Researchers on violent
criminal organizations have grown more intrepid over the years. Until the
1980s, most information came from interviews in prison, reminiscences of
ex-members, or by hanging out in neighbourhoods that had local gangs. Some
researchers have been taking the dangerous step of participant observation
inside the group itself.
Here I will focus on
four pieces of insider research: by an FBI agent who spent six years
infiltrating the Mafia; Alice Goffman, a white woman who spent six years with a
black street gang; Italian sociologist Alessandro Orsini, who went underground
to observe both the Red Brigades-- Left ideologists practicing political
assassinations-- and a Fascist militia.
An FBI agent seeking
evidence to convict criminals in court is not the same as an academic
researcher aimed at increasing knowledge; for one thing, the FBI puts vastly
more resources into supporting their informants. But the process of making
discoveries about secretive organizations is much the same. What difference
does it make when violent groups are organized in different ways? We will see
how these four pieces of research cast reflections on each other.
Joseph Pistone. 1987. Donnie
Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia.
NY: Dutton.
Pistone already had some of the qualifications for passing in the
Mafia: he spoke Italian; his family was of Sicilian descent; he was a strong,
muscular guy, with a lot of self-control but at the same time a convivial guy
to hang around with. Hanging around was mostly what he did, like most other
Mafia members and associates. He started by spending a lot of time at bars,
restaurants, and night clubs in Manhattan-- upscale places with burnished wall
panels and low lighting, which had a reputation for being Mafia-connected.
(David Grazian's study of night life in Philadelphia, On the Make, 2008. Univ. of Chicago Press] similarly found that the
city's professional criminals liked to visit chic center city bars late at
night.) The FBI provided Pistone with stolen jewelry so he could pose as a
jewel thief with goods to sell. But at first he just let his face become known,
not striking up conversations or asking questions; eventually bartenders came
to recognize him as "Donnie." (No one in the Mafia world uses a last
name.) He was always stylishly dressed (at this time, the late 1970s, this
meant leather jackets, gold chains, designer jeans); but he never showed a lot
of money-- this would set him up as a tourist, or a target for robbery.
After a couple of months, he showed a bartender a couple of fancy
watches, asked if he could move them, and named a cash price: the figure was
deliberately chosen to show that Pistone knew the street price of stolen
jewelry. A few days later the bartender told him he couldn't get that price
from his buyers; Pistone thought he might be testing him, so instead of
lowering his price he just said, no big deal, maybe we can do business some
other time. He passed the test; the bartender agreed. He was beginning to be considered
an insider.
It is a good rule for a researcher to bear in mind: the
difficulties you are having doing research are telling you something about the
social organization you are trying to understand. This was an organization of
distrust, of tests and subtle understandings. It was also an organization
spending most of their time in surveillance of each other. Crews or associates had their hangouts,
places they could go just to see who was there; backrooms where they could do a
little illegal gambling at backgammon, talk about the game and who they'd seen
around. Once Pistone became a regular at passing stolen jewelry, he was invited
to a more exclusive hangout: a store-front in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. Only
local residents ever came in to buy anything at the store, so outsiders would
be immediately recognized.
The crew-- low level Mafia associates, not "made men" or
Mafia soldiers-- spent their days in the backroom, playing cards, and talking
about scams and scores and hustles: hijacks or burglaries they might carry out,
warehouses where the night watchman was on the take; drivers who would arrange
to be robbed; a tip that a shipment of Armani suits was coming into JFK airport
and where it would be stored. These were
not casual thieves. "The mob was their job," Pistone commented. They went every day to the hangout, sometimes
dropping in at other social clubs where they traded information, and put
together ad hoc crews for particular jobs. It was, in the not-yet-coined
cliché, "networking" at its most intense. The Mafia is nothing like a
bureaucracy; it keeps no records and has no payrolls; there are no regular
working hours and no overtime. Nevertheless it is a full-time occupation.
Everyone shows up every day because that is how they find what jobs they are
going to do and who they are going to do it with; if you stay away people
wonder what you're up to and suspicions multiply.
"Mafia" means a network like the roots of a tree
branching into the earth. The ground level are associates, hustling for money
and always on the lookout for opportunities; further down are fences buying and
selling stolen property, and even lower ordinary citizens who are on the take.
Rising above these dendrites are the Mafia members, more sharply defined like
the trunk of a tree. "Made men" or "wiseguys" are more
likely to be violent, professional intimidators and killers. But as Pistone
notes "the Mafia is not primarily an organization of murderers, but of
thieves." [115] Mafia soldiers have
to prove themselves as steady money-makers, whether through their own jobs or
their ties with lower associates; each soldier has to pass a percentage of
their take upward to their captain, who owes a further percentage to the boss
of the Mafia family. From the 1930s onwards there were five families, joined in
an alliance called the Peace Commission; their main business was to keep wars
from breaking out between the families; they also enforced rules against
killing anyone in the Mafia without orders from the Commission; and rules against
killing police or public officials--- avoiding all-out war by seeking a modus
vivendi with the world of officials via bribery and collusion. (For this
reason, the FBI would not confide in New York officials about their
operations.) To change the metaphor, the Mafia is a a political umbrella over a
bunch of ad hoc criminal activities; collecting a percentage of the take in
return for policing themselves and providing a degree of protection from the
government.
Pistone worked himself into the lower fringe of crime associates;
and eventually, by moving more money, became a tag-along of connected
"wiseguys". Both levels did
much the same kind of hustles. Pistone took part in some of these operations,
and heard about others from the endless discussions in hangouts, their staple
of conversation. Hijacks were mostly give-ups planned in advance with the
drivers; or at least from tips about what was being delivered where and when.
Crews inserted themselves into commercial supply chains; they would hijack
perishable food-- frozen shrimp and lobster were favorites-- and sell them to
grocery store or restaurant managers below the usual discount. Pharmaceuticals could always be sold to a
pharacist who asked no questions. Over-the-counter drugstore items could pay off
in bulk; a shipment of aspirin, toothpaste, or perfume could be sold below
distributer's price, since these were items with a big markup in any case.
Cigarette packages were smuggled from the south without the tax stamp and
distributed in vending machines at bars. Shipments of TVs and other electronics
could be sold, right in the box, to discount stores and flea markets. Stolen
cars were disassembled for used parts, a supply chain for no-questions-asked
repair shops. The result was a web of ordinary businesses profiting from crime,
colluding with thieves and middle-men.
There were also illegal businesses. Since everyone dealt in cash,
there was money around for wiseguys to put to work. A favorite was loans at
very high interest rates-- especially to gamblers or rich addicts, who could
put up no collateral except their own bodies--- hence "shylocking"
with broken legs instead of a pound of flesh. Businesses frequented by wiseguys
or associates (especially restaurants and clubs) could find themselves with another
partner, who got part of the take for just coming in. One advantage of being a
made man is that the Mafia didn't allow anyone to horn in on a partnership;
turf wars that plagued gangs in illegal street drugs were generally avoided by
the vertical protection of the Mafia. The volatile entertainment world,
including promoting pop concerts, was another niche for skimming and silent
partnerships. Some legitimate businesses-- cement, garbage collection, trade
unions-- with a lot of turnover and casual record-keeping were full of mafia
partners.
To move up in the Mafia, Pistone needed to get involved in
big-money operations. And this pushed the limits of what an FBI agent was
supposed to be doing in reporting rather than causing crimes.
Everybody wants to have their money in on the action, putting it
on the street shylocking, or middling swag or a drug deal; and everyone wants
to use someone else's money rather than their own (not unique to the
underworld; big financial investors operate in just this fashion). But this means everybody is leaning on
someone for repayment. Some jobs don't work out, but somebody has to absorb it.
This leads to more distrust, an overtone that floats in the atmosphere along
with the gossip.
