ALESSANDRO ORSINI
▶ FIELDWORK LOCATION: ITALY
I was warned not to write my book, Sacrifice: My Life in a Fascist Militia. Sacrifice is a fascist organization that has been involved in numerous incidents of violence in Italy. In some cases, it has been violently attacked by far left organizations. In other cases, Sacrifice members have been the attackers. Many of its militants are in prison for beating up political adversaries or for taking part in various kinds of clashes. But no Sacrifice militant has ever been arrested for larceny or robbery or drug pushing. Violence against people is always the reason for their arrest.
I managed to gain access to two cells in Italian towns (that I call Mussolinia and Lenintown) to understand the cultural significance Sacrifice comrades attribute to violence. The history of this research, recounted in my book, is long and complicated and forced me to live in more than one city. It lasted for five years and was divided into three stages.
The first stage, the “approach stage,” took roughly three and a half years. During that time I managed to become friendly with some important Sacrifice militants after taking out a membership in a gym that they own.
The second stage, the “entry stage,” lasted for four months, three of which I spent as a full-time militant. During those three months I played the part of a militant day in and day out, including weekends. This stage ended with my expulsion from the group and an explicit warning not to approach any comrade in the future.
The third stage, the “departure stage,” lasted a year. Because I could no longer approach the group, I continued to study it through the enormous quantity of documents that the Sacrifice comrades publish on Facebook, and also thanks to a friendship I had developed over five years with a Sacrifice militant who did not live in Mussolinia or in Lenintown. This young man, although a highly respected militant, had begun a deradicalization process after the birth of his son, but he has never spoken about this with his other comrades.
This is what I call “living ethnography.”
WARNINGS FROM POLICE AND FAMILY
I received numerous warnings about the dangers and costs of my ethnographic research with fascist militants, but two in particular stuck out: one from a police chief and one from my own mother.
At the beginning of the “entry stage,” I asked for and was granted an appointment with the chief of police in Lenintown, who received me in his office. He told me that the Sacrifice militants had been involved in numerous aggressive acts and that a recent beating of a young woman by Leonidas, the local Sacrifice leader, was just one of many episodes. At the end of a very cordial conversation lasting thirty minutes, the chief of police advised me not to conduct research in Lenintown. After confirming that I was still quite determined to study Sacrifice in Lenintown, his tone, until then friendly, suddenly became firm and decisive:
Professor Orsini, the people you want to study are dangerous and violent, and we might not be able to protect you. If you decide to go ahead with your research, you will have to assume total responsibility for your choice. We have a special unit that deals with Sacrifice and, as I told you, we’re conducting our investigation into the fights in which Leonidas is involved. I would also inform you that you could be charged if you break the law. Being a sociologist does not mean having special permission to commit crimes. Bear that in mind.
A few days after the meeting with the police chief, at the end of three and a half years of preparation, I was permitted to enter the Mussolinia and Lenintown cells. I joined at a significant moment in their lives; the police were finishing their investigations on Leonidas after having arrested another group member.
A second warning came soon after from my mother, who helped me to better understand the reality of everyday life in a fascist militia. During a dinner in my parents’ apartment in Rome, at which one of my two brothers was present, my mother got up from the table and refused to continue eating after I’d explained what my new research involved. “Alessandro,” she said, “I’ve never been so ashamed in all my life! And if a friend of mine should see you? Or someone who knows your father? Do you realize how much shame you’re bringing on your family? Why do we all have to pay the price for your absurd choices?”
Over the next three days, my mother called me three times and sent me eleven messages on WhatsApp accusing me of damaging my family’s image, being selfish, and putting myself in serious danger. Then she asked my father—himself a psychology professor—to intervene and convince me to give up my research. In the end, she said she would explain to her friends in Lenintown why I was associated with the Sacrifice fascists. But I asked my mother not to speak to anyone about my research for a number of reasons linked to my personal safety.
