by Mark Dyal
Il Romanista began covering the October 20, 2007 game against SSC Napoli on October 6, 2007. On that day, Felice Ferlizzi, the President of the National Observatory of Sporting Events, was interviewed, saying in essence that AS Roma’s Ultras had behaved impeccably in the young season’s games, but that one misstep and AS Roma would face a stadium ban. This was because of their past reputation for incidents, in spite of previous promises by the Observatory that each team would begin the season with a clean record and that it would act only to punish current wrongdoings.129 A warning was issued that even singing racist songs would be considered grounds to close the Olympic Stadium or ban travel. Two days later, AS Roma’s Ultras traveled to Parma and caused no problems. Therefore, the next game against SSC Napoli was under no threat of being played entirely behind closed doors. The same day, though, Inter Milan’s Ultras unfurled banners calling Napolitani tubercolosi (tuberculosis sufferers) and colerosi (cholera sufferers), which implied that Naples was a Third World city.
Normally Il Romanista devoted itself to AS Roma on the morning following an AS Roma game. On the morning of October 9, 2007 however, well before October 20th, the headline screamed ‘Siamo Tutti Italiani’ (We are all Italians) and the banners from Inter Milan-SSC Napoli were displayed on the cover.130 The tone of the issue was that the ‘anti-violence laws’ enacted after Raciti were failing. There had been no fights in Milan, it is true, but this was because there had been no SSC Napoli fans. (Actually, there was a small group seated in the grandstands with SSC Napoli scarves and flags. They were obviously not Ultras but their presence in Milan was noted — as defiance of the travel ban — in the eventual decision to ban the Napolitani from traveling to Rome.) Yet, the media had understood the banners as a form of provocation.
Figure 10. Ultras graffiti, notably, ‘Curva Sud, Strong and Roman,’ and ‘Neapolitan Jew,’ Stadio Artemio Franchi, Florence, 2007.
For the next two days, the local media turned on the AS Roma Ultras, who had gone from destroying train cars two years earlier (during a trip to Naples for a Coppa Italia game) to doing little more than eating and sleeping in them. Nonetheless, the Roman media, led by two center-Left papers, La Repubblica and Il Romanista, went into attack mode. By October 11, 2007, Ultras were writing to Il Romanista saying they, as Romans and Ultras, were not to be co-identified with the Napolitani, and that they hated Naples. Finally, one Ultra wrote that if the Napolitani arrived in Rome the Ultras were prepared for World War III.131 Of course, normal fans wrote to say that hatred was abhorrent and that the Ultras were animals. For every opinion supporting the Ultras there were two opposing. The back page of the issue said simply, ‘Sono Romanista ed odio nessuno’ (I am an AS Roma fan and I hate no one). The question of the day on the newspaper’s website asked if one hated Naples, to which more than 90% responded ‘No.’
Also on October 11, 2007, La Repubblica published an exposé on politics in Italian curvas. According to the article, there are two hundred and sixty-eight political Ultra groups in Italy and all of these share a common enemy: the forces of law and order. It said that political extremism and its concordant violence are the biggest concerns of the Observatory and other forces of Italian law and order; and that extreme political parties like Forza Nuova seek fertile ground in the curvas today amongst young males between fourteen and sixteen.
La Gazzetta dello Sport, the nation’s most popular sports daily, joined in. On October 12, 2007, it announced that the ‘good times are over for the Ultras.’ It explained that the forces of law and order had begun a new strategy that ultimately bans away travel if the Ultras misbehave (by fights with Ultras or police, unfurling unauthorized banners, or singing offensive songs); or the game is considered too risky for fans. The paper also announced that this new State strategy, called ‘Operation Clean Curvas’, would keep the ten worst offending curvas in the country under constant surveillance. The Ultras of AS Roma and SSC Napoli were first and second on the initial list of ten.
