by Mark Dyal
There is a similar tension between Ultras, Romanità, and Fascism among Leftist groups, which also have a strong association with Romanità. This is because the Leftist and self-described apolitical groups, themselves interacting with Romanità, acknowledge the role played by historical and current Fascism in keeping alive not only Roman political discourse but also Roman self-conception.
Manuele, a member of Fedayn, explained Romanità to me in simple terms. ‘Romanità,’ he said, ‘is the thing that makes AS Roma’s Ultras different from and superior to any others. It links the Ultras with the past and future of the city, and our city is more steeped in glory and conquest, in veneration and honor, than any city in the world. Other Ultras love their cities, as they should, but when looking for glory, they have no choice but to envy us.’ I suggested to Manuele how similar was his understanding of Romanità to that of Ultras on the Right.
Like the Ultras, Fascism sought to link itself with the past and future of the city through Romanità. It also understood Rome as a city of glory and conquest, as well as of honor and veneration — ideals that drove Mussolini’s project to transform, aggrandize, and render more fascist the center of Rome.221 Indeed, Rome, as home to both the unification of Europe through imperial conquest and Catholicism, was for Fascism a universal symbol.222
Manuele responded with brevity: ‘It’s true because Fascism is also Roman,’ an attitude that will be explained in the next chapter. However, there is an important distinction between the Romanità of the Ultras and that of Fascism. Fascism utilized Romanità not only to lend itself legitimacy by linking its rule with Imperial Rome, but also to undermine the power of campanilismo in the provinces. Romanità was to be the unifying narrative of the Italian Fascist State. Thus, its universal aspects were highlighted.223
Romanità motivates an inversion of the universal mission of Rome for the Ultras, being reserved, rather, as the rarified domain of Romans. It is not a universal phenomenon or mission, but what separates them from someone in Milan, for example, who can no better understand Rome than a foreign tourist. Nor is it a will to unity as part of Italian nationalism. Instead, Fascist Ultras of AS Roma seek to make little more than the Curva Sud Fascist. I will now turn to a deeper explanation of the differences between the Ultra and other uses of Romanità.
Understanding Romanità
Liberal and Fascist Italy
Romanità is primarily studied and theorized by scholars of Fascism and the unification of Italy. The study of the uses of Rome by Fascism parallels that of the uses of Rome by the Ultras inasmuch as the Ultras understand themselves as a continuation of the Fascist project of creating a Third Rome.224 While this will be discussed in Chapter Seven, it is important to note that the political project of AS Roma’s Ultras is an attempt to replace the liberal bourgeois order of the present day with a recreation of the largely mythologized values of the warrior society of Ancient Rome.
Romanità was defined by Piergiorgio Zunino as a pre-modern and mythical (as opposed to historical) form of collective mentality best expressed in nostalgia for ancient Rome.225 Claudio Fugo found this definition useful as he attempted to explain how an idea of Rome operated in the fascist understanding of history. Fascist history, he says, was structurally dependent upon a break with the past. He argued that Fascism did not seek a continuation of Classical Roman identity within a Fascist context. Instead, Fascism sought to use Rome, through Romanità, to lessen the influence of a modern, linear view of history amongst Italians. In other words, Fascism used a concept of history that aimed at diminishing the conceptual import of the meta-narratives creative of modern political subjects.226
Tracy Koon, meanwhile, is less concerned about the functioning of history and historiography during the Fascist era. Instead, he linked Romanità first with liberal Risorgimento thinkers and their desire to find a unifying discourse for all peoples of the peninsula. Secondly, he pursued Romanità through to the Fascist period to show how then, as well, the greatness of Rome’s imperial power was glorified as a unifying discourse.
