Alessandro Orsini | |
---|---|
Born | Naples, Italy | 14 April 1975
Nationality | Italian |
Occupation(s) | Sociologist, writer |
Height | 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) |
Alessandro Orsini (born 14 April 1975) [1] is an Italian sociologist and scholar of terrorism who is an associate professor at LUISS University. [2]
Orsini was born in Naples, the son of Arturo Orsini, a Jungian psychologist who was later a professor of theory and techniques of personality testing and director of the School of Clinical Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome. When he was fifteen, his family moved to Latina, where he graduated from the Liceo Classico Dante Alighieri. [3] He earned a degree in sociology from Sapienza University followed by a doctorate from Roma Tre University. [1]
In November 2004, Orsini took up a position as a researcher at Libera Università Mediterranea. He had teaching duties, and in 2007 was disciplined by the university for absenteeism. Several well-known sociologists, and the Federation of Education Workers union, wrote to the university in Orsini's support. [4] [5] He was subsequently a researcher in the sociology of political phenomena at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where from 2013 to 2016 he directed the Centre for Terrorism Studies, with a focus on Islamist terrorism in Europe. [1] His book on ISIS published by Rizzoli Libri won the Cimitile Prize for best work on a current-affairs topic in 2016. [6]
At LUISS University, Orsini is an associate professor and teaches general sociology and sociology of terrorism. From 2011 to 2022, he was also a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT, in the United States, where he was a Visiting Scholar at both the Department of Political Science and the Center for International Studies. [1] [7] [8] His research interests focus on "strategies for access to violent groups motivated by ideological hate". [1] He is the founder and director of LUISS University's Observatory on International Security and of the news website Sicurezza Internazionale. [1] [9] [10] He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, of the Radicalisation Awareness Network of the Council of Europe, and of the "future scenarios" committee of the Stato maggiore della difesa of the Italian Armed Forces. [1]
From 2019 to 2022, Orsini was a columnist on Il Messaggero , writing articles on geopolitical and international issues. Following the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he left Il Messaggero due to conflicts with the editor Massimo Martinelli. [11] He subsequently became a columnist for Il Fatto Quotidiano upon the invitation of the editor Marco Travaglio. [12]
Based on terrorists' biographies, Orsini has developed what he calls the DRIA model (disintegration, reconstruction, integration, alienation) to explain the process of radicalization. [13] [14] Orsini says this analysis applies to "vocational terrorists". [13] He defines these as people prepared to sacrifice their lives for a politico-religious ideology – an ideology that is marked by the belief that the world, as it is, is entirely corrupted ("radical catastrophism") and destined to be destroyed ("waiting for the end"), as well as an obsession with ridding the world of evil, the dehumanization of enemies, the relishing of martyrdom and persecution, and a belief that the end justifies the means. [13] [15] [16] According to Orsini, this activity answers an unmet spiritual need for meaning in terrorists' lives. [14]
The model comprises four stages: [14] [17]
In 2009, Orsini published a monograph on the motivations of those who joined the Red Brigade, a far-left group, from Rubbettino Editore ; it was originally submitted to il Mulino , Italy's premier publisher in social sciences, who rejected it. [19] Spencer M. Di Scala, a historian specialized in Italian socialism, prefaced the book. [19]
Orsini uses the Red Brigades as a case study for his view that political homicide, whether coming from the extreme left or from neo-Nazi groups, whether from non-state actors or from groups such as the Pol Pot regime that have taken over the state apparatus, is motivated by a messianic form of thinking. [20] [21] [22] Violent religious or political sects succeed in turning their members into terrorists only to the extent that they succeed in indoctrinating them into believing that the group has a spiritual mission to purify the world of corruption. [20] [21]
Upon publication, Richard Drake, a historian of contemporary Europe, Italian history, and terrorism, characterized Orsini's discussion of the background of the Red Brigades as a "tour de force of intellectual history" in its attempts to explain not only the history of Italian terrorism, but the source of terroristic thought as well. [23] Guido Panvini, a social historian focused on European history and political violence and terrorism, thought the wide range of historical parallels cited by Orsini, while offering many insights, might leave the reader somewhat disorientated but found the link Orsini had established between terrorist violence and the behaviour of right-wing radicals and totalitarian regimes particularly interesting. [22] The work went on to win the Acqui Award of History. [24]