The next day, October 13, La Gazzetta explained the inclusion of the ten Ultras under surveillance. SSC Napoli was on the list because of the fifteen or so of their fans who were at the Inter game, as well as an ongoing investigation into Curva A, the home of Napoli’s Ultras, extorting tickets from the club. AS Roma was on the list because ‘it is a curva of the Far Right’ (the same rationale that landed Serie C1 team Lucca on the list). It singled out Boys Roma as being the most violent group in Italy and cited as evidence that they turned their backs on the Raciti moment of silence back in February.
Meanwhile on October 12, 2007, the Observatory decided that the game would take place without SSC Napoli supporters. Five days later, after conferring with Roman police authorities, it was decided to have only AS Roma season ticket holders in the stadium. As expected by the Ultras, this was met with disappointment by the media, who desperately wanted a mixed stadium with no guest section in order to show the world that Italy was a civilized nation.132 With this in mind, Il Romanista created an issue devoted entirely to distancing what it called ‘true fans’ (the bourgeoisie) from the ‘delinquents’ (the Ultras). On the cover was an open letter written by AS Roma’s beloved coach Luciano Spalletti.
Under the headline ‘we must unite to defeat the violent fans,’ he wrote that the game should be a party and not an opportunity for partisanship. He asked all fans to help Italy move beyond the need to have police forces outside stadiums in order to keep the peace between the opposing fans. He concluded by saying that the only way forward for soccer was without any ‘divisions and barriers, either ideological or material.’133 Inside, one found two full pages devoted to fans pledging their allegiance to stop the Ultras from destroying the game with their violence. They were, as the headline said, ‘tutti uniti contro i violenti’ (all united against the violent). For two days Rome and Italy spoke in glorious terms of Spalletti’s letter. He was ‘courageous,’ ‘correct,’ and ‘a real man’ for having stood up to the Ultras and their ‘delinquency’ (according to RAI’s TG2 on October 15, 2007).
Then on October 16, 2007, Il Romanista allowed a counter-voice to the moralism against violence and published an interview with Giuliano Castellino, co-founder of Padroni di Casa. Castellino wasted no time in pointing out that the ‘a braccia aperte’ (open arms) theme that the media had taken with AS Roma-SSC Napoli was not only utopian but also ‘moralistico’ (moralistic). He said that Padroni di Casa was disciplined and organized and thus rarely involved in violence. But, he added, the 2001 game in Naples was ‘like Iraq’ and included the mistreatment of AS Roma’s Ultras by the police. Because of this AS Roma-SSC Napoli could never be contested as if the fans were ‘brothers.’ When asked about Spalletti’s letter, Castellino chastised the manager for being manipulated by the media against the Curva, saying ‘Spalletti should concentrate on training the team.’
As for those who condemn the Ultras for being political, he explained that ‘life is political. Life does not end when one enters the curva but is more amplified. After all, Padroni di Casa loves Rome above all else and thus works to help Romans who are without homes or meals. Some come to the stadium and are enraptured for ninety minutes and then go home and do nothing. For us [Padroni di Casa], that energy remains throughout the week and it is used, along with the efforts of Fiamma Tricolore [at the time, one of two popular movement-based neo-Fascist parties in Italy, along with Forza Nuova], to make Rome a better place for Romans and Italians to live.’134
Turning to the press, Castellino accused reporters of turning a blind eye toward the positive things that Padroni di Casa and other groups had done in various Roman neighborhoods, only to descend upon the Ultras, even when the only thing to report were whistles, as if they were criminals and ‘mafiosi.’ He asked specifically why, although no one came to file a report after fifteen armed Leftists ransacked the group’s office, when four SS Lazio Ultras of the Far Right were caught with weapons the entire national press ‘sono ai ferri corti’ (have their knives out).