Add a dimension of distrust from the vertical structure of Mafia
protection. If a Mafia soldier partners with an associate, he gets 50%. But he
has to keep his captain informed of any big score, of which the capo gets 50%--
who in turn has to send 10% up to the family boss. These portions are flexible
and some capos demand more than others. There is an irresistable temptation to
fudge the numbers, under-reporting the actual take. Naturally, everyone is
suspicious, because they fudge their own numbers to their higher-ups.
Since so much depends upon bribing security guards and truck
drivers, treachery was the key to keeping the illegal pipeline open. Thus the
contours of the organization emerged: constantly buying treachery, constantly
ongoing gossip and surveillance, all under a veil of secrecy maintained by
unspoken agreements. Once again, difficulties in research are tell-tale signs
of what you are researching.
Shying away from violence would defeat the purpose of the
undercover penetration; it would give you the reputation of a wimp or a snitch,
when you are seeking admission to an organization of tough guys. Pistone had to
do more to promote his tough-guy reputation as he came to hang out with Mafia
soldiers -- men with a reputation for stabbing dubious connections with a
switchblade knife. If you get into an argument, one of his buddies warned
Pistone, keep arms-length away from that guy. Yet they made their nighttime
rounds together, bar-hopping. Pistone began to get tough with anyone who
bothered him, even associates of other Mafia families. When a drunk kept loudly
wondering who he was (implying a snitch), Pistone floored him with a punch. A
little incident over spilling beer on the bar escalated to the other tough guy
spilling beer on Pistone-- "Let's go outside," he challenged, but as
soon as the guy turned around Pistone knocked him down and hit him with a
bottle as he tried to get up. Pistone later rationalized to himself that his
Mafia "friend" was about to kill the guy, so that it was better to
take care of it himself first. Pistone was getting more reputation, nearing the
goal of becoming a made man in the Mafia. But he also had to become more like
them. His moral stance was compromised; and it was also becoming more
dangerous.
Ascending Mafia ranks, Pistone plunges deeper into the web of
suspicions. Sent to Florida as side-kick to a Bonanno captain ["Sonny
Black" Napolitano], his boss mulls the idea of middling a Colombian drug
shipment of cocaine without telling anyone.
Pistone is worried but can't show timidity; they decide to risk it.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the pieces are shifting in the Mafia structure.
Pistone's switch-blade wielding companion gets sent back to prison, removing
one source of danger. There is a succession crisis in the Bonanno family,
factions lining up for a possible war. And there are more FBI plants in the
Mafia, creating more suspicion. This is another layer of deception for Pistone
to handle, not to leave any hints that he knows these guys, except coming
across each other in the line of business. When another agent is involved in a
deal gone wrong, ripples of suspicion touch Pistone since he made some
introductions.
It is a multi-layered world of deceptions and suspicions. But
simultaneously an endless round of convivial conversations at bars and night
spots, a veneer of hugs and cheek kisses in the hale heartiness of the
fraternity. Pistone's Mafia mentor tells him: in the mob it's your close friend
that will kill you.
On top of this, Pistone's crew is assigned to assassinate the son
of a Mafia capo, known to be addicted to cocaine. He lives in Florida, holed-up
and trigger-happy; with a habit running through thousands of dollars a day and
nothing coming in (a wiseguy comments, at least with heroin you're nodding off
four or five hours, with coke it only lasts 20 minutes). All agree he is a
burden and an embarassment. FBI policy is to condone almost anything for a
plant but not murder; when a killing is about to go down, they'll have the
victim arrested as protection. There is a temporary respite as the Florida
killing is postponed; but now the FBI higher-ups want Pistone to come out in
the open, so they can use him to testify in court in a big Mafia sweep. Pistone
is torn: he is about to become a made man; his name is being talked about. Six
years undercover and he is about to reach the goal. But no-go.
The FBI puts on extra camera surveillance around Mafia hangouts
and homes to catch their reaction the day Pistone's identity is announced.
Faces are stunned and shocked. It is a world, Pistone comments, of cynicism and
distrust; where crime is normal; chiseling is expected. But there is one
ethical principle universally felt: you don't work for the government.
Pistone's mentor is called to a sit-down with the bosses; he gives his keys to
his wife, but goes anyway. The guy who worked most closely with Pistone, moved
him up in the organization, pays the price; his body in found with hands
chopped off.
And the personal costs to Pistone of his underground research?
Missing six years of his life with wife and kids; sneaking away to buy
Christmas presents, rare furtive visits. "I would have to remember faces
and names and facts and numbers until I could call in a report to my contact
agent," Pistone recalls, since he couldn't risk taking notes. "When I
would get home for my one day or evening in two or three weeks, it would be
difficult to adjust and focus attention on my family. Especially when they
didn't know what I was doing and we couldn't talk about it." [105] It's
proof of how strong their marriage was, his wife says, living her own life. His
children are not so forgiving. His family changed their names; moved a
half-dozen times in the following years. Pistone stayed out-front, testifying
in court for another six years.
Pistone summed up: "I had some uncomfortable feelings because
I felt close to Sonny Black. But I didn't feel any guilt of betrayal, because I
always maintained in my own mind the separation of our worlds. In a sense we
were both just doing our jobs. If he found out who I was, he'd have whacked me
out. He would have done it in the traditional way. He wouldn't have talked to
me about it. He'd have set me up. Who kills you in that business is someone you
know.... Sonny was good at what he did. He wasn't a phony. He didn't throw his
weight around. For reasons that are hard to explain, I liked him a lot. But I
didn't dwell on the fact that I was going to put him in the can, or that he was
going to get killed because of me. That's the business." [396-97] Pistone
imagines one last conversation: "But if you did so good exposing us,
Donnie, whyzit you and your family gotta live a coverup for the rest of your
lives?" [413]
Alice Goffman. 2014. On the
Run. Fugitive Life in an American City. Univ. of Chicago Press.
Alice Goffman entered the field through the university cafeteria.
A 19-year old freshman, she became friends with the black women who worked with
her, and started tutoring one's teenage grand-daughter, Aisha. Just before they
met, Aisha had been suspended for punching her teacher in the mouth. The area
just west of University of Pennsylvania is a poverty ghetto of old houses;
Elijah Anderson had done his research there for Streetwise [1990 Univ. of Chicago Press] and expanded into north
Philly with Code of the Street [1998,
Norton]. She started dropping by the
subsidized housing apartment of the girl's mother, who told Alice she sold
drugs before going on welfare. Alice met Aisha's cousin Ronny, when he came
home from juvenile detention; he was called a "cousin" because Aisha's
mother had taken him in when his own mother had a crack addiction. Ronny was a
14-year old self-proclaimed "troublemaker", a street-dancer who jumped
in front of stopped cars to put on a show.
Alice also met Mike, a good
looking young man a year older than herself.
Connections grew, and also went. Ronnie was sent back to juvenile
detention for aggravated assault, for beating up his sister's boyfriend.
Another of Mike's friends, Chuck went to jail for a fight in the schoolyard and
fleeing the police. Alice became more important to Mike's crew when he called
up to ask if she had a state ID.
Alice's book stresses that black gang members are forced to live
outside the world of legal institutions. They can't have credit cards or bank
accounts. They are in constant trouble with the police and the courts. They are
repeatedly arrested, for small offenses or large; both involve a series of
rescheduled hearings, an overburdened district attorney and court system
releasing suspects subject to future court appearance, which they often miss,
resulting in more fines. Traffic tickets and unlicensed cars, not to mention
drug possession, assault, robbery and homicide, spiral in an endless chain.