Two years later, a translation was published by Cornell University Press. This received quite mixed reviews: while some highlighted its contribution to understanding terrorists' mindset, others criticized, in particular, a lack of historicism. Lawrence Freedman, a scholar in strategic studies and resident reviewer for Foreign Affairs , included the work in his choice of the top three titles on "military, scientific, and technological" topics published in 2011, [25] while R. J. B. Bosworth, a historian specializing in Fascist Italy, panned the book and attributed its positive reception in Italy to pro-Berlusconi sentiments. [24]
Anna Cento Bull, a professor of Italian history, politics, and fascism, found Orsini's conclusions provocative but "too one-sided to be convincing" in that they were marked by a total disregard not only for the historical and cultural context that gave rise to the Red Brigade but also the group's evolution over time; his usage of interviews and internal documents as objective sources drew criticism as well. [26] Tobias Hof, a historian of European terrorism, raised similar issues, writing that though it offered a "stimulating insight" into the mindset of the Red Brigades, it lacked "thorough historical contextualisation" and neglected "the political and social background as well as the historic tradition of violence in Italy", thereby potentially overgeneralizing the phenomenon of radicalization. [27] Much the same critique was made by Ryan Shaffer, a historian focused on Asian and European history with a particular interest in extremism and political violence, although he thought that despite these shortcomings, the book provided an "insightful look at the mindset of modern political terrorists" and gave scholars "a theoretical model to explain an individual's route from marginal existence to 'revolutionary' action". [28]
Brian Sandberg, specializing in the intersections of religion, violence, and European political culture, found Orsini to have adopted a "completely ahistorical approach", adding that his failure to interrogate his source materials and superficial readings led him to problematic generalizations. [29] Gearóid Barry, a historian of pacifism and religion in interwar Europe, found Orsini's portrayal of the historical lineage of the Red Brigades "deeply problematic" because it ignored the role the "Christian Democrats' hegemony" had played in the group's formation; discussing Orsini's attempt to portray the Red Brigades as firmly within the tradition of Italian Communism rather than communists who had "gone bad", Barry said "the tone of sorrowing indignation adopted by Orsini cannot hide the weaker points in his circular arguments". [30] Phil Edwards, a historian specializing in Italian radicalism, was scathing in his assessment—Orsini's analysis was "deliberately ahistorical", shaded by pro-right political partisanship, and his usage of primary sources, marked by an inquisitorial tendency and selective quoting, had no regard for either context or accuracy; the end result, despite some genuinely interesting material on radicalization, was not an "anatomy" of the Red Brigades but an "anathema". [31] Julian Bourg, specializing in intellectual histories of European terrorism, panned the book; Orsini relied on "dehistoricized political theology to explain wildly dissimilar worldly phenomena"—going so far as to claim that Müntzer, Robespierre, Mao, and Brigadist Mario Moretti shared the same worldview—and like early 20th-century philosophers, located the root cause of all political dilemmas in the religious sphere. [15] John Veugelers, specializing in Italian far-right and social movements, found the book frustrating; he said the central argument of the book stood on cherry-picked evidence, the historical and cultural context was lacking in that the influences of the Catholic Church and the Italian Civil War did not feature at all, and Orsini's theoretical apparatus was decades old, having had its heyday in the 1960s. [32]
Jeffrey Herf, a historian specializing in European history and communism during the Cold War, was more critical of these imperatives of historicism, calling the work a "welcome turn away from social science reductionism"; for Herf, the primary sources Orsini uncovered were invaluable as they allowed him to show how "eschatological ideology" rather than "material concerns" can motivate violence. [33] Likewise, Paul J. Smith, a professor of National Security Affairs, described the book as a "powerful and sweeping study" that provided an "explanatory framework" for the Red Brigades' actions and motivations and made an "enormous contribution" to the field. [34] John R. Hall, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, said he found Orsini's analysis of the Red Brigades as a quasi-religious "active sect" convincing and consistent with his own analysis of utopian movements. [35] Hall concluded