In September 2016, the pay channel Sky Sport interrupted its collaboration with football analyst Paolo Di Canio, because his fascist tattoo was visible. ‘DUX’ is tattooed on the right arm of the former attacker in Roman letters: the Latin variant of ‘Duce’ (leader), the honorary title with which Mussolini addressed himself.
Di Canio’s sympathy for far-right ideas has been known for years. For example, in 2005 in Livorno, as captain of Lazio, Di Canio greeted the supporters who had traveled from Rome with an outstretched arm, the infamous fascist salute. Di Canio receives a four-month suspension for the tattoo on TV. After that, everyone has long forgotten the incident.
His former club Lazio, which hosts Feyenoord in the Champions League on Tuesday evening, has a hard core with a long history of racist and anti-Semitic songs and slogans. Together with the supporters of Hellas Verona, Lazio’s ultras are known as the most far-right in all of Italy. They sometimes also openly fraternize with neo-fascists. In June 2020, extreme fans of Lazio, but also of AS Roma, protested together with members of the neo-fascist party Forza Nuova at the Circus Maximus in Rome against the government’s anti-corona measures. Journalists were not welcome and, like the security forces, were pelted with bottles, among other things.
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Hateful slogans
Where does this come from? The Roma fans count many Italian Jews in their ranks, also simply because the Roma fans are much more numerous, explains former radio journalist and Lazio supporter Marino Sinibaldi. “AS Roma was created from the merger of a number of neighborhood teams in Rome, and took all those supporters on board the new club. Lazio originally comes from the north of Rome, where traditionally right-wing voters are more likely to vote.”
In football stadiums, supporters rebel against their opponent, and against anyone who is slightly different. Sinibaldi: “And for centuries the Jew in Rome was the only one who was ‘different’. There were hardly any blacks and no Protestants. The Jew, and today also the black, embody The Other par excellence.”
Lazio certainly does not have a monopoly on hateful slogans, wrote the Italian-Jewish journalist and football fan Davide Lerner after the riot with the Anne Frank stickers, in an op-ed for the progressive Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “The vast majority of ultras in Italy belong to the far-right camp,” says Lerner on the phone from New York. “That applies to the hard core of Lazio, but also to those of AS Roma, Inter and Juventus. Some Lazio fans are calling Roma fans ‘Jews’, but some of Inter Milan’s ultras – who are allied with Lazio’s hard core – are also shouting ‘Rossoneri ebrei‘ and therefore call the AC Milan fans ‘Jews’.”
A Jewish supporter of AS Roma, who prefers not to use his name due to the tensions surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas NRC wants, however, finds the racism towards black players in the stadium much more striking. He has not yet noticed anti-Semitism in the Olympic Stadium itself. “I often hear jungle noises directed at black players, as well as insults against the Roma and Sinti people.”
Certainly not the entire hard core of a club is racist and fascist, but many others hardly take it seriously or happily participate. The Roma supporter resents it so much that he doubts whether an Italian football stadium is still a place to visit with children.
The ultras regularly downplay their own racism, as if this were simply part of football. For example, in 2019, Inter’s ultras sent a letter to their own player, Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku, to explain to him that the racist attack by Cagliari supporters would not have been real racism. “Lukaku, you have to understand that in Italy we do certain things to help the team and to get on the nerves of the opponents. Not out of racism, but to make them fail.” And Luca Castellini, leader of the infamous hard core of Hellas Verona and board member of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova, once described the racist behavior of the supporters towards the black Italian player Mario Balotelli as “folklore”.
However, in Italy there are penalties – from fines to prison sentences – for statements or actions that incite violence and discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity or nationality. Expressions of sympathy for Nazi fascism are also prohibited. But Italian stadiums appear to be lawless zones where this ban often does not apply. A stadium ban is imposed on supporters who misbehave, but it is usually complex to find guilty individuals in such a large group.
Blackmail by supporters
The club itself can also be punished for the misconduct of its supporters, with a fine or the forced closure of part of the stadium. But that no longer happens automatically, after it became apparent that the hard core used the measure to blackmail their own club board. In return for “good behavior” in the stands, the ultras demanded lower ticket prices and other benefits. It happened to Juventus, which filed a complaint against its own supporters.
It is also possible to stop a match, but it actually rarely happens. And fines for racism – such as the 20,000 euros that Lazio once paid for racism towards Balotelli – hardly make an impression on modern football clubs, which are multi-million dollar companies. The racism against Lukaku, who now plays for AS Roma, not only continued after the incident with Cagliari, earlier this year the Belgian himself received a red card because he had made a disapproving gesture to racist supporters after a goal.
The Jewish supporter of AS Roma therefore considers education, especially among the young generation of supporters, to be at least as important as sanctions. Radio journalist Marino Sinibaldi agrees with this. “Young supporters nowadays form their identity exclusively around their own club. Today they lack other social experiences, such as studies, a political movement, or club life.”
If the identification with your club becomes so all-encompassing, you can no longer accept the other person, and anyone who is slightly different. “Other people’s defeat is the source of your happiness. That’s how it works in sports,” says Sinibaldi. “But it becomes downright dangerous if such a view also seeps into real life.”
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