&
nbsp; As for the police, he said only that the Ultras are against any form of arrogance and overbearingness, whether by police or a fan that, for instance, insults someone in the presence of his wife and children. The Ultras, he said, are about being extreme, or ‘beyond’ as he called it — beyond the law, beyond the State, and beyond the stadium. As for the whistles against Raciti, the Curva was not protesting Raciti but the moment of silence and the arrogance of a State that insults dead Ultras every weekend.135
The bourgeois fans exploded in indignation over the interview. The cover of Il Romanista on October 17, 2007 announced that, ‘the curva that had insulted the Napolitani [Inter’s Curva Nord] is closed for one game,’ and that ‘the Ultra [Castellino] is no fan of AS Roma.’136 Both headlines were followed up inside with articles saying ‘clean up this shame’ in reference to Inter Milan’s Ultras and ‘a chorus of “shut ups” to Padroni di Casa.’ An ex-police chief of Rome said that having people like Castellino in Rome was justification for closing the doors to the stadium for good — that way they could ‘keep the animals out.’137
Although one would have to turn all the way back to the emergence of Judeo-Christian morality in order to find the moment when it became hegemonic in the West, it is clear from the discourse on violence, rivalry, aggression, and hatred that enveloped the build-up to AS Roma-SSC Napoli in 2007 that there is a fundamental distance between how these are understood by the Ultras and the media. For as Nietzsche argues, there was a form of life and morality that pre-existed the morality of the modern West. Below I will demonstrate how the morality and ethics of the Ultras more closely resembles Nietzsche’s pre-modern morality than the modern. What we must understand first is that the model of soccer and bourgeois life espoused by the media and private individuals who interacted with it through polls and letters is on the level of a ‘common sense’ that cannot be separated from the practical, everyday behavior of modern bourgeois subjects.138 After all, Castellino had not demanded that all of Italy understand soccer as do the Ultras, only that the Ultras themselves be allowed to understand it this way. He had not defended the Ultras’ right to violence, but instead their right to hatred and discrimination. In the end, this is exactly what Il Romanista and the media could not abide. As Riccardo Luna wrote, ‘there is no room in soccer for these kinds of “prejudices.”’139
Ultras, Violence, and Nietzsche
The Purposes of Violence
Although I am arguing, based on the evidence I gathered, that the ethic of violence employed by the Ultras is more prevalent than actual violence, it must be remembered that the history of the Ultras in all parts of Italy, but especially Rome, shows it to be a fundamentally violent phenomenon. Returning to Sorel, who asks us to think of the purposes of violence, we see that the purpose of State violence against the Ultras is to maintain the State’s monopoly of legitimate violence in the Italian territory. At the same time, and more mundanely, the State is violent against the Ultras in order to protect the moneyed interests of the business of soccer. In later chapters I will examine the diminution of soccer-related violence in recent years. For now, it is clear from public statements and actions that the State is intent to eliminate all forms of violence from soccer matches, and especially violence between Ultras and the police.
As with the statistical data on violence between soccer fans reported in the previous chapter, according to the National Center of Information on Sporting Events violence between soccer fans and the police has lately been severely diminished. From 2003–2004 to 2007–2008 violence between fans and the police is down 79%. After reaching a high of two hundred and fifty-seven incidences in 2004–2005, by 2007–2008 the incidences of violence between police and fans was fifty-three. In that period, injuries to police have also plummeted, from one hundred and eighty-one in 2004–2005 to twenty-two in 2007–2008. However, while injuries to fans have also dropped, from seventy-six to thirty-one, 2007–2008 showed more injuries to fans in violent encounters with the police than to police officers. Concurrently, arrests for acts of violence against police or other forces of law and order are up from fifty-eight in 2004–2005 to seventy-three in 2007–2008. This has also happened as attendance has plummeted 23% in the same period.140 In examining these statistics, the Observatory proclaimed that the State is winning its battle against soccer-related violence.
Returning to the purposes of violence, this time of the Ultras, we see the crux of the issue. The Ultras use violence just as Sorel proposed for the French sub-proletariat: as a way to maintain the distance between themselves and the bourgeois form of life.141 They use violence as a way to distance themselves from the State and its morality of peace, tolerance, and inclusion. But, because the Ultras have no political revolutionary intent, but instead focus upon what Emilio Gentile has called an ‘anthropological revolution,’ — which seeks to create a new type or form of man — they remain too closely bound up with the State and the industry of soccer to be able to practice their ethical violence with impunity. As the examples above demonstrate, the media is as concerned with the Ultras conceptualization of soccer and their form of life as it is with their actual violent encounters.