Half of the 300 young men Alice interviewed in the neighbourhood had a warrant out
for their arrest, for failure to pay court fines or failure to appear. Missing
a court-mandated piss test for drugs gets you another warrant; street merchants
run a side-business selling "clean" piss. A black man badly beaten in a gang fight
won't go to the hospital for treatment, fearing a parole violation charge for
breaking curfew. Another won't accompany his baby-mom giving birth at the
hospital; there are cops hanging around, running names on their compters. Gang members
have no fixed address, whatever they tell the court clerk; they live
with relatives and girlfriends, who are harassed by the cops for information as
to their whereabouts. Cops call employers if any are listed, keeping fugitives
from holding regular jobs. They live in a world of cash and on-going
deals-- all of which worsens when a deal
goes wrong, either by police bust or robbery.
The fact that Alice had a driver's license made her eligible to
sign for getting Chuck's younger brother, 15-year-old Reggie, out of jail-- he
was charged with fighting and threatening a boy from school. ("I'ma hurt
you," he had said. Alice spent months learning the black street dialect.
"I ain't like that shit." [222, 236]
Linguist William Labov studied black English in this same neighbourhood
and concluded that grammar was deliberately migrating away from school-standard
verbs and word-meanings: alienated rebellion in language.)
Another culture shock for Alive was sexuality. She started hearing
older women talking about how she had no boyfriends-- must be a lesbian
molesting black girls. Alice sets up a movie date (she paid for everyone) with
Mike and a group of friends. They were bored with the action movie she'd picked
out, it had no black characters and they only liked gangsta movies and rap.
Mike took it upon himself to explain to Alice that she didn't know how to act.
Her clothes were too casual and sloppy; her toes were unpainted; why do white
girls wear flip-flops insead of cool sneakers? She needed to plump up, learn
how to walk and hold her body right. Stop trying so hard to be liked; stick up
for yourself when someone insults you. Don't go around paying for everything.
And spend some time fixing your hair, it looks like you slept on it. [220-21]
Alice had to re-strategize. She had been assuming the styles of
the casual/hip side of white youth culture; she was a studious intellectual,
whose father (dead since she was a baby) was the famous Erving Goffman, and
whose colleagues treated her like a young sociologist. She had no interest in
white college boys or girls. Like her dad, who had gone incognito for two years
in the psychotic ward of mental hospital (and came out with a devastating
report on how hospitalization reinforces mental illness), Alice was devoted to
penetrating an alien world more deeply than anyone before. Now the black ghetto
world was full of sex, and she had to find a place in it. She found an
acceptable identity: she was one of those white girls who like black guys
[228]. Mike, handsome and charismatic, had all sorts of black girlfriends
chasing him. But Alice was becoming more useful to him and his crew. She took
an apartment in the neighbourhood, an address where Mike could live, and his
friends could hang out. Mike began referring to her as his sister. He had a
scar in his hip where he was shot by a man trying to rob him in a dice game.
Now he was hiding out from a murder charge; eventually a lawyer plea-bargained
it down to firearms possession and he went to prison for 1-to-3 years.
Alice asked Mike and his friends if she could write about their
lives for her undergraduate thesis at Penn, and they agreed. [223] She was
obviously anomalous; all-the-way absorption like Pistone in the Mafia was out
of reach. But the 6th street crew were OK with having an ally in the white world,
especially since she had a car, an apartment, and was willing to drive and help
out. "I was taken almost as an honorary man, permitted to hang around when
men spoke about shootouts and drug deals and robberies, or about romantic
escapades with women other than their main partner." [232]
Periodically war would break out between the "6th street
Boys" and the "4th street Boys", two loosely-affiliated groups.
The rival crew firebombed Chuck's car;
who retaliated by shooting up the attacker's house. ""What the
fuck I'm supposed to do, go to the cops?" Chuck said. "He going to
run my name [on the police database] and next thing you know, my black ass
locked the fuck up." [33] The result was a warrant for attempted murder.
One thing led to another. When Mike was arrested, Ronny carried out a house
robbery for cash to bail him out.
Alice had gotten more deeply involved in a violent gang than any
researcher, not by happenstance but deliberate choice. Participant observation,
Erving Goffman had written, means becoming so familiar with your subjects (in
his case, mental hospital patients) that you react the same way to what they
feel is attractive and unattractive. When she started graduate school at
Princeton, Alice found herself "making mental notes of TVs and computers
she could steal if she needed cash". She found the students physically and
culturally alien, with their Facebook chitchat and white wine and conversations
about indie rock bands and national politics. "I feared the hordes of
white people. They crowded around me and moved in groups... In cafeterias and
libraries, I'd search for the few Black people present and sit near them,
feeling my heart slow down and my shoulders relax... Above everything, I feared
white men... white American men who were relatively fit, under the age of
fifty, with short hair. I avoided the younger white male faculty at all costs.
On some level, I knew they weren't cops, they probably wouldn't beat me or
insult me, but I could not escape the sweat or the pounding in my chest when
they approached. When I had to pass them in the hallways, I could feel my heart
racing, like I was getting ready to run." [247-48] Alice continued to live
at her apartment in West Philly, driving the hour to Princeton a few times a
week to go to class.
Committed to feeling the experience of the 6th Street Boys, Alice
evaded police and neighbourhood enemies with them; driving a friend on the run
to her family cottage out of town. She debated getting herself arrested, but
concluded her experience would not be the same since the police would treat her
as white. When Mike and his friends, without jobs, pooled their money to buy
wholesale crack, which they cut with adulerants and bagged for sale on the
street, Alice offered to sell crack too. But they refused: it was a man's job,
the riskiest thing they did other than robberies; and it would demean their
status in the neighboorhood-- only crack whores sold drugs, not Mike's sister.
She came to accept that the ghetto was deeply gendered. She wanted to do more
than study the lives of poor black women; as a white sympathizer, with car,
license and money, she could do a certain amount of useful backup for the crew,
but no further. It came home to her when Chuck was shot in the head and taken
to the hospital-- right in the middle of the University, where the entire 6th
Street crowd of young men-- 25 altogether-- gathered to defy the 4th Street
killers, risking police warrants. Arriving with Mike, Alice was told to stay
back--- that isn't your place. Falling back on white middle-class status, and
on her home turf, Alice walked across the street into the Emergency Room, and
found her way to where Chuck was dying.
By 2008, Alice's research was at an end. Chuck was dead, along
with two others shot; a fourth committed suicide while addicted to PCP; a fifth
was shot by police soon after his release from prison-- he thought some
undercover cops were the 4th Street Boys, and opened fire on them. Chuck's two
younger brothers were both serving long prison terms. Mike was out of prison
but moved away from the neighbourhood. Only 2 of the 9 core crew were still
alive and free. During her years living there, Alice attended 19 funerals for
young men killed by gunfire. [234] After Chuck was shot, Alice sat up all night
with his friends in a laudrymat making plans for revenge, but these fizzled out. [250] Alice and Mike drove
around in her car looking for the 4th Street guy who shot Chuck, looking at
license plates and car makes, acting their own police force-- but he had
skipped town. [260] Alice got her Princeton PhD and left to do research in
Detroit.
There is more to the story, but here I will comment personally on
what went into her book. The over-riding theme is what it is like to be
constantly on the run from the police, from spiraling arrest warrants and
fines, unable to live in the above-ground economy, in and out of prison. Alice
was an undergraduate student in my classes at Penn, and during her graduate
studies at Princeton she would drop in my office from time to time to discuss
what she was finding in the neighbourhood 20 blocks or so to the west. From my handwritten notes, typed up in 2008:
Early on, Alice said: Are these the popular kids on the block?
They're in the center of the action; everyone talks about them; they spend a
lot of time hanging out, gossiping about each other, assessing each other,
circulating their reputations. The girls want to be with them. Guys are more
confined to their neighbourhood. A girl who has worn out her sexual reputation
locally on one street, moves over to another street, where she passes along
information about the old street gang; but she comes back and talks loudly in
public, insulting her old boy friend; now fucking his rival, proclaiming he
fucks me much better than you did. Within 4 block territory, some guys acquire
local baby-moms; but they prefer women from distant neighbourhoods beause they
know less gossip about them; locals are considered sluts.
