Word: gangsterisms
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...grown accustomed to his faces: Hitler the buffoon, Hitler the madman, Hitler the monster. Memoirs of a Confidant introduces us to Hitler the misunderstood idealist whose vision of peace and prosperity was distorted by his gangster lieutenants. The author of this benign nonsense was Otto Wagener, a forgotten Nazi who served as storm trooper chief of staff and party economist until his career was derailed by Rival Hermann Göring. According to the book's editor, Yale History Professor Henry Ashby Turner Jr., Wagener was lucky to escape Göring's blood purge of June 30, 1934. He spent...
While savagery like El Verdugo's might evoke a Hollywood gangster movie, it has become a grim reality of life in some Mexican border towns. Upstart groups like the Zetas have emerged largely as a result of the Mexican government's recent crackdown on the big cartels that have long monopolized the country's $25 billion-a-year drug trade. Experts call the phenomenon "atomization": as the large Mafias decompose, more reckless "microcartels" spin off or move in. In their heyday in the 1980s and '90s, Mexico's biggest kingpins ran networks that employed thousands of people; now gangs like...
...deep into Colombian jungles to mediate between leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads, and once showed up at the house of cocaine king Pablo Escobar disguised as a milkman. Revealing himself, Castrillón Hoyos implored Escobar to confess his sins, which, presumably at some considerable length, the vicious gangster...
...First he falls in with a violent Manhattan street gang whose members call themselves the Whyos and communicate with an elaborate, secret singing language (they are selected for their musical ability). Then he falls violently in love with a fetching Irish Whyo named Beanie, "a sassy girl gangster who sometimes wore trousers." Against his better judgment, our hero gets embroiled in the Whyos' various capers and feuds, including an internal power struggle involving their charismatic but cruel leader, Dandy Johnny, who sexually assaults his underlings and wears special boots tricked out with ax blades...
...gangsta rap, battles for authenticity can take dangerous turns. As the genre moved from stories of petty crime into super-gangster fables, rappers’ real lives simply could not keep up. What passes for authenticity is really a fragile character developed for public consumption. Record labels, rappers, and even (mostly white) consumers to some extent know this—and act accordingly...