Giovanni Francesio sums the most important of his book "Tifare contro" over four decades Ultras-culture in Italy in the subtitle: "Una storia degli ultras italiani" - "A History of Italian ultras." One, not the story, Francesio makes no claim to the absolute truth or universal solutions - but he insists, adding to the discussion, a valid vote, that of Curva itself And that is why it has become a much-needed book: For decades there was a published opinion, the hard core of the Italian "Tifo" exclusively from interventions by sociologists, politicians, journalists, police superiors and psychologists who have never seen in their lives from the inside curve and in turn, attributed to an audience that was probably not even in a stadium. And then moved the discussion of the phenomenon of "Ultra" has always been on a meta-level from the actual subject of largely detached and sold only as an analytical speculation. Therefore, the repeated as often as false platitudes come from "violent criminals who have nothing to do with football," which are drawn from the "ground-level social strata of society." And then logs Francesio who has spent most of his life in Italy turns to speak:
"For many years I was an Ultras. Inside the stadium, in the curve, I always felt comfortable. But outside of the curve, no one had the slightest idea of what makes up this world is really important for me so. I wrote this book because I did not any longer. "
Sure he has not endured Francesio has not tapped anyone, nor is he a regular criminal who unloads his pent-up aggression in the marginalized life of excessive violence. Nevertheless, he is Ultrà. Something can not vote in yet so clear picture of the child-devouring rowdy hordes that any Given Sunday invading Italian soccer stadiums. In this respect, although Francesios book appeared just at the right time, 2008, after the death of the policeman Raciti during the Sicilian derby and shooting death of the Lazio fan Gabriele Sandri . Not at all, it is but a cheap attempt to jump on the mass subject. It is clear that the author of the document the history of Italian ultras the serious episodes of the year 2007 only as a preliminary culmination of four decades of continuous development and sees here an author wishes to speak, who is disgusted by the actions of the parties and the helpless unsuspecting public, a media debate on an aspect of society, they do not even want to watch closely. And with Francesini logs for once someone who was there who can tell us the inner workings of the Curve and its own dynamics, the fascination and the dangers - without sensationalism, but it is stereotypical thinking without verkürzendes. Someone to be both the enthusiasm decreases, as well as the critical distance from the mistakes that led to the current sorry state of Italian fan culture.
"I was born in 1970. The first time I went to the stadium in 1976. I've never stopped. For many years I was an Ultras. For this I went to away games thousands of miles, but I was involved in clashes with rival fans and police forces, but I escaped, I was scared, but may also have the only community feelings of my life, celebrate with others and to suffer me feel part of a 'true and free' world, may also feel that I am still belong. "
Who now themselves Ultras or Kurvenfan is disgusted by the indifference of commonplaces of Journaille, the blatant lies of the police forces, the populist reflexes of the political caste and elitist reflections of the university intelligentsia us and look forward to an expansive sweeping blow from the Curva, which will probably disappoint. Francesio's Ultras and the passion for the "old curve" breathes from each of its lines. So he sits down but far from uncritical dealing with the ultras and can be black and white paintings, this time vice-versa, carried away. "Tifare Contro" describes, usually by way of particularly dramatic events, the dynamics of the Ultras movement of the different generations that brought us to the point where we now stand: disintegration of the Ultras groupings, repression, more color looser curves and an ever armseligeres spectacle in Italian stadiums. And just as angry and emotional, as the complete ignorance of large parts of society, the propoganda press criticized unorganized violence to police horny troops and acting stupid stadium owner, he is relentlessly deal with one's own motion:
"To have never severed yourself from the mysticism of violence. Have not cut the ground in which swam the pure criminals, psychopaths, idiots. Never structured design in their own center to have antibodies, have never openly stated that the "honorable struggle" is not viable crazy mindedness towards the pure violence. "
Francesio begins his journey through four decades of history the ultras apparently related to the birth of the movement, the birth of the historical groups such as the "Fossa di Leoni", even if he proves on the basis of press reports that violence at football games was an invention of the ultras not and clashes with first dead already decades before inserting. Then he accompanied the changes and exit out of the curves over the generations to his discourse in the current situation, with resolutions of the most influential groups of the superheated spiral of violence, the mono-thematic call for new repressions as a panacea and the deaths of 2007 . He draws a line from the left-wing culture of the 60s and 70s who are practicing in the stadium a place of meeting, and for an open counter-culture won over the 80s and 90s, in which political orientations changed and increasingly influence won and the police the role of the enemy, took up the present day, in the different curves represent economic interests that are far removed from the actual Ultrà Code.
