by Mark Dyal
Strength, instead, was to be created through isolation.298 Elsewhere, Nietzsche explained that one can only maintain what is one’s own by maintaining adequate distance from one’s neighbors.299 The Ultras have used this formula to great effect against other Ultras and fan bases, but it also motivates their oppositions to globalization. The adoption of more liberal and secular understandings of the human is not a problem unless it is being imposed or being popularized due to the influence of what they see as degrading elements within society. Certainly, MTV Day, and MTV in general, was singled out as an insidious influence on Italians. In seeking distance from the form of life being promoted by MTV the Ultras also make arguments for an organic understanding of society.
The idea that the State is an organism that thrives and declines in conjunction with its population is central to Counter-Enlightenment thought. Although the Fascists saw in this a material rationale, and thus promoted the general health of the population, Sorel, following Nietzsche, was more concerned with how the weakness of a political class — one ashamed of ruling — leads to a toleration of weakness that ultimately effects the policy decisions of a State.300 Michael O’Meara has discussed the implications of such an idea amongst those who are opposed to liberalism today. Far from the biological justifications for nation-or-people-hood, the organic State idea hinges upon ‘common heritage and tradition’ for relevance and survival.301 Tradition, he proposes, functions as a skeleton upon which peoples constitute themselves. While modernity and rationalism propose that traditions are contextual and are thus fluid and less valuable as markers of human behavior, O’Meara counters by explaining that tradition, like history, is more about the present than the past. Thus, one can act through a market-driven, homogenizing liberalism or one can act through something else. That something else, the Ultras believe, is their ‘own Roman culture.’ I asked a group of five Ultras Romani Ultras if the State or the Church could be considered part of this culture. They responded, only the Church.
The Church was also at the center of discourse surrounding the Gay Pride parade. And, like DICO and Family Day, the issue was around ‘rights,’ pitting the Prodi government against the Pope. It was not surprising that this was so. Along with the family, scholars and journalists often present the Church as the reason for Italy’s notoriously weak State.302 Because of its ability to act as a political sovereign, the Church was historically able to control understanding of the issues that, in the summer of 2007, were in danger of becoming the domain of liberal ‘rights.’
It seemed Italy was struggling to accept that the State was actually to be responsible for defining the family. The family as a legal and material entity was something different from the family as the basis of human life. The sanctity of the family, said the Church, came from God; the impositions of a secular State were out of place in relation to an institution given the species by its creator.
The days leading up to the June parade were contentious. On June 15, the Northern League continued to agitate against Prodi, as their twenty-two MPs stormed the Lower House, demanding the government clear out. This was part of Fini, Bossi, and Berlusconi’s new initiative against Prodi in the wake of vast Rightist victories in regional elections, as well as the consequence of uninterrupted bickering, disunity, and indecision within the Prodi coalition. The latest flare up was caused by the government’s decision to allow various ministers to march in the Gay Pride parade. Catholics within the government were outraged as the parade was set to embrace calls for rights of gay marriage, adoption, and even assisted fertility.
The Right was quick to expect a full assault on the Church’s control of public discourse on the family (an issue that had been debated since DICO was unveiled in February 2007), while the Left said it must support any demonstration calling for greater secularization and bans against discrimination. Leftist MP’s had even called for more rights for Chinese immigrants, after a number of them attacked police in Milan upon being ticketed for illegally unloading trucks in a public street.
Saturday morning, in Piazza Bologna, Piazza Vescovio, and Piazza Dalmazia (near Mussolini’s former residence at Villa Torlonia), were found fascist graffiti against the march (and gays as well): ‘Gays, Rome does not want you,’ ‘Italy needs children, not gays,’ ‘Gays, no rights for you,’ and the particularly nasty, ‘Gays to the ovens.’
The parade was more disputatious than had been Family Day and its counter demonstration in Piazza Navona. The paraders aggressively condemned the Church and the Pope. They rode on floats laden with men in drag, transsexuals, and nudity. They called for an end to discrimination against gays. Commentators noted that Italy was far behind other Western countries in its attitudes toward homosexuality and in addressing equal protection issues.
