by Mark Dyal
During this same period, organizers of Serie A, Italy’s top professional soccer league, began to seek greater profits from the game. England’s Premier League, the quintessence of modern, consumer-based soccer, began in 1993 and reaped immediate financial gains by way of domestic and international television rights contracts. Serie A would become the world’s richest league by 1999, paying the highest player wages, as well as becoming a popular advertising vehicle for Italy’s most important industries.110 The Ultras, with their organized mob violence and manifestoes and protests against Calcio Moderno, appeared to be ‘bad for business;’111 that they attracted more police attention in the 1990s could also be because they threatened the stability of soccer, Italy’s most stable industry.112
What is certain is that the interactions between the State and the Ultras have been defined by hostility. Returning to Weber’s understanding that modern states must control the use of violence in their territories, Agamben argues that modern neoliberal States utilize states of emergency or a ‘state of exception’ to strengthen the security of the State at the expense of individual liberties. During a state of exception, the ‘well-being of the State’ is used to justify an increase in suspicion and surveillance of private individuals.113 For the Ultras, just such a state of exception exists. Each professional soccer game that takes place in Italy is a militarized zone, as the police make use of the ‘show of force’ technique to enforce the peace. Surveillance is also a normalized part of the Ultras’ experience of soccer, especially after the 2005 Pisanu Decree, which demanded that Closed Circuit Television systems be installed in all Italian stadiums hosting professional matches.
The consequences of this militarization of soccer games can be deadly, as both Raciti and Sandri attest. However, it is important to remember what it tells us of the State and its responsibility toward the Ultras — some of whom are professionals, students, and even fellow police officers. With soccer games being militarized, they are essentially states of exception. Therefore, the Ultras, by definition, lie beyond the moral obligation of the State.114 The State alone is able to define what is included and therefore excluded from its purview. In doing so it also defines the expectations of those who are excluded. As Agamben argues, the policing of any ‘agent of chaos’ becomes part of the legitimation not only of State violence but also of the State itself.115 In this way the physical repression of the Ultras comes to mirror the terms of their condemnation by the media (delineated below).
Agamben was motivated to interrogate the liberal State in these terms by the juridical scholarship of Carl Schmitt, which explained how the liberal State defined its enemies and violence. The State must be free, as sovereign, to determine who and what is the political and mortal enemy of its people.116 What the Ultras question are these very definitions. By seeking hostility and extremely restricted modes of altruism, they challenge the bases of liberal consumer-based passivity and freedom.117 In so doing, though, they also take exception to the State’s legitimate power to maintain such a state of passivity amongst its populace.
Through the media, the State is able to maintain its hegemonic grip upon public (liberal) discourse on violence, inclusion/exclusion, and the enemies of the State. As Gramsci explained, it is not simply a matter of enforcing discipline upon the public, because the State’s discourse of ‘the public good’ is already based on a high level of consent within civil society. In other words, hegemonic ideas are already received as natural truths. But, when the hegemonic fabric is torn — when consent is withdrawn (as in the ‘derelict spaces’ described above) — State policing is justified in order to maintain hegemony over the main body of the public sphere.118 The relationship between the State (and its repression of the Ultras) and the media (and its condemnations of the Ultras) is seemingly contradictory. If the press is in business to sell newspapers or gain viewers and listeners, then Ultra violence is conceivably ‘good’ for the press. However, the press is also in business to maintain the hegemony of the bourgeoisie over the ‘subaltern classes’ that threaten its dominance of the ‘cultural and political’ fields.119
In describing the circularity or mutually dependent nature of the discourse and violence of ‘being Ultras’ with the media discourse about the Ultras, I do not intend to give the impression that the former’s self-understanding is merely reactive. Instead, their knowledge, and use, of the Counter-Enlightenment philosophies of Nietzsche, Sorel, and Evola all demonstrate a high level of awareness of the image they project as well as the historical nature of what they are doing. The rest of this chapter will focus upon the discourses and ethics of violence and inclusion/exclusion that the Ultras and State utilize against each other.
