January 29 – Mussolini’s Fave Team

MOST football clubs would probably rather not have a fascist dictator as their most famous all-time fan, but then Lazio isn’t most football clubs.

SS Lazio are firmly on the right of the political spectrum, the natural choice for any Romans with fascist tendencies. Paulo Di Canio is Lazio through and through having been born and bred in Rome and was initiated into the Lazio Ultras as a boy. He is more of a right winger than David Beckham and has even praised Benito Mussolini as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” who was “deeply misunderstood”. He even has “Dux”, the Latin equivalent of Mussolini’s moniker Il Duce tattooed on his arm.

When he moved back to Lazio in 2004 Di Canio soon got himself in hot water when he began celebrating wins for the team with a Nazi salute towards the club’s fans. The Fifa suits were soon alerted to his actions and, from deep within their hollowed-out volcano lair, they issued a £7,000 fine and a one-game ban for the striker who, undeterred insisted “I am a fascist, not a racist”.

Today in 2006 it became apparent Di Canio was a product of the problem in Italian football rather than the cause of it when swastikas were hung at Rome’s Olympic stadium during Roma’s game against Livorno. Walter Veltroni, then the Mayor of Rome was so shocked he decided action was needed. He said: “The word ‘game’ and swastika have no place together.”

Veltroni’s idea was to summon the entire squads of both AS Roma and SS Lazio to meet and listen to the stories of Italians who had survived the Nazi death camps. The mayor said he wanted to give players and officials “a chance to learn of the gravity of what happened directly, in the words of those who endured the hell of the Shoah”.

Council officials told The Guardian newspaper how Alberto Sed, a 77-year-old survivor of Auschwitz and lifelong Roma supporter, broke down as he read out a letter he had written to the club as a young man. Mr Sed, who was sent to Auschwitz under the anti-semitic laws passed by Italy’s fascist regime, was reported to have turned to the Roma captain and said: “Totti, before they deported me, at the age of 15, I was smarter with the ball than you.”

Another told footballers that it was irrelevant that only a minority of far-right activists was involved. “There are [only] 50 cretins in the stadium?” Piero Terracina was quoted as asking the players and officials. “Nazism also started with 50 cretins.”

It seems that Mr Veltroni may have a tough job in changing attitudes when some of the country’s highest-placed officials seem to think Nazi salutes and swastikas are nothing more than hijinx.

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi said Di Canio is “an exhibitionist but a good lad” and his salute “did not have any significance”.

Two MPs loyal to Berlusconi proposed a collection to pay Di Canio’s fine. The MPs were both members of the “post-fascist” National Alliance, the second-largest party in Mr Berlusconi’s rightwing coalition. Among those who endorsed the whipround was Daniela Fini, the wife of the National Alliance leader, Gianfranco Fini, who was Mr Berlusconi’s deputy and foreign minister. Ms Fini said the collection for Di Canio would be “an act of solidarity”. As Boney M didn’t quite sing, oh those crazy Italians.

Have a look at the clip below to see Di Canio being embraced by the extreme right section of the Lazio crowd who gather in the Curva Nord stand and who, until recently, displayed a delightful banner taunting their traditionally more liberal Roma counterparts which read: “Team of Blacks, Crowd of Jews”. Charming.