that the book offered "a compelling and descriptively thick portrait of religious terrorism as a type of organized social action." [35] Soma Chaudhuri, a sociologist studying gender, social movements, and violence, said Orsini had analyzed the process by which ordinary people become killers through the concept of a "pedagogy of intolerance"—an "apocalyptic vision of history" where the world is seen as ruled by enemies of humanity—"pigs". [36] She concluded: "This is a uniquely organized book, and it is my assessment that scholars in the future will be comparing it with Christopher Browning's monograph on Nazi holocaust, Ordinary Men ." [36] Alex P. Schmid of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) praised the book as an "excellent" work in 2014 and highlighted it as an example of increasing numbers of good researchers joining the field. [37]
In the early 2010s, [38] Orsini embedded himself within two fascist militias for a span of three months to gain an auto-ethnographic perspective, later published as Sacrifice: My Life in a Fascist Militia. [39] R. J. B. Bosworth found the work to be an uncritical portrayal that was quite sympathetic towards fascists. [39] Christiane Olivo, specializing in the politics of social dissent in post-Communist East-Central Europe, was struck by Orsini's first-hand description of the rupture with the ambient "bourgeois ideology" of conflict-avoidance and self-preservation that resulted from the fascist groups' emphasis on the practice of combat sports like MMA, which instilled values of self-sacrifice and encouraged seeking out violent conflict (by brawling with far-left groups) as a valorous way of life. [40]
João Bernardo, a Portuguese historian of communism, capitalism, and fascism, stated that while the book "usefully" discusses the development of Bruno Rizzi's political stances from 1937 on, a topic that has been largely lacking in scholarship, he found the book to be "seriously wanting" by not including the broader debate of critical leftist thoughts on the Soviet Union beyond "Trotsky's views pertaining to the Stalinist USSR". By the omission of multiple other views from Italian political thinkers throughout Rizzi's lifetime and their impact on his thinking, the book creates a "Bruno Rizzi palatable to contemporary taste, expurgating everything of which neoliberals are not fond" and ultimately harms understanding of the individual being presented. [41]
Orsini had a rapid rise in popularity as a controversial talk-show guest during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, [42] [43] [44] [45] where he repeatedly expressed his criticism of NATO's expansionism towards Russia and the European Union's diplomatic failure, which he considers to be co-factors of the war in Ukraine. Papers like Corriere della Sera and Le Monde have described Orsini as spreading Russian war propaganda. [42] [46] LUISS University, fearing reputational harms, issued a statement in 2022 expressing its "full solidarity with the Ukrainian people". [46]
In March 2024, Orsini wrote an article in Il Fatto Quotidiano stating that Italian soldiers and vehicles were on duty at the Constanța base in Romania and that they were in imminent danger from a Ukrainian military defeat. [47] The Italian Ministry of Defence rejected the claims stating that Orsini's statements were "completely false. The Italian Air Force servicemen, who were part of the Task Force 'Gladiator' in Constanța, returned to Italy as early as 31 July 2023" adding that "Orsini is either in absolute bad faith or he is not even able to consult normal web sources". [48] [49]
Later on in 2023, Orsini endorsed a law proposed by the Meloni government prohibiting the creation of mosques in garages and sheds. He argued that the law was intended to encourage Muslims to gather in large mosques and thus to prevent isolation and radicalization. [50]
Aldo Moro was an Italian statesman and prominent member of Christian Democracy (DC) and its centre-left wing. He served as prime minister of Italy in five terms from December 1963 to June 1968 and from November 1974 to July 1976.
Religious terrorism is a type of religious violence where terrorism is used as a strategy to achieve certain religious goals or which are influenced by religious beliefs and/or identity.
Christian terrorism, a form of religious terrorism, refers to terrorist acts which are committed by groups or individuals who profess Christian motivations or goals. Christian terrorists justify their violent tactics through their interpretation of the Bible and Christianity, in accordance with their own objectives and worldview.
Kneecapping is a form of malicious wounding, often as torture, in which the victim is injured in the knee. The injury is typically inflicted by a low-velocity gunshot to the knee pit with a handgun. The term is considered a misnomer by medical professionals because only a very small minority of victims suffer damage to the kneecap. A review of eighty kneecapping victims found that only two had a fractured kneecap. Some victims have their elbows and ankles shot as well.