R's baby-mon told her street that guy on another street fucks her
better; so R killed him. But there was no retaliation; the guys from the other
street gave pressure from cops as excuse why they can't retaliate.
Men do not use violence on women in public, since they would lose
status. A guy angry at his baby-mom, who he suspects of having snitched on him
twice, hires another woman to beat her up. Women have staged fights, with their
moms and other relatives gathered as audience. But girls are matched for equal
fighting abililty; lack of an even match is one way to avoid fighting. [*]
[*] The male/female divide was studied by another of Elijah
Anderson's students, Nikki Jones, Between
Good and Ghetto: African-American Girls and Inner-city Violence. 2010.
Rutgers Univ. Press. Its theme is that young black girls who want to get out of
the ghetto try to avoid being entangled in networks of girls who hang out with
the gangs; they stay indoors and avoid making friends they might be called upon
to fight for, or against.
Drug dealers have high status as street elites. Dealers don't use
crack; their customers are older generation, grandmothers, etc. It is a serious
insult to say you sold crack to someone's mother; on the other hand, sometimes
teens went into crack selling to get it for mother, to avoid having her get it
from strangers.
Weed [marijuana] is prevalent in the group; but used in relative
safety indoors of one's own apartments, especially after a shooting: stay
indoors, stay stoned, to alleviate tension and grieving. [Apparently attacks
are not made indoors, but always out of the street-- unlike mafia, whose method
is treachery by friends.]
Drug dealers rob each other for vengence, as put-downs, and for
money. [Question: how well can the drug
business operate if this is happening?]
Heard about a plot to rob someone from out of town who brings $25,000 to
buy half a brick of crack. It is a phony sale, two guys putting guns to both
sides of his head. But plan aborts because buyer brings backup in car, who
flashes gun; the two robbers shoot in out
with guy from car, but apparently no one is hit.
Alice eye-witnesses a shooting: Alice and friend [called Chuck in
book] meet his friend Z in bar; very
noisy because it's Caribbean night, so they decide to drive to another bar in
Alice's car. When they arrive, three of Z's enemies see him getting out of car
from back seat-- Alice and Chuck are exiting from the front. Z is shot and
killed; the windshield is shattered. [suggesting wild firing] Alice and Chuck
run away; she said the experience was a blur, hard to observe anything.
"Riding" for someone means you have a duty to carry out
vengence. Men in prison often tell each other about their obligation to ride,
or their plans to ride when they get out. Getting out of jail promotes
shootings. Alice says there is a gap between what they say and what actually
happens. There is a hierarchy of preferred accounts: most legitimate is
shooting because of riding, honourable retaliation on behalf of others. If not
riding, it is framed as self-defense. Most of the time violence starts from
fear: since the others are trying to kill me, so I'll kill them first. Lowest
level account is you were drunk, high, didn't know what you were doing. Over
time, stories changed. Furthermore, riding is a claim for high status; but in
many instances, they don't carry it out, instead offer excuses: "it takes
money to go to war" --hence must accumulate large sums for self and family
to go on the lam. Another excuse: undercover cops around, wait til they leave.
Or hear that the other side has fled-- a frequent excuse told to guys in jail.
Narratives are often contested by hearers, who try to bring the
account down to a less preferred level. A version of bragging contest, or
verbal sparring-- what used to be called "the dirty dozens",
trash-talking as a form of entertainment in the culture of hanging around and
testing reputations.
B shot AJ [a 4th Street Boy] at a dice game, resisting being
robbed in front of an audience. B told 6th Street Boys he would rob the game
(in retaliation). This led to 4th Street obligation to ride 6th Street, though
6th Street guys tried to apologize and negotiate. Even enemies know each
other's cell phone numbers, and phone threats to each other. That night, someone called 6th Street, and
left a message "it's on." 6th Street guys talked [in Alice's
presence] about need to shoot 4th Street first. But they lived close by so that
they constantly bumped into each other; everyone stayed in and no shooting took
place that night. One guy in the apartment was disgusted, walked out saying
"I'm going to get me some cock." [i.e. pussy, in the street language
reversal]
B's friend N was in jail during the peacemaking; when N got out,
both sides escalated threats again. N called them pussies, "you're
disrespecting me"; pretends to be pulling out a gun, hence he got shot--
in the ass and back. [i.e. running away] 4th Street Boys shot and ran. [a
typical encounter consisting of threats, gestures, wild shots, and getting
away. Most face-to-face violence is adrenaline-stressed and incompetent;
bragging and blustering is the easy part. Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, 2008 Princeton Univ. Press:]
This incident led to a 4 month peace, brokered by Chuck. The two
street gangs played pool together, although carrying guns. Then X got out, after
having done much talking in jail. "I'm the only one who's riding." X
shot at 4th Street; so 6th Street shot at 4th. Mike's car was shot up, and he
was hit by bullet fragment in face. Mike now began to shoot at 4th Street,
claiming he is riding, but he didn't convince others, since earlier he did not
shoot. 6th Street didn't shoot back, in order to keep the war from continuing.
[I asked Alice about gun
gesturing, as a ritual of defiance in lieu of actual violence.] In a beef,
you can say you're going to get your gun; or make a bulge with your hand in
pocket; or flash a gun by opening your coat; or draw a pistol and point it at
the ground or up in the air. These moves give others time to talk you down:
"No, no, chill, chill." There is often considerable faking during
quarrels inside the group; third parties argue with them, point out their
family ties and long-term friendship. Friendship means blocking other friends
from hotheaded violence: "talk me down."
The original story of Chuck's being shot in the head was that he
was pump-faking with a gun, taken seriously and was shot. Over time the story
morphed into a story about riding.
In sum: Alice describes what can be called a culture of violence,
but especially a culture of talking about violence, narrating and bragging.
Where everyone plays up their own toughness (what Anderson calls "code of
the street'), those who act on it have extra status: there is much gossip about
who is "turned out" or not-- i.e. shifting from being a pussy, to
using a gun in a robbery, to actually killing someone. It is widely known who
killed who; it isn't secret. No one is going to tell the cops; they are no
substitute for providing your own revenge. But the main thing is to look tough;
they often take pictures of themselves with their guns; e.g. Alice had a phone
photo on of a guy with a M-16. [end of summary of notes]
Alice said she breathed a sign of relief when she completed her
book and burned her field notes; the courts could no longer subpoena them. She
had some narrow escapes with violence in the ghetto; but this turned out not to
be the worst threat. When her book was published, she was accused of
transporting fugitives, drugs and guns, and conspiring to commit murder. The
accusers were law professors and a so-called "legal ethicist", who
quoted their colleagues in police administration denying they ever put undue
pressure on ghetto residents; in short the legal and extra-legal bureaucracy of
digital surveillance that Alice was protesting against. More damaging to Alice
personally than this attack from the right was an attack from the left:
researchers of color accused her of being a white woman appropriating their
turf, a tourist writing a jungle book.
Alice took it to heart. She had been making speeches, starting
with the black preacher's call-and-response with the audience, laying out the
experience of her friends on the run, now dead or imprisoned, calling for
police reform. Again she was being told, she was not one of us. After leaving
Philly, she had done two years of research in Detroit-- another black city with
a high violence rate, that had economically collapsed and was reverting to
wilderness. To experience what it is like to starve and freeze, when power was
turned off for non-payment, and petty dons extracted extortion over combing
local dumpsters, Alice lived with a poor family, sleeping in the kitchen with
the oven open for warmth. The way to deal with hunger, she reported at an
ethnography conference, is try to be asleep as much as possible. She never
published her social psychology of extreme deprivation; it would have been attacked as one more
jungle book. She started researching race-neutral subjects, such as turning
points in personal lives.