Thus, he presents Romanità as a discourse that, contrary to Fugo, created links between the Classical and modern periods. By focusing more upon Mussolini’s speeches and the symbolic finery of Fascism, Koon understood Romanità as a powerful tool in Mussolini’s drive to create (via Fascism) a Third Rome (after the Classical and the Papal). Indeed, part of the power Romanità was that it (as a discourse) demonstrated the supposed Classical origins of Fascism.227
By presenting identification with the past as a fundamental element of the creation of a new civilization, itself based on the values and historical successes of Classical Rome, Fascism not only desired to universalize amongst Italians the celebration of their Classical origins, but also to make all actions, not matter how banal, historical. According to Koon, children in classrooms and Balilla (or, Opera Nazionale Balilla, the after-school and weekend youth groups which were intended to increase physical fitness and understanding of Fascism) organizations learnt the proper moral and spiritual value of their Roman heritage. Through the Balilla, the children were not only to learn valor and military discipline, but also that ‘Rome is alive’ through each of them.228
Evola
Unsurprisingly, given his own uses of Rome as an idealized entity, Evola had much to say about Romanità. In Men Among the Ruins, he demonstrates that Rome is unique among cities because it can be used as a forceful affect.229 Rome, he explained, as might the Ultras, is an ideal. As such it demonstrates the fallacy of the political Left’s reduction of life and politics (one and the same for Evola) to the interests of economic class. Rome must be part of a form of life (and State) seeking to transcend the vulgar economic determinism of materialism. That the previous generations of ‘conservatives’ sought to defend their economic interests at all costs, even at the expense of ‘a higher right, dignity, and... legacy of values, ideas, and principles,’ made them unworthy of being revered by the generation of ‘revolutionary conservatives’ which Evola hoped to mold. Instead, it would be the traditions and principles of Classical Rome that would guide their war.230
Evola was influenced by Nietzsche’s distinction between ‘acting unhistorically and suprahistorically’ against the power of linear ‘modern’ history to destroy one’s ‘will to life as art’.231 Acting unhistorically allowed one to forget history by enclosing oneself within a bounded temporal horizon. Acting suprahistorically was, by contrast, a more powerful option and one that inclined practitioners toward the greatness achieved in all periods. The suprahistorical bestowed ‘the eternal’ unto the actions and existence of the mortal.232
For Evola, Romanità was a suprahistorical agent. He acknowledged that the radical Left perpetuated an idea that Romanità was ‘antihistorical’ in that it motivated attachment to ideology at the expense of commitment to class conflict and was thus an example of irrational reaction to historical dialectical processes.233 Even as he used the concept ‘antihistorical’ to attack the liberalization of the world, however, he described Rome and Romanità in Nietzsche’s terms. There are immutable principles, he said, that have been useful in creating ascending cultural forms. These principles can only be found by looking toward the past, toward tradition. ‘Tradition,’ he said, ‘is neither servile conformity to what has been, nor a sluggish perpetuation of the past into the present. [It] is something simultaneously meta-historical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force, in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy’.234
Figure 13. Typical view of a game in Curva Sud, always full of Roman imagery, 2006.