NEGOTIATING ENTRY INTO A FASCIST MILITANT CELL
Despite the warnings, I proceeded with my plan to enter the Sacrifice militia. The greatest challenge, which I spent more than three years attempting to overcome, was to gain permission from the group’s leadership to be accepted into the militia as a member. As a consequence, I was allowed to participate in all of the activities and meetings of the militia, including the distribution of fascist leaflets in the streets as well as one of the comrades’ most popular initiatives, the distribution of food to poor Italians. The militants donate five euros each to purchase the goods whenever the militia leaders decide to launch the program. One of my tasks was to stand in the street, distributing flyers with the Sacrifice symbol, explaining our initiative.
I decided to distribute flyers, rather than simply observing, for two reasons. First, I came to the conclusion that distributing flyers was a good way to increase the level of trust toward me from other group members. Second, I intentionally wanted to run the risk of being insulted or verbally assaulted, something that did happen on numerous occasions. Understanding what it means to be a fascist militant implies understanding what it means to live surrounded by people who despise you. From my ethnographic perspective, I was not aiding Sacrifice, I was just helping myself better understand the everyday life in a fascist militia.
Near the end of the process, while I was alone in the LUISS University Faculty Room in Rome, I telephoned Marcus, the head of the Mussolinia militia. I answered all his questions on the type of research I intended to carry out. The telephone call lasted forty-six minutes. Marcus said, “I’m sorry to ask all these questions, but we’re very paranoid because we’re always afraid that someone is trying to damage us. This is why we never give information to anyone and we don’t trust anyone.”
With these words, he gave me three fundamental items of information I could use to manage my relations with the Sacrifice militants:
1. “We’re always very paranoid.”
2. “We’re always frightened that someone is trying to harm us.”
3. “We don’t trust anyone.”
Marcus said that he was “flattered” that a university professor was interested in his militia. In my ethnographic notes, which I have in front of me as I write these words, I recorded that Marcus treated me with great respect: “His voice seems insecure. It’s like the voice of someone who thinks he’s talking to a very important person. Sometimes he doesn’t finish his sentences as if he were afraid of getting the construction wrong.”
Marcus told me he was in favor of my entering the militia, but he had first to obtain the permission of the national leaders. This was our dialogue, which I copied onto a piece of paper as it was happening:
MARCUS: My leaders will ask me what Sacrifice will gain from accepting your requests. They’ll ask me what … Do you see? What you can offer.
ME: What do you think I could offer the national leaders?
MARCUS: The national leaders will certainly want a political gain. That is, it’s not about money. I’d like to let you enter the militia but … Do you understand what I mean?
ME: You want to know what I can offer Sacrifice as a university professor?
MARCUS: Correct.
ME: I think that the Sacrifice national leaders would be interested in increasing their members, entering places where they can’t go.
MARCUS: Right! [Marcus laughs]
From that moment on, a negotiation began that allowed me to answer the question that everyone was asking: “Why would a fascist militia like Sacrifice, with such a high level of paranoia, decide to let a sociology professor enter its organization?” The answer is that Sacrifice’s national leaders hoped to gain access to my department and use me to launch a strategic penetration of Italian universities.
The cause of my ultimate expulsion was linked to this negotiation, which became more complicated over time. Initially, we agreed on everything; but problems arose later, and I received a demand that I couldn’t accept. A Cornell University Press editor and a senior MIT professor—the only people I asked for advice in addition to my father—reminded me that there were rules that I couldn’t break.
In an exchange of emails, the MIT professor told me that I would have to abide by two fundamental rules during my research. The first was to respect the people I was studying. I had to reveal my identity and the purpose of my research. The second rule was to respect what Thomas S. Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, calls the “scientific community,” that is, my colleagues.1 The MIT professor was also concerned about my personal safety.
The initial negotiation with Marcus ended with this deal. In exchange for the authorization to enter the Mussolinia militia, I agreed to:
1. Urge my students to read my book on Sacrifice after its publication.
2. Invite one of the Sacrifice national leaders to my sociology course so he could talk to my students.
Marcus thought he had closed an excellent deal, but in fact I hadn’t conceded anything, for two reasons. First, when I write a book that costs me years of work, I ask my students to read it and discuss it in class. Second, every year I seek out a violent political activist, perhaps even someone who has committed one or more homicides for ideological reasons, to come and talk with my students. On April 8, 2014, for example, I had invited to LUISS University in Rome an extreme-left terrorist who had killed seven people but who, after having served thirty-two years and six months in prison, had become a fervent Catholic. He had never repented publicly for the homicides he had committed, but he had written essays criticizing his role in the Prima Linea terrorist group, of which he had been a leader.