This time with a small group of Rightist Ultras, I witnessed only a few minutes of the parade. The group of Ultras met with a large group from Forza Nuova on Via Cavour. Aside from occasional slurs against gays, the meeting was mostly to complain against Prodi and the ‘rights seekers’ who were attempting, it was argued, ‘to hold Italy and its history, honor, and traditions hostage for their own benefit.’ The Left, they said, had, as usual, aligned itself against anything of value or tradition, anything Italian, in order to shame the country into ‘keeping up with some universally defined progress.’
The Ultras attacked the paraders within the terms of their general attack on liberalism and globalization. ‘Who were these people,’ asked Luca, a thirty-eight-year-old veteran of Tradizione Distinzione Roma who now was well respected in Padroni di Casa, ‘to make demands on the Pope? What had they done to be worthy of insulting a Roman institution? On whose behalf, and to whose benefit, did they expect Italy to change? If things were better for them in other parts of Europe, why not leave?’ he asked.
The other Ultras answered angrily, showing their disgust that Italy now had ‘minority’ issues. Luca spoke of ‘spineless weaklings who made demands without having made themselves worthy of demand.’ They complained bitterly that Italy had not been like this before the European Union. But now, it was changing life for the worse. Two things were especially interesting about their complaints: their continual questioning why policy makers were dismissing what Italians wanted; and their anger at the assumptions driving ‘minorities’ to demand ‘their rights.’
When I proposed to them that plurality is demonstrative of progress in liberal societies, Luca told me in response that ‘gli Ultras sono i veri subalterni’ (the Ultras are the true subalterns). ‘It seems that one can be anything in Italy except an Ultra. And you are telling me that these people bring more to Italy than us? We want Italy to be strong, virile, and proud but instead we get an Italy determined to be a cesspool,’ he said. Poetically, on the same day as the Gay Pride parade it was announced that soccer-related violence had fallen dramatically after Raciti’s death, showing the value of the crackdown on the Ultras. As already noted, attacks on police were down 93%, while violent encounters between fans were down 44%.303
Luca insisted upon driving me back to Monteverde as evening fell. While driving, he identified three crucial ‘political enemies’ of the Ultras: American-based popular culture, ‘which celebrated above all vulgar materialism and ignorance;’ the Italian State, ‘which, in the hands of the Left was intent on making Italy a melting-pot, diminishing the value of Italian culture and history at every turn;’ and the European Union, ‘which debilitated culture for the sake of a free market that demanded consumerism and inclusiveness from all.’ The EU would be center stage in the true bane of Ultra politics, immigration and the Roma.
Immigration and the Roma
Perspectives on Rome and Immigration
In November 2007, Massimo D’Alema, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, was in Turkey to demonstrate the Italian government’s support for that country’s entrance into the European Union. When asked in a press conference about his position on the issue, he did not use a cultural-historical argument. Instead, he chose multicu
lturalism as rationale for Turkey being a part of Europe. While others in Europe were debating Turkey’s cultural and historical connections to Europe, D’Alema chose to put the onus on Europe itself to be worthy of Turkey. As he put it, Turkey must be admitted, ‘out of a commitment to creating a Europe based on inclusion and tolerance.’
His words stung the ears of Curva Sud’s Ultras, for again, the idea of tolerance and inclusiveness were being wielded against those who saw in Europe something worth protecting from dilution. That same week, I walked in the neighborhood south of The Vatican called Borgo, but which the Ultras who live there call ‘Gregorio Settimo’. The area, like other established Roman neighborhoods, is a self-contained universe. It has a fresh market, wine bars, small restaurants, cafés, clothing stores for men, women, and children, pastry shops, gelato shops, banks, and insurance offices. Almost every corner is covered in Ultra graffiti and the area’s Ultras walk the streets with a sense of pride. Most of them know everyone, from the merchants to the men and boys standing in front of each café or mechanics shop. In two hours, one might only walk two blocks, as the Ultras stop and converse with their neighbors.
