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See Mafia. The sense "entity which attempts to control a specified arena" makes an analogy to crime-syndicate mafias' attempts to control certain kinds of business in the regions in which they exist.
(in compound terms such as "moral mafia") An entity which attempts to control a specified arena by violence or threats.
1994, Francis Wheen, Lord Gnome's Literary Companion, page 161:
Worse, it confirms what one always suspected about the 1930s literary mafia, with their graceless posing and relentless self-obsession — what terrible , terrible bores they were.
2000, Senator Robert Torricelli, Andrew Carroll, In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century, page 432:
Since the victory of gadgetry is "inevitable," you might as well come along quietly and let us smother you in speed and convenience, says the digital mafia.
2019, Anne Holt, In Dust and Ashes, page 83:
I can scarcely leave the apartment without being engulfed by journalists, not to mention the fucking left-wing activists and the multicultural mafia that assailed me with spitting and verbal abuse the last time I ventured out […]
“mafia”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03