Rome (AFP)

Lazio, club of fachos? To fight against a deeply rooted stereotype that makes the Roman team a uniformly right-wing club, groups of supporters have organized themselves and defend the possibility of a "laziale and anti-fascist" identity.

The emblematic eagle of Lazio that breaks the beam, symbol of the fascist party of Mussolini, under the slogan "Love Lazio, Fight Fascism": it is one of the stickers, central element of the culture Ultras, distributed free by the group "Laziale e Antifascista" with mission to cover others, racist, anti-Semitic or fascist.

Created in 2011, "Laziale e Antifascista" (LAF) aims to "destroy the stereotype of the fascist laziale in Italy and in the world", wrote to AFP in writing one of the administrators of the Facebook page of the collective who asked anonymity, the group does not wish to be "represented by a person".

LAF claims several thousand supporters, several hundred active members, and says it pursues a twofold objective: "to erase from the name of Lazio any infamous political label" and "to prevent neo-fascist movements from continuing to use the North turn to make proselytism and indoctrinate young people who had entered the stadium only to support Lazio ".

But the mission is not simple in a heavy context, which sees the Roman club regularly sanctioned for the political excesses of some of its supporters.

- arms extended -

Thursday, at the reception of Celtic Glasgow in the Europa League, a meeting for which exceptional security measures were taken, the Curva Nord of the Olympic Stadium will be closed, UEFA having punished the fascist greetings noticed during the match against Rennes .

In the first leg in Scotland, Roman fans once again had their arms outstretched in the city center and were greeted at the stadium by a banner of Celtic fans representing Mussolini hanging from their feet next to the message "Follow your Leader".

In April in Milan, Roman supporters had paid tribute to the dictator with a banner "Honor to Benito Mussolini" deployed Piazzale Loreto, where his body was exposed and then hanging upside down in 1945. The banner was signed " IRR "as Irriducibili, the main group Ultra of Lazio.

"The North Curva has been under the heirs of the Irriducibili for 30 years and they conquered it with the help of organized crime at the expense of the Eagles Supporters", explains the head of LAF, in reference to the little politicized group that has dominated the shift from the late 1970s to the 1980s.

In the Irriducibili, "if we talk about activists who are really active politically, we talk in dozens, it's not even a hundred," explained in 2017 to AFP Sebastien Louis, sociologist specialist in radical support in Europe.

But the weight of this fringe is enough to erase widely from the collective memory everything that in the history of Lazio precisely removes fascism, including its refusal to participate in the merger of different Roman clubs desired by Mussolini and resulting in the birth of AS Rome in 1927.

- threat -

For their part, the antifascists are trying to make live another image, with the support of supporters of other clubs, like the evening organized Wednesday in Rome by fans of Celtic and the group Laziali di Sinistra (Laziale left, ed) in a social center of the capital.

"Among us are active communists, anarchists, socialists, social democrats, liberals and others who do not care, it is not the political ideology that counts but how we live actively his anti-fascism ", details the head of LAF.

But can they make that voice heard at the stadium? "Several groups are present at the Olimpico, in different sectors, but for the moment without signs of recognition", he admits, mentioning "continual threats".

"But it shows that what we do is useful and problematic for them, and we oppose proselytism in the stadium, which is the main instrument of support for Roman neo-fascist parties," he says.

A phenomenon that would not be limited to Rome, since according to him "the vast majority of Italian turns is in the hands of neo-fascist groups". The incidents of the weekend in Verona around Mario Balotelli are an illustration.

© 2019 AFP