The Ultras’ Nietzsche
The Anti-Liberal Nietzsche
Through their politics and deeply ideological mentalità, the Ultras find themselves aligned with Nietzsche’s critiques of modernity and ‘the modern man.’ Nietzsche’s place in this narrative is complex, for while he offers me instruction for understanding clashes of morality and forms of life, he offers the Ultras a way to formulate and create distance between themselves and modernity. It is where these intersect that the affective power of these words lies. That being said, Nietzsche plays an active role in how the more ideologically committed Rightist groups understand the Ultra phenomenon. The leadership of Boys Roma, Romulae Genti, and Padroni di Casa all utilize a Nietzschean reading of the distance between the Ultras and the bourgeoisie. In the large groups (Boys and Padroni di Casa) these ideas are disseminated through hours of spirited conversation that occur at the groups’ offices. For Romulae Genti, the small size of the group (less than twenty people) and exclusive membership ensure that each member is already familiar with Nietzsche before joining. Some of these are former members of Antichi Valori, which used to find inspiration from The Gay Science. Beyond these groups, AS Roma’s Ultras acted in accord with Nietzsche’s philosophy, regardless of how deeply he was known by the mass of Ultras. Most fundamentally, AS Roma’s Ultras’ critique of modernity parallels that of Nietzsche. For the Ultras mentioned above, this is purposeful.
For Nietzsche, modernity was problematic because of three foundational features: the relentless process of democratization; the tendency to exalt compassion and pity; and a cult of facile painlessness. These three combined to act as corrupting agents turning European civilization into a rest home for sheep-like herd animals.142 To arrest the corrosive influence of modernity, Nietzsche attacked the moral and ethical system that he argued provided the intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical impetus toward mediocre standardization. He did so not to leave Europeans without value but in order to further the re-establishment of heroic pre-modern values. These he consistently identified as strength, honor, discipline, spiritualism, hierarchy, distance, and veneration (among others).143
Because his critique was designed to destroy so as to create, Nietzsche proposed that the weakness promoted by modern life could be overcome in the present. Modern weakness he characterized by ‘indolent peace, cowardly compromise,’ preoccupation with triviality, extreme tolerance, and a desire to forgive all through ‘understanding.’144 To combat these instincts of modernity, Nietzsche demands that one ‘thirst for lightening and action . . . to stay as far away as possible from the happiness of weaklings.’145 Modernity, he explained, and its normalization of middle class mediocrity, has diminished the species and made ‘us’ smaller. Our goal is now a soft life of comfort, with hands for mediocre work but unfit for making fists.146
> While there is much to be gained from Nietzsche’s (postmodern) deconstruction via genealogy of modern hermeneutic concepts, his rationale for pursuing such a project is often lost when one ignores the political aspects of his motivations. Put somewhat differently, by ignoring Nietzsche’s ‘great politics,’ — wherein he distinguishes between the higher, aristocratic and noble, and the lower, democratic and cosmopolitan, forms of life, and urges his readers to liberate themselves from the latter at any cost — one is able to use Nietzsche to support the most liberal of projects which he himself would never have countenanced.
But those who ignore ‘great politics would be unable to appreciate the deepest implications of Nietzsche’s thought: namely, how even those on the most radical edge of modernity are still children of ressentiment as long as they think with bourgeois modernity’s image of thought. In embracing the characteristics of the Nietzschean noble, the Ultras, better perhaps than the Far Right with which they are most often associated, transvaluate the foundations of bourgeois modernity. This is important for the obvious macro-political ramifications of such a transvaluation, but perhaps more so for the micro-political transformations that it affords.
For in transvaluation there can be no simple Manichean shift between active noble forces and reactive slave forces in order to transcend what is modern in each of us. In other words, there must be ‘no simple substitution’ of values, but a radical conversion of valuing itself.147 Transvaluation thus becomes less about a genealogy of oppositions between the Classical world and Judeo-Christian modernity than about re-constituting the very ground of human thought.
As Gilles Deleuze says: