by Mark Dyal
Romanità is a feeling, another mentalità to be sure, but it is also something material and recognizable in the physiology of the Ultras. These are often men of the hardest order, with muscles, tattoos, and extreme self-discipline, who will shed tears while gazing upon Rome from the Gianicolo Hill. As a caveat, however, I must say that having a deep Roman pedigree is extremely important to those who have it. The Ultra with the longest Roman genealogy I met, Danillo of Antichi Valori, boasted seven-generations, but only through his mother’s line. His father is a migrant from Campagna. Even so, Danillo stakes his claim to Romanness on his Romanità and years of service in Curva Sud, as he says, ‘per difendere l’onore di Roma’ (in defense of the honor of Rome).
With regard to the Ultras’ militarism, explained in Chapter Five, their actions ‘in defense of Rome’ are more determinant of Romanness than their respective backgrounds. To sacrifice and, potentially, suffer for Rome’s honor, is considered heroic, and, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, the conferring of ‘Roman’ status is of the highest seriousness. That being said, Ultras must demonstrate their willingness to ‘be an Ultra’ for an extended period before being honored thus.
The ‘Ultra’ honored with ‘Romanness’ was myself. My being American was an issue in that it gave my new status even more gravitas (seriousness, weight). But the Ultras used my Americanness to make points to me that might not otherwise ring true. One was their use of ‘melting pot’ to explain the distance between their Rome and the Rome of the rest of the modern world. With no melting pot ideology of their own, the Ultras wondered why the liberal world expected them to open their arms to anyone who wanted to set up shop in Rome. Their identification with Rome was something to be admired, they said. Their identification with Rome was their model for how other peoples should interact with their cities.
Luca (introduced above) and a group of sixteen Ultras at Padroni di Casa were dumbfounded when I explained that it was not part of being American to have strong connections to where we were born or lived. On their behalf (metaphorically), Luca asked, ‘come si puo vivere così, a testa in giù’ (how can one live like this, with one’s head down). For them, to live was a matter of pride; so much so that it seemed never to have occurred to them that others might not feel about their place of residence the way they do about Rome. Further, the idea of ‘hanging one’s head’ conjures images of shame, weakness, and defeat — the antithesis of what the Ultras’ form of life is about.
For them, the issue of immigrants had little to do with rejection of others through ignorance but of protecting something they cherish from diminution. Again, they wanted to know ‘how many immigrants came to Rome because of their undying passion for Rome and to become Roman.’ I relayed numerous stories about American students proudly displaying their ignorance of Rome, its history and topography, on the 8 tram from Trastevere. The Ultras were not surprised. ‘Trastevere is ruined. It’s no longer Roman but full of foreigners,’ I was told dismissively.
On other occasions I was also told what Trastevere was like as little as twenty years ago. Needless to say, their understanding of Trastevere, even if driven by nostalgia, mirrored their understanding of the rest of the city. Romans who still lived in the neighborhood suffered every day at the hands of unfeeling and mobbish tourists and immigrants, Daniele of Giovinezza said, as we walked the area on a summer evening. Again, with my being an American a focal point of conversation, he wanted me to ‘tell the world’ that the grandparents and elders who were the nobility of Roman society were now just victims of rowdy American students and vulgar immigrant merchants.
African Immigrants
The two types of immigration of most concern to the Ultras are the arrival of African illegal immigrants to Lampedusa and the legal immigration of Roma gypsies from Eastern Europe. While they are ambivalent about the Africans, they are downright hostile to the Roma. Despite having ample opportunities to witness Ultra hostilities to African immigrants, I saw none, aside from the instance described in the Introduction. Migrants from Africa were most commonly encountered in Rome as sidewalk salesmen of counterfeit purses, CDs, and DVDs. Perhaps because they tended to be seen in Rome’s historical center and not in other neighborhoods, the Ultras had little to say to them. That being said, they often wondered aloud why they had come to Rome. The only answer they knew of was ‘da fare soldi’ (to make money). To make money was the worst answer they could have come up with. For the Ultras ask of each and all the same that they ask of themselves — not to diminish ourselves by reducing life to a series of opportunities to make or spend money. This critique of life as a marketplace was clearly consistent with their critique of Calcio Moderno.
For all of the ambivalence of how the Ultras interacted with African immigration in Rome, there was little sympathy for those arriving in Lampedusa, an island off the southwestern coast of Sicily. From early Spring to late Fall, it was normal to read daily in the morning papers or to see on television that a boat or raft carrying Africans had made its way to Lampedusa. According to ANSA and Istat, 20,450 Africans made their way to Lampedusa in 2007. Through 9 October, 27,417 had arrived there in 2008 (since 1998, roughly 265,000 Africans had arrived in Italy by boat). Coming in from twenty-five to 450 at a time, the Africans were seen literally as a flood by the Ultras. And, with each arrival, the Left and Right politicians argued publicly about how to properly handle the situation. Predictably, the Left sought the more compassionate approach, saying that not only would denying the Africans entrance be inhumane, it would be illegal. In March 2007, Romano Prodi even went so far as to commend his government for having ‘an open-door policy on immigration.’ Immigrants, he explained, were ‘a true blessing for businesses, for less skilled workers and in helping care for the elderly and disabled.’
Even as it was illegal to deny asylum seekers the right to a hearing, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced that, while legal aliens were arriving in Italy and Europe in record numbers — 31,000 in Italy in 2005 alone — those applying for asylum had dropped to 15% of total arrivals.
The most extreme gesture in support of the Africans was reported by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, which covered the plans of Amani, an Italian nonprofit, to erect a monument in Lampedusa commemorating those Africans who died at sea attempting to illegally enter Italy. According to officials at Amani, the thousands of Africans who seek to reach Lampedusa and other European ports each year are ‘victims of unscrupulous human traffickers who pocket hundreds of euros to take them on rickety boats unfit for the journey.’
The Right rejected the economic and humanitarian discourses, choosing instead to focus upon the cultural and social effects of immigration. Jole Santeli of Forza Italia accused Prodi of ignoring the feelings of Italians on the issue. He explained that the presence of immigrants was causing tension in Italian cities, as even few immigrants give the impression that the country is changing beyond recognition. TNT Sofres, a French research institute, found that the majority of Italians feared immigration because of the cultural change it must entail. While they were less concerned about the economic impact of immigration, 50% of 4900 respondents saw immigration as a threat to the country’s cultural identity. According to the same survey, 75% saw illegal immigration as an important problem, 57% said that there were too many foreigners living in Italy, and 53% said failure to assimilate was the fault of the immigrants.
In response, Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, author of the Amato Decree (see Chapters Two and Three), said that it would be dangerous to put limits on immigrants. Thanks to an extremely low birthrate (1.23 children per woman), Italy’s population was in steady decline, and immigrants were an important source of labor. The real worry, he said, was ‘ideological prejudices’ against immigration, as had been witnessed in Holland, where the native population demanded that immigrants speak Dutch and show knowledge of Dutch culture and history. The Ultras were as incensed over these comments as they had been o
ver the Amato Decree.
‘How,’ I was asked by Giulio, a twenty-eight-year-old Monte Testaccio nightclub bartender and unaffiliated Ultra formerly of AS Roma Ultras, ‘could someone feel no unease about selling-out his culture and history in order to appease multinational businesses and mercenary foreigners who only want to exploit our country?’ According to Mabel Berezin, when exogenous threats to national or cultural identity arise, most people will turn to the State or to ‘law and order’ as allies against the xenos (stranger).314 The Ultras and others on the Right had no such ally in the Center-Left government of Romano Prodi. This was not only because of policy decisions that aimed at more fully connecting Italy to the global marketplace, but because the Prodi government readily adopted the neo-liberal language of immigration justification couched solely in terms of demographic decline and economic benefit.315
The European Union, Immigration, and the Roma
In the summer of 2007, the European Parliament consistently utilized a neoliberal understanding of the world as a marketplace, saying that it would be tantamount to suicide if Europe closed its doors to immigrants. Being chaired by the Italian Socialist Lili Gruber, the European Parliament urged the European Union to make immigration easier, rather than more difficult. Romano Prodi made similar comments soon after, arguing that ‘protectionism’ of any kind was suicidal. ‘Italy is not afraid to open its borders,’ he said.
