Taliesin said:
What's stunned me about the italian scene though is that no one seemed to care much
Oh, no, they do care.
In fact, they care enough to try their best to keep the pseudo-hooligans thing going for as long and as steady as possible. It is a known fact that most teams do not really have fans going to see any match anymore: all the people crowding the stadiums on both sides are somehow supported and encouraged by the clubs themselves (and I don't mean the players, of course) to come to the match and stick around afterwards. The sticking around part also has a threatening function: every so often, the clubs send supposedly "crazed" hooligans to beat up players of the opposing team or - even more often -
their own, when they're guilty of playing lazily or being distracted by activities that have little to do with training for the next match. Quite obviously, the people who are recruited to perform this kind of tasks have an inclination to violence, that is however merely
employed by the system of powerful soccer teams, so it's not as if they're
drawn to soccer due to inherent connections between supporting in sports and aggressive behavior. Also rather obviously, organized groups with the purpose of instigating and promoting violence have a fascination - and even a need - for symbols that can be traced back to a history of aggressive (mis)use.
There are probably two main reasons why blatant fascist undertones are not crushed by the long arm of the law. First and most important, some of the clubs are way too powerful to be told much at all. For all purposes, they are akin to a criminal organization operating outside of the law and according to rules the State very rarely meddles with: while this is not due to them carrying weapons and killing meddlers, the amount of money circulating in this sub-culture is by far one of the largest sources of income for both the clubs and - indirectly - the State. They wield enough economical power to be allowed to "do their thing" without interference, unless somebody dies. We still don't know what happens if the violent crime is as trivial as a mere kidnapping, but stay tuned for an answer in the coming hours!
The second reason is more subtle, and the result of a (mostly) not very conscious choice on the part of post-World War II culture in Italy. While at first everyone kept clamoring to come down hard on each and every reference to the fascist regime - and very strict rules were introduced to this purpose - later on it seemed wiser to allow innocuous or straight-out ridiculous propaganda to survive in the underwood of some groups and cultures. I imagine that the reasoning behind this could be seen as something like this: total annihilation of extreme nationalism is next to impossible, and we're not even sure that a vibrant patriotic reaction on the part of the population might not come in handy at some point in the future. If we keep showing the citizens a nihilistic side that implies this country is a free-for-all shopping mall of unconnected elements of tradition and culture, the unity of the State could easily be compromised by groups who call for a disaggregation of it to serve the autonomy of this or that minority. On the other hand, by giving some old farts and a few young hotheads an outlet in the shape of a now harmless cultural fad from the twenties, we can keep a finger on the pulse of nationalism in the country.
It seems to me that this - more or less overt - decision has been working fine so far: despite widespread ignorance about the events that took place during the last century (down to almost complete oblivion of the
real reasons why the fascist regime was a dictatorship, which have nothing to do with rhetoric speeches or wars or military parades), no political party with a program or symbols directly inspired by Fascism has ever obtained a significant support on election day. On the other hand, parties with straightforward references to Communism consistently receive (put together) 11-12% of the votes.
In this, I believe Italy is quite different from Germany. Then again, after WW II Italy was more or less left alone to be a country of its own, whereas in Germany the public opinion was forced to reject the Nazis at gun-point, with no room for ifs and buts for decades. And no, I'm definitely not saying I'd approve of reconsidering either Nazism or Fascism with a dose of ifs and buts, but for both the rabid idiots who would and the historians and scholars who don't like to be forced to express a theory in terms of black/white and added token reminders that
this was bad, mmmk kids? it could serve a practical purpose.
As for the players, we certainly have a few of them who are actually infatuated with fascist ideas themselves. It's not hard to see why: they come from the same pond as the "fans" and breathe in that kind of trite shit day in and day out. Then you have to consider that - while a modicum of intellect is necessary in almost any human activity - they're not really chosen because of their outstanding mind skills or enlightened world view, and I hope not to sound too cynical if I confess that it is my strong belief that you can pick eleven individuals from any country in the universe and almost universally find your hands full with nine, if not ten imbeciles.
My point in an earlier post was that generalizations are useful when you have a reliable sample. Sports fans do not have reliable samples for their generalizations, in the same way that people trying to assess the characteristics of a foreign population based on the features of its
immigrants don't have a reliable sample either. Such is the basis of (small scale, ok) racism. To be perfectly honest, those who are "in the know" enough to be aware of the fact that the Italian catcher is an abysmal example of a fascist, racist, and altogether retarded cunt, either do not care because approve of his ideas due to an inclination to worship the ground he trods on, or actively despise him for his stupidity. The point I'm trying to make here is that you never get to hear of the many who'd happily kick his World Cup-winning butt, because I'm sure the news in Germany give plenty of room to the worship of famous soccer players, and very little to random opinions from Italy.
I'm still inclined to believe that all the countries where soccer is the be-all-end-all of sports show the same attitude, quirks, and differences amongst fans and non-fans: for instance, my heart goes out to all the French who smiled with delight at the misfortune of Zidane, a player who's known for his sudden, unmotivated, and uncontrollable bursts of rage.
