The camorra is not “Them”

A thought we need to keep in consideration concerns the continuous displacement of the speculative place where the press and the politics in Campania locate the criminal phenomenon. The Camorra assumes multiple faces within the Neapolitan society – and also throughout the Campania region – but what grabs the media’s attention the most is only the drug trades and the trafficking of women for prostitution, which are the results of failed prohibitionist politics. The ground on which the Camorra operates the most, on the other hand, is the war between the various political factions that involves the parties, the press and the magistracy, and it operates in particular when it comes to the invitations to tender, the buying of votes, and the improper and belated use of the European funds. Prison sentences applied beforehand in order to put certain politicians out of play, notices of investigation interpreted as convictions by the press, the misuse of the declarations made by former criminals now collaborating with the police, and the free application of almost-illegal practices like the buying of votes and external associations – these are all ploys shaping the politics in Campania, and the cause, in my opinion, of this democracy crisis. What we should ask ourselves is whether we want to take control of the Region by mimicking the Camorra’s methods with continuous arrests and the replacement of mayors with special commissioners by the Government, or if we rather work for the greater good of the community. The phenomenon we’re witnessing is related to a “dictatorship” made by the legislative policy which doesn’t always apply democratic and legal procedures, and which is mostly in favour of the left-wing parties. What we want to focus on is the excessive blame heaping on the most vulnerable and abandoned social class, shifting the attention from the so-called “bourgeoisie”. When it comes to the Camorra, people should stop adopting the way of thinking of the radical chic bourgeoisie – who represents the majority of voters sharing the interests of the white-collars – so that they could see how the emergency of the violent, blood-shedding criminality is only one face of a much wider system of organized crime. Before talking about the arrests of the heads of the clans, we should talk about the abandonment of the poorest social classes and about the massacres of young people due to the institutions’ lack of action – not all the youngsters involved are affiliated to criminal organizations, but they’re also boys and girls who have not received by the Government the chance to live under legality. Let’s say that by “Camorra” we mean a phenomenon related to the underworld, causing innocent victims to the purpose of a personal enrichment. It is then not inconceivable to find a similarity in other cases currently investigated, which involve people considered “clean faces” that were appointed to high positions within the Public Administration and partially state-owned companies, as well as in the usual aiding and abetting of a certain class of people when it comes to public competitions (e.g. for university chairs) or even places inside Government Departments. Isn’t this a conflict of interests in Campania? In Campania, if you don’t belong to the system you can’t get in in any way. So encouraging the bourgeoisie to take to the streets to protest – an invitation made by some revolutionary politicians in Naples who see themselves as champions  of legality, but just for show – is completely useless. For who would ever give up on their privileges to fight a lost war? Identifying the fight against the Camorra only with the fight against the “youth mafia gangs ” (cit. Roberto Saviano) offers a misleading and superficial picture of the situation, a picture that interests only the voters of a certain left-wing faction advertising this criminal phenomenon instead of fighting it, for they’re limited when it comes to seeing how the Camorra’s system truly works on a wider scheme.