Fan Activism, Protest and Politics: Ultras in Post-Socialist Croatia

Fan Activism, Protest and Politics

In what sense can organized football fans be understood as political actors or participants in social movements? How do fan struggles link to wider social and political transformations? And what methodological dilemmas arise when researching fan activism? Fan Activism, Protest and Politics seeks ethnographic answers to these questions in a context – Zagreb, Croatia – shaped by the recent Yugoslav wars, nation-­state building, post-­ socialist ‘transition’ and EU accession. Through in-­depth ethnography following the everyday subcultural practices of a left-­wing fan group, NK Zagreb’s White Angels, alongside terrace observations and interviews conducted with members of GNK Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys, this book details fans’ interactions with the police, club management, state authorities and other fan groups. Themes ranging from politics, socialization, masculinity, sexuality, violence and fan authenticity are examined. In moving between two groups, the book explores methodological issues of wider relevance to researchers using ethnographic methods. This is important reading for students and researchers alike in the fields of football studies, regional studies of the former Yugoslavia and post-­ socialism, political sociology and social movements, and studies of masculinity, gender and sexuality. A useful resource for scholars writing about social movements and protest, or post-­socialist subcultural scenes in south-­ east Europe, the book is also a fascinating read for policymakers interested in better understanding the contemporary (geo)political situation in the region. Andrew Hodges is a social anthropologist working at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany. His main research interests include the anthropology and sociology of football fandom, minority language activism, and the politics of knowledge production. He has written extensively about left and progressive fan initiatives in Zagreb, Croatia, and about Croatian minority activist networks in Serbia, analysing them both as social movements.

Critical Research in Football Series Editor Pete Millward Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Editorial Board Jamie Cleland, University of Southern Australia Dan Parnell, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Stacey Pope, Durham University, UK Paul Widdop, Leeds Beckett University, UK

The Critical Research in Football book series was launched in 2017 to showcase the inter- and multi-­disciplinary breadth of debate relating to ‘football’. The series defines ‘football’ as broader than association football, with research on rugby, Gaelic and gridiron codes also featured. Including monographs, edited collections, short books and textbooks, books in the series are written and/or edited by leading experts in the field whilst consciously also affording space to emerging voices in the area, and are designed to appeal to students, postgraduate students and scholars who are interested in the range of disciplines in which critical research in football connects. The series is published in association with the Football Collective, www.footballcollective.org.uk.

Available in this series Fan Activism, Protest and Politics Ultras in Post-­S ocialist Croatia Andrew Hodges

www.routledge.com/sport/series/CFSFC

Fan Activism, Protest and Politics

Ultras in Post-­S ocialist Croatia

Andrew Hodges

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Andrew Hodges The right of Andrew Hodges to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-6022-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-11886-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



List of figures Acknowledgements



Introduction: football fandom in the European semi-­periphery

vi vii

1

1 Football fandom and post-­socialist transformation in Zagreb, Croatia: a historical sociology

18

2 Ethnography: positionality, approach, methods

41

3 Everyday fandom in Zagreb

64

4 Police practices and repression

91

5 Political ideologies and the fan movement

102

6 Gender, sexuality and violence

117

7 Banter, urban–rural hierarchies and political correctness

135

8 Fan authenticity and international networks

149



Conclusion: the ‘New Europe’ in crisis? 

163



Index

168

Figures

0.1

A map of Zagreb, including several important neighbourhoods, and the locations of the two football grounds: Maksimir (GNK Dinamo) and Kranjčevićeva (NK Zagreb) 1.1 The main text reads: ‘On 28 May 1991 at NK Zagreb’s stadium, the first parade of units of the Croatian National Guard, the beginnings of the Croatian Army, took place’ 1.2 Memorial to BBB who died during the ‘Homeland War’ (1991–1995) 3.1 Trnsko neighbourhood, Novi Zagreb 3.2 BBB mural at local council building, Trnsko 3.3 BBB ‘Homeland War’ mural 3.4 The ‘oppositional patriotic register’ (see Chapter 5) – Dinamo ‘d’, Nazi swastika, Ustaše ‘U’ 3.5 BBB fan support at Futsal Dinamo match 3.6 The North Stand (on a boycott day), Maksimir Stadium 3.7 Fan support at NK Zagreb 041 match, Dugave, Novi Zagreb 3.8 Fan support at NK Zagreb 041 match, Dugave, Novi Zagreb 3.9 White Angels mural outside Kranjčevićeva Stadium, Trešnjevka 3.10 White Angels banner with theme drawing on the Croatian rap group Tram 11

1

23 25 65 65 66 67 68 68 69 69 70 70

Acknowledgements

This book is a collective endeavour which has been written for, and to draw attention to, the activities of many involved in fan organizing in Zagreb and the Balkan and Central European region more widely. It began as an informal side project after completing my PhD, taking time out to think about what I really enjoy writing about, following early encouragement and suggestions from my PhD external examiner Paul Stubbs. Paul first suggested I write a paper on football fans after realizing I was spending more time at football matches than writing up my doctoral thesis. The first few texts written were completed without any project funding, but I did have the financial support and time to write, which various precarious affiliations made possible. The first of these was the Faculty of Philosophy, at the University of Novi Sad, who I wish to thank. Over time, these early texts grew into this book and completing it would not have been possible without the support of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (Zagreb), the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Rijeka and, for the final two months, the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany. I would particularly like to thank the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research for their flexibility in giving me significant space to complete the manuscript once the proposal had been approved. Intellectually, this project developed as I moved away from a strict focus on social anthropology, and as I came into increasing contact with qualitative sociologists of sport. I therefore wish to thank Peter Millward, Mark Doidge and John Hughson for their encouragement in moving in this direction, and for their comments on my previous work. As concerns comments on the manuscript, in addition to the anonymous peer reviewers, I wish to thank Čarna Brković, Rahela Jurković, Dario Brentin, Dino Vukušić, Ivan Đorđević and Paul Stubbs for their comments on individual chapters, and Jonah Bury, Sanja Kajinić and Bojan Bilić for their comments on earlier versions of some of the material presented here. I also wish to thank Pete Waterhouse for his careful reading of the text and his extremely useful suggestions during the copy-­editing stage. In Croatia, I would also

viii   Acknowledgements

like to thank Marko Mustapić, Sunčica Bartoluci and Ben Perasović, as well as Ozren Biti for their input. I look forward to further collaborations through the newly founded Section for the Sociology of Sport in the Croatian Sociological Society, which we have collectively founded. I would also like to thank Orlanda Obad, Ines Prica and Tea Škokić for their support of my work and in pursuing an academic career in Croatia. In terms of intellectual exchange, my ideas developed upon thinking through and comparing south-­east European and UK-­based traditions in what I would describe as a mixture of social anthropology, political sociology and cultural studies. Finally, I thank Stef Jansen for his indirect involvement through supervision of my doctoral thesis in which many of the wider political anthropological approaches I have pursued in this book, and developed in my earlier work, have blossomed. There is a much wider pool of audiences and colleagues with whom I have developed, discussed and tested ideas here, and whilst I will not name them all individually their help and support has been much appreciated. My work has also been greatly influenced by my participation in the Football Collective, and I believe the spirit of this initiative resonates with the perspectives articulated in this book. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the wider milieu of people helping with the everyday running of all the institutes where I have worked, and so I wish to thank everyone who has helped me on an everyday basis with all the hidden obstacles and hard work involved in producing a book manuscript – from secretaries, cleaners, librarians, technicians to copy-­editors and proofreaders. The warm support of my friends (both inside and outside of the Zagreb fan scene), family and Ivan Fosin mean a great deal to me as well, and I dedicate this work collectively to you all.

Introduction Football fandom in the European semi-­p eriphery

Introduction Long wooden benches and wet plastic seats stretch out across the length of a football pitch in the Zagreb neighbourhood of Dugave, south of Travno (Figure 0.1, Vuković 2018). It is a match day in late autumn, and around a hundred people have gathered to watch the community club NK Zagreb 041 play in one of Zagreb’s lower local leagues. Bottled beers are available for a suggested donation in the clubhouse and the air is thick with cigarette

Figure 0.1 A map of Zagreb, including several important neighbourhoods, and the locations of the two football grounds: Maksimir (GNK Dinamo) and Kranjčevićeva (NK Zagreb).

2   Introduction

smoke and, at opportune moments, with the combusted products of smoke bombs and flares. I have struck up a conversation with a fan of the main Zagreb club, GNK Dinamo,1 who describes himself as a punk and as an old member of the Dinamo fan association the Bad Blue Boys. He is in his late 30s and grew up in the neighbourhood where the match is taking place, offering his services as a cook when he heard about the new club. When he hears I am from the UK, he tells me the story of a player, Igor Bišćan, also from the same neighbourhood, who went on to play for Dinamo, and later Liverpool, before returning to play for Dinamo again and then managing a lower league local club. Emphasizing how Bišćan never forgot about the people and neighbourhood in which he grew up, he describes how during the period when Bišćan played for Liverpool, on one occasion, he turned up in Dugave in his car. He got out and opened the car boot, which was full of Liverpool kit which he then distributed to his friends in the neighbourhood before leaving. Bišćan’s career tells a story common to many who have ‘succeeded’ in Croatian football, of a gradual ascent through the various clubs and/or football academies in Croatia and the surrounding region, before playing professional football, typically in Western Europe, with the management of top level Croatian clubs such as Dinamo, Hajduk Split, Rijeka and Osijek selling such players for large transfer fees to teams participating in the ‘Big Five’ leagues, where, ‘the enormous riches pouring into European football may have produced an unrivalled spectacle of top-­class players from around the globe producing football of the highest standard, played out in state-­of-the-­art stadiums’, nevertheless accompanied by ‘instability in the game’, and ‘barely concealed resentment of fan exploitation’ (Kennedy and Kennedy 2012, 328–329). The above account also stresses the importance of local solidarities, and is part of a wider story in which mostly men who gather collectively in public spaces feature. Such are many of the stories told about Croatian football, a relic of strong patriarchal tendencies in the post-­Yugoslav space, and the gendering of football as a predominantly male domain. Yet there are other stories to be told. Dugave, where the above match was taking place, was a neighbourhood directly affected by the recent humanitarian crisis that resulted in refugee flows through the region in 2015–2016 (Bužinkić and Hameršak 2017). The neighbourhood housed a reception centre for refugees, some of whom were involved in the community club playing there. Founding a new club and working with refugees was in part a political response taken by some members of an explicitly left-­wing fan association named White Angels Zagreb. It emerged as a reaction to the changing conditions and fortunes of Croatian football, amidst increasing alienation from the previously top-­ league club, NK Zagreb, which they had previously followed and which some members continued to follow.