When Alice got her degree from Princeton, she had job offers everywhere.
She took a position at University of Wisconsin. But in 2018 she was denied
tenure. Attacks from left and right were aired; plus vicious attacks from
colleagues who dislike ethnographic research, calling it merely anecdotes,
unscientific in the era of statistics and Big Data. An attack by intellectual
bureaucrats, who think data is only real if it consists of numbers, whether
collected by the police or by interview surveys-- even though these are
increasingly unreliable samples in the era of cell phones and the Internet.
Statistics filter lived reality through pre-existing categories, a standard set
of variables sliced for cutting points to yield some degree of mathematical
significance (professionals refer to such techniques as "massaging the data"). In the social sciences, it is the
ethnographers, the field researchers, who make the discoveries, that
statisticians in their offices would never have thought of. This is
particularly true of crime and violence, where concepts reflect the point of
view of politicians and the police.
Alice appears badly hurt by her rejection from those she felt were
on her side. She is a casualty of her commitment: the cost of being a hero of
ethnographic research.
Street Gangs vs. Mafia:
discrimination in crime
Since participant observation builds reliable knowledge by
combining the work of different ethnographers, let us compare Pistone with
Alice Goffman. The 6th Street Boys
resemble the Mafia in that everything is done in cash. Well, almost everything:
Mafia associates buy and sell fake drivers licences and Social Security cards;
with a thriving market in counterfeit or stolen credit cards. [Pistone 138]
With these credentials, they open bank accounts in fictitious names; they cash
bogus cashiers checks, written on an upstate New York bank where a vice
president on the take OKs them. Mafia soldiers park their real estate and other
property in the names of wives and relatives. They are silent partners in
businesses where their names don't appear on the books; or own legitimate
businesses where they can hang out, always in the independent small business
sector, never in big corporations. (On the streets of Mafia-reputed
neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, I noticed an absence of chain
stores.) The Mafia, too, is off the books.
How do they make it work? given that they can't sue anybody in
civil court and can't report theft to the police. They have their own
hierarchic structure--- not a business corporation but a political umbrella--
using physical threat internally to deter turf wars and welched deals;
extending the umbrella of protection externally through understandings with the
authorities and fending off the courts with suborned witnesses. A certain
amount of prison time is figured into the system without undermining it.
It is this political structure that street gangs don't have. In
Philadelphia and the East Coast in particular, there are mainly little crews, a
dozen members or so, organized street-by-street or neighbourhood by
neighbourhood. The big alliance gangs (the Crips and Bloods, spreading from the
West Coast); the big quasi-corporate gangs of the vast Chicago housing projects
[studied by another adventurous researcher: Sudhir Venkatesh, Off the Books. 2006, Harvard Univ.
Press; Gang-leader for a Day. 2008,
Penguin] make an effort to keep the peace by absorbing local gangs into bigger
alliances, or by assigning turf monopolies. Alice Goffman's subject is gangs of
the smallest sort, unable to keep themselves from fighting with similar group a
few streets off. Virtually all of these would-be cartels have been unsuccessful
in keeping the peace among their members; the most successful was the
five-family Commission of the New York mafia.
Essentially we have an ethnic story: the Mafia guards itself against
infiltration by requiring Sicilian ancestry (and farming out its dirty work to
contract killers of different ethnicity). The organizational form is
traditional in rural southern Italy, although there too its strongest tentacles
were in the 20th century. One could call it a heritage of feudalism
successfully resisting the bureaucratic state, in Italy as in the USA. [Marco
Santoro, Mafia Politics. 2022, Polity
Press.] Black poverty ghettos are similarly out of reach of the bureaucratic
state-- what the police scrambing after failure-to-appear fines are trying to
enforce. But such bureaucratic penetration is thin and punitive, not doing
anything positive for making a living in the ghetto. One could see the pattern
as another form of structural racism: indigenous American black gangs don't get
very far in the illegal businesses they work and petty extortion they exact;
white mega-gangs, in cities of heavily immigrant neighbourhoods and local
businesses, survived and prospered by growing a web of collusion through
decentralized markets for stolen goods and illegal services.
Survived, for a while; RICO took down most of the Italian Mafia
around the time Pistone was testifying. Since then, Dominican and Colombian
organizations have taken over the whole-sale drug busines; Russian and
Ukrainian mafias operate in much the same places as the Sicilians a generation
ago. Organized crime remains white; one doesn't hear of blacks being integrated
into its hierarchies. There was an effort in the late 1960s to create a Black
Mafia, in Philadelphia and Washington D.C.; but it aborted in internal wars,
overlaid by splits inside the religious movement of ex-convicts, the Nation of
Islam (Black Muslims), raiding each other's strongholds. [Sean Patrick Griffin,
2003. Philadelphia's "Black
Mafia." Kluwer Academic Publ.] In Philadelphia, the Mafia-dominated
Italian neighbourhood south of Center City is notable for the quiet of its
streets; black gangs are wary of going down there. Their violent styles are too
different: Mafia soldiers out-of-line end up in clandestine assassinations;
black crews' display of posturing and threatening boils over into hurried
shoot-outs. Alice's numbers suggest that one is more likely to be killed in a
street gang. But the Mafia is more sinister; and better at keeping the peace
among themselves.
Alessandro Orsini. Anatomy
of the Red Brigades. The Religious Mind-set of Modern Terrorists. 2011 [2009] Cornell Univ. Press.
Alessandro Orsini. 2013. "A Day Among the Diehard Terrorists: The Psychological
Costs of Doing Ethnographic Research." Studies
in Conflcit and Terrorism 36: 337-351.
Orsini, a sociologist in Rome, wanted to interview members of the
Red Brigades in prison, but they refused to talk to him. As a revolutionary
Communist organization, they aimed to keep the revolution alive by spectacular
acts of violence-- 3000 attacks and bombings in the late 1970s. [2009: 263]
They had kidnapped and killed the Prime Minister of Italy, and attacked rich
capitalists as enemies of the workers. They particularly hated reformers who
were making things better-- they killed a university professor in his office
for trying to improve conditions in prisons, undermining their chief weapon, hatred of oppression. In the
late 1990s and early 2000s, the group revived, released from prison and
recruiting new members. The killings resumed. After killing a professor of
labor law, they shouted during their trial from their cages: "[he] is a
murderer of workers... [he] represents capitalism, he is the executor of the system
and we will perform the duty of ridding ourselves of this system." Another
shouted: "If you don't kill, you're not going anywhere, you won't change
anything." [2013: 338]
Orsini wanted to develop a theory about why terrorists kill, to
understand their daily life and how they think. But since such groups cannot be
studied through participant observation, he decided to use documents produced
by the group itself: trial affidavits; statements claiming responsibility for
assaults, kidnappings, and killings; commemorations of Red Brigadists killed by
the police; letters written in prison; leaflets and slogans in factories or
graffiti on walls. [2009: 285-6]
But when his book was published in Italian in 2009, he thought of
a new strategy to get them to talk to him as more were released from prison:
"I would meet them by doing what the terrorists themselves are experts at
doing when they are preparing to kill their victims: secretly trailing and
observing them." [2013: 340] He began by using Google Alert to collect
links; he found publishing houses printing their autobiographies, a radio
station in Rome airing their views. A newsletter announced a book launch by a
member released after 32 years in prison; Orisini decided to attend.
It was held on the outdoor courtyard of a community center in the
Rome suburbs on a beautiful summer day. It was easy to walk in; Orisini took
the precaution of parking his car a mile away so he could arrive by bus. About
40 people were gathering, chatting. How to talk to them without appearing
intrusive or inquisitive? He started by buying a copy of the terrorist's book,
persuading the vendor to give him a bigger discount, displaying his zeal and
perhaps making an impression of having little money. The book had a photo but
30 years out of date; which one of these people was the author? Orsini asked
the vendor to point him out so he might ask for an autograph. Putting on a big
smile (ethnography books said you should strive to be liked by the person you
want to study), he got a smile in return and a handshake from the author.