The author tells of the beginning and the end of the glorious Milanese "Fossa di Leoni", the "ribbons for" of Turin, the birth of the Ultras culture of the youth protests against a perceived as a fascist state. He talks about the politicization of the curves and the intricacies of the "Autonomous Brigate Livornesi" or "Brigate Gialloblu Verona" or the infiltration of the Lazio-curve by neo-fascists or nascent racism . We learn from the first fatality of the Ultras culture in Roman Derby in 1979, when a misguided 18-year-old fires under the applause of his friends befeuernden several anti-hail rockets into the north end, Vincenzo Paparelli there until it hits the face. We learn the background of deaths, such as the 14-year-old Andrea Vitone, the inflamed in 1982 in a train compartment suffocated by a torch. Marco Fonghessi who is stabbed to death after a game winner against Cremonese 1984 or by Stefano Furlan, who was bludgeoned in the same year by a police baton to death. Paolo Caroli, which burns on the way home from Pisa in a Roma ultras set fire to railway wagons. Reno Fillippini, Antonio de Falchi, Vincenzo Spagnolo, and all the other ultras and police officers who have left the battle on the track. And only in the rarest cases in "honorable combat".
"If you do not want to behave like animals, listen to it, treat it as such." (Lord Justice Taylor Report)
It Francesini denounces again the blindness with which the Ultras are running even in their own destruction, as the fascination of the debate have succumbed to such decoupled to violence increasingly has devalued from meaning-giving context and for its own sake, for free adrenaline has. On the basis of deaths and massive destruction, he outlines how the public image of the ultras and their own marginalization they maneuvered ever in a situation where they face resistance not lobby or colleagues unconstitutional and absurd repressions how Ultrà of anti-oppressive aspect of a free counterculture has moved into the area from all sides of the hated and disregarded "hooligans". And as ultras have been missing any chance to remove a type of "self cleaning", the criminals and pure psychopaths from among themselves, determine the image of the ultras in public, even if - or precisely because - they represent only a minority.
"The Italian government is to be to hit an enemy they never wanted to learn it."
This criticism stems but now just the concept of an ultras of the curve is known and loved, who lived by the rules and not only analyzes that Ultras is a youth movement at a crossroads, but regret the end of Ultras just personally deeply would. Because of what may just be Ultrà: pursue a place where young people according to their own rules of their own passion and where they can live relatively free of emotions and ideals. A space that is covered by its own value system and that can be customized according to your wishes. Consequently, denounces Francesio not the violence of "confrontation" in themselves, but their excesses, the use of knives and other weapons, the mindless devastation of railway wagons, attacks against innocent "normal fans", attacks in the majority. And this is where the dialogue opens: Ultras are not than what it describes, but they are also not that what they describe as yourself.
"With all its stains, its too serious debt, the ultras one of the few juvenile mass movements of recent years."