Introduction   3

The European semi-­peripheral (Blagojević 2009) positioning of Croatia and the dominance of networks of influence relying on personalized connections (Brković 2017) combined with significant player talent had led to ‘crony capitalist’ figures, epitomized by the president of Dinamo, Zdravko Mamić, purportedly embezzling large amounts of money from the sale of players to Western European clubs. Fans’ battles against this situation (Hodges and Stubbs 2016; Vukušić and Miošić 2017; Perasović and Mustapić 2017; Tregoures and Šantek 2017) and the authoritarian actions of these figures who were closely connected with certain sections of the political establishment, had also resulted in extreme consequences. Fan groups such as Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys had found themselves under intense police surveillance and many fans – characterized as ‘hooligans’ in the media (Obradović 2007; Hodges 2016a) – became the focus of a moral panic (Cohen 2011; Pearson 1984), with parallels occasionally drawn with Margaret Thatcher’s clampdown on ‘football hooliganism’ in the UK during the 1980s (Zečević 2013, 18). In addition to small-­scale left fan initiatives such as the above, larger and more mainstream groups such as the Bad Blue Boys and Hajduk Split’s Torcida (Lalić and Pilić 2011; Perasović and Mustapić 2014) were often associated, in the eyes of the general public and media, with violent behaviours and conservative nationalist ideology. This was also how the Balkan region more generally was imagined by Western European and Amer­ican observers and political analysts, in an orientalist (Said 2003) imagining of the region and the effects of recent wars during the 1990s. As many football fans and scholars of both football studies and post-­socialist transformation in south-­east Europe are aware, such stereotypes are largely media constructions suiting particular ideological purposes in various contexts that bear some relation to, but misconstrue the underlying social realities and relationships. It is these realities, relationships and stories that this book seeks to describe and analyse, drawing on the Zagreb fan scene as a case study through which to shed light on wider processes of political and social change taking place in Croatia, the post-­Yugoslav region, and Europe more widely. On the surface, this is a context that is both strikingly European, yet also a little bit different. Similar to certain practices among the Barras Bravas of Latin America (Paradiso 2016), the managing bodies of several football clubs offered forms of assistance. In the case of NK Zagreb, the management supposedly funded coaches to away games, and turned a blind eye to practices such as the White Angels’ forging season tickets or using old season tickets to enter the stadium each week. Such practices emphasize the more widespread presence of everyday clientelism, which is frequently restricted to higher level management and international football networks in Western European contexts. In this context, organized fan associations have arranged collective religious trips to monasteries, some fans have fought as a group in paramilitary brigades (Sindbæk

4   Introduction

2013) and the fight ‘against modern football’ (Perasović and Mustapić 2017; Numerato 2014; Webber 2017; Hill, Canniford, and Millward 2016) has taken strikingly different contours to similar social movements that have recently emerged in Western Europe, despite surface similarities. This book seeks to describe the ‘everyday geopolitics’ (Jansen 2009) of fandom in this context. It achieves this by shifting between activist anthropology (Scheper­Hughes 1995) and anthropology as cultural critique (Marcus and Fischer 1999), in order to make a series of arguments that invite the reader to rethink the activities of fans in this and other contexts.

White Angels Zagreb and the Bad Blue Boys This book deals with two fan groups based in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The primary focus is on the small, left-­wing group White Angels Zagreb (hereon: the White Angels, or WAZ), drawing on extensive fieldwork over six years (2011–2017) as an involved member and, at times, an activist. This material is complemented with more distanced observations and in-­depth qualitative interview material with the fans involved – to varying degrees – in the Bad Blue Boys (hereon: the Bad Blue Boys or BBB), the organized fan group following Dinamo. This material is added to contrast and compare the groups and their engagements in and across the space of Zagreb. In featuring observations of the Bad Blue Boys, the book also remains true to how the White Angels experienced Zagreb, for whom the Bad Blue Boys were a frequently referred to ‘other’. However, thanks to their explicit left-­wing orientation, the White Angels were largely ­considered an anomaly, a joke or an irrelevance by other groups on the organized fan scene in Croatia and so this ethnographic material offers a specific and unique perspective on the fan scene in Croatia and the region more widely. The White Angels followed a Zagreb team called NK Zagreb. This club had previously enjoyed significant top league success, including winning the top league in the 2001/2 season, but in recent years had embarked on a downward spiral. This group consisted of approximately 25 members when I first became involved in 2011. They regularly attended football matches and had a small but noted presence on the local ultras scene. The group name, often commented on as unusual for a left-­wing group, relates to the colour of the team shirts. The stadium where NK Zagreb play, Kranjčevićeva, is in Trešnjevka, a Zagreb neighbourhood with working class associations.2 From 2014 onwards, most of the membership abandoned the main club and founded a community club called NK Zagreb 041 which collaborates with refugees, including those living in the earlier mentioned Dugave neighbourhood. The White Angels have been collectively committed to an antifascist and anti-­nationalist platform, fighting racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination in football since

Introduction   5

2008, but have existed as a group for much longer, with some of the current membership participating from 1999. They are in regular contact, both formally and informally, with other leftist fan groups and football initiatives throughout Europe, and these links will be discussed in later chapters. In Croatia however, they are mostly ignored and sometimes disliked by members of other fan groups, given their commitment to a platform explicitly fighting against nationalist, racist and/or homophobic tendencies. Over the time in which I attended matches, the membership was overwhelmingly male, ranging in age from late teens to late 30s. The level of formal education varied across the group from not having finished secondary school to doctoral level, and members were involved in a range of different occupations including agricultural workers, students, NGO workers, psychologists, punk artists, security guards, sociologists and taxi drivers. The Bad Blue Boys is a much larger fan association, and has a clear, visible presence across public spaces and especially the Zagreb neighbourhoods, with active subgroups present in many. Murals and graffiti show their presence all over the city, as well as in many other cities in Croatia and the region more widely. Dinamo play in a stadium named Maksimir, located in an area of Zagreb close to where members of the Yugoslav Army used to be housed. The immediate Maksimir area itself is affluent, whilst the wider area of town is economically and socially heterogeneous. Among the Bad Blue Boys, there are around 150–200 participants in the ‘inner circle’ or ‘core’ (sometimes referred to as the first team – prva ekipa, or core – jezgro), who are most active and at the top of the group hierarchy. A much larger number, perhaps six or seven hundred, might be considered very active members, with the group mobilizing even larger numbers of people (up to around 7000) at protests and sometimes at football matches. They are also part of international networks, with informal connections to other fan groups among some sections of the membership (Hodges 2016b), and links to the Croatian diaspora in other locations, such as Australia – the focus of an earlier study of the Bad Blue Boys (Hughson 1996). The numbers following online Bad Blue Boys’ related groups such as Facebook is much larger again, with upwards of 40,000 followers in some groups. Whilst the White Angels are explicitly left-­wing, the Bad Blue Boys are more flexible regarding its membership, echoing Testa and Armstrong’s (2008) observation of the Italian Ultras, where it was relatively straightforward for anyone to obtain a membership card. Whilst the group might be considered ‘inclusive’ in this sense, hierarchies surrounding who is a legitimate member or spokesperson for the group are present, and there is a broad consensus as regards support of Croatian nationalism. The Bad Blue Boys also use rebel slogans such as otpor sistemu (resistance to the system) and protiv sistema (against the system), which emphasize their oppositional and often anti-­authoritarian stance towards crony-­capitalist

6   Introduction

elements in football and society more widely. Finally, there is a very small degree of overlap between the two groups, with some White Angels having earlier followed Dinamo, attending matches on Maksimir’s North Stand with the Bad Blue Boys or later doing so after leaving the White Angels. Common points linking the two groups include an opposition to crony capitalist forces in football, a positioning as being Against Modern Football, oppositional or rebel stances as regards the police, using slogans such as ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), and certain football, street and punk subcultural links.

Professional football in the European semi-­p eriphery The top league of Croatian football is called the 1.HNL (1st Croatian Football League). There are currently ten teams playing in the league and matches take place in two rounds, from the middle of the summer to late autumn/early winter, with a winter pause from December to February given the cold temperatures, which can reach –20°C, and a Spring round ending in late May, before the hot summer. Echoing processes that have taken place in other countries’ leagues (Millward 2011), the clubs in the top division vary dramatically as regards the funds they have at their disposal and the various teams’ ability, with the top clubs (Dinamo, Hajduk Split and Rijeka) frequently functioning as ‘feeder’ clubs mediating between the smaller Croatian sides and much richer clubs typically in Western Europe. These differences are also reflected in players’ wages and in connections between the management of the top clubs, key figures in the post-­war political establishment and the police – links that will be examined in more detail later. A significant amount of taxpayers’ money is spent on several of the clubs, many of which are officially run as citizens’ associations (udruge građana) and funded through taxes. Some, including Hajduk Split, have pursued a privatization model that has seen fans taking some degree of ownership over the club (Tregoures and Šantek 2017; Gardijan 2017). Despite clubs such as GNK Dinamo and NK Zagreb being run as citizens’ associations and funded by taxpayers, they are neither transparent in their operations, nor open to public participation, as numerous scholars (Hodges and Stubbs 2016; Vukušić and Miošić 2017; Perasović and Mustapić 2017; Tregoures and Šantek 2017) and journalists (Đulić 2014) have discussed. The executive directors of GNK Dinamo and NK Zagreb – Zdravko Mamić (later an advisor) and Dražen Medić respectively – have links to high-­level government and public administration figures, including the town mayor Milan Bandić, who is reputedly notorious for clientelist/corrupt practices. Bandić privileges the interests of a small number of stakeholders in his network of influence, at the expense of the social needs of a wider cross-­section of people living in Zagreb.

Introduction   7

He  has invested in several extremely expensive projects of little social value, such as ostentatious fountains. Simultaneously, he presents himself as a person who distributes gifts to the people of Zagreb, particularly in the pre-­electoral period, for instance where he introduced new, cheaper tram tickets for short journeys, and, immediately following the election, roughly halved the cost of visiting public swimming baths. This kind of gentle patriarchal persona emphasizes the personalized connections along which he operates, and mystifies the fact that the purchases he makes and contracts he draws up are funded through taxes. Zdravko Mamić and Dražen Medić have reputations as mafia-­style figures within this network. They are commonly viewed as embodying a variety of vulgar masculinity associated with a class of criminals who became rich during or after the wars of the 1990s, frequently through black-­market activities. Mamić, for example, is famous for his constant swearing and some members of the Bad Blue Boys have referred derogatively to his wartime activities in smuggling cigarettes, rather than being on the front line, describing him as a war profiteer. Such figures, and those who aspire to their material wealth, are sometimes referred to as urban peasants (Jansen 2005) with their focus on conspicuous consumption and presumed ‘primitive’ rural origins. One consequence of the dominance of this clientelist elite in Croatian football, alongside the break-­up of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav league, is a significant drop in attendance at football matches over the past 20 years. Fans have responded, not only by openly confronting Mamić’s hegemony on the terraces and at Maksimir, but also by setting up various initiatives designed to change this situation, including ‘Together for Dinamo’ (Zajedno za Dinamo) (pursuing a legal course of action against him) and setting up a futsal club named Futsal Dinamo, with a friendly fan atmosphere free of the problems many fans face at Maksimir. Despite their small size, the White Angels attempted to set up similar initiatives, including an unsuccessful legal route named ‘We will reclaim Zagreb’ (Vratit ćemo Zagreb) and later a community club named NK Zagreb 041, which was more successful. The Croatian Football Federation (Hrvatski nogometni savez, hereon HNS) was one key institution almost universally disliked by the fans with whom I spoke, both for its close connection with the crony capitalist elites, and with European football organizations such as UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) which was also strongly disliked, and which it joined in June 1993.3 Closely related to the HNS is Uvijek vjerni (Always loyal), an official fan club supporting the national team. Uvijek vjerni were disliked for similar reasons, for enacting policies suggested by UEFA, such as banning the use of certain words (often with racist, far-­right or homophobic connotations) on the terraces. Some fans suggested that Uvijek vjerni had been founded as a way for Hercegovci (people from the Herzegovinian region of Bosnia & Herzegovina, who had strong networks of

8   Introduction

contacts in key Zagreb businesses) to launder money, and they received funds from the HNS for various fan activities such as away games. Zdravko Mamić’s connections with organizations such as UEFA means that UEFA-­funded initiatives, such as Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), were also viewed negatively by many fans in Croatia, and this will be discussed later in relation to the White Angels’ involvement in this initiative.