Romanità has value, then, for Evola, because it does not seek to re-establish the institutions of Classical Rome, but the principles of which such institutions were expressions. Some of the principles to which Evola gave so much power were visible in the Roman cultural and psychological characteristics to be striven for in the present. These were self-control, an enlightened boldness, a concise speech and determined and coher
ent conduct, a cold and dominating attitude; virtus (virile spirit and courage, not moralism); fortitudo and constantia (spiritual strength); sapientia (thoughtfulness and awareness); disciplina (love for self-given law and form); fides (loyalty and faithfulness); dignitas (studied and moderated seriousness); religio and pietas (respect and veneration for the gods); deliberate actions; realism as love for the essential, not the material; the ideal of clarity; inner equilibrium and suspicion of confused mysticism; love of boundaries; and unity in pursuit of higher goals.235
In remembering, and desiring, all of these, one does not seek a teleological and transcendental law in which the past mechanically determines the present. Instead, one would seek only to properly distinguish subversive and degenerative cultural elements from those capable of sustaining greatness.236 Evola’s highly Nietzschean model was itself also highly modern. Emilio Gentile explains that the form of modernity sought by Fascism was a mythologized modernity, in which a symbiosis between ‘art and life, culture and politics’ would be made possible by adherence to an ‘activist conception of life’.237 Fascist modernity’s focus on vitalism, daring, faith, mythic thought — and its disaffection with reality — was designed to promote a moving forward while carrying a slightly heavier load than that demanded by other, more liberal forms of modernity. It also became the basis of its use of Romanità, but in the form of myth dramatically celebrated by Sorel as a ‘spur’ to courage and faith.238
Ultra Uses of Romanità
Romanità as Counter-Modern Discourse
Having just stated that Romanità, and its uses by Evola and Fascism, is a form political modernism, I must make clear why I continue to call it counter-modern. As I explained in the Introduction, Fascism is a complex mixture of political modernism and counter-modern, or Counter-Enlightenment, philosophy. In other words, it seeks to actualize a way of living that is an aggrandizement of the radical edge of modernity, with its fetishes for change, movement, industrialization, and efficiency,239 while at the same time constructing a cultural core around a scathing critique of the intellectual bases of such social change, namely egalitarianism, marketization, and individualism.240 Romanità might be useful as a means of motivating the ‘actualization’ of modern life, in the guise of political and social change, but in its championing of selected elements of Rome’s intellectual heritage, demonstrated above by Evola, it is essentially counter-modern.
To take the matter further, Evola explained his use of Romanità in terms that countered the metaphors of collective human aggregates found not only in the origins of liberalism (the people, the nation) but in Hegel (the State). Instead of these concepts, which subsume the individual human will to a system that counter-balances the potential for individual greatness, Evola proposed the Roman and Nordic systems of Tradition. These, he felt, ‘do not recognize the voice of the leveled multitudes, but instead beat down and mock these idols of clay, these modern ideologies, and organize themselves on the ... recognition of the irreducible differences among men, which define themselves in the natural and dynamic relation of their intensity’.241 The idealized elements of Roman character, then, are not attainable for the multitude. As we have seen, the Ultras conceive of themselves in the same terms, as an elite element that is separated from the bourgeois masses by their own devotion to Evola’s ideals.
It was suggested in previous chapters that the Ultras’ mentalità, while containing aspects common to all Ultra groups in Italy, is better developed in AS Roma’s Ultras than in other curvas. It is, perhaps, no accident that the founders of Commando Ultra Curva Sud coined the phrase ‘mentalità Ultras’ in 1977. This is because of the extraordinary depth of feeling they have for the city of Rome as well as the depth of historical and mythical narratives to be found in the city. Rome, its history and symbolic universe, confer upon Ultra thought and action a sense of ‘the eternal’ or extreme importance.
In 2004 Vincenzo Patanè Garsia interviewed Etore, one of the leaders of AS Roma Ultras. He spoke of AS Roma’s Ultras as ‘rappresentati di Roma città, e di tutto ciò che vi sta dietro ... millenni di Storia e di cultura’ (representatives of the city and all which that entails ... millennia of history and culture). He continued to explain the pride and responsibility this conferred on the Ultras. ‘Come eredi di un Impero, come figli della Lupa, come gente Romana, fieri e orgogliosi andiamo in giro [...] a sostenere i colori della nostra squadra e sopratutto della nostra città, la più bella del mondo’ (like heirs of an emperor, or children of the Lupa [Capitolina], or the Roman people fierce and proud, we go on tour to support the colors of our team, but above all the colors of our city — the most beautiful in the world).242
While I was unable to interview Etore for this project I met others who know him well. One of these was Federico, founding member of Antichi Valori, and former member of AS Roma Ultras. He described Etore as a ‘bravo ragazzo,’ (good guy, one of us) one of those always present and one who never turned his back to the enemy. I asked about his statement, quoted by Garsia, hoping to understand the rarity of his love of Rome. Federico shrugged his shoulders and told me, ‘we all feel this way — it is normal — if someone is this way they are an Ultra.’ Sensing my next question, he interrupted, ‘even if one does not go to the stadium.’ In other words, not only is Etore’s feeling for Rome and what it means to be Roman not unique, but it is enough to agree with him in order to be considered an Ultra by those who see themselves as the ‘keepers of the faith,’ the most proud and fierce of the Ultras. Federico’s analysis points to an interesting question. If one may be an Ultra without going to a stadium, what is the purpose of the game of soccer within the Ultra phenomenon? And this raises the prior question of why soccer is important to the Ultras.
