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As I watched Dave Chappelle on Saturday Night Live discussing the ongoing saga of rapper Kanye West and basketball star Kyrie Irving’s conflicts with the Jews, I was reminded of something I have always known but never seriously considered until now: the nature of mafias. Mafias maintain power in two ways: They deny that they themselves exist, and they enforce silence upon anyone inclined to say that they do. Total silence means total power. If a mafia commits a crime, and no one is willing to speak of it, is it really a crime after all?

In 1971, Joseph Colombo caused problems for the makers of The Godfather movie, which was based on a novel by Mario Puzo that had been published in 1969 and was just going into production. Colombo tried to halt it by threatening to prevent...