And is not "Tifare Contro" the work of a Nestbeschmutzers. I emphasiere the aspect of self-criticism in Francesios works only because the other publications in the Curva itself mostly just missing as well as on the media side, some kind of serious discussion of the phenomenon ultras. If we are right now two hostile and no dialogue ready stock look, which each in their own claim to absolute truth and their own wagons (which is largely in myths and dogmas, and not based on reality), then does a book like this very well . Because, of course, bear the largest share of the escalated situation by Francesio gerückten at the center of factors: a sensationalist press, which offers over without any knowledge of the subject, in ever more spectacular Civil War reporting. Police forces, whose own interest in violence is not even so hidden (and the examples are placed in the well researched and indeed frightening). Intellectuals who legitimize erroneous classifications and unquestioned Anahmen a brutal repression, which in turn exacerbates the problem only, and not least the incredible state of Italian stadiums (very nice, the background to the case of Raciti) and the pathetically amateurish organization of those for the "public order and security "should be in charge (the behavior of the police forces during the Romans' derby del bambino morto" ("Derby of the dead child") is selected with stupid inadequately described).
Francesio writes a history of Italian ultras, his own. He researches, he summarizes and reflects it. And he does not look for simple solutions to complex problems - like something ends, we see precisely. But he finally brings the voice of the Curve in the public discourse that much has been fired for too long by protagonists who insisted on not knowing each other that their lowest, but the more firmly to their beliefs. In this respect, "Tifare contro" the natural counterpart to the excellent "ACAB" by Bonini - while the latter, the cycle of violence illuminated from inside the police force out, makes use Francesini in "Tifare contro" of the gaze of the curve itself, taken together, both books form a fairly clear picture of what went wrong in Italy and going wrong. Both simple without debt write-ups, both by making the phenomenon in the context of other societal changes, and both by Italian state a general problem in the "public policy" that has long been hushed respective self-interest and simply swept under the carpet. A book is polarizing because it is just liberated from the typical stereotypical thinking and the dynamics of the development looks a whole, the failure of both sides. And that's why it opened a dialogue, a dialogue that would in a truly democratic society, at least after the first death to be carried out, the two sides are close but so far consistently.
"Tifare contro" that its title from the typical Italian culture of the "vertical heads against someone" borrowed, is an exciting book to read, an emotional reckoning with 4 decades of youth movement, a personal - and personally written - refurbishment of both the positive factors as and the contradictions within the Ultras movement. The examples described are exciting to read in itself, unpretentious develop written, but its full fascination only because in the context of social changes and developments are made in the football itself, which manifest themselves in the ongoing tightening of the overall spiral of violence. It is clear that there is a logically comprehensible way of first use of blades, the first death by a shot from the curve rockets up to the fight against the mobile police force, with its serious consequences, a path that is best in the younger incorporate Italian history in other areas of society can be. One way to analyze to date neither sociologists nor safety officer and above all, no journalist bothered. In Italy, which does not always the panacea is to create symbolic laws and then to make sure that scandals disappear as quickly as possible from public view - whether he was dead just a Ultras or a "Celere". And suddenly the two deaths in 2007 are no longer startling and frightening individual cases that fall into a tranquil middle-class normalcy, but expectable and consistent events of a hushed reality for decades.
"'Fighting'. That's what we did for 40 years, is fighting. Never avoided, limited, curbed. No. We fought. And lost. "
Giovanni Francesio - Tifare contro. Una storia degli ultras italiani.
Pag 206 16,00 € - Sperling (del presente Radici) Copper & 2008
EAN 9788820045050
Buy: Of course, a book that * no one in Germany, it translates so well no one . I always refer my Italian books at La Feltrinelli.
Addendum: "Tifare Contro. A history of Italian ultras "can be a price of 9.90 EUR on German order directly from the publisher! you can give me also a mail to info [squiggle] AltraVita [dot] com Send. Discounts for groups are available, also asks the simple from the publisher or via email to me. Perhaps your group has been ordered in November, but also copies that you can buy in the clubrooms. If not, sucks your capo!
Related:
Duleep Allirajah: The policing of fans is more insidious now.
Marc O'Brian: The problem of violence.
Reviews:
Secolo XIX (claudiopaglieri.com)
Il Manifesto
Quasi Rete
Ivo Germano
La Gazzetta dello Sport