A lengthy exchange of texts, emails, and telephone calls was initiated between me and Marcus. Marcus talked to the national leaders and then told me what they had said. In the end, he said that the national leaders had decided to accept my proposal because they thought it was advantageous for Sacrifice. Then Marcus sent me an email in which he said,
I told the national leaders that I’m in favor of you entering my militia because, if you were someone who wanted to badmouth us, you could write a pack of lies behind a desk, like the journalists do. Someone who has bad intentions doesn’t act like you. He doesn’t ask for authorizations, and he doesn’t spend his own money renting an apartment in Lenintown.
As time went on, a relationship of trust and respect was created between me and Marcus; it would save me on the night Leonidas expelled me from the Lenintown militia.
A key problem remained, however. Dux, the founder of Sacrifice, who no one was allowed to contradict, said that an eye had to be kept on everything I did and that I should agree to have the manuscript read before its publication. This was the condition that I refused and that, in the end, caused my expulsion.
Augustus, a member of the Sacrifice national executive, visited me at my university to confirm the terms of the deal: having my students read my book, inviting a Sacrifice leader to my class. In addition, I told him that I would show the national leaders those parts of my manuscript in which their interviews appeared, and they would be able to ask for corrections or additions. I later phoned Augustus and, using the language of the Sacrifice militants, told him that I needed to talk to “my leaders” to see if I could accept their request to have the full manuscript read before its publication. In fact, I don’t have “leaders” in the Sacrifice sense, but I couldn’t explain to Augustus how the scientific world functioned. Augustus told me he was in favor of my research and tried to convince me to accept the request of Dux. This was my response:
Augustus, I get what you’re saying, and I’m very grateful for your help, but like you I also have leaders and I can’t do everything I want. I don’t believe that my leaders would allow me to accept, but I’ll ask them all the same.
Augustus asked me to put myself in his shoes, and I asked him to put himself in mine. Then he asked, “Where are these leaders of yours?”
“They’re in the United States.”
I don’t understand you. No one will ever know that you let the book be read before publishing it. None of us will ever tell anyone that we’ve read it. The problem is solved. These guys are in the United States!
I gave Augustus the most fascist answer I could think of:
Augustus, the problem is that I, like you, even though I’m not a fascist, profoundly believe in honor and loyalty. My leaders are my leaders, and I could never betray their trust. Perhaps they’ll never find out that I let you read the manuscript, but I would lose honor, and I could no longer look at myself in the mirror.
Augustus continued to say that he couldn’t understand me and repeated that my leaders would never know anything. I continued to be very polite and replied that I had already agreed to show all the parts of the manuscript that quoted Sacrifice leaders, who could ask me to make corrections or additions. Augustus told me that he would try to find a solution, but he didn’t tell me that I had to leave the militias. From that moment on, I did the simplest thing in the world: I waited for the day of my expulsion to arrive. I was well aware that neither my contact in the Cornell University Press nor the MIT professor would agree that I should allow my manuscript to be vetted by Sacrifice before its publication. The reason is obvious—it’s called self-censorship. Ultimately, I was expelled three months after joining Sacrifice for my refusal to have my manuscript read by the group leadership before publication.
LESSONS LEARNED
The key ethical lesson I learned from my process of entering a fascist militia is that it is crucial to remain in contact with someone who represents the social world to which the ethnographer belongs. The ethnographer needs to stay in contact with a moral world that is different from that of the fascists. After spending almost all of my time with Sacrifice militants, on more than one occasion I realized I was running the risk of becoming a fascist militant from an ethical point of view. Remaining in contact with the MIT professor and my father—a professor of psychology at La Sapienza University of Rome—helped me avoid being completely absorbed by what I termed “the parallel world” of Sacrifice. Unfortunately, my father died from lung cancer during my research, and the MIT professor became my only remaining ethical point of reference. Beyond human supporters, many books helped me understand the ethical risks I ran during my time in Sacrifice, including Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram.2
For a number of reasons, including the fact that I was assaulted by some extreme-left militants for being a Sacrifice militant during my time in the group, I became very obedient to the authority of Leonidas, my “leader” in Lenintown, who was a violent professional boxer. Had the MIT professor not told me that I could not let Sacrifice leaders read the manuscript before its publication, I think I would have let them read it without feeling that I was doing something wrong from an ethical point of view. I am almost sure I would have at least deleted a paragraph or two to retain the trust I had managed to gain during both the approach and entry stages, but also to protect my personal safety. After all, my principal aim was not to be expelled by the militia. I was obsessed with gathering information for as long as possible so I could write a well-informed book.