Discourses of Violence and Morality: Sorel and Ethics of Violence
Just as Nietzsche provides a rationale for rejecting the morality of the modern world, Georges Sorel provides justification for maintaining a counter ‘ethic of violence’ to that of the modern West. Contrasting the modern aversion to violence with the ‘cruelty ... [and] brutality of past times,’ Sorel explained that, by example, the Roman celebration of strength and dominance was accompanied by ‘uprightness, sincerity, a lively sentiment of justice, [and] pious respect before the holiness of morals.’ Instead, the modern democratic world is characterized by an extreme aversion to violence — so much so that any violators of passivity may be considered insane — but also by ‘lies, duplicity, treachery, the spirit of deception, the contempt for property, [and] disdain for instinctive probity and legitimate customs.’120
Sorel’s analysis stems from his considering violence only from the position of its ‘ideological consequences.’121 Thus, the violence of the State and its capitalist rulers, for instance, is justified, but no more so than the derelicts who fight its hegemony. Elsewhere, he borrowed from Paul Bureau to relativize the modern aversion to violence. He explained that in Norway it was possible to find populations that subscribed to strict moral systems, but who were also averse to passivity. ‘A stab given by a man who is virtuous in his morals, but violent, is a social evil less serious and more easily curable than the excessive profligacy of young men reputed to be more civilized.’122
Sorel’s examination of modern precautions and prohibitions against violence began, though, where the Ultras — like the Fascists — based their critiques of modernity. Modern thinkers, he said, favor industrial societies, over military societies, because peace, while being essential to consumerism, has ‘been considered the greatest of blessings and the essential condition of all material progress.’123 Fascism — especially while under the influence of the Futurists and Syndicalists — condemned pacifism and neutralism as properties leading to the creation of ‘economic men’ at the expense of ‘heroic men.’ Thus, it praised the purifying effects of war and dynamism. The Ultras, likewise, understand that occasional violence can be useful in reducing the value of Italian soccer to those attempting to engulf it within Calcio Moderno. For the soccer of the Ultras is full of rivalries, antagonism, aggression, and violence — the characteristics associated with the heroic life.124
Although the Ultras have shown an ability and willingness to think through the ‘ideological consequences’ of violence, it must be remembered that violence is more useful to the Ultras as a salve of sorts against modern life. For this reason, Sorel and Nietzsche provide important lessons on the possibility of violence to coexist within a moral-ethical system (like the Ultra mentalità) that is enmeshed in myth and narrative — significant when we consider that the Ultras largely reject the world of wealth, materialism, and consumerism.
The Moral Prohibition Against Violence
There are two intertwining elements that will alternate as the focus of this important section: one, the morality of the Italian political class and media which seeks a prohibition of violence; and two, the Ultras and their understanding of violence. Both of these combine to make knowable what I, following Sorel, am calling an Ultra ‘ethic of vio
lence.’ In other words, both sides of the opposition have developed ways of talking about violence. And, both of these distinct ways mirror the visions held by each side of the optimal state of soccer (and life in general): egalitarian and sporting for the one and hierarchical and warring for the other. Where one speaks of delinquency, the other speaks of vivere pericolosamente (living dangerously), contemptuous of life that has been stripped of confrontation.
The Media and Violence
The Italian press has an ambiguous approach to the Ultras. On the one hand, they are presented as the color and excitement of soccer. Most broadcasts of games begin with a montage that includes Ultras with flags and flares, even as the latter are now banned from stadiums. Additionally, journalists occasionally praise the social initiatives, and even the commitment to fandom, of the Ultras. However, these occasions are offset and rendered strange by press hostility toward the Ultras, which centers on its violent aspects. Past aggressions against one another and current aggression toward the police are frequent media topics.
That the media presents the Ultras negatively is not a concern for many Ultras. Indeed, many take responsibility for the image; entranced by the media attention they received in the 1990s. Most Ultras, at least those in the large cities or those of teams in Serie A, were conscious of the media and even strategized how best to make it into newspapers and news telecasts. The notoriety of many groups like Boys Roma or Irriducibili Lazio was established by media coverage, leading these groups, among others, to be revered and feared throughout the Italian curvas. The clippings from various newspapers of their history of violent encounters fill two notebooks at the Boys Roma office.
By focusing only on aggression and violence, the media fails to understand or clearly present the Ultra mentalità or to specify the targets of their enmity, which come across only as rationales for violence. In many respects, the Ultras are what the press makes of them: aggressive, violent, and driven by agonism and rivalry. Nor would they deny this. Where there is a glaring contradistinction between the Ultras of the media and the Ultras’ self-understanding is in the press’s moral oppositions to rivalry, violence, and aggression, and associated utopian vision of soccer — a vision without the Ultras. In the end, the media demonize the Ultras as a way to moralize against aggression, violence, and conflict, omitting these from the legitimate concerns of Italy’s passive liberal subjects.
From the perspective of the Ultras, what the media wants is a world in which all are seated and clapping politely as twenty-two actors present an evening of entertainment; in which the peoples and cities of Italy and the world exist in perfect harmony; in which communities no longer appear homogeneous and teams are made up only of low-priced Africans and Asians; and in which games take place at times and places only designed for a television audience — in short, the world of Calcio Moderno.
The Ultras’ understanding of the media’s motivations is formed by the daily coverage of Ultra activity in the Italian press. For the purpose of brevity, only two periods of media coverage will be analyzed here: the immediate post-Raciti period of February 2007, and the period before AS Roma’s Serie A meeting with SSC Napoli in October 2007 (just one week before the killing of Gabriele Sandri).