The neighborhood is also home to a recent addition, a kebab stand. Typically associated with Turks, kebab stands are opening throughout Rome. The owners of this particular stand are not Turks but Indians. The first time I encountered the stand with Ultras there was derision and a dismissive silence. The only comment made was that ‘a few years ago there were no kebab stands in Rome. Now they are everywhere.’ I asked if anyone had eaten kebab and they acted as if I had suggested cannibalism.
A few weeks later I received a call from Danillo, one of the dismissive Ultras. Danillo, a twenty-nine-year-old waiter in a restaurant near Campo dei Fiori, lives in Gregorio Settimo with his mother and father. His aunt lives in the same building several floors below. His girlfriend lives on the next block and they are usually inseparable. They met when she was a student in need of a Latin tutor. (Being in the same neighborhood both sets of parents knew of the other; thus, hers were aware that Danillo might help their daughter learn Latin.) Now they work together in her family’s small restaurant. She even occasionally attends games with him now that he is no longer affiliated with Fedayn but attends games in the Tevere Grandstand. According to Danillo, ‘the Curva is no place for women because it is dangerous.’ He often chastised me for taking my wife to games.
He was never a member of Fedayn because he didn’t live in the Quadraro neighborhood, but was close friends with many in that group, and thus stood behind their banner. Danillo is not a Fascist, per se, but is well versed in the history of Fascism, especially as it pertains to Rome. He is interesting for his proximity to Fedayn (a formerly Leftist group but now only mildly political) and for his less-than-zealous ideological commitment to Fascism. Like Federico of Antichi Valori, Danillo’s parents are extremely proud Romans, even going so far as to show me their modest collection of antique espresso cups adorned with images of Rome at the turn-of-the-century.
Danillo told me that he had eaten kebab from the stand after a recent game (as no restaurants were open at the hour on a Sunday night). He had enjoyed the kebab and said the people were friendly. He was quick to add, though, that this did not signal a change in his negative attitude toward the proliferation of kebab stands in Rome.
‘Rome,’ he said, ‘is opening up to foreigners because the government and the EU are forcing it to do so. [The Roman people] are left to lament the changes in their neighborhoods and an influx of people who neither speak our language nor take an interest in our culture. How do these people have the right to come here and do very little to be accepted,’ he asked, ‘and those who have been here for generations, who can trace their Roman heritage seven generations [as he could, his mother proudly told me] have no right to defend the form of life that we have created in that time?’ He went on to say that Rome was his city, not theirs. He would never dream of going to another country to set up shop. Such a move would be ‘the most vulgar [form] of materialism.’ I asked him what he feared in the presence of the Indians. ‘The eventual destruction of Roman culture,’ he said.
Danillo, like Luca and so many others, was exaggeratedly aware of the sanctity of Roman culture. He had been given a responsibility toward Rome as a birthright from his parents and family, but also from the Ultras. The most common mode of discussing Rome amongst the Ultras with whom I had the most contact was in terms of pride, protection, honor, and sacrifice. From Ultras of various ages and numbers of years of involvement with Curva Sud, as well as from various neighborhoods, I heard self-descriptions as ‘cavalieri’ (knights). Lorenzo of AS Roma Ultras explained that it comes from an old CUCS-era (1972–92) song that speaks about proud knights in defense of Rome’s honor. The Ultras seemed to have taken to heart this message and earnestly see themselves in these terms. Danillo made clear his commitment. ‘It would be an honor to die serving Rome, but I don’t give a damn about Italy,’ he said.