Speaking about successful cuts to Italy’s 18.6-billion-euro trade deficit, Prodi explained that it was only due to embracing globalization that the country was re-establishing itself as an economic power. Being competitive was the biggest challenge and biggest responsibility, he said. This came weeks after the European Union lamented Italy’s budget deficits. With Stability Pact budget limits set at 3%, the European Parliament urged the Prodi government to make drastic cuts to services and to make the bureaucracy more efficient. Despite having debts totaling 105% of GDP, Italy was expected to have zero deficits by 2010. The only way to achieve that goal was by cutting expenditure on services and applying tax revenues to the debt.
It was particularly galling for the Rightist Ultras to hear Prodi and representatives of the European Union speaking to Italians about globalization and immigration. ‘It is the will of these forces,’ Fabio of Boys Roma told me, ‘that Africans and Muslims praying in mosques be the face of Italy.’ Of Prodi, little more was expected, despite his being Italian. ‘He is a Communist,’ he said, despite Prodi having been a former member of the Center-Left and Right Christian Democrats. The European Union, though, had become an enemy in ways that few expected. Many in Italy had expected the economic hardships of membership. As a country that had historically used currency devaluation to stem the onset of inflation, Italy was now at the mercy of the powerful French and German economies. Inflation figures were reported each evening on RAI’s TG1. 2.4% was the norm for late-2007 (a three-year high). Pasta and bread prices had increased 300% in one year.
While waiting for a table in a Monteverde pizzeria, Luca of Padroni di Casa and I glanced at the news on the pizzeria’s bar area TV. It was the week before Christmas, 2007. The only news, it seemed, was bad news. The Ultras were still on strike following the Circo Massimo protest (see Chapter Eight), Italian soldiers were dying in Afghanistan, and the Roma crimes were prompting popular cries for their deportation to Romania. At that, Luca sneered, ‘That will never happen.’ I agreed that it would be difficult, assuming they were Romanian in origin, given Romania’s member status in the European Union. ‘Exactly,’ he told me, ‘we have lost our sovereignty to these people.’ ‘Which people — the European Union or the Roma?’ I asked. ‘Well, the European Union,’ he laughed, ‘although I guess one could say both. Anyway, we have lost the right to defend ourselves.’
In 2007, four high-profile crimes committed by Roma captured the public’s attention. The first was the April 2007 murder of Vanessa Russo by two Roma prostitutes. The second was the murder of four Roma children by their parents near Livorno in August 2007. The third was the brutal October 2007 rape and murder by beating of Giovanna Reggiani by a Roma with a history of violent crime. And the fourth was the rape of a Roman woman in December 2007. The response to each was similar. Romans, not just Ultras, were outraged. They wanted the gypsies out of Rome and without delay.
The government’s responses were less uniform, with there being little it could do initially. There was no legal precedent for expelling the Roma, it was said, now that Romania, home country to most of the gypsies in Italy, was a member of the European Union. A hastily drawn decree after the Reggiani rape and murder was held up to the public as proof that the government was aware of public demands that something be done to rid the country of Roma. But, because the authors of the decree had also included measures to decrease crimes against homosexuals, President Napolitano refused to sign it into law. After the rape and knifing in December, a new version of the bill was drafted which allowed for the deportation of violent immigrants, even if they had come from European Union countries.
