now, and probably reach for a baseball bat.
[/quote]
Western Sicilian mafiosi were well-acquainted with other mafiosi throughout the island even as far back as the 1800s. Yes, travel was more difficult in the Sicilian interior but that did not stop them from visiting other towns and networking. These weren't cripples but extremely enterprising men who knew how to make and sustain connections to their mafia peers regardless of time and place.
There is compelling evidence Torrio and Colosimo were part of the Camorra, itself already a well-organized branch of the Italian underworld, and it's an outdated view that they "created the Outfit." The Chicago Family evolved to include a variety of Sicilian and Italian underworld networks, including Torrio/Capone's network and existing Sicilian mafiosi, much like we see around the United States. What were once Sicilian-centric Families did become pan-Italian but it was a gradual development and the Families were originally highly formal branches of the Sicilian-rooted mafia.
[quote]And did you even read the rest of this thread and posts today? Others on this forum have posted extensively about how major families, notably several in New York, started as completely independent affiliations of criminals, who happened to be Italian, and then overtook rackets and adopted what we would think of as traditional "mafia" structure. This has been showed time and time again. Examples abound. Get a clue.[/quote]
Where has anyone on this forum claimed several New York Families, or any of the Families, started as "completely independent affiliations of criminals, who happened to be Italian" and "overtook rackets and adopted" the mafia structure? Not only is this completely untrue, I have no idea where you're seeing this on the board.
I highly recommend the May 2014 issue of Informer Journal (authored by several board members here) for a comprehensive education on the roots of the NYC Families.
[quote]Who enforced your conception of this uniform paradigm? Do you have some fantasy of a strong national commission with a separate group of enforcers? NATO peacekeepers perhaps? A Boss of All Bosses spending blood and money to keep the nation uniform?
Again, as shown on other threads here, there widely disparate regional differences, and different rules. It was indeed only after things seeped into national culture, via pop culture, that you started to have more uniform "rules."
Again, as other posters have documented extensively, as have turncoats themselves, the idea of a "strong" commission and a boss of all bosses is largely nonsense.
If you think some proud regional boss in 1910, who was a boss back in the old country and became a boss here - if you think he was going to let some dude in Chicago or Jersey tell him how to run his family, then you are high. You haven't even read the basics (Luciano, Bonanno, etc.)
[/quote]
My understanding comes from extensive research and collaboration with other detail-oriented researchers. I've spent over 20 years consuming every source available to me and comparing notes with others who have done the same.
Your repeated claim that Families around the country adopted uniform "rules" (why the scare quotes?) through pop culture is bizarre, baseless, and I can't imagine where you got it to begin with. Same with the idea that the core mafia rules were arbitrary and disparate.
The Commission was created in 1931 to act first and foremost as a national mediation board. It was incredibly strong and influential. Before 1931, there was a Gran Consiglio and capo dei capi as well as Assemblea Generale meetings where leaders around the country voted and discussed issues / policies of national concern. Nicola Gentile talked extensively about this and even Giuseppe Morello made reference to these bodies in a 1909 letter to a Chicago leader.
No, these national bodies were not designed to micromanage bosses and Families around the country, but if they did issue a directive or ruling it was law.
[quote]
"Universal rules". OMG :lol: :lol: :lol:
In another thread, you tried to claim "the rules were uniform from Day 1" and then I posted about a dozen rules that were NOT uniform. You had no reply.
Like your silly rule you posted here that "it was a rule that all mob families were Sicilians and many were part of a highly organized group in Sicily in the 1800s."
If you think some dude fresh of the boat from Naples in 1915 was using terms like "shelved" and "got his button" and such, you are high.
If you think every family pre-1930 even followed the paradigm of "boss, underboss, consigliere," you are simply ahistorical.
[/quote]
The non-uniform examples you gave were either general guidelines (i.e. facial hair) or circumstantial (i.e. the drug rule), nothing that proved "they had no universal rules" early in their history.
No, fresh immigrants weren't using the English terms "shelved" or "button" and if you've followed my argument you'd know a Neapolitan in 1915 wouldn't be using Sicilian mafia-centric terminology even in his native tongue (although if he was a Camorra affiliate he would have his own terms/framework). Sicilian mafiosi coming here in 1915 however absolutely had figures of speech and terminology for shelved/posato and membership. Since you mentioned "button", Dr. Melchiorre Allegra who was made in Palermo in the 1910s even used the term "bottone" to refer to mafia membership so they've been using "button" for a considerable amount of time even in Sicily.
--
If you're wondering why I'm being a bit more aggressive with you than I otherwise would be with a new poster, it's because you registered an account here to shamelessly promote your e-book and constantly steer discussions toward the same bullshit conclusions the book presents. Your intentions are impure, you've done poor research, and your understanding of this subject is a mash-up of crackpot nonsense.