Regardless of the effect this kind of sentiment has on the Italian military, Danillo’s comment points to the ongoing predominance of campanilismo in the Italian worldview. In fact, it would be difficult to find anything more ‘Italian’ in that worldview than an extremely local, or at best regional, focus. Allum and Diamanti point out that the anti-Italian views of those involved in the Northern League are barely enough to unify that party across the regions of the north. Instead, there is the sense that, while Italy is bad for the people of the north, the Northern League might be too broadly focused to truly promote the best interests of all northern peoples.304
Although not to the same extreme, one even senses regionalism amongst the chapters of Forza Nuova. Despite a missive from Roberto Fiore, national leader of the party, proclaiming the solidarity of ‘Forzanovisti’ (members of the party) and explaining the lack of need, therefore, for regional or local chapter websites (as all news could be coordinated through the main Forza Nuova site), members have still created local websites devoted to their activities. These, such as the members of ‘Forza Nuova Roma,’ often use blog sites that operate free of charge and slightly under the radar of the party bosses.305 Even amongst the nationalists, then, there is a strong undercurrent of regionalism and localism.
Anthropological studies on prejudice against immigrants in Italy rarely present the justifications of natives in terms that would be coherent to those natives. Sniderman and Peri, for example, explain that refugees are struggling for acceptance in Italy because of ‘skinhead violence’ and the ‘extreme prejudice’ of marginalized Italians.306 They spend considerable time redefining ‘prejudice,’ taking it from a psychological model to one that incorporates the creation and dissemination of discourses of difference. They wanted to know, in the end, what made otherwise intelligent people succumb to the idea that immigrants are somehow different from them.307 In the end, the issue was more about intolerance than prejudice. Some Italians, they argue, were being made intolerant of others because they were manipulated to be so by the media and Far Right parties. Those parties had used manipulated statistics to fan flames of fear against immigrant crime and a specious argument against cultural dilution to rally honest Italians to their cause.308
Elsewhere, Jeffrey Cole studied the attitudes of Sicilians toward African ‘new immigrants’ in the 1990s. Like the Sniderman and Peri study, Cole views the intolerance of ‘new racists’ on the Far Right as evidence of ignorance and manipulation. However, he presents a more accurate model of Sicilian interaction with immigrants and immigration than do Sniderman and Peri, for he explains how attitudes change depending on place and economy — showing that bourgeois merchants and college students think most favorably about immigrants, both being influenced by ‘market rationality’.309 Unfortunately, neither of these studies leave space for attitudes toward immigration such as those of the Ultras.
The Roman Ultras I met showed no signs of being xenophobic. In fact, their justifications for desiring stability in cultural form showed
the emptiness of xenophobia as a concept. They had no fear of outsiders, others, or foreign cultural traditions. Their fear, instead, was that Rome was to become a cosmopolitan multicultural ‘guazzabuglio’ (mishmash). Even as a great number of the Ultras of Curva Sud could be assumed to be children of a previous generation of migrants, more than likely from the Italian south, there is, interestingly, no discursive awareness of the fact in their self-understandings. While the city was not an industrial center, as were Milan, Genoa, and Turin, there was enough money (in tourism, service employment and shop keeping) and cultural allure (in La Dolce Vita) to make Rome a viable option to Southern provincial life.310 Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Rome’s population swelled by one-third with migrants from around Lazio (the region of which Rome is capital) and other Southern regions.311
Nonetheless, the overwhelming cultural identifier for AS Roma’s Ultras is Rome and ‘being Roman.’ While there could be a process of ‘national invention’ here, whereby an artificial community is created through narratives that promote the cohesion of disparate groups,312 I suspect it is the ‘truth’ of Romanità that renders the ideology of Roman greatness and ‘the Rome of the Ultras’ nearly isomorphic — so much so that one’s pre-Roman genealogy is less relevant than one’s current commitment to Rome and Curva Sud. The ‘inventedness’ of memory (see Chapters Three, Four, and Five), or, its metaphorical and monumental form, often allows for omission and invisibility in specific areas (usually associated with some form of moralism — as in truth and reconciliation).313 Just as the Ultras discriminate between the various strata of Roman history, they often willingly ignore their personal sundry backgrounds.