How to Cure a ‘Sick Culture Of Sport’
After the death of Filippo Raciti in February 2007, the press was united in condemnation of the violence that led to the officer’s killing. Many opinionisti (columnists) worried that Italy was suffering not only a hooligan problem but also a generally negative culture of sport. Government ministers like Giovanna Melandri, Minister for Youth and Sports under both Prodi and Berlusconi, supported their view. Melandri, a member of one of the Left parties that emerged after the collapse of Communism — Democrats of the Left, subsequently renamed the Democratic Party — was one of the most vociferous opponents of the Ultras’ view of soccer (as a system of rivals and enemies) in the days after Raciti’s death. What she proposed in place of Italy’s overly extreme sense of rivalità (rivalry) was an ‘English model’ of sport, in which sportsmanship, tolerance, multiculturalism, and deterritorialization replace rivalry, discrimination, Italianness, and localism.
In Rome, the local sports newspaper, Il Romanista, championed this attitude most loudly. In a week’s worth of editorials, the paper’s director Ricardo Luna, a former editor with the center-Left Espresso group (which includes La Repubblica, the leading center-Left newspaper in Rome), made it clear that ‘rivalry was killing Italian sport.’ The tradition and cherished practice of vociferous tifare contro (rooting against) on the part of many Italians was ‘archaic in a world striving for oneness.’125 Luna took up the theme of a ‘sick culture of sport’ the day after Raciti’s death. His answer to this problem (for no one in the media was asking if this was perhaps a positive element of Italian life) was ‘education;’ not of the current generation of fans, which included the Ultras, but the next. ‘The next generation,’ he said, ‘should be made to see that “si può essere avversario, non nemico”’ (one can be an adversary without being an enemy). A few days later, Luna, buoyed by the positive response to his understanding of the problem, gave his vision of what could be done to facilitate this utopia.
First, rid soccer of the Ultras, for while Italy itself was sick, the Ultras were sickest of all. Second, fill the curvas with children. And third, close all guest sections and allow fans to intermix.126 While the first two were unlikely to be accomplished, the third was worth trying, according to Luna. For one week, Il Romanista promoted the idea of integrating fans. As the February 11, 2007 game against FC Parma approached, Luna realized that AS Roma was powerless to change the Italian Football Federation’s ticketing policies, so instead of insisting that the guest section be closed, he invited Parma fans to buy tickets in the Monte Mario grandstand as a demonstration of support for this new vision of sport and soccer in Italy.127 Although only a handful of Parma Ultras attended the game, standing in the designated guest section, it was reported that some Parma fans did sit in Monte Mario.128 In the end these matters were overshadowed by Curva Sud having whistled during the moment of silence to remember Raciti.
AS Roma-SSC Napoli: A Braccia Aperte (With Open Arms)
The AS Roma and SSC Napoli Ultras share a vehement hatred for one another. Although the games on the field tend not to manifest the aggression and combativeness characteristic of the derby games between AS Roma and SS Lazio, for the Ultras the rivalry with the Napolitani is more intense. Both sets of Ultras boast of provocation of, and victory over, the other, and for AS Roma’s Ultras Naples has value as the dark pole in a Manichean scheme. Indeed, it represents or symbolizes the lowest value one can have and still be Italian. I asked Maurizio of Romulae Genti to clarify, especially as his father’s family hails from a small town between Naples and Rome. ‘There are zingari [Roma or gypsies], stranieri [strangers or foreigners] like Africans and Muslims,’ he told me, ‘and then Napolitani. It is enough to be from Naples to be disliked.’
For example, the insults AS Roma’s Ultras sing to other Italians tend to be structural or situational. The Juventus fans, whose team has long been owned by the Agnelli family (of FIAT), are insulted for being ‘slaves to the Agnelli.’ Livornesi (people of Livorno) are insulted for being Communists. Veneziani (people of Venice) are insulted for living in a lagoon. Milanesi (people of Milan) are insulted for being Lombards and former Roman slaves. Napolitani are insulted, however, just for being from Naples.
Compared to other rivalries, AS Roma’s Ultras are less articulate when explaining their opposition to the Napolitani. Whereas the songs they sing against the other fans point to the above-mentioned specific reasons for rivalry, and whereas they speak with a sense of irony or playfulness against other cities, teams, and curvas, when asked about the Napolitani, many say matter-of-factly that they hate Naples and Napolitani and leave it at that.
So it was that the Roman Ultras were looking forward to hosting their biggest rivals and to opportunities to make
the SSC Napoli Ultras pay for past disputes. The media treated the October 20, 2007 game as the biggest test yet of the post-Raciti security measures. The common assumption among the Ultras and the press was that the authorities would simply prohibit the SSC Napoli fans from traveling to Rome for the game. Although it is unconstitutional to ban travel itself, the government is able to ban ticket sales beyond the city or region hosting the game. They can also prohibit selling tickets for the designated guest section.