Walter Veltroni, then mayor of Rome (before leaving the post to form the American-style Democratic Party in 2008), addressed public outrage by claiming that ‘in the first seven months of 2007, 75% of arrests for murder, rape and robbery [had] been Romanian Roma.’ ‘Roma committed seventy-six murders in the last year and a half — a record which surpassed the forty-eight committed in a similar time-frame by Albanians a decade ago. In the same period, from January 2006 to June 2007,’ Veltroni explained, ‘almost half of rapes were committed by Roma. They also topped the statistics for people trafficking and forcing women and girls into prostitution — while they were second to Senegalese nationals for robberies.’ Police began sweeping campi nomadi (Roma camps) nationwide soon after. Arrests were made of Roma without proper identification or proven criminal records either in Romania or Italy.
On November 1, two days after Giovanna Reggiani had been found clinging to life in a ditch near a gypsy camp along the Tiber, six to eight men (and perhaps one woman) with metal bars, knives, and chains attacked a Roma camp near Tor Bella Monaca, a suburb on the eastern outskirts of Rome. The same camp had been the target of a Forza Nuova manifestation in October.
Even earlier there were raids against other Roma camps in Rome. On consecutive nights in late September 2007 young Italians attacked a camp near Ponte Mammolo with not only knives and metal bars but also Molotov cocktails. The camp was burned but no one was injured. One arrest was made.316 It was revealed by La Repubblica five months later that the arrested youth was an AS Roma Ultra. Raids of camps in Milan and Naples also occurred.
The extreme action of the raiders was condemned by the media, the government, and by charitable organizations. La Repubblica a Center-Left newspaper based in Rome, published a series of appeals for reason and tolerance as well as condemnations of hatred and violence. Representatives of Veltroni’s government expressed solidarity with the victims of the raids, saying that peace and tolerance was the true face of Rome, not violence and xenophobia. A Rifondazione Comunista party member, Massimiliano Smeriglio, was horrified that ‘racist Romans’ were attempting to eradicate from their communities ‘rom, migranti, lavavetri, e prostitute’ (Roma, migrants, squeegee men, and prostitutes).
An immigrant rights group called EveryOne said that, as usual, Roma were the victims of racism, while only one man had been guilty of murdering Reggiani. In December Linda Laura Sabbadini, the head of Istat, addressed the Global Forum on Gender Statistics. Speaking on the issue of Roma crime in Italy, she explained that the perception of Roma as criminals was due more to stereotype than fact. In fact, Roma only committed 10% of the rapes in Italy, she said. She failed to relate that number to their percentage of the population, however, which, according to Il Messaggero, a Center-Right Roman newspaper, was 0.3% in 2007.
Not only were the Ultras not impressed by the discourse of tolerance and peaceful coexistence; they were, in some cases, openly committed to ridding their communities of Roma
, prostitutes, squeegee men, and migrant workers, as Smeriglio had said. From the perspective of the Ultras, it is difficult to interpret the responses to Roma crime as being motivated by prejudice, xenophobia, or racism. They desired to maintain strong connections with their communities, with their narrowly defined altruistic co-identifiers. A failure to do so seemed a form of self-abasement in the name of a multiculturalism that could promise them nothing but the diminishment of their form of life.
Conclusion
AS Roma’s Ultras are a political phenomenon. Within the Curva, the themes and scenes of their aesthetic displays often invoke the Fascist and ancient past of Rome. Beyond the Curva, they are sometimes involved with the leading neo-Fascist parties in Italy. Even when unaligned with these parties, however, the Ultras make use of a critique of the contemporary world that puts them at odds with the political issues of neoliberal globalization as well as the concurrent morality of pluralism and inclusion that globalization promotes.
In this chapter, I demonstrated that the Ultras are politically active. More importantly, I explained that these activities are buttressed by a worldview that links Romanità with protectionism, a will to violence, and a vision of society based upon the narrow confines of their altruism.
The deep affection for Rome carried by AS Roma’s Ultras links them with Fascism and the uses to which it put Romanità. According to members of both Ultra groups and neo-Fascist parties, it is the former that promote a use of Romanità in the present. As such, the political concerns and actions of the Ultras are given meaning by the devotion to Rome. Their protest against MTV, their presence at Family Day, and their opposition to Rome’s Gay Pride parade each showed a concern more for the modernization of Rome in neoliberal terms than an aversion to the constituents whose rights were being advanced.