From socialist Yugoslavia to the ‘Homeland War’ Football fandom in Croatia and the wider post-­Yugoslav region today has been strongly affected by the recent wars that followed the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the SFRY). Ruled by Josip Broz Tito, the SFRY combined an emphasis on a unique ‘Yugoslav’ path to socialism based on self-­management principles and a market variety of socialism (Woodward 1995) which contrasted with the more centralized and authoritarian command structures of planned economies in neighbouring states under Soviet rule. This approach emerged following a divergence from Soviet rule in 1948, wherein the Yugoslav state sought to follow a path between Eastern and Western blocs, declaredly ‘non-­aligned’. The SFRY was viewed by neighbouring states as especially liberal and more Western. The 1980s, overshadowed by the death of Tito, were accompanied by a series of ongoing political and economic crises, before the events of 1989 proved to be a catalyst for regime change. Whilst such changes were relatively peaceful in other parts of Eastern Europe, this was not the case in Yugoslavia. A Croatian declaration of independence in June 1991 was shortly followed by a war that lasted for four years and in which at least 20,000 people died, and in which many hundreds of thousands of people were forced to move, as national categories increased in importance and came to define citizenship in the new states.4 Football fans, including members of the Bad Blue Boys, fought in this war in organized units (Sindbæk 2013; Fijačko 2017), as did, famously, Arkan’s tigers who were part of Delije, the fan group following Red Star Belgrade in what is currently the Republic of Serbia. In a context shaped by recent state formation accompanied by ideological transition, economic crisis, and nation-­ building processes, aspects of everyday life that are often passed over or are relatively invisible in Western European contexts come to the fore. These ultimately violent processes are key, I will argue, to understanding a range of fan behaviours, from practices to banter and the construction of club and national myths, and the history underlying them will be described in more detail in Chapter 1.

Introduction   9

Studies of football fandom in Croatia One of the pioneering ethnographic studies of football fans was conducted by Dražen Lalić primarily during the 1990s (Lalić and Pilić 2011), following fans of Hajduk Split’s organized fan group, Torcida. Sometime later, a detailed ethnographic study of urban subcultures in Zagreb was published by the sociologist Ben Perasović (2001). This book included a short section on fans as a subculture, while the same author – a Zagreb-­based fan of Torcida – later conducted an in-­depth empirical study, including participant observation of football matches and interviews with Torcida members with a colleague (Perasović and Mustapić 2013, 2014). These studies were largely ethnographic, with an emphasis on long-­term movement ‘back-­and-forth’ (Brković and Hodges 2015) to the field site. Many fans were knowledgeable of their work and supported several of their interventions in public debates over crony capitalism, including a speech by sociologist and fan Ben Perasović against the current football elite in Croatia on the Split Riviera (Index.hr, 2014). The above-­mentioned studies were based around the authors’ long-­standing connections with the fan associations they study – as suggested by Lalić and Pilić’s (2011) title Torcida – A View from Within. Perasović and Mustapić have also emphasized their ‘insider’ status and close relationship with the Torcida core, alongside a caveat describing how generational differences affected their access to and engagement with the group. A younger generation took over the leadership when they were beginning their research, resulting in a certain amount of distance experienced by them at the start of their project. Such near-­insider perspectives are close to the new ethnographies of fandom (Armstrong 1998; Giulianotti 1995) which emerged in the UK during the 1990s. In Croatia however, fewer discussions over researcher positionality have taken place compared with in the UK context (see Hughson 1998), particularly as regards the merits and pitfalls of being close to ‘native’, and a contextualization of research/fan masculinities remains less discussed. Perasović’s work also draws on studies of subcultures, notably Hebdige’s (1995) work on subcultural style, emphasizing the presence of a significant cross-­over and borrowing from Anglo-­Amer­ican theorizing. This study extends this explicitly in bringing together elements of ideas circulating in both Anglo-­Amer­ican and post-­Yugoslav – mostly Croatian – sociology. More recently in Croatia, football fans have resurfaced as a topic of study, with a range of works in progress paying attention to new fan initiatives as earlier mentioned, to hegemonic operators in the fan scene (Hodges 2016a), the uses and abuses of different kinds of nationalist ideas (Bartoluci 2013), and a cultural studies approach to sport and advertising directed at fans (Biti, 2016). Features that are emphasized in Anglo-­Amer­ican and Western European studies of Balkan football and fandom – namely ethnicity and nationalism (see Hughson and Skillen

10   Introduction

2015; Brentin 2016, 2013) – drop into the background of the ethnographies and studies written by authors based in the region, and this feature will be discussed in greater detail in Chapters 2 and 5. Finally, in neighbouring Serbia, a small number of cultural studies of football have emerged (Kovačević 2015; Đorđević and Pekić 2017; Đorđević 2015) but the scale of empirical engagement with fans and their initiatives is not as deep as in Croatia.

The everyday geopolitics of football in post-­s ocialist Croatia On the surface, the experience of attending a football match in Zagreb might seem ideal to a Western European fan. Attending top-­league football matches often costs less than the price of a beer,5 standing and often alcohol is permitted on the terraces, as are banners, and choreographed displays and sometimes even flares and other pyrotechnics are tolerated. Yet despite this, the clubs are run by shady figures who operate in the grey zones of the law, and who have the personal connections necessary to override any charges laid against them. As a result of their authoritarian command over footballing institutions, issues relating to club democracy take centre stage in a political system which might be described, drawing on Verdery’s (1996) discussion, as ‘neoliberal capitalism with feudalist characteristics’, and where significant political repression of fans has taken place in Zagreb. This ‘everyday geopolitics’ (Jansen 2009) of fandom has also been shaped by the effects of recent war, state and nation building, coupled with the wider social and political direction that post-­socialist ‘transition’ has taken in this context. From the mid-­late 1990s onwards, liberal and national elites throughout Europe promoted a narrative wherein, following a socialist aberration, the states of Eastern Europe – often referred to by policymakers as ‘new democracies’ – would converge on the market models of their Western European neighbours. During the 1990s, anthropologists extensively critiqued the market fundamentalist teleology in this narrative, emphasizing that such a convergence is not inevitable and that different ‘post-­socialist’ paths may emerge. Concretely in Croatia, the system of personal connections became more important in finding work in some sectors, and especially the public sector. Whilst, during the SFRY period, connections often depended on stated allegiance to the Yugoslav League of Communists and were necessary for a successful career in party structures, in post-­socialist Croatia such connections came to frequently, but not exclusively, depend on stated patriotic allegiance. There has been a dramatic roll back in state social welfare provision, with markets opened up in many domains and access to cheap credit creating – especially in the case of Croatia – a large debt problem in a country where over 300,000, of a population of around four million, have their bank

Introduction   11

accounts blocked due to personal debt.6 Such connections became important then, for survival rather than career progression, whilst a mixture of a new and old political and cultural elite established control over such resources. The political economy of professional sporting events and football fandom relates, in important aspects, to a club or group’s positioning at different junctures of the global world system. Might, for example, the importance Pearson attaches to ‘carnival fans’ and their ‘heavy alcohol consumption, “piss taking” and collective expressions of fandom’ (Pearson 2012, 3) in the UK relate to the promotion of economic concepts of value based on a pleasure principle and a form of capitalist time-­discipline (Thompson 1967) quite different from the slow, staccato and uncertain rhythm that arguably characterizes post-­socialist temporality in Croatia? Do the often explicitly ideological and organized expressions of fandom found in the post-­Yugoslav states relate to historical legacies and the post-­ socialist direction pursued, as it became increasingly clear that convergence on the Western European market model was not occurring? How, if at all, have the post-­Yugoslav political economy, accompanying rural–urban hierarchies and the population movements that occurred as a result of the wars’ refugee flows, shaped the football fan scene? And building on this, how, if at all, have fans shaped the political direction post-­Yugoslav states have taken? The struggle over Dinamo’s name during the 1990s, discussed in Chapter 1, illustrates how a fan habitus and associated practices can challenge state authority, resulting in concessions and changing the outcome of the political processes taking place in Croatia during the 1990s. Borrowing from Beck’s concept of sub-­politics, the sociologist Srđan Vrcan (2002) argued that this relates to fans’ sub-­political positioning and its potential in times of crisis. Yet this possibility opens up a range of other questions. Under what conditions can football fans significantly influence political decision-­making on a state and international level? What does it mean to speak of fans as ‘organized’? What is the interplay between the politicization and sub-­culturalization of fan movements? What light can the experiences of fans in Zagreb, Croatia, cast on these issues? Finally, in what sense if at all, is there anything special about the footballing context? What is it about match days that generates a gamut of emotions, and embodied and symbolic practices that are considered inappropriate in many other contexts? This is a question the sociologist Srđan Vrcan asked, when considering the issue of  whether the sociological analysis of football and totalitarianism ought to operate with a specific set of concepts in order to elaborate a peculiar framework adequate to that specific task, or whether it may use the same set of fundamental concepts utilized in the interpretation of possible relationships between football and politics elsewhere. (Vrcan 2002, 60)

12   Introduction

To sketch an answer to some of these questions, Chapter 1 presents a historical sociology of football fan initiatives and organizing in Zagreb, from the 1980s to the present day, with a specific focus on the Bad Blue Boys, the largest organized fan group in Zagreb. It situates organized fan initiatives in the wider context of youth sub- and counter-­cultures of protest in Croatia, examining the extent to which they may be considered as social movements with a history of not insignificant political influence, relating them to the ultras and hooligan concepts. It describes and engages with a strong tradition in Croatian/post-­Yugoslav sociology (Lalić and Pilić 2011; Perasović and Mustapić 2013; Đorđević and Žikić 2016; Čolović 1996; Vrcan 2003). The prevalence of clientelist relations and crony capitalism as it impacts on professional football is also explained in this chapter, along with its post-­socialist specificities and a discussion of the regional political economy of football. Chapter 2 introduces the ‘cultural critique’ (Marcus and Fischer 1999) approach taken, alongside the focus on researcher positionality offered through a brief biographical discussion of entry into the field. The main focus of the chapter is on a methodological discussion of the challenges faced in conducting a comparative study moving between two groups, with different styles of engagement and data collection. It tracks the nuances of an involved ‘fan’ and/or ‘activist’ position separately. The distinction is made between the possible blinding effects of ‘immersion’ and a definition of ‘activism’ whereby the anthropologist from a distance shares specific categories geared towards social action with her or his interlocutors (e.g. concepts such as hegemony). The implications of the researcher’s gender, sexuality, race, cultural knowledge, citizenship and language skills are considered in relation to access and knowledge production. Given the recent context of war and national secession, methodological nationalism and the author’s own anti-­national position are articulated and related to wider debates in the anthropology of south-­east Europe (Hayden 2007; Jansen 2008). Finally, ethical issues relating to participation and illegality are considered. The third chapter focuses on quotidian fan practices among the two groups’ membership, drawing on both ethnographic observations and earlier ethnographic studies, conducted in the region, of fans. It offers a typology of various dimensions of fan participation and day-­to-day experiences, as an introduction into the deeper themes that follow. These include organizational practices, semiotic and language regimes and aspects of participation which relate to ‘everyday geopolitics’. Chapter 4 discusses police practices and repression in Croatia, through fan narratives gained both through interview and ethnography. A chronology is offered, and the ‘personalized war’ against the Bad Blue Boys is detailed, along with how the fan movement has responded to this ‘war’. Police practices and repression are related to discussions over clientelism and modes of state-­making in south-­east Europe. Chapter 5 examines the relative (un)importance of far left and right ideology among different