Renato Curcio is a former terrorist, and the former leader of the Italian far-left terrorist organization, the Red Brigades.
Sociology of terrorism is a field of sociology that seeks to understand terrorism as a social phenomenon. The field defines terrorism, studies why it occurs and evaluates its impacts on society. The sociology of terrorism draws from the fields of political science, history, economics and psychology. The sociology of terrorism differs from critical terrorism studies, emphasizing the social conditions that enable terrorism. It also studies how individuals as well as states respond to such events.
The Italian Democratic Socialist Party, also known as Italian Social Democratic Party, was a social-democratic political party in Italy. The longest serving partner in government for Christian Democracy, the PSDI was an important force in Italian politics, before the 1990s decline in votes and members. The party's founder and longstanding leader was Giuseppe Saragat, who served as President of the Italian Republic from 1964 to 1971. Compared to the like-minded Italian Socialist Party, it was more centrist, at least until Bettino Craxi's leadership, infact, it identified with the centre-left.
In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
Radicalization is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalization. Radicalization can result in both violent and nonviolent action – academic literature focuses on radicalization into violent extremism (RVE) or radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. Multiple separate pathways can promote the process of radicalization, which can be independent but are usually mutually reinforcing.
Gaetano Arfé was an Italian politician, historian, and journalist. From 1966 to 1976 he published Avanti!, the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party, which he represented as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1979 to 1984. He died at the age of 81 on September 13, 2007 in Naples.
Gabriele Adinolfi is an Italian far-right ideologue and essayist. Adinolfi was involved in Terza Posizione, a short-lived far-right group founded in 1979. Like other neo-fascists of his generation, he saw his enemy as the far-left and the Italian Social Movement (MSI). He founded several publications and a website called Noreporter.
The nascent state is defined as a psychological process of destructuration-reorganization where the individual becomes capable of merging with other persons and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity.
Lorne L. Dawson is a Canadian scholar of the sociology of religion who has written about new religious movements, the brainwashing controversy, and religion and the Internet. His work is now focused on religious terrorism and the process of radicalization, especially with regard to domestic terrorists.
Alberto Franceschini is a founder and former leading member of the Italian far-left terrorist organization, the Red Brigades, along with Renato Curcio, Margherita Cagol and Mario Moretti.
Gino Giugni was an Italian academic and politician. He served as the minister of labor and social security in the period 1993–1994.
Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views often conflate with religious and political violence, and can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics, religion, and gender relations.
The Red Brigades was an Italian Marxist–Leninist armed terrorist guerilla group. It was responsible for numerous violent incidents during Italy's Years of Lead, including the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978. A former prime minister of Italy through the Organic centre-left, the murder of Aldo Moro was widely condemned, as was the murder of left-wing trade unionist Guido Rossa in January 1979. Sandro Pertini, the then left-wing president of Italy, said at Rossa's funeral: "It is not the President of the Republic speaking, but comrade Pertini. I knew [the real] red brigades: they fought with me against the fascists, not against democrats. For shame!"
Luciano Luigi Pellicani was an Italian sociologist, journalist and university professor.
Online youth radicalization is the action in which a young individual or a group of people come to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject, or undermine the status quo or undermine contemporary ideas and expressions of a state, which they may or may not reside in. Online youth radicalization can be both violent or non-violent.
Guido Rossa was an Italian worker and syndicalist who was born in Cesiomaggiore, Veneto, and lived for several years in Turin. His first job was at the age of 14 as a worker in a ball bearing factory, then at Fiat in Turin as a milling machine worker. In 1961 he moved to Genoa to work for Italsider and, the following year, was elected to the labor union FIOM-CGIL. As a member of the Italian Communist Party, he was a trade unionist for the labor union CGIL at Italsider in Genoa-Cornigliano. He denounced to the Italian police a colleague, Francesco Berardi, who produced propaganda at Italsider on behalf of the Red Brigades. In retaliation, Rossa was killed by the Red Brigades on 24 January 1979, during the Years of Lead.