6. The View From Prindle's Head

6.  The View From Prindle’s Head

by

R.E. Prindle

Unintended Consequences 2.  The Italians

 

I’m now to deal with the Italian/Sicilians.  After them, the Jews.  Bear in mind that we are dealing with a psychological profile of peoples, these are Freudian group psychologies.  A group is a number of people who share similar backgrounds and/or goals and mental characteristics.  Gustave Le Bon’s study of the psychology of crowds was dealing with a group of people of dissimilar backgrounds and bound together by an event, or an idea, a panic or hysteria not different from the current corona virus hysteria in which the whole world has been stampeded much as cowboys got a herd in motion.

We are dealing here with national characters as evidenced by actions.

The Italian group is made up of dissimilar peoples and mentalities: Lombards, Venetians, Sicilians, Romans, Florentines etc.  One large division is between the North and South as characterized by the Two Sicilies. Of the South and Lombardy of the North.  Lombardy is named after the Lombard people, a German tribe, with a different history and mental organization from the Sicilians.  Venetians obviously are different from the Lombards and Sicilians and so on.

Sicily named for the very ancient people, the Sicels, may possibly be considered aboriginal.  When the Mediterranean flooded after the last ice age, the Sicels, by whatever name they may have been named were flushed from the Med Basin into the former highlands formed by their island.  Or perhaps the Sicels already inhabited the highlands and received the Basin people as their first invaders of their highlands although they must have had relations with the Basin people. The Basin flooded during the Age of Leo thus eight to nine thousand years ago.  At any rate the island was invaded by many peoples including in historical times the Greeks and Phoenicians, the Moslems and the Normans each leaving their imprint on the Sicilian character.

Out of all this chaos whatever original Sicels were left they took part in a melting pot, actions and reactions that formed the Sicilian character and the formation of the criminal organization called the Mafia.

As mentioned earlier the Sicilians, their country ravaged and depleted of resources began renting themselves out as unskilled laborers to Northern Europe during the summer months while returning to Sicily in the Winter when their services were no longer required.  Then, as steamships reliably and quickly made Atlantic crossings safe they first travelled to Argentina, moving North and eventually, in the nineties,  they discovered New York City.

They were seen by Americans with disapproval as Birds of Passage.  That is as migrant laborers they arrived on these welcoming shores to make their bundle, then as in Europe, the returned to Sicily to bask in the Sun enjoying their leisure on their savings.  While this was natural to them, Americans resented them because unlike immigrants they didn’t stay.

For every two that came one went back home, perhaps repeating the experience when he ran out of money.  Those who stayed were almost all illiterates, being only grunt unskilled labor with which an expanding New York City abounded in opportunities.  Like the other immigrants they clustered in colonies each forming a no go zone for all but their own nationality.  New Yorkers called these colonies, neighborhoods and ghettoes.  You nearly needed a passport to enter and pass through.

Of course they brought their native foods with them, enriching they said, the American palette.  Of course the recipes were adapted for a universal appetite.  Gradually American and Northern European dishes were replaced by various ethnic cuisines.  These cuisines usually consisted of poverty foods.

Over time NYC would become a congeries of colonies each forming a no go zone for all but their own.  The Sicilians also brought their well organized criminal Mafia with them that quickly adapted to American conditions.  At first, they operated in their own colonies, but combining with the Jews who were familiar with European ways, thus American, were better adapted to move between their own and the general culture.  They to some extent brought the Italian criminals out of their own colonies.

It is difficult to determine whether Jews or Italians brought organized crime to America.  At first the criminals were involved in crimes of theft, prostitution and gambling.  In 1920 an unprecedented opportunity to enrich them beyond their dreams was created with the introduction of Prohibition.  The illegal liquor trade made the mobsters, both Jewish and Italian, day.

At the same time a gentleman named Mussolini was coming to power in a unified Italy and he assumed that the Sicilians in America were still Italian citizens.  Merely Overseas Italians.  His agents encouraged this belief in America.  Thus the Sicilians became another dual citizenship people not unlike the Irish.  Mussolini demanded a control over these Italians.

In the US all the peoples of Italy were known as Italians although most were Sicilians.  I wouldn’t have known the difference until I was over twenty.  As Mussolini thought of the Italian colonies as part of Italy at one time, he wanted to ship injured war veterans to New York for free treatment in US hospitals.

As of 1920 then, the Sicilians were in a primitive state of organization.  They were tightly bound to colonies in which the remained until after WWII at which time their ties to Italy were broken and they became Italian-Americans.

Next I will deal with the most influential of the immigrant nations, the Jews.  I expect this to be very controversial as the actual history differs greatly from the orthodox or official fables that we have been conditioned to believe.  History is nevertheless history and it should be told as accurately as possible.

The history will also be only up to 1920 at this point.

Continue to 7.  The View From Prindle’s Head, Unintended Consequences 3.