Introduction   13

s­ ections of the White Angels’ and the Bad Blue Boys’ membership. It examines the role far right symbolism plays among certain members of the Bad Blue Boys in forming a radical right counterculture. Clear associations exist in graffiti present throughout Zagreb, which consists of a mixture of Nazi (e.g. swastikas) and radical Croatian nationalist symbols associated with the Axis-­controlled Second World War ‘Independent’ State of Croatia, alongside motifs associated with the Bad Blue Boys and Dinamo. This chapter discusses the roles that certain nationalist and fascist symbols play in everyday life and fan organizing, synthesizing arguments made that the Croatian fan culture is especially problematic in this respect, but also that such ideology is only present amongst a small subsection of the fan scene. Chapter 6 examines hegemonic and alternative masculinities in the White Angels and the Bad Blue Boys in relation to the masculinist dimensions of ultras belonging, and the White Angels’ pro-­LGBTQ activist positioning. It also considers the roles of female fans, and non-­heteronormative sexualities in both groups. Finally, it discusses violence and claims over urban spaces, relating these claims to a processual definition of citizenship specific to the post-­socialist political economy, and contrasting with liberal public/private sphere distinctions. Chapter 7 examines banter among the White Angels with a focus on how boundaries to such banter are produced and how such boundaries relate to group belonging and ‘state-­making’ in the post-­Yugoslav context. Banter is also related to the anthropological literature on ‘joking relations’, and political correctness in the White Angels is analysed in relation to other left-­wing fan traditions across Europe. Urban and rural labelling – which frequently feature in such banter – are considered in relation to the urban claims of ultras belonging and hierarchies within the fan scene. Chapter 8 examines the White Angels’ participation in European Networks and how group members described their relationships with European actors such as Football Supporters Europe and FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe). It argues that these institutions played a significant role in constructing oppositional identifications both at the Zagreb level (with other fan groups) and in relation to perceived European fan groups. It relates these to struggles over fan authenticity that took place within the group and stances regarding the believed incursion of left-­wing political activists with little interest in football. Other dimensions to fan authenticity among the White Angels and the Bad Blue Boys are also considered, both ethnographically and through following forum discussions, and the role of the Croatian diaspora and its relationship with the Bad Blue Boys is also discussed. Finally, in the conclusion, the methodological reflections made in Chapter 3 are discussed in relation to the ethnographic material, and its limitations are  explored. The conclusion seeks to evaluate what can be gained and lost when taking an activist or more distanced perspective, with explicit

14   Introduction

reference to the differing qualities of the material gathered on the White Angels and the Bad Blue Boys. Finally, it suggests ways in which anthropologists of football fan cultures might draw on theoretical tools from political anthropology and outlines areas for future possible research.

Notes 1 Hereon, Dinamo. 2 Understandings of class in the Balkan context differ substantially from the UK, where in the latter there exists a much longer history of class production and a greater degree of social hierarchy. Nevertheless, if we understand class as a process taking place, with greater intensity during the post-­socialist period, then it follows that class distinctions have increased and classed groupings/areas of town have been consolidated, leading to greater inequalities in recent years. 3 See http://hns-­cff.hr/en/hns/about-­us/ (accessed on 16 November 2016). 4 However, this process was more contested and ambiguous in the Rump Yugoslavia, later Serbia and Montenegro. 5 The cheapest tickets for GNK Dinamo matches are often 10 kunas, whilst a beer typically costs 13–17 kunas at present. Match prices are increased, often three-­ fold, for ‘derby’ matches. 6 See Buchen et al. (2016, 12–16).

Bibliography Armstrong, Gary. 1998. Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score. Oxford, New York: Berg. Bartoluci, Sunčica. 2013. Uloga vrhunskog sporta u oblikovanju nacionalnog identiteta u Republici Hrvatskoj: usporedba devedesetih i dvijetisućitih. Doctoral Dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb Biti, Ozren. 2016. Hrvatska fanovska scena: nogomet u televizijskim reklamama za pivo. SANU 64(2), 273–289. Blagojević, Marina. 2009. Knowledge Production at the Semiperiphery: A Gender Perspective. Belgrade: Institut za kriminološka i sociološka istraživanja. Brentin, Dario. 2013. ‘A lofty battle for the nation’: the social roles of sport in Tudjman’s Croatia. Sport in Society 16(8), 993–1008. Brentin, Dario. 2016. Ready for the homeland? Ritual, remembrance, and political extremism in Croatian football. Nationalities Papers 44(6), 860–876. Brković, Čarna. 2017. Managing Ambiguity: How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood. New York: Berghahn Books Brković, Čarna, and Hodges, Andrew. 2015. Rethinking world anthropologies through fieldwork: perspectives on ‘extended stay’ and ‘back-­and-forth’ methodologies. Anthropological Notebooks 21(1), 107–120. Buchen, Teresa, Drometer, Marcus, Oesingmann, Katrin, and Wollmershäuser, Timo. 2016. Managing Household Debt in Croatia. CESifo Forum 17(1), 12–16. ISSN 2190–717X. Bužinkić, Emina, and Hameršak, Marijana. 2017. Kamp, koridor, granica: studije izbjeglištva u suvremenom hrvatskom kontekstu. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Centar za mirovne studije i Fakultet političkih znanosti–CEDIM.

Introduction   15 Cohen, Stanley. 2011. Folk Devils and Moral Panics the Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Čolović, Ivan. 1996. ‘Fudbal, huligani i rat’. Srpska strana rata. Trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju. Beograd: BIGZ, 419–444. Đorđević, Ivan, 2015. Antropolog među navijačima. Belgrade: XX vek. Đorđević, Ivan, and Bojan Žikić. 2016. Football and war in Former Yugoslavia. Serbia and Croatia two decades after the break-­up. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe: People, Passions, Politics. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 39–54. Đorđević, Ivan, and Pekić, Relja. 2017. Is there space for the Left? Football fans and political positioning in Serbia. Soccer & Society 19(3), 355–372. Đulić, Goran. 2014. Čiji su naši klubovi? – Le Monde Diplomatique, Hrvatsko Izdanje. http://lemondediplomatique.hr/ciji-­su-nasi-­klubovi/ (accessed 23 February 2018). Fijačko, Marko. 2017. Uloga navijačkih skupina u rušenju Jugoslavije i Domovinskom ratu. Undergraduate Dissertation, University of Zagreb. Department of Croatian Studies. Division of Sociology. Gardijan, Daniel. 2017. Modeli demokracije u hrvatskom nogometu: studija slučaja udruge. Undergraduate Dissertation, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Sciences. Giulianotti, Richard. 1995. Football and the politics of carnival: an ethnographic study of Scottish fans in Sweden. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 30(2), 191–224. Hayden, Robert M. 2007. Moral vision and impaired insight. Current Anthropology 48(1), 105–131. Hebdige, Dick. 1995. Subculture: the meaning of style. Critical Quarterly 37(2), 120–124. Hill, Tim, Canniford, Robin, and Peter Millward. 2016. Against modern football: mobilising protest movements in social media. Sociology, August. Hodges, Andrew. 2016a. The hooligan as ‘internal’ other? Football fans, ultras culture and nesting intra-­orientalisms. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51(4), 410–427. Hodges, Andrew. 2016b. The left and the rest? Fan cosmologies and relationships between Celtic’s Green Brigade and Dinamo Zagreb’s Bad Blue Boys. Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU 64(2), 305–319. Hodges, Andrew, and Stubbs, Paul. 2016. The paradoxes of politicisation: fan initiatives in Zagreb, Croatia. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe: People, Passions, Politics. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 55–74. Hughson, John. 1996. A feel for the game: an ethnographic study of soccer and social identity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of New South Wales. Hughson, J. 1998. Among the thugs: the new ethnographies of football supporting subcultures. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 33(1), 43–57. Hughson, John, and Skillen, Fiona. 2015. Football in Southeastern Europe: From Ethnic Homogenization to Reconciliation. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. Index.hr. 2014. Poslušajte govor navijača Bena: ‘Našim nogometom vladaju kralj, njegova obitelj i huligani u odijelima’. www.index.hr/sport/clanak/poslusajte-­ govor-navijaca-­bena-nasim-­nogometom-vladaju-­kralj-njegova-­obitelj-i-­huliganiu-­odijelima/787355.aspx (accessed 23 February 2018).

16   Introduction Jansen, S. 2005. Who’s afraid of white Socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-­Yugoslav urban self-­perceptions. Ethnologia Balkanica 9, 151–167. Jansen, S. 2008. Cosmopolitan openings and closures in post-­Yugoslav antinationalism. In Cosmopolitanism in Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 75–92. Jansen, S. 2009. After the red passport: towards an anthropology of the everyday geopolitics of entrapment in the EU’s ‘immediate outside’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(4), 815–832. Kennedy, Peter, and Kennedy, David. 2012. Football supporters and the commercialization of football: comparative responses across Europe. Soccer & Society 13(3), 327–340. Kovačević, Ivan. 2015. Fudbal i Film: Trener. Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology 10(4), 945–963. Lalić, Dražen, and Pilić, Damir. 2011. Torcida: Pogled Iznutra. Zagreb: Profil multimedija. Marcus, George E., and Fischer, Michael M.J. 1999. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. London: University of Chicago Press. Millward, Peter. 2011. The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Numerato, Dino. 2014. Who says ‘no to modern football’? Italian supporters, reflexivity, and neo-­liberalism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 39(2), 120–138. Obradović, Đorđe. 2007. Nasilnici stvaraju medijski događaj. MEDIANALI – Znanstveni časopis za medije, novinarstvo, masovno komuniciranje, odnose s javnostima i kulturu društva 1(1), 45–72. Paradiso, Eugenio. 2016. Football, clientelism and corruption in Argentina: an anthropological inquiry. Soccer & Society 17(4), 480–495. Pearson, Geoffrey. 1984. Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. New York: Schocken Books. Pearson, Geoff. 2012. Ethnography of English Football Fans: Cans, Cops and Carnivals. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press. Perasović, Benjamin. 2001. Urbana plemena: sociologija subkultura u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada. Perasović, Benjamin, and Mustapić, Marko. 2013. Football supporters in the context of Croatian sociology: research perspectives 20 years after. Kinesiology 45(2), 262–275. Perasović, Benjamin, and Mustapić, Marko. 2014. Football, politics and cultural memory: the case of HNK Hajduk Split. Култура/Culture: International Journal for Cultural Researches 6, 51–61. Perasović, Benjamin, and Mustapić, Marko. 2017. Carnival supporters, hooligans, and the ‘Against Modern Football’ movement: life within the ultras subculture in the Croatian context. Sport in Society 21(6), 960–976. Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition with 1995 Afterword. London: Penguin Books. Scheper-­Hughes, Nancy. 1995. The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3), 409–440.