Orsini pretended to rummage in his backpack for a pen, then asked the terrorist
if he could see him at the end of his presentation. "Of course," he
replied in a friendly tone, "we can have a chat and get to know each
other." [341]
The man had been convicted of killing a fellow terrorist on the
prison exercise yard, for having for talked to the police under torture. He was
held down by six inmates and strangled. Orsini had shaken a hand that had been
around the victim's neck.
Not wanting to be hasty, Orsini now wandered through the crowd,
holding the book with the cover facing out, looking for other Red Brigades
members. He saw a woman (here called "Maria"), about age 50, greet
the author like old friends. A little later, Maria was chatting with another
man; Orsini excused himself and asked, when will the presentation begin? This
led to a conventional exchange about how nothing ever starts on time at such
events. Maria was in a chatty mood, and after a few words about the book in his
hand, Orsini asked if there were any other Red Brigades members present besides
the author. She said proudly: "The entire Roman column of the Red Brigades
is here!" Drawn in by the warmth of their interaction, Orsini "decided
to exploit her vanity and asked her if she personally knew any Red Brigades
members: "Of course I know them. I know them all!" [Feeling he was
making a mistake but thinking it might be his only opportunity] "I asked,
in the voice of those who express enthusiasm at the ideal of shaking the hand
of a terrorist: "Do you really know them? Could you introduce me to one of
them?" Maria looked at me and remained silent before replying dryly:
"You don't introduce some people to the first comer." She moved away.
[342-3]
The talk began and the tone became very serious. In the question
period, Orsini decided to reveal his identity: taking the microphone, he
explained he was a sociologist, and offered a general remark about poverty as
the cause of terrorism. Afterwards, the author remained friendly; said he would
like to hear a sociologist's opinion of his book; and suggested they exchange
phone numbers. Warily, Orsini said he would contact him: "I wanted to be
in control, deciding when and how the meeting would take place." [343]
Maria, however was hostile and suspicious. She had read a review
of Orsini's book: "You wrote a lot of crap about us... Who's paying you to
write this shit?" Her body posture was defensive, armed crossed and
speaking without looking him in the eyes. But the courtyard was full of
cheerful people. Maria walked away. Orsini went into the tiny toilet to write
his notes. Back home, he thought about his mistake: not checking out what they
knew about him. Entering his own name in Google, "I suddenly discovered
that my name was circulating in the world of extreme left-wing terrorism, where
it was held in contempt." [344]
But he had the invitation of the terrorist author
["Antonio"] to meet and talk.
Orsini began to find himself full of moral qualms and physical anxiety. As an
ethnographer, he had to make himself liked by his subjects; how could he be
friendly with a diehard murderer, who declared the violent attack on capitalism
and its collaborators must go on? And professors were being killed-- reformers were
especially disliked [also they were relatively easy targets; the
micro-sociology of successful violence hinges to a large extent on finding a
weak victim; Collins 2008]
Orsini decided to make himself an object of sociological study. He
recorded a series of nine dreams, nightmares scrambling the details of murders
the Red Brigades had committed-- disguished as a postman; four against one
bursting through the door of the professor's office, forcing him to kneel and
be shot in the head. "I park my motorbike in the garage. An unknown voice
shouts my name from the stairs... In my living room are two men dressed in
black who look me in the eyes. They walk towards me. I awake with a
start." [346]
After a month the dreams suddenly stopped. Orsini renews his counter-stalking
tactics. Investigating the publisher of the terrorist's book, he makes friendly
contact and gets his e-mail address. They agree to meet in a public place in a
few weeks. "To minimize the possibility of making mistakes, I began to
live my life imagining that I was being followed and that my phone was
tapped... For two days, I was beset with contrasting thoughts: should I cancel
the appointment?.. On Wednesday I woke up early. I had no nightmares. The idea
of acquiring new materials for my sociological research thrilled me... A few
hours later, Antonio and I were facing one another." [348-49]
Orsini already knew a lot about how Red Brigade terrorists live
their everyday lives. Doing the research for his recently published book, he
knew that they considered themselves "accelerators of history"-- that
violence was their sacred mission for keeping communist revolution alive in
times when police pressure was intense and the labor movement had sold out to
reformers. They had become fanatical believers, either as workers or as
students, like extreme religious sects of the past. But most such revolutionary
sects had faded in a few years (the Weather Underground from American
university campuses in 1968-70; the bank-robbing Baader-Meinhof group in Germany).
How did the Red Brigades carry out such extensive violence, and keep up
commitment for such a long time? The ideologies were similar; but the Red
Brigades made their ideology a living force, every moment of the day. Orsini's
chapter, "Daily Life in a Revolutionary Sect," explains how.
Living underground, you take on a new life. You cut off all
relation with your family, with your children if you have any. You have no
relations with anyone outside the Red Brigades. No friendships, no amusements.
"All links with the outside world would be dangerous, so it means that
love affairs had to be created inside the organization." [*] "You
spend your days with the nightmare of being recognized or running into an
informer." To maintain discipline and maximal focus, everyone lives in an
apartment with several others. "It is impossible to escape the
group." You are living a double life, with an assumed identity to the
world. Slip-ups are dangerous; every detail of your act must be consistent. If
you assume the role of a repairman, for instance, you have to leave home before
eight in the morning and not return until twelve-thirty [i.e. Italian lunch
hours], leave again at two and not return until seven or later. Everything is
prescribed: noises to avoid so as not to raise neighbours' suspicions, how to
do the shopping or buy newspapers. How to look in the rearview mirror.
"Dressing, combing your hair, tending your beard, nothing escapes the
all-seeing eye of the revolutionary sect." [49-51]
[* Also the practice in other secretive organizations. A
sociologist in the CIA was told during orientation that the persons they might
marry were those in the room. Bridget Nolan. 2013. Information Sharing in the US Intelligence Community. PhD
dissertation, Univ. of Pennsylvania]
"What was incredibly stressful was having always to check
everything. Have you taken your gun? Is it loaded? Have you got your identity
documents? Have you put on your sham spectacles? Have you looked out the window
before going out? Have you enough gas in the car? Have you unlocked it to get
in after the action? Who the hell are those three in that car? Is that a police
aerial? What do they look like? Have you changed your bus? And don't lift your
arm to hang onto the strap because you can see the gun bulge. Who's that guy
with a shoulder bag who's just gotten on? Is he a cop? See if he pays for a
ticket. Have you done your shopping far enough from home or did you get
lazy?" [49-50]
Of course, not every day you are taking part in a killing; but
your real work everyday is advancing such an action: shadowing your target,
noting their routine. "Before being killed, Marco Biagi was the subject of
a very careful study. For months, all his habits were set down in a document of
17 pages. The Red Brigades recorded and analyzed every movement of their
victim, including the time needed to chain up his bicycle at the train station.
There are 21 possibilities indicated for eliminating him, divided into three
plans... It is not only for organizational reasons that the Red Brigades take
so much time to eliminate their victims. They have to train themselves
mentally; before they pull the trigger they have first to dehumanize the enemy;
they have to see him fall a thousand times; they have to get used to seeing him
die before they kill him." [66]
And one lives this routine with a couple of fellow militants, an
isolated cell, a backstage from all the world; where the conversation is an
endless debriefing-- recounting what you did today, questioning each other
about the details, warning where you slipped and left a clue. It is mutual
interrogation, putting pressure on others and thereby increasing pressure on
oneself. It is Lenin's "organizational weapon", the tight underground
self-disciplining cadres of revolution who can keep themselves dedicated,
through failed revolution, exile, prison; keeping oneself always making steps
towards raising revolutionary consciousness. It is the clandestine small-group
self-disciplining that keeps the Bolsheviks going from 1905 until opportunity
opens in 1917. It is Chinese Communist thought-reform, pressuring enemies into
accusing themselves in front of a group; but in this case, intensified into
mutual thought-reform, not just imposed but internalized. Communist revolutionaries
were the most perspicacious practitioners of micro-sociology of their day.
How can Red Brigades keep this up, day after day, year after year,
with little measure of political success? Doesn’t it become fatiguing and
boring? But they have found a way to make it energizing; their conversations
and self-questionings in clandestine apartments are social energy cells. It is
interaction ritual at its most intense; not merely the periodic noisy
gatherings of Durkheimian primitive religion, or of evangelical sects; but
quiet, low-voiced, breathlessly whispered because the outside world must not
hear it. The pressure of being clandestine, the incessant wariness of being
discovered, gives everything you do a tremor of physical excitement. Recall the
ingredients of a successful interaction ritual: bringing the group together;
focusing everyone's attention on the same object; sharing each other's emotions
and thereby intensifying them into what Durkheim called collective
effervescence, maximal bodily and mental coordination so that all believe the
same thought and treat it as the highest morality. [Collins 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton
Univ. Press.] An additional ingredient is excluding outsiders who might disturb
the circle of attention, of shared emotion and belief. The Red Brigades cells
do all of these things to the most intense degree. They are not a periodic
tribal festival, or a once-a-week prayer and sermon; they are immersed in their
interaction ritual of revolutionary commitment every waking moment, monks
testing each other on the path to sainthood. They are not bored, because that
is an individual emotion, and the group allows no individual emotions.
Durkheim first analyzed the mechanism of interaction ritual in
religious groups; but it applies to any kind of emotion. The Red Brigades work
with the ingredients of fear and hate of the outside world; but above all with
the tension and anxiety of living a clandestine life, not giving themselves
away in any detail, putting this in the center of their attention by constantly
questioning each other about it. In a socially isolated individual this could
become neurotic and self-destructive; but the Red Brigades if anything are the
maximal social support network. Their interaction ritual takes a pervasive,
shared emotion-- clandestine tension and excitement-- and transmutes it into
emotional energy. They become forceful, dedicated, self-righteous in the
extreme. They are the accelerators of history, and everything they do is a step
that reminds them of who they are and where they are going.
Orsini emphasizes that the Red Brigades, unlike some other
militant or religious movements studied by sociologists, are very
theory-oriented; they generally come to the theory of revolution before joining
the group (whereas in most other groups people join for the excitement and
social belonging, and then convert to the belief). The details of how Red
Brigades organize their daily life shows something further: their ideology is
at the center of attention because they talk about it to each other so
frequently. The interaction ritual of mutual interrogation keeps them focused
on it. Their revolutionary ideology is their sacred object-- not an abstract
belief, but as a practice in everything they do. Their underground paranoia of
giving themselves away becomes a source of emotional strength; through constant
interaction ritual they transmute shared emotional stress into dedicated
action.
The Red Brigades operate in a much more difficult social
environment than the New York Mafia or the Sixth Street Boys. The biggest
stress is not the chance of getting killed or imprisoned. The Red Brigades are
far more paranoid (taking this descriptively rather than as a psychiatric
diagnosis; Orisini says they are not mad, even if their beliefs are). The Mafia
dominate their personal environment so much that they can spend their time
drinking and chatting, combining business with pleasure; they don't need to
spend their days shadowing their targets, because so many people are willing to
be lookouts for them. The Philadelphia street gang have a life of dangerous
bravado, but they are the street elite, the trouble-makers and party animals of
the block. The Red Brigades show us that a violent organization can be built on
yet another set of emotional processes. The Mafia and the street gangs have
their times of fun and the glory of local prestige. The Red Brigades have none
of this; but they have manufactured a social mechanism that makes them feel
they are the most righteous people in the world.
Alessandro Orsini. Sacrifice.
My Life in a Fascist Militia. 2017. Cornell Univ. Press.
Orisini next decided to use his ethnographic technique in a
Fascist militia. The Red Brigades and the so-called Black Brigades had been
enemies for almost a century. Fascist black-shirt squads began soon after the
1917 Russian revolution, to prevent it from happening in Italy by attacking
communist organizers in factories. Italian communists at first were rather
hapless, but with the fall of Mussolini in 1944 they became an equally militant
force on the left. Now the fascists were making a comeback in the 21st century.
Orsini tried several approaches. He spent 3 years investigating
Italian fascists on the Internet, and tried to get interviews from the national
headquarters of an organization called here by the pseudonym
"Sacrifice." Eventually he located two branches in northern Italy, in
"Mussolini-town" (where fascists traditionally had been strong and
the mayor was sympathetic) and "Lenin-town" (where radical left
movements were strong). Both cities had recent incidents of fascist violence.
In Mussolini-town, during a nighttime street festival, a Sacrifice militant,
strolling with 15 comrades, had gotten into an insult-match with a group of
men; the tough guy spotted his adversary later, broke a bottle and stabbed him
in the eye. He himself had lost an eye in a stadium fight between rival soccer
fans. In Lenintown, the head of the
local Sacrifice group had made a pass at a girl in a short skirt; she slapped
his face. A professional boxer, he punched her in the face, causing permanent
damage. [1-5]
"Aren't you afraid of getting close to this type of
person?" Orsini was often asked. "The answer is yes, I'm
frightened.... [but observation] does allow ethnographers to understand the people
they want to study and to decide whether to be frightened of them."
[184-5] To put a specific face on fear, he hung out in a bar across the street
from the Sacrifice office in Lenintown, leaving good tips so he could sit with
his computer watching who came and went. After a while he knew their faces and
their schedules. Recognizing one of the militants going into a gym, Orsini
joined the gym and began working out regularly at the same time. As his
contacts multiplied, Orsini was able to get respected names to vouch for him,
and to join the Sacrifice group in Mussolini-town, and to partipate with the
Lenintown group too.
This is what he found: the Sacrifice headquarters was called a
"pub" in their webpage. It had a billiard table and a bar serving
drinks and cheap sandwichs, paid for the member's dues. The idea was to attract
young people to become members, although Orsini never saw anyone else use it.
Every militant was required to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings there,
although they also cruised the streets of these lively Italian cities.
Major events were MMA (mixed martial arts) cage fights. Sacrifice
militants were both fans and sometimes participants; they hosted a
European-wide tournament, with neo-nazis and skin-heads from many countries. It
was their united front, turning radical nationalism into a transnational
ideology; Europe being historically a warrior culture, threatened everywhere by
immigrants from the Arab world and Africa. Militants gathered at rock concerts.
Recruitment was from youth who started out as soccer "ultras" or
hooligans, skinhead music fans, all the violent aspects of popular culture.
Sacrifice also has an intellectual side. They spend their dues to
buy books and ran bookstores, carrying hard-to-find books by Mussolini, Hitler,
and other fascist authors from various countries in the 1920s and 30s. A
surprising number of militants had been university students. That these books
were banned added to their appeal; just reading them was an act of defiance. As
an Italian organization, they modeled themselves on ancient Romans. Instead of
the stiff-arm salute (which was banned) they greeted each other by grasping
forearms, like Roman legionaires, and covered themselves in tattoos like Roman
eagles and helmets.
Sacrifice was politically ambitious, aiming to get back into
power. Hence they would not mention Hitler in public, though they admired him;
their website and headquarters were not explicitly called "Fascist"
but "Sacrifice." Italians are not ready to hear our message, Orsini
was told; "the tactic is to gain power through the back door without
making too much noise." [20] It aims to bring in the young, through the
opening of popular culture. "Before destroying the bourgeoisie, it's
necessary to destroy the bourgeois spirit that exists inside each of us."
[25] The emphasis on secrecy, on their inner message known only to the fully
committed, generates clandestine excitement.
Demonstrations and confrontations were focused on image and
publicity. Every week, militants would hand out groceries (bought with their
dues) to the poor; food packages always carried the Sacrifice banner. These
were expressly for the Italian poor, not for Arab and African immigrants. These
events brought a lot of hostility and insults from passers-by and from left
counter-demonstrators.
The central feature of Sacrifice activity, in fact, was dealing
with constant hostility, humiliation and shame. They made this an explicit
ideology: their central value is honor, they keep telling each other; to fight
even when outnumbered, and even against stronger forces. And this was generally
the case: in the food handouts, Orsini observed, 9 or 10 militants were
surrounded by dozens of opponents, and relied on police details assigned to
keep the two groups apart. In a major demonstration where both sides were
present, a video showed 40 Sacrifice militants in a dense phalanx against 400
communists pelting them with stones and bottles. In the melêe, the Fascists
used their belts to hit their opponents-- and possibly each other, Orisini
commenting: "I can no longer distinguish the Fascists from the
communists... [After viewing the video in a Sacrifice meeting] The young
comrades seem full of adrenaline. "Did you see? It was the communists who
attacked! There were many more of them, but our comrades fought with honor! We
were outnumbered, but we didn't retreat!" [135-7]
Sacrifice militants are acutely aware that they are regarded as disgraceful,
insane, or worse. Most girls dislike them; their families warn them against
having anything to do with them. Militants' own families dislike them. Orsini's
own mother was ashamed of his research: "Do you realize how much shame
you're bringing on your family?" [106]
Orsini decides to plunge even deeper into the daily experience of being
a fascist, making his own emotional processes a central tool in his research.
In Lenintown, he wears a black T-shit with the fascist symbol, to observe the
reaction. He locks his bicycle to a lamppost a few hundred yards from the
office and walks the rest of the way. He finds a message on the bike:
"Fascist shit, we're following you." What should he do?
"Prompted by fear, your imagination makes you magnify the danger...
Putting a face on your enemies is always reassuring. In the end, I decided not
to say anything to the comrades because that would have set off a fight with
extreme-left groups. My task wasn't to provoke battles but to study them."
[113]
The police chief in Mussolini-town wanted to see him, but Orsini
refused to meet him except in a distant city. "As the days passsed, I had
the impression of being shadowed. I imagined that it was by [the chief's]
agents. I had studied for years how people tail someone to kill them, and I had
also studied the so-called counter-surveillance techniques, that enable you to
know if someone is shadowing you. I had learned a lot about these practices
from interviews I had conducted with extreme-left terrorist groups responsible
for multiple murders. Some of these people used to enter and exit a number of
subway stations before entering the right one. To return home, a person
normally gets on and off the subway just once. A terrorist, before returning to
his hideout, may get on and off the subway a dozen times to discover if he's
being tailed by the police. When he enters and exits the subway car, he looks
around and tries to memorize the faces of the people who enter and exit with
him.
"I had been affected by the paranoia of those living in the
parallel world, especially when violence was about to be carried out. For three
consecutive days, before returning home, I entered and exited various bars and
clothing stores a dozen times. It usually took me a quarter of an hour to walk
from the militia headquarters to my apartment. During those three days, the
journey took more than two hours. And no cop was following me. It wasn't the
police that was my problem." [120-21]
Orsini decided he needed a break; he realized he was entering a
paranoid universe. Since entering Sacrifice, his private life had disappeared. He met some personal friends in a bar,
"starting to feel how repressive the lack of female companionship could
be." He had left his bike in a dark alley behind the pub. Unlocking the
chain, he heard a voice behind him, "Hi, Fascist!"
"When I realized I was surrounded, I got on my bike and
grabbed the handlebars, making two mistakes in one move. There are two
fundamental rules if you think you're about to be attacked. The first is to
have both hands free, to protect your face... A punch in the stomach will pass,
but damage to your face remains for life. When you look at yourself in the
morning and see a smashed-up face, you also see the face of the person who hit
you. The second rule when being attacked is to look for an escape route to get
away as quickly as possible. Generally, those who plan an assault expect the
victim to remain motionless and cry out for help. They never imagine the victim
will start running away without saying a word. I broke both rules."
He was on his bicycle, both hands on the handlebars, squeezing the
brakes to keep from falling over. He started to explain he was a professor of
sociology, when a large gob of spit from close range hit his nose and covered
his mouth. "After everyone had left, I got down from the bicycle and started
to spit on the ground, ten, twenty, thirty times with such violence that I felt
a stabbing pain in my ribcage. I swore to myself I wouldn't swallow, to prevent
the spit from ending up in my stomach. I felt an abrupt movement in my gut, and
then I bent over and vomited. After returning home pushing my bike, I realized
that when you remove spit with your finger, the odor remains on your skin and
the saliva forms a sticky coating that has to be washed off with water."
[122-23]
Always the sociologist, Orsini found a lesson in what he was
feeling. He couldn't sleep: his desire for revenge filled his body with
tension. He relived the scene in the dark alley for days thereafter. "My hate
constructed a fantasy world full of violence, in which I beat up those youths,
humiliating them as they had humiliated me.... I wrote down the violent scenes
produced by my imagination in my notebook... Even though in my violent
fantasies I was a superhoero who beat up everyone, I hated my hate because it
filled my days with negative emotions. It took away my smile. I didn't laugh
anymore. As I walked through the streets of Lenintown, I was always tense
because I feared other attacks." [124] Although he was about to be
expelled from Sacrifice as the organization turned against him, he had achieved
an understanding of the emotions at the core of the fascist militants' social
universe.
In his waning days,
Orsini reflected on the paradox that the militants glorified violence, but in
fact they mostly participated symbolically and at a distance. Only a few of
them, like the boxer who headed the Lenintown group, did much fighting; they
cheered MMA cage-fighters but remained in the audience. The majority of them
were soldiers who did not fight. What kept them attracted to the organization?
Their ideology blended with their daily practice: focusing on their hatred and
humiliation; realistic about being a despised minority who would lose any
direct fights; getting honor from their willingness to continue against heavy
odds. And punctuating their lives with the excitements of pop culture violence
in athletics, stadiums, and music. Fascism raised entertainment into political
fantasy; where fantasy becomes tinged with enough daily tensions and emotions
to make it real, as lived experience.
Perhaps surprisingly, the neo-fascists appear the most modern, the
most contemporary, of the four cases. The mafia is a relic of patrimonial
politics, the familistic pre-modern state. It flourishes among small
businesses, commodity chains, and everything that is not bureaucratized. Street
gangs form among the excluded of modernity: segments of modern youth culture,
but unable to survive into adulthood. Terrorist cells have learned the power of
endless mutual interrogation, and the clandestine pschology of acting as an
organization of underground executioners. Neo-fascists, although they throw
back to a mythology of warrior-heroes, spring from the breeding-grounds of popular
entertainment and surrogate action-adventure: sports fans acting as violent
auxiliaries at scheduled matches; gyms and exotic martial arts amalgamated into
cage fights; music concerts at their loudest and most combative. Of the four
cases, they are the ones who flourish with the Internet. They are parasites on
the left-revolutionaries; originally formed to combat revolution, they stay
energized as opponents of the left, like a sports league that would fold
without rivalries.
Of the four, the Italian neo-fascists were the least dangerous to
research. Orsini's wounds were psychological; though his post-prison terrorists
would have killed him decades ago. Pistone risked his life; Alice Goffman was
splattered with blood and her friends were killed. Orsini's analysis of the
neo-fascists shows that violence attracts far more fantasy-followers than
real-life killers. Does this in any sense bode well for the future?