Why a sport is popular in a particular time and place is often impossible to answer. Soccer holds a special place in any debate on the subject, as the United States, the tastemaker of the vast majority of popular culture in the West, is virtually bereft of passion for the game. Avoiding the psychological aspects of aesthetics or fandom, Markovits and Hellerman provide a social/material explanation for the popularity of sports in time and place. The main factor they identify is the presence of a sport for a long period, and crucially, at the moment of industrialization and the creation of mass society. Another factor is that a sport must be played, and not just watched, by a large percentage of the population. Finally, a sport should have enough media coverage that it becomes part of the ‘hegemonic sports culture’ of the nation. It should be discussed long after the games are finished.243
The popularity of soccer tends to be a given in countries where it is hegemonic. That it is hegemonic is demonstrated by the connection of national character with the playing style found in each nation. For instance, the Brazilians connect ‘beauty and art’ with the ways their professional and national teams play.244 Similarly, the Dutch want their teams to play beautifully rather than ‘doing anything’ to win.245 The Italians, instead, seem to have always associated soccer with warfare. Simon Martin reports on the failure of Serie A to unite the peninsula, as Mussolini had intended, because of the extreme partisanship of local fans.246 Similarly John Foot summarizes the origins of Italian soccer by explaining the exacerbation of civic rivalries by the game.247
The Ultras and their understanding of soccer fit nicely within this understanding of soccer. The game was imported to Italy in the 1880s and became nationalized in the 1920s, meeting Markovits’s and Hellerman’s criteria. Likewise, Italians obsess over the game in midweek and it is no doubt the dominant sport in the country from a media point of view, and every Ultra of AS Roma and every fan of soccer I met in Italy played the game in some form. Turning to the national character of the Italian game, the element of warfare and rivalry, as I have shown, is absolutely central to the Ultras as fans and as a unique social phenomenon.
But if soccer is important and available enough to be the sport of choice for the Ultras, what purpose do they see it serving? Following
Allen Guttman’s research of Ancient Roman spectators, the Ultras are perfectly consistent with the purpose of Roman sports for their most passionate fans: as an opportunity for partisanship. Guttman uses ancient sources to explain that Roman spectators were extremely partisan, to the point that partisanship seems to have been the point, or at least the draw, of spectating sports in the ancient city. Pliny the Younger, Guttman tells us, had difficulty understanding the passions of the masses for sports. If the masses had a genuine appreciation for the skills one needs to properly control a speeding chariot, perhaps he would have been more sympathetic to their passions. Instead, Pliny said, ‘it is the racing colors they really support and care about, and if the colors were to be exchanged in mid-course ... they would transfer their favor and enthusiasm. Such is the popularity and importance of a worthless shirt’.248 Guttman continues, explaining that team loyalties were so deep that often a man’s funerary inscription would mention his partisanship.249
So deep were the passions for chariot teams that violence between sets of fans was common, with certain rivalries being so inflamed that the rival cities were prohibited from hosting games.250 Further, identification as a fan of a certain team bound one to a common body that had political clout. Certain colors, as teams were divided by color, were historically affiliated to certain parties. This was true regardless of social rank. ‘Whatever differences in behavior and even social class there may have been,’ Guttman explains, ‘partisans of both colors moved in much the same world’.251