Introduction   17 Sindbæk, Tea. 2013. ‘A Croatian champion with a Croatian name’: national identity and uses of history in Croatian football culture – the case of Dinamo Zagreb. Sport in Society 16(8), 1009–1024. Testa, Alberto, and Armstrong, Gary. 2008. Words and actions: Italian Ultras and neo-­fascism. Social Identities 14(4), 473–490. Thompson, Edward P. 1967. Time, work-­discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past & Present 38, 56–97. Tregoures, Loïc, and Šantek, Goran. 2017. A comparison of two fan initiatives in Croatia: Zajedno Za Dinamo (Together for Dinamo) and Naš Hajduk (Our Hajduk). Soccer & Society 19(3), 453–464. Verdery, Katherine. 1996. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vrcan, Srđan. 2002. The curious drama of the president of a republic versus a football fan tribe: a symptomatic case in the post-­Communist transition in Croatia. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1), 59–77. Vrcan, Srđan. 2003. Nogomet-­politika-nasilje: ogledi iz sociologije nogometa. Zagreb: Naklada Jesenski i Turk. Vuković, Matej. 2018. Map of several Zagreb neighbourhoods. Original Artwork. Vukušić, Dino, and Miošić, Lukas. 2017. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society 19(3), 440–452. Webber, David M. 2017. ‘Playing on the break’: Karl Polanyi and the double-­ movement ‘Against Modern Football’. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 52(7), 875–893. Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zečević, Ivan. 2013. Moralna panika kao čimbenik zakonodavnog procesa: primjer Zakona o sprječavanju nereda Na športskim natjecanjima. Undergraduate Dissertation, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.

Chapter 1

Football fandom and post-­socialist transformation in Zagreb, Croatia A historical sociology

Introduction The overwhelming majority of studies into sport, football and fandom in the (post-)Yugoslav region has focused on politics and political relationships articulated through fan and wider sporting activities, with a specific focus on the role of the Yugoslav state (Anđelić 2014; Petrov 2017; Mills 2018); nationalist grievances, e.g. during the Socialist Yugoslavia (Blasius 2018; Mills 2009), especially during and after the wars of the 1990s (Brentin 2013, 2016; Sindbæk 2013); and the myth-­making that surrounded certain events, such as the famous clashes at Maksimir stadium (Đorđević 2012) between Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys and Red Star’s Delije fans, around a year before the war began. Studies of post-­socialist transformation and its impact on fandom have especially emphasized both ­‘bottom-­up’ and ‘top-­down’ nationalist articulations and manipulations (Vrcan 2002) and, later, self-­organizing and new forms of participatory and direct democratic fan organizing (Tregoures and Šantek 2018; Vukušić and Miošić 2018). Nationalism has formed the dominant focus in this literature, especially, but not exclusively (e.g. Bartoluci 2013) among researchers writing in Anglo-­ Amer­ican and Western European settings, in an imaginary that associates particular global regions with particular research themes (Clifford and Marcus 1992). Whilst this nexus of themes is not the focus of this book, certain details and relationships outlined in this literature are key, so as not to portray fan organizing and activities in an uncritically positive light. On the other hand, topics that have been covered in other settings, such as the massive social transformations resulting from the information revolution, changing print media formats such as fanzines and e-­zines (Millward 2008; Cleland 2010) and – later – social media (McManus 2016) over the past several decades, have received relatively little attention in post-­Yugoslav contexts, despite their presence, due to the dominant focus (continued here), on the explicit political instrumentalization of sport. This chapter therefore offers a brief introduction into political transformations and changes associated

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   19

with the organization of football and fandom from the late socialist period onwards, focusing on the more theoretical discussions of political ideology and on institutions that feature in the historical literature, and taking seriously Giulianotti’s (1999, XV) claim that ‘the social aspects of football only become meaningful when located within their historical and cultural context’. The remainder of the book has a more anthropological focus on how power operates on an everyday level, and how fans have engaged and contested these modes of operating.

Football and fandom in late socialist Yugoslavia Whilst Soviet socialist states were based on a centrally planned economy, the Yugoslav leadership – following a dispute with Russia and ideological split in 1948 – pursued a form of market-­based socialism, which deliberately and strategically positioned itself between Eastern and Western Blocs, declaring itself non-­aligned, and opening up – to a limited degree – to Western markets, particularly in the later years (Woodward 1995; Unkovski-­Korica 2016). Internally, the Yugoslav leadership under the rule of President Josip Broz Tito sought to strike a balance between the various Federal Republics, between which significant economic differences persisted, with living standards higher in the more north-­western republics, such as Slovenia and Croatia, as well as in political centres, such as Belgrade. Amidst the rhetoric of these richer republics subsidizing the ‘lazy’ South, increasing calls for federal autonomy emerged, particularly from the 1960s onwards, including among the Croatian leadership, with Croatia being a republic that profited from tourism on the Adriatic Coast, leading to some resentment regarding funds being siphoned to Belgrade, and to the poorer republics. The implementation of the 1974 Constitution significantly decentralized power to the level of the Federal Republics (SFR Croatia, Serbia, etc.), a process which, through likely increasing identification at the Republican level, laid the groundwork for further devolution and calls for national autonomy and, ultimately, secession. As concerns sport, the governing Party elite1 promoted mass public participation in sports, viewing sport as a tool for the emancipation and physical preparation of the masses (Kovačić 2016; Petrov 2017; Zec and Paunović 2015). Top-­level players, including those playing for the national team and top clubs were perceived as at the peak of a sporting pyramid. The Party elite were caught between retaining a socialist and humanist ideological focus on sport as a tool for mass emancipation and improving the wellbeing and productivity of workers, and wanting to promote Yugoslavia through participation in world sporting championships (see Jovanović 2017), which through competition with capitalist states required the importing of certain capitalist practices – such as a certain degree of professionalization. Comparable dynamics persisted in other socialist

20   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

c­ ontexts, for example in Poland where Western sporting professionals were pejoratively referred to as crypto-­professionals (Kobiela 2011, 89). Professionalization was viewed with suspicion as sport was not considered a productive activity (although mass participation was understood to improve worker efficiency and wellbeing), and concerns over corruption and the production of a capitalist class often surfaced, for as Kovačić (2016, 74) observed, professionalism in culture was considered something good, a kind of guarantee of quality, but in sport and especially football it became a synonym for everything that was not good, a swamp in which ‘group ownership’ relations reigned, bourgeois ideas and political values which brought into question the basic principles of the socialist revolution.2  The metaphor of a swamp to describe the nature of top-­league Croatian football is often used today, and it relates to the lack of transparency in club management, crony-­capitalist dealings, a lack of democratic accountability on the part of club owners, and the existence of black funds (crni fondovi). Black funds are undeclared funds paid ‘under the table’ to players, officials, or management – a practice which also took place in the socialist period (Kovačić 2016, 78), and these features are important in understanding fan struggles. In the late Yugoslav period, i.e. from the early 1970s onwards, the increasing federalization and economic liberalization led to ever-­growing criticisms of the emergence of a ‘technocratic-­ bureaucratic’ class that strived to connect itself with some organizations of the League of Communists (Kovačić 2016, 68). This was also a period when the Western capitalist system was in crisis, and global capitalist elites were beginning to formulate neoliberal policies as a response to this crisis. During this period, Western players started to receive sharp salary increases, exacerbating East–West tensions in sport. Alongside concerns over professionalization, the Party elite also feared the manipulation of sport by nationalist sympathizers. Overt expressions of political nationalism were met with state repression,3 although as Blasius (2018, 2) described, two of the top four clubs – Dinamo and Red Star – ‘encompassed both Yugoslav and potentially anti-­Yugoslav symbolic features’. They simultaneously promoted symbolic identifications with Yugoslav belonging and with national identifications which, far from being suppressed, were institutionalized and nurtured during the Socialist Yugoslavia, tempered by a discourse of ‘brotherhood and unity’ amongst constitutive Yugoslav nations. The other two clubs of the top four – Partizan and Hajduk Split, were not so strident in their symbolic connection with their respective national republics, representing more Yugoslav dimensions such as the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA – Partizan), and the Second

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   21

World War Partizan victory (Blasius 2018, 4). The late 1970s and 1980s saw a ‘subculturalization’ of the fan scene, where fan groups began to emerge as organized groupings in their own right with which individuals identified, drawing on traditions and styles of fandom popular in the UK (hooligans) and Italy (ultras). As regards Dinamo: The middle of the seventies was marked by the ‘migration’ of fans at that time to the North Stand. Of course, this suited the club management’s decision to offer free entry to certain matches to those with recognisable club markings, but at that time we can also speak of the formation of an awareness among active fans regarding the particularities of a group which supported the team more fiercely than other spectators at matches. (Prnjak 1997, 31)4 This period saw an explosion in the number of fan associations in former Yugoslavia, many with openly nationalist views, as the socialist federal leadership and their explicit anti-­nationalist and antifascist platform was weakened, an effect attributed to the death of Tito in 1980. In 1982, Dinamo won the Yugoslav First League and, by this point, a hard-­core group of fans had existed who, whilst not yet called the Bad Blue Boys, attended matches as an organized group. Prnjak suggested that the membership and meanings attached to fan participation changed significantly over this period. At the start of the 1980s, those who travelled to away games were mostly those who had the resources to travel and/or were close to the club management, with links to the ‘technocratic-­bureaucratic’ class, whilst the subculturalization and the subversive, increasingly politically nationalist connotation recruited a new, very young generation from a wider variety of backgrounds. As concerns Zagreb, the Bad Blue Boys, associated with Dinamo, were founded in 1986, purportedly in Split, where the rival group Torcida were popular (see Perasović and Mustapić 2014; Wood et al. 2014). As Prnjak described: The name came from the film ‘Bad Boys’. The film was on in town and loads of people had seen it. And that was how the name came about. Then Ićo made it spread some time later throughout Split and that’s how it started out … But the name in general isn’t important. Because the group existed before it. And the fact that the group wasn’t organized earlier is connected with the fact that we have never had the club management behind us. And when you don’t have a homogeneous group, you don’t have a name either! We didn’t have any kind of backing and that’s why we organised in neighbourhoods: ‘Dinamo’ has never supported its fans. (Prnjak 1997, 36–37)5

22   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

The claim that the Bad Blue Boys (BBB) are specific in never having had a good relationship with the club they support contrasts with other fan groups’ experiences, where the club often provided certain privileges, such as paying for buses to away games (Prnjak 1997, 42). The first White Angels Zagreb group associated with NK Zagreb was founded a little later, in 1989, according to an account given in the group’s fanzine: The history of organised fan support for NK Zagreb began at the end of the eighties, more precisely in the Autumn of 1989 when the first banners appeared with the words White Angels and the old flags of the Socialist Republic of Croatia with the name of the club … War interrupted all the fan activities of the White Angels old guard, only a couple of them waited for the group to reorganise in the 1992/3 season, when a new generation of fans got together. In the autumn of 1992 they got an ultras atmosphere going once again in the East stand of Kranjčevićeva. At the end of 1992 the group got together in the East stand and in Spring 1993 they began to actively follow NK Zagreb.6 Organized support for NK Zagreb, considered Zagreb’s second team for a long period, was always fewer in number than the support of the organized fan groups for the larger teams, and the leadership and visible expressions in the public space of many of these fan associations came to draw on Croatian nationalist tropes and ideals.7 BBB’s frequent use of English and its use of motifs from the ‘English hooligan’ tradition, such as a bulldog, also sent a veiled pro-­Western message to the socialist authorities. The group also frequently employed military visual insignia (as also noted in Australia by Hughson 2000, 12) and their style on the Croatian fan scene is frequently characterized as ‘military’. In contrast, Hajduk Split’s fan group – Torcida – more explicitly drew on motifs from the Italian Ultras (Testa and Armstrong 2010; Roversi and Balestri 2000), whilst in terms of modes of visual display and formal organization (on and off the terraces) both groups are much closer to the Italian Ultras style of organizing.

