''L'eretico della sinistra'' In 2004, Orsini wrote ''L'eretico della sinistra. Bruno Rizzi élitista democratico'', which was published by
FrancoAngeli. 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.
Anatomy of the Red Brigades Italian edition In 2009, Orsini published a monograph on the motivations of those who joined the
Red Brigade, a far-left group, from ; it was originally submitted to , Italy's premier publisher in social sciences, who rejected it.
Spencer M. Di Scala, a historian specialized in Italian socialism, prefaced the book. 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. 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. 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.
English translation 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, while
R. J. B. Bosworth, a historian specializing in
Fascist Italy, panned the book and attributed its positive reception in Italy to pro-
Silvio Berlusconi sentiments.
Tobias Hof, a historian of European terrorism, raised similar issues, writing that although 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. 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".
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.
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".
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".
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. Hall concluded that the book offered "a compelling and descriptively thick portrait of religious terrorism as a type of organized social action." 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."
Sacrifice: My Life in a Fascist Militia In the early 2010s, 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. 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. == Views ==