Proud members of mafia families, ex-convicts looking for followers, Islamic fanatics pushing for jihad. Those who transform a life on the edge of legality into a “myth” have landed on social media. And they have a lot of followers
«We do not betray those who are at our side. We don’t know the word infamity…”.
Word of Mirko Federico, a former prisoner who now presents himself as someone who has made it and who has transformed his past into an identity mark, so much so that he has even managed to obtain a position in one of the many nostalgic parties of the crusader shield. Almost 40 years old, wearing a baseball cap, hooded sweatshirt and white jacket, he walks briskly looking at the screen of his cell phone. These are his New Year’s greetings to the social media people who follow him: 18 thousand followers on Facebook, 13 thousand on Instagram and over 300 thousand on TikTok, a platform which boasts 8.6 million “likes”. He’s an influencer. He talks about his experience answering questions about life behind bars. A storytelling that also earned him some appearances on TV, where, talking about overcrowding, isolation and suicides of prisoners, he remained firmly on track. It’s on social media that it derails. Especially when his advice becomes a hybrid, a moralistic discourse mixed with codes from bad times of yesteryear. His videos are full of mantra phrases: «Remember my friend, be careful who you talk to, who you talk about and what you say. Avoid those people who are too curious, intrusive and always want to know everything. They have big ears and wide mouths and most of the time they are either chatty or mean.”
One of the cornerstones of the refrain is the word “infame”, followed by another term that recalls the ancient codes sung by Mario Merola: “Respect”. Which, explains Mirko, «is much more than a word. You don’t pronounce it, you demonstrate it.” Then, mixing respect with the word “betrayal”, here’s another bullet point: “A person who loves you doesn’t use you, doesn’t hurt you but above all doesn’t betray you, doesn’t sell you off to the first bidder because before loving you he respects you.” And here’s the advice bordering on silence: “Remaining silent is a wise choice.” There is no order to be silent, but the praise of silence. And even when he talks about 41 bis, the harsh prison regime, the theme of respect returns, this time connected to other topics that often appear in maxi-trials: «Fortunately I haven’t seen 41 bis but I have met people who lived it and told me about it when they left that department, very destructive, but I have to tell the truth… it is from them that I learned respect, solidarity and support for my comrades».
Mirko, however, is not the only amplifier of concepts between the novel of deviance and its morbid spectacularization. There are plenty of bad teachers who, having landed on social media, manage to rack up hundreds of thousands of views. All united by the same thread: a language that, often unconsciously, legitimizes the culture of silence, of defiance of the rules, of the criminal myth or, even, of jihadist terrorism. There is not always a plan, a direction, a desire to make an apology. It is an automatic mechanism. It is internalized language, breathed for years and metabolized as normality.
It is a code that resurfaces even when the story is intended to be positive, motivational and even educational. The problem, in fact, is not the intention: it is the effect. Those catecheses on silence, on respect, on infamy, on betrayal, function as a lexicon of legitimation. This is how the border gets slippery.
“Infamous people are a very bad thing.” It is one of the most famous phrases from the 2007 TV drama about Totò Riina, Il capo dei capi, uttered at a certain moment by the Cosa Nostra henchmen. It is taken up on social media by another “upside down” influencer: Gaetano Maranzano. Who is certainly no nobody. He is the scion of the Zen family of the same name from Palermo (his father Vincenzo, known as “Gnu Gnu”, was sentenced to 10 years for the attempted murder of his rivals Giuseppe and Antonio Colombo). He places that piece of speech while appearing bold, a chain with a revolver-shaped pendant dangles around his neck. It is he who, after having committed a murder in the heart of Palermo’s nightlife, last October, instead of turning himself in, preferred to make a spectacle of the arrest, relaunching an explicitly criminal story on TikTok and using another audio clip from the Boss of Bosses: «You arrest me and for what? (…) Nice job you chose.” Result: over 300 thousand views. His story intertwines family and mafia myth. The same language that returns in the posts dedicated to his cousin Angelo, promising boxer and already in prison for attempted murder, celebrated with video calls from Pagliarelli prison and neo-melodic songs that glorify prison, anger and violence: «Like in an action film, two hundred of us arrive. You hear the shots, then the sirens.”
In the end the sirens also arrived for Said Alì, who proclaimed himself Don Alì and who assigned himself the role of “king of the Maranza”. Followed by over 200 thousand followers, he has a social archive that presents itself as a criminal autobiography in installments. For years he filmed himself stealing from convenience stores, attacking officers, displaying weapons and raiding neighborhoods. Always with the same aesthetic: provocation and arrogance. Until, last October, he made a big deal: he accused a teacher of having mistreated a student, related to a member of his “gang”. And so, the social video shows the teacher being chased, surrounded, slapped, insulted and threatened in front of his three-year-old daughter. A month later, after days on the run, the influencer was found in the cellars of a building in the Barriera area of Milan. The accusation is of persecutory acts and aggravated defamation. The investigation also links him to the attack on a Dritto e Rovescio television crew, and reconstructs an escalation of threats and violence always fueled and relaunched on social media.
Two other names appear in this album of “bad influencers”. One is Crescenzo Marino, who communicates in a different way. No video confessions, no sermons or sermons on good or evil. His name appeared in the newspapers first as the son of one of the protagonists of the Scampia feud, in news reconstructions that held together criminal genealogies and seasons of blood, then as a suspect and accused of Camorra crimes and finally acquitted. The rest is a parallel story, which the press describes as a social phenomenon: 40 thousand followers on TikTok and an exposure entirely through images. Luxury, cars, travel. A Ferrari, holidays, tables in starred restaurants, very high-end hotels. These are not claims, they are framings. There isn’t the word, there is the context. His is a storytelling that shows the result, not the path. It is the other side of the same lexicon. Not the shouting of silence preached, but the silent one of the legacy that is never named and which for this very reason remains suspended, intact, against the glittering background of the images.
The other name is Slah Omri, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Zero luxury and no ambiguity. Tunisian, guest of an extraordinary reception center in Campania, Omri enters the news only and exclusively for what he publishes online: an obsessive and monothematic digital presence: over 200 pro-jihad propaganda videos uploaded continuously. Contents defined by the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office as “explicitly oriented towards jihadist ideology”. An archive built over time, which has guaranteed him 4,550 followers and more than 52 thousand likes in total. Small numbers compared to big influencers, but enough to transform a marginal profile into an ideological amplifier. The peculiarity of the case is all in the context: while living within the reception system, Omri used social media as a sounding board. Not to tell about himself or to build a character. But to repeat, insist and relaunch propaganda. In the mosaic of bad digital masters Omri thus occupies a different position from the others: it does not create a spectacle and does not sell an image of success. Spread a message. It is the crudest point of the phenomenon: when language no longer flirts with the criminal myth, but becomes explicit ideological adherence. Here the border has already been crossed.