The 1990–1999 war and authoritarian nationalist rule The first multi-­party elections were held in SFR Croatia in April 1990, with the second round of voting in early May. Franjo Tuđman, who later went on to become President of the Republic of Croatia, won the elections, along with his party, named the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union). These events were accompanied by a growth in tensions between football fan associations, which culminated in the famous pitch invasion at Maksimir, Zagreb on 13 May 1990 (Đorđević 2012; Mills 2009). This pitch invasion

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   23

took place days after the election victory during a football match between GNK Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade, and this event has both received a great deal of attention in the academic literature (Đorđević 2012; Sindbæk 2013; Mihailović 1997), and acquired a mythical status among many fans. At this match, violent encounters between members of Red Star’s Delije, Dinamo’s BBB, and the police occurred, with the Dinamo captain Zvonko Boban famously attacking the Yugoslav police. NK Zagreb’s stadium (Kranjčevićeva) was also a site of some significance during this period, as Tuđman headed a famous military parade there on 28 May 1991 and a plaque commemorating this event exists to this day (Figure 1.1). This parade showcased the newly formed Croatian National Guard, who assumed a police-­like role and counter-­posed themselves against the JNA (Jugoslavenska narodna armija) – the Yugoslav army, which was dominated by Serb identified citizens. SFR Croatia officially declared its secession from Yugoslavia in late June 1991 on the same day as Slovenia, following referendums in the two republics several weeks earlier. Whilst Slovenia’s secession was followed by a short conflict with few casualties, the Yugoslav Army under Milošević’s rule would not let Croatia secede without a battle for territory. Large numbers of Serb identified people lived on the territory of SFR Croatia. Furthermore, radical Serbian nationalist claims were made over large stretches of the SFR Croatian territory and by slipping between socialist and nationalist tropes, Milošević successfully manipulated a grey zone between mobilizing a

Figure 1.1 The main text reads: ‘On 28 May 1991 at NK Zagreb’s stadium, the first parade of units of the Croatian National Guard, the beginnings of the Croatian Army, took place’.

24   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

s­ pectrum of people seeking to ‘save’ the SFR Yugoslavia, and Serbian nationalists seeking to secure a ‘greater Serbian’ territory that included large regions of what is currently Croatia. Following Croatia’s declaration of independence, the new government sought to legitimatize the newly formed state and Croatian national belonging formed a key dimension of citizenship, with essentialist, ethnic definitions of Croatian identity heavily promoted across many spheres of life, including in sport (Brentin 2013). The call for the Croatian diaspora to return and their receiving voting privileges attests to the ambiguous space (Hodges 2017) created by the ruling nationalist government’s use of patriotic tropes, between promoting an essentialist definition of Croatian national belonging and building a network of patron–client relations with the diaspora, particularly those located in Western countries (notably the USA and Australia) who supported the war efforts financially and ideologically (Hockenos 2003). The declaration of independence was followed by a four-­year war, typically referred to in Croatia as the ‘Homeland War’ (Domovinski rat)8 which ended in a victory for Croatian nationalists, following two US-­aided military actions (Bljesak and Oluja) in which Serb populations were forcibly relocated off the territory of what became the Republic of Croatia. Certain Bad Blue Boys, who had a very young membership at that time, fought in the war (Sindbæk 2013), and there was a tank named BBB on the front (Lalić 1995, 52). Many who fought died, and a monument commemorating their sacrifice for an independent Croatia exists near Maksimir (see Figure 1.2). Quite how many participated is difficult to gauge however. Fijačko (2017, 24) claims that the majority of older BBB members left for the war, leaving only children on the terraces, but his (Bad Blue Boys) perspective may perpetuate the mythologization of such events. Gaining a sense of numbers is compounded by the difficulties surrounding the ambiguous margins of the group, of which many people could claim as being members, and the dangers of such statistical claims have been highlighted by anthropologists working on this topic (Jansen 2005a). The broader political environment was characterized by a shift towards authoritarian nationalism and war, and, economically, the beginnings of a rollback in state welfare provision. A shift towards neoliberal governing was slowed down initially by war on the territory (Croatia), and even more so in neighbouring territories by a period of sanctions and economic isolation in neighbouring regions (FR Yugoslavia; Serbia and Montenegro). The Croatian president Tuđman and Serbian leader, Slobodan Milošević, are commonly understood as having participated in a complementary process, each mirroring the actions of the other while claiming ever-­increasing difference on national grounds. In what is presently Serbia, fan groups similarly participated in armed combat. Members of Red Star’s Delije, led by the mafia-­ criminal figure Arkan, led a famous unit called the Tigers (Čolović 1996).

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   25

Figure 1.2  Memorial to BBB who died during the ‘Homeland War’ (1991–1995).

Professional level football in the 1990s in Western Europe was deeply affected by the push towards a common EU market, media deregulation and advances in media and information technologies, which resulted in match slots being affected by the timetables and the whims of satellite and cable television companies. Indeed, Dinamo first participated in the UEFA Champions’ League in the 1993/4 season. These transformations to what the sociologist Anthony King described as the ‘European ritual’ were ‘connected with the increasing interpenetration of national markets by multinational corporations, the “decline” of nation-­states, the rise of new networks of cities (and regions), and the increasing prominence of new urban, or regional affiliation’ (King 2017, 32). King emphasized Manchester United fans’ strong regionalist identification and dislike of the English national team, with the fans critiquing this English identity as a project representing the particularist interests of certain social groups in the ‘South’ of England. Yet these fans were ‘not rejecting appeals to all forms of nationalism or allegiance to the British state’ (King 2000, 429). Whilst national identifications were less important than regional here, a description of this situation as ‘post-­national’9 did not imply that the national had completely disappeared in Western Europe contexts, whilst in the Balkans the importance of the national had increased. The period of Tuđman’s rule can be characterized as a period of authoritarian nationalism and frequent flirtation with fascist symbolism, which the leadership were not always able to control, given that the state formation that emerged was far from monolithic and the war effort included actions by paramilitary forces. The

26   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

political scientist Dario Brentin has described in detail how sport was mobilized by Tuđman’s government as an ethno-­political tool and has argued that sport ‘generally proved to be a social field where alternative political standpoints remained marginalized and almost non-­existent’ (Brentin 2013, 995).10 The right-­wing symbolism mobilized most often related to the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945), which was ruled by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše, as a Nazi puppet state. Over the four years of Ustaše rule, hundreds of thousands11 of people, including Serbs, Jews and the ideologically suspect, were murdered in concentration camps, the most famous of which in Croatia is called Jasenovac (see Boban 1990; Yeomans 2015). Tuđman did not advocate such extreme right-­wing views. He retained a certain level of respect for aspects of the socialist heritage (e.g. keeping a statue of Tito in the presidential house), arguably modelled himself to some extent on Tito during his later years, and removed funding for political parties to the right of the HDZ, which consolidated the party’s hegemony. This apparent contrast between western European and south-­east European socio-­political experiences in this period might be resolved when thought through the philosopher Žižek’s comment (Žižek 1997, 2010) that the discourses of multiculturalism, of blurring boundaries and the creation of a European melting pot of cultures is in fact the same logic as that of nationalist consolidation taking place in the former Yugoslav region, based on an idea of bounded national culture. However, it is a discourse appropriate to the centres of global capitalism where those different nationally defined cultures mix. ‘Balkanist’ depictions of the former Yugoslavia emerged in the Western and regional media. In Western media, terms such as ‘primitives’ and ‘warlords’ portrayed these societies as less modern and civilized than the West, and as under the influence of enduring ethnic tensions and nationalism in a manner in which Western societies supposedly were not. Nationalist elites in the various post-­Yugoslav republics then frequently mirrored this Western discursive strategy (see Bakić-Hayden 1995), painting more Eastern and ‘less European’ states as more primitive and ‘Balkan’. Within these societies, football fans were often similarly exoticized by the wider public as a particularly violent, nationalist subsection. While there was some truth in such labelling, in that fans did engage in violent acts (primarily with one another), the situation was somewhat more complicated.

Croatia or Dinamo? A large dispute occurred during the 1990s between members of the Bad Blue Boys and Tuđman’s authoritarian government. Tuđman sought to change the name of the club from Dinamo, a name with socialist connotations, first (in June 1991) to Hašk-Građanski – the names of two Zagreb

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   27

clubs in the period from 1911 to 1945 – and later in February 1993 to ‘Croatia’, the Latin, and English, word for Croatia. The name change was rejected by the Bad Blue Boys who had a strong attachment to the name Dinamo, and a conflict ensued, wherein BBB members heckled live speeches, torched the VIP area of the stadium, and boycotted matches. The government response was brutal police violence. Over this period, we can therefore speak of the formation of a sub-­political movement which challenged the political authoritarianism of Tuđman. As Vrcan commented: This conflict had arisen originally as a family quarrel within the Croatian nationalist political and ideological family to which both the President and fan tribe ‘BBB’ belonged initially, but quickly it turned in practice into public political conflict with ramified consequences and very unfavourable effects for the alleged charisma of the President of Croatia and for the new post-­communist regime claiming to be an authentic post-­communist democracy. (Vrcan 2002, 61) As concerns the Bad Blue Boys, the membership during the early 1990s was overwhelmingly very young and male, with many in their late teens. One response to the boycott was that some BBB members attended NK Zagreb matches instead, which led to a significant overlap between the White Angels and BBB membership at that time (one source went as far as to describe the White Angels group, in that period, as a branch (podružnica) of the BBB). The depth of the dispute is telling, especially given the BBB membership’s willing participation in armed combat (and the frequent military metaphors ‘mobilized’ in fan organizing (see Vrcan and Lalić 1999) meaning that this most certainly was ‘a family quarrel within the Croatian nationalist political and ideological family’, as Vrcan (2002, 61) had described. The dispute over the name has been analysed by scholars in a variety of different ways. Bellamy (2003) suggested that the debate over the name was inflected with urban–rural divisions and hierarchies. The primary association of the club name Dinamo was metropolitan rather than ideologically inflected as socialist, whilst the name Croatia and the national team had rural connotations, for the national team was often the primary association people living in rural areas had with professional football.12 In the context of mass refugee flows, primarily from rural locations (Jansen 2005b) into metropoles such as Zagreb, the urban credentials of the name Dinamo dominated over any association with socialist ideology. Such urban/rural hierarchies are also visible in the associations implied in the word ‘građanski’ and the choice to speak of GNK Dinamo encodes this urban aspect in its present name, adding the prefix in 2011. Sindbaek (2013, 1018) drew attention to a generational dimension to this dispute, with the first proposed name (Hašk-Građanski) having a clear

28   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

association with the inter-­war period for older officials, including Tuđman, whilst the BBB membership was very young and they would have little or no emotional attachment to these older names. In addition, Sindbaek (2013, 1018) briefly alludes to the meanings attached to Dinamo for those who had engaged in the Bad Blue Boys and fought as part of the group, compared with those who were not in the BBB-­core of fandom. Through such violent encounters with other fan groups, the depth of association with the club name may have been reconfigured. The sociologist Stubbs (Hodges and Stubbs, 2016), drawing on Vrcan, analysed the fan dispute in terms of a political challenge and reaction to Tuđman’s authoritarianism, situating the fan group in a more libertarian nationalist vein. As Vrcan and Lalić commented, On the one side stands an authoritarian regime with neo-­totalitarian ambitions, which promotes at all costs the official culture while trying to impose itself upon all the crucial areas of social life. On the other side stand the existing fan subcultures trying to safeguard and preserve their identities and autonomy. In this, the fan subculture functions as a kind of oasis in the emerging civil society. (Vrcan and Lalic 1999, 184–185) Finally, a psychosocial distinction between two varieties of nationalism at play is worth distinguishing. This is ‘authoritarian’ and ‘state-­ sponsored’ nationalist discourses, such as those taught in schools and enacted through state representatives, and a ‘rebellious’ counter-­cultural nationalism, which – whilst not necessarily anti-­state as in Brubaker’s (1999) distinction – internalizes the national framework but is not directly interested in the ideological promotion of nationalism that took place in numerous academic disciplines in Croatia.13 The rebel aspect of this fan habitus, also reproduced along nationalist lines in other post-­ Yugoslav contexts, and arguably relating to the geopolitical positioning of the Balkans on the edge of Europe, has also received scholarly attention (Jansen 2000).

