[Watching the Netflix documentary, I found myself wondering—what
made Gotti so attractive? Wouldn’t people have understood precisely
who he was?  The answer is simple:  Yes, they understood who he was,
and they did not care."]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

WHAT DO JOHN GOTTI AND DONALD TRUMP HAVE IN COMMON?  
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Bill Fletcher, Jr.
January 5, 2024
Liberation Road
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_ 'Watching the Netflix documentary, I found myself wondering—what
made Gotti so attractive? Wouldn’t people have understood precisely
who he was?  The answer is simple:  Yes, they understood who he was,
and they did not care." _

"Get Gotti" Documentary Series , Netflix

 

DID THAT GET YOUR ATTENTION?

A new Netflix series on John Gotti, the notorious late leader of the
Cosa Nostra’s (Mafia’s) Gambino crime family  is a remarkable
look at the rise and fall of one of the most well known criminals of
our time.  Whether you’ve followed Gotti’s career or not, you
will find the documentary fascinating in its detail of his brutal rise
and take-over—via assassination—of one of the most important of
the notorious “five families” of the Cosa Nostra.

Yet what is most striking about the series is not the legendary way
Gotti was able to avoid prison, but the attention and even admiration
he captured over the years, one trial after another.  “Dapper
Don” and “Teflon Don” were two of the terms invented by the
media to describe Gotti’s ability to get away with … murder.

Gotti was built up by the media into a larger-than-life figure—and
he apparently loved it.  His expensive suits and well trimmed hair
made him a dashing figure.  He did not need extensive interviews with
the media in order to gain the sort of attention he received. He
needed only his picture, with his sly look, posted in every newspaper
and across all the television stations..

And amazingly, people gobbled it up. Many celebrities showed a
fondness for Gotti. In one television clip, actor John Amos
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the series _Good Times) _commented to the effect that he liked
Gotti’s style.  His style?  The man was behind multiple murders,
extortion rackets, robberies, etc.

 
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Yet, like many other criminals, Gotti was fascinating to many in the
media and entertainment industries, and, through them, to a
semi-adoring public.  Gotti was the “bad boy” who gave a middle
finger to “the system.”  And when that system tried everything it
could to put him away, he somehow survived,  in part due to the
competitiveness and incompetence of various government agencies. Gotti
did have a social base among certain sections of his own neighborhood.
But more importantly, it was the elite media who gave him wide
visibility and presented him as something he was not.  What he was,
of course, was a murderer and, as it turned out, a less-than-brilliant
leader of the Gambino crime family.  

The media ate up the “bad boy” thing. They eagerly followed
gangsters like “Crazy Joe” Gallo, who was allegedly involved in
the assassination of mob boss Joseph Colombo and who loved associating
with celebrities.  One can see this kind of media attention going
back to the 1930s, with actors such as George Raft.  Yet the Gotti
phenomenon went beyond celebrities.  It touched a nerve in the public
… until it did not.

While watching the Netflix documentary, I found myself wondering—and
asking my wife—what made Gotti so attractive? Wouldn’t people have
understood precisely who he was?  The answer is simple:  Yes, they
understood who he was, and they did not care—until two things
happened. First, he fell out of style. And second, upon his ultimate
conviction, the full brutality of the man became undeniable.

With this criminal bio in mind, let’s return to Donald Trump. Trump
serves as our national Gotti.  I do not mean the extent of alleged
criminal behavior or any direct involvement in murder (Trump has never
been alleged to have been involved in murder). Trump is a bad boy: 
He keeps holding up both middle fingers to the “system” while at
the same time crying about being a victim.  It is actually the latter
that may become his undoing, because it is so childish and weak.  For
now, he is getting away with it. Trump’s supporters ignore the
multitude of charges against him because he is saying what they want
to hear and because they believe he is a victim of the system, or the
supposed “deep state.”  His flamboyant playboy image and displays
of temper all make him what a (mostly white, mostly male) section of
this country wants.  Whether they really want him elected again is a
different matter, but for now his antics seem to express their
collective discontent, regardless of the actual source of such
discontent.

 
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Toward the end of the original _Thomas Crown Affair_, Steve McQueen,
in the title role, explains to investigator-turned-lover Vicki
Anderson (Faye Dunaway) why he is going to commit a second robbery: He
wants to “stick it to the system.”  Really?  Thomas Crown is a
millionaire businessman.  He made his money through and for that
system. So, what system is he actually talking about?

In other words, there is a libertarian, self-indulgent side to
criminal activity, a desire to break with any constraints.  Trump’s
alleged revulsion with the system is, fundamentally, no different from
that of Thomas Crown or John Gotti.  The system gets in the way of
their making more money and, more importantly, doing whatever the hell
they want to do.

This libertine self-indulgence has an attractive side, particularly to
those who have stomped on by the system, people whose dreams of upward
mobility and the “good life”  have been destroyed or, at best,
shrunk.  There are those who wish to live vicariously through the
antics of the bad boys, sticking it to the faceless monster that
deprives them of the ability to do whatever the hell they want. Sadly,
in the case of the majority of the population, it is this very
capitalist system that deprive most of us of the good life we long
for.  So, if we cannot live the life we want, we can at least enjoy
watching when the likes of Gotti go free.  And this is true for those
who rejoice at an angry, maniacal Trump seemingly taking on a system
that, by the way, made him and his father filthy rich.   

“Taking on the system” has no concrete meaning here other than
scapegoating. Just as nineteenth century socialist August Bebel
brilliantly described antisemitism as “the socialism of fools,” we
can today say that the idolatry of Gotti and Trump and their bad-boy
ethos of taking on the system is nothing more than the _populism of
fools_.

"GET GOTTI" IS CURRENTLY STREAMING ON NETFLIX.

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_Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a longtime socialist, trade unionist, and
international solidarity activist.
@BillFletcherJr, billfletcherjr.com [[link removed]]._

_Thanks for reading Liberation Road! Subscribe for free to receive new
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