A threat coming from the King of Rome, the Samurai, the one who lays down the law in the Middle World. The power of criminal underworld myths and symbols is at the heart of a study conducted by Professor Alberto Vannucci of the University of Pisa and Davide Torsello, anthropologist at Central European University, who passed away last year. The research, published in SN Social Sciences and released to coincide with the International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December, shows for the first time how narrative power helps make criminal and mafia networks more efficient, delivering results and exercising control with less recourse to violence and the risks associated with it.
The case study examined is the 2014 Mafia Capitale investigation, which uncovered a network of corruption and criminal activity rooted in Rome. Its protagonist is Massimo Carminati, a former neo-fascist terrorist who first introduced the notion of the “Middle World”. The expression is drawn from the literary universe of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, from which Carminati borrows the image of an intermediate space “where the living and the dead meet”: the grey zone where politics, business and organised crime blend and exchange favours.
“The symbolic dimension,” Vannucci explains, “serves to give order, regularity and stability to a system based on corruption. It is what ensures that participants follow the rules, step aside when required, or pay what they are supposed to pay. Symbols serve this purpose.”
The power of symbols emerges in several episodes. The nickname “King of Rome”, coined in an article published by L’Espresso, becomes for Carminati a title of strength — a mark of authority that he uses to intimidate and assert his power over his interlocutors. The same is true of the name “Samurai”, a label fuelled by the discovery of a katana in his home: an object that legitimises him as a warrior, evoking values of respect, loyalty and domination. The study reconstructs how Carminati inspired the character of the Samurai in Suburra (2013) by Giancarlo De Cataldo and Carlo Bonini, and how this overlap between reality and fiction ultimately reinforced his charisma.
The images of the “King” and the “Samurai” thus merge into a single symbolic language, in which the warrior’s discipline and the leader’s sovereignty translate into reputation and power.
But the research also highlights the use of more everyday metaphors, such as the idea of the “cash cow”. Businessman Salvatore Buzzi uses it to describe the logic of exchange with politicians: “If you want to milk the cow, first you have to feed it.” The phrase encapsulates the normalisation of corruption as a practice of reciprocity.
“The power of narratives and symbols is not decorative — it is a central element. It creates order, strengthens trust and enables criminal networks to function with the efficiency of an institution,” Vannucci concludes. “Reduced reliance on violence, and the risks associated with it, results in greater efficiency of the criminal machine. From this standpoint, the Mafia Capitale case is the first to have been analysed in this way.”