The 1999–2008 ‘democratic transition’ and increasing police repression of fans On 10 December 1999, Tuđman died. Parliamentary elections took place soon after, on 3 January 2000, and the centre-­left Social Democratic Party (SDP), headed by Ivica Račan, assumed power, with the nationalist HDZ rocked by several corruption scandals from the mid-­1990s onwards. This period might be considered a return to relative normality after a difficult decade marked by war. The fan scene began to unite again, with the Bad Blue Boys operating as an official organization (udruga) from 2001, and

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   29

publishing a new fanzine in 2002, named ajmo plavi (Go blues!) which became increasingly popular.  WAZ (White Angels Zagreb) was formally registered as a fan association in 1999 and some continuity in the member base has existed from 1999 to the present day. However, the group’s membership and relationship with the management of the club they support, NK Zagreb, have changed significantly over the years. During the early 2000s, some of the WAZ membership were in good relations with the club management, had an official space for meetings at the stadium, and received funds for transport to away matches. And the club enjoyed significant league success, winning the top league in the 2001/2 season. At Dinamo, the early 2000s was a period when Zdravko Mamić came to assume control over the club, seeking to retain a place in the UEFA Champions league, and waging war on the Bad Blue Boys. Shortly after, in 2004, and on the wings of their league victory, Dražen Medić – a crony-­capitalist figure similar to Mamić but on a smaller scale – became president of NK Zagreb. More generally, this period can be understood as part of a wider Europeanization (aligning Croatia with EU market rules, legal directives and protections) project taking place, with the normalization, including among large sections of the nationalist right, of EU accession as a political goal, and Croatia gaining EU candidate status in 2004 (Butterfield 2016, 31). Consequently, the Croatian ruling elite were faced with passing various laws and demonstrating that Croatia treated oppressed groups – such as national and sexual minorities – in a manner in line with EU-­promoted values, such as tolerance and respect for difference. LGBTQ pride events organized in Zagreb became one key flashpoint of struggle, with threats of violence common amidst anti-­Pride demonstrations, and the HČSP – a far-­ right political party, who had links to some BBB members through the subcultural skinhead scene – organizing protests. The ruling elite’s need to present a positive image of Croatia to European elites also entailed a crackdown on fan disorder, particularly but not exclusively at international competitions. Consequently, many fan groups in Croatia found themselves subject to increasing police repression, amidst a rhetoric of a moral panic (Zečević 2013), as noted in other contexts (Pearson 1984) and propagated by mainstream media. This was particularly strongly affected by Croatia’s joint bid with Hungary to host the UEFA Euro 2012, with the final decision, made in 2007, favouring Poland and the Ukraine. Following a series of incidents – including a fan falling from the North Stand onto the ground below in 2001 and a number of scuffles at other matches over that period – Zečević argues that two key incidents were heavily reported on by the media, which strengthened the demonization of fans. The first was the appearance of a banner at a December 2002 derby (Dinamo v Hajduk Split) with the message ‘Split swines, today is the slaughtering’ (Tovarske svinje, danas je kolinje), which the media reported

30   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

as an invitation for violence. In June 2003 a water polo match took place in Kranj, Slovenia, the final of which was between Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro. At the end of the match, Croatian fans, including many fans who primarily attended football matches, tore apart the seats and threw them into the water (Zečević 2013, 28) and a tense situation ensued. These events led the Croatian prime minister, Ivica Račan, to condemn fan behaviour at football matches, with media reporting on how such events damaged the image of Croatia abroad, in what was perceived as a sensitive period, shortly following the war and with Croatia seeking to join the EU. Reference was made to strict UK laws, suggesting that not only football fans looked towards the UK as an example, but elites and the police force as well. The law on the prevention of fan disorder at sports events was quickly submitted and passed in July 2003. These laws included a dramatic increase in fines and the possibility of imprisonment for misbehaviour. A system of banning fans deemed problematic from attending matches was also introduced, in line with practices in other European countries. Banned practices that affected fans included, but were not limited to, the following: the prohibition of the use of alcohol and other intoxicating substances/ drugs in and around the stadium area for two hours before and after football matches; pyrotechnics were not permitted, nor items to be thrown across the terraces or onto the pitch; there were to be no written messages (on banners, flags etc.) or the singing of songs or shouting messages and chants that included messages that displayed or encouraged hate or violence on the basis of religious, race, national or other belonging. These laws, as we shall see in the fan narratives and ethnography, were selectively implemented by the police depending on the concrete situation and – as we shall also see – the wider situation in which fans found themselves at a given match. The punishments, including fines, were increased further in 2006, with the minimum amount doubling.14

2008–present: economic crisis and a slow conservative revolution The year 2008 roughly marked the end of a period of increasing liberalization, middle class formation and economic recovery, although the period continued to be mired by corruption scandals in which the prime-­minister Ivo Sanader was implicated, leading to his resignation and later conviction. At NK Zagreb, Dražen Medić instigated a number of changes that were widely unpopular, such as altering the strip colour and crest – a move that distanced the club from Zagreb. Amongst the WAZ fan base, a key split emerged between a smaller group who were happy with the changes and a larger group unhappy with the changes, claiming the club had lost its ‘identity’ and connection with Zagreb. Dražen Medić was perceived by many fans as part of a wider and corrupt Zagreb ‘mafia’-style elite. A clear

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   31

parallel is present here with the Bad Blue Boys’ criticisms of the Dinamo chairman Zdravko Mamić and of the name change in the 1990s, which many fans claimed threatened the identity of the club. Consequently, the majority of White Angels split off from having any connection with the club, beginning the campaign Vratit ćemo Zagreb (We will take Zagreb back) and at the same time assuming an antifascist political platform, taking groups such as St Pauli (Totten 2015, 2016) as their role model and calling for the direct democratic management of the club. The Vratit ćemo Zagreb campaign is important as it enmeshed social activism, with reclaiming the club as its goal, into the very definition of the fan group that split off. Their fresh activist focus is visible in the current self-­definition of the group, as the website describes: In addition to following the club, us fans of Zagreb also cherish the powerful idea of social activism, and we are committed to the idea that our fan association, and every individual, will make a contribution to the fight against various forms of primitivism in football and society: against hate, violence, discrimination, racism, fascism, homophobia etc. for which there is no place in football as a sport. Instead at our stadium an atmosphere of acceptance and tolerance, sport and fun pervades. (nkzagreb041, 2015) Police repression particularly against the BBB further increased significantly after what became known as ‘Bloody 1 May’ in 2010, when a flare was thrown onto the pitch during the Dinamo v Hajduk Split derby and the police reacted brutally, resulting in clashes during which an exploding pyrotechnic device hit a policeman, destroying his eye and damaging his hearing. One fan, Nikica Marović, was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for this act. Marović’s arrest was used as an example to deter others, and these events marked the beginning of a protracted period of deeper police repression directed specifically at the Bad Blue Boys, and a deepening of their protest, in which fans initiated a campaign (ne daj se nikica) emphasizing Nikica’s unfair arrest and calling for his release. BBB’s oppositional position to the club was challenged by the club owner Mamić’s attempt to make inroads into the BBB, offering certain members money and protection (e.g. from police arrest), along with their own social space at the Dinamo stadium. Mamić employed Krešimir Antolić as a member of the executive board. Antolić was an ex-­ policeman specializing in narcotics, who some fans argued played a role in convincing young members of the BBB to join the plaćenici; given his street knowledge and Zagreb connections, some fans with whom I spoke claimed that he offered forms of protection for those dealing drugs in certain Zagreb neighbourhoods.

32   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

The effects of the economic crisis intensified over the years that followed, and especially following 2011. It became increasingly clear that the convergence with Western Europe hoped for by those promoting ‘transition’ and liberal democracy was not taking place. Rather, the crony-­ capitalist path taken might be described as a combination of certain aspects of the previous system (a dependence on political connections to find work or progress, especially in the public sector) combined with increasing labour precariousness and personal debt crises. As Jansen (2015, 210) described: whereas during the SFRY having good connections was a path to social mobility and climbing the party hierarchy, in the post-­socialist period, such connections were often necessary, particularly in the public sector and with domestically owned companies, for basic survival.15 Up until Croatia’s EU accession, which took place on 1 July 2013, professional football clubs received funding from the state and local council budget. This is now technically illegal, although the youth divisions of some football clubs are still permitted to receive funds from the city council budgets (Grad Zagreb). The other main source of income for clubs at present is through selling players (income from ticket sales and marketing and television deals is negligible). Players often move from lower ranking clubs, such as NK Zagreb and clubs from the lower divisions up to Dinamo or Hajduk, before being sold on the international market. Owners and managers of clubs have often also benefited, directly or indirectly (as they often acted as players’ agents), from the transfer fees which they helped to negotiate. New EU regulations are likely to demand more transparency concerning club finances, one issue that football fans in Europe have called for extensively. From the perspective of many fans, a number of significant problems remain concerning financing, as the WAZ fanzine describes: On the surface, from a supporter’s perspective, citizens’ associations provide the best model for managing a football club. However, in Croatia, throughout the twenty-­year history of the HNL (Croatian Football League), it has become clear that this model has been most often chosen in order to hide streams of money, to avoid paying taxes etc. Aspects such as transparency, the real participation of citizens, openness, the principle of voting on the basis of the ‘one member, one vote’ rule, have been completely ignored by those in charge of the clubs, for two basic reasons: the silencing of illegal practices by legislators and the inadequate level of organisation and educational level of fans regarding their civil rights. (White Angels Zagreb Fanzine 2013) One consequence of the protracted economic crisis was a growth in conservative and nationalist voices on the political scene, particularly among civic

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   33

organizations promoting conservative social change. These voices became louder after EU accession had been achieved, as there was no longer as strong a need to signal positive practices to the EU commission, for it was highly unlikely that accession could be reversed. These voices and a series of events have been characterized as a ‘slow conservative revolution’.16 In 2013, a referendum was organized by a group called U ime obitelji (In the name of the family), which sought to redefine the definition of marriage in the Croatian constitution as being exclusively between a man and a woman. They succeeded, amidst a campaign that included extensive Catholic mobilization, sweeping homophobia, and a counter-­movement that created deep divisions amongst citizens of Croatia. Shortly after, a group of war veterans destroyed several public signs written in Cyrillic (understood as Serbian) in Vukovar – a town in which a massacre of civilians, perpetrated by the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) took place in 1991 and in which divisions between the Serbian- and Croatian-­identified inhabitants are manipulated by politicians to this day. In October 2014, a group of organized, right-­wing Croatian war veterans put up a tent in front of the town council offices, demanding the defence minister Matić leave and that the government listen to their set of demands. At the end of the year the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) candidate Kolinda Grabar Kitarović assumed the presidency and one year later the HDZ assumed power in a coalition that included far-­right elements. This government fell approximately seven months later and a new HDZ coalition was elected on a pro-­European, more centrist mandate. On a more positive note, this period was also characterized by a significant increase in organized fan initiatives, with many fans disillusioned with the changes occurring at the big clubs taking matters into their own hands, and mirroring the shifts on the political scene towards tools of direct and participative democracy, such as referendums. A variety of direct and participative fan-­organized initiatives emerged, including Futsal Dinamo – a self-­organized football club built on participatory democratic principles, and Zajedno za Dinamo (Together for Dinamo), a legal initiative seeking to instigate democratic change at Dinamo (Vukušić and Miošić 2018; Tregoures and Šantek 2018). On occasion, collaborations between fan groups emerged. In October 2013, serious incidents took place during a game between NK Rijeka and Hajduk Split in the so-­called Adriatic derby. Although those incidents were mostly due to situational elements, namely police provocation and bad organization from NK Rijeka, the HNS reacted by issuing a decision according to which away fans would no longer be allowed at games unless they were part of an official trip organized by their club. Furthermore, being part of this trip implied buying a special card (voucher), to supply personal information, and to come to the club three days before an away game to sign in and pay for the ticket. This resulted in attempts

34   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia

to coordinate a response among various fan groups, which had some success. The past few years have also seen an increase in the use of ‘symbolic politics’ by football fans, mirroring events such as the Vukovar veterans’ protest. Aware of the penalties attached to the use of flares at football matches, and racist/discriminatory symbols and chants, fans have used them as a means of punishing the management and Croatian Football Federation, which receive large penalties. In June 2016, the Croatian National Team played against Czechia as part of the Euro Tournament in St. Etienne, France. Towards the end of the match, a group of Croatian fans threw flares on the pitch before attacking a larger group of Croatian fans, resulting in the match being suspended for a short while. Following this, the coach Ante Čačić commented on how hooligans are ruining Croatian football and that the government is too lenient on them. UEFA declared the opening of disciplinary proceedings,17 and in a bizarre twist, the Croatian president Kolinda Grabar Kitarović described the protagonists as haters of the Croatian national team and Croatian state, using the label Orjunaši.18 Orjunaši were a political group who sought to use extreme tactics in the 1920s to found a unitarist Yugoslav state, collaborating with Serbian Royalists (Četniks) and attacking both Communists and Croatian patriotic groups. The term has become used more generally to refer to antiC ­ roatian forces, i.e. groups who are against the existence of a Croatian state. This incident, and others such as, a year earlier, the giant swastika imprinted using chemicals on the grass at Hajduk Split’s ground, Poljud, for a match between Croatia and Italy,19 illustrate – alongside the battles that took place during the 1990s – that organized football fans in Croatia are a force to be reckoned with, significantly impacting on Croatian politics and international relations, particularly in periods of political uncertainty.20 Finally, in keeping with the recent conservative developments, the past few years have seen, throughout the post-­Yugoslav region, a process of historical revisionism taking place regarding understandings of historical figures and the nature of the states that existed during the Second World War. Especially in Croatia, this has resulted in increasing divisions occurring in society between the so-­called ‘Red and Black Croatia’ (see Pavlaković 2009), one side broadly sympathetic, or at least ambivalent to the SFRY heritage, the other actively promoting Croatian nationalism. At the ‘black’ extreme, certain news portals have reported positively on life under the Second World War ‘Independent State of Croatia’ – a state that promoted a mixture of Nazism and Croatian national ideology – in contrast to ‘reds’, who are generally critical of political nationalism and sympathetic towards the socialist heritage and the Partizan resistance movement during the Second World War. The deepening of such divisions is exemplified by the near equal support for the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP) and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) following an

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   35

Autumn 2015 campaign in which certain members of the HDZ flirted openly with fascist associations, and the leader of the SDP, Zoran Milanović, adopted an unapologetic ‘us’ or ‘them’ discourse, as a result of which Kolinda blamed him for cementing this division, before she (finally) condemned the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and using a rhetorical trope also used by Franco, of a need to come together and reconcile these ‘two Croatias’. This ‘ideologization’ of the state space is also sometimes referred to as ‘red’ and ‘black’ Croatia and marks a key axis roughly distinguishing a base among supporters of WAZ and BBB.21 This culminated at the end of 2015 in the election of a conservative government with extreme-­right elements. The Minister of Culture, Zlatko Hasanbegović, a historian with a very right-­wing record and purported involvement in pro-­ Ustaše initiatives in his youth, used his position to remove funding for non­profit media, whilst funding the production of a film that sought to redefine the history of the Ustaše concentration camp, Jasenovac. Hasanbegović, himself an ex-­member of the Bad Blue Boys, is widely regarded as having helped generate an atmosphere of fear also conducive to the consolidation of far-­right narratives. These events might be understood as a regional permutation of the right-­wing ‘populist’ politics that have been increasingly enveloping large parts of Europe over the past few years, and it is currently unclear how both the fan scene and wider society will change in light of these developments.

Notes   1 I choose this English phrase to express those at the top of the Party hierarchy, who had power over political decision-­making. In the regional language(s), the phrase upravljačka elita captures this power relation.   2 Profesionalizam je u kulturi bio nešto dobro, na neki način jamstvo za kvalitetu, a u sportu, odnosno nogometu postao je sinonim za sve što ne valja, močvara u kojoj su vladali ‘grupnovlasnički’ odnosi, građanske idejne i političke vrijednosti koje su dovodile u pitanje temeljna načela socijalističke revolucije. (My translation.)   3 Besides nationalist fears, a second perceived ideological enemy of the state were so-­called ‘anarcho-­liberals’ (anarholiberali).   4 Sredinom sedamdesetih dolazi do ‘seljenja’ tadašnjih navijača na sjeverno stajanje. Naravno da je tome pogodovala odluka uprave o besplatnom ulazu na pojedinim utakmicama za one s prepoznatljivim klupskim obilježjima, ali upravo tada mozemo govoriti o nastajanju svijesti medju aktivnijim navijačima o posebnosti grupe koja je na utakmicama navijala vatrenije od ostalih gledatelja. (My translation.)   5 Ime ti je nastalo od filma ‘Bad Boys’. Film je bio po gradu, masu ljudi ga je gledalo. I ime je nastalo po tome. Onda ga je kasnije Ićo ‘propagirao’ po Splitu i tako je to nastalo … Ali ime ‘opće nije bitno. Jer je grupa postojala i prije. A to što grupa ranije nije organizirana ima vezu s tim sto mi nikad nismo imali upravu iza sebe. A kad nemaš homogenu grupu nemaš ni ime! Nismo imali nikakvu zaleđinu I zato smo se organizirali po kvartovima. ‘Dinamo’ nikada nije bio uz svoje navijače. (My translation.)

36   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   6 Povijest organiziranih navijača NK Zagreb počinje krajem 80-ih godina, točnije u jesen 1989. godine kada se pojavljuju prvi transparenti s natpisima ‘White Angels’ i stare zastave SR Hrvatske s imenom kluba … Rat prekida sva navijačka djelovanja stare garde White Angelsa, samo njih par dočekuju reorganizaciju skupine u sezoni 1992/3, kada nova generacija navijača u jesen 1992. ponovo radi ultra atmosferu na istoku Kranjčevićeve. Krajem te 1992 ekipa se skuplja na južnom dijelu istočne tribune, i u proljeće 1993. počinje aktivno pratit NK Zagreb. (My translation.)   7 For a historical overview of nationalism in sport during the eighties, see Mills (2018).   8 This label is ideologized but is perhaps more accurate, from its protagonists’ point of view, than the label commonly used in Serbia, which refers to the events as a ‘civil war’ (građanski rat).   9 As discussed by Smith (1995) 10 I would qualify this as ‘not able to be articulated explicitly’.  11 The numbers are debated by historians (see Boban 1990). They were almost certainly inflated during the socialist times, and since then – and particularly from 2010 onwards – have been dangerously downward revised, with far right historians even seeking to redefine the nature of the camps to having been ‘work camps’ at which some people died. 12 This was my experience when I conducted workshops on football fandom and racism with primary and secondary school pupils in urban and rural contexts in Croatia. When asked to draw a ‘typical fan’, almost all pupils in urban contexts drew a picture of a fan supporting the main city club, whilst those in rural locations far more frequently drew a picture of a fan supporting the national team. 13 Linguistics and history are particular cases here, and serious splits emerged among anthropologists in Serbia and Croatia as well. 14 For a detailed overview of the legal changes and their implications, see Zečević (2013). 15 Guțu (2018) has dealt with this topic, describing local fan groups as networks of personalized (male) connections in Romania. 16 Arguably the liberal democracy hoped for by some, captured in the use of terms such as ‘civil society’ (for a critique, see Stubbs 2007) and authoritarian nationalism were two sides of the same coin. It is also contested (see Archer 2016, 2018) to what extent the events of the early 1990s constituted a break – or not – with tendencies that were already taking place in the 1980s. 17 www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2016/06/17/croatia-­v-czech-­republic-euro-­2016match-­suspended-after-­sports/ (accessed 31 March 2017). 18 www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/novosti/hrvatska/clanak/id/316434/kolinda-­grabarkitarovic-­orjunasi-odgovarat-­cete-za-­prekid-i-­za-svastiku (accessed 31 March 2017). 19 This will be discussed in the chapter on BBB and the far right, even though it has little to do with BBB directly. 20 www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/nevidjena-­hrvatska-sramota-­kukasti-kriz-­nacrtanna-­travi-poljuda-/825236.aspx (accessed 31 March 2017). 21 Such a distinction has also been the subject of recent arguments in Croatian ethnology (see Čapo Žmegač 2015) and might be considered indicative of the extensive politicization which typically accompanies a crisis situation.

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   37

Bibliography Anđelić, Neven. 2014. The rise and fall of Yugoslavia: politics and football in the service of the nation(s). Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift Für Politik Und Gesellschaft 2, 99–125. Archer, Rory. 2016. Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism. London; New York: Routledge. Archer, Rory. 2018. ‘It was better when it was worse’: blue-­collar narratives of the recent past in Belgrade. Social History 43(1), 30–55. Bakić-Hayden, M. 1995. Nesting orientalisms: the case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54(4), 917–931. Bartoluci, Sunčica. 2013. Uloga vrhunskog sporta u oblikovanju nacionalnog identiteta u Republici Hrvatskoj: usporedba devedesetih i dvijetisućitih. Doctoral Dissertation, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Bellamy, Alex J. 2003. The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-­ Old Dream. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press. Blasius, Martin. 2018. FC Red Star Belgrade and the multiplicity of social identifications in socialist Yugoslavia: representative dimensions of the ‘Big Four’ football clubs. The International Journal of the History of Sport onlinefirst, 1–17. Boban, Ljubo. 1990. Notes and comments: Jasenovac and the manipulation of history. East European Politics and Societies 4(3), 580–592. Brentin, Dario. 2013. ‘A lofty battle for the nation’: the social roles of sport in Tudjman’s Croatia. Sport in Society 16(8), 993–1008. Brentin, Dario. 2016. Ready for the homeland? Ritual, remembrance, and political extremism in Croatian football. Nationalities Papers 44(6), 860–876. Brubaker, Rogers. 1999. The Manichean myth: rethinking the distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nationalism. In Hanspeter Kriesi, Klaus Armingeon, Hannes Siegrist, and Andrea Wimmer (eds), Nation and National Identity: The European Experience in Perspective. Zurich: Verlag Rüegger. Butterfield, Nicole. 2016. Discontents of professionalisation: sexual politics and activism in Croatia in the context of EU accession. In Bojan Bilić (ed.