The fact that I wrote an email asking for advice from the MIT professor demonstrates that I got confused from an ethical point of view. Being a scholar, I should have known that I could not let fascists vet what I had written about them before publication. Becoming a full member of a new community allows for unparalleled insight and understanding, but researchers must maintain connections to their prior scholarly and social communities to reinforce their ethical responsibilities and remain true to themselves and their research.
THE ETHICS OF PARTICIPATING IN A VIOLENT FASCIST MILITIA
I would like to add a few words about the ethics of my full participation in a violent fascist militia. Ethnographers are split between those who turn to Kantian ethics and the so-called utilitarians. The first group claims that in no case must individuals be considered as a means to an end: concealment, deception, and falsehood must always be rejected, even if the aim to be achieved is that of scientific knowledge.3 Utilitarians believe it is permissible to hide one’s identity and publish confidential information if one’s goal is the advancement of knowledge or the exposure of behavior deemed unfair and harmful to the community. In this case, the achievement of a higher aim is used to justify the harm to people who, unbeknownst to them, have been involved in the study, as was the case with the famous experiments of Stanley Milgram,4 David Rosenhan,5 and Philip Zimbardo.6 Before moving to Lenintown, I already had coped with questions of ethics in participant observation during my ethnographic research with extreme-left terrorists who committed several homicides.7
My red lines on these ethical issues fall into two categories: academic and personal. On the academic level, my red lines coincided with those of my colleagues at MIT: “Do what MIT allows you to do, according to the highest ethical and professional standards that MIT expects their researchers to carry out in their work.” Before making direct contact with the Sacrifice leaders in Mussolinia and Lenitown, a senior MIT professor was very clear with me about what I was allowed and not allowed to do during my time embedded in the cells in Lenintown and Mussolinia. It turns out that my academic red lines were rooted in Kantian ethics.
On a personal level, my red lines were much more practical; namely, I sought to avoid being punched in the face. I have often, but not always, made efforts to avoid being pulled into dangerous or potentially violent situations. I have avoided employing concealment, deception, and falsehood both to comply with the MIT ethical and professional standards and to reduce the risk of being punched in the face one day or another. This was a real concern, especially because I regularly walked with the Sacrifice militants in broad daylight through Lenintown and Mussolinia, two cities where I had friends and the group had enemies. This combination of academic and personal red lines formed the foundation of my ethical approach to my research, keeping me and those around me safe during my time in the field.
______
Alessandro Orsini is director of the Observatory on International Security at LUISS University of Rome.
PUBLICATION TO WHICH THIS FIELDWORK CONTRIBUTED:
• Orsini, Alessandro. Sacrifice: My Life in a Fascist Militia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2017.8
NOTES
1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
2. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
3. Rosaline Barbour, Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide (London: Sage, 2013).
4. Milgram, Obedience to Authority.
6. Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (New York: Random House, 2008).
7. Alessandro Orsini, “A Day Among the Diehard Terrorists: The Psychological Costs of Doing Ethnographic Research,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 36, no. 4 (2013), 337–51, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2013.763601; Alessandro Orsini, “Interview with a Terrorist by Vocation: A Day Among the Diehard Terrorists, Part II,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 36, no. 8 (August 2013): 672–84, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.802975; Alessandro Orsini, “Are Terrorists Courageous? Micro-Sociology of Extreme Left Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 3 (March 2015): 179–98, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2014.987593.
8. Some material was reprinted from Alessandro Orsini, Sacrifice: My Life in a Fascist Militia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2017), © 2017 by Cornell University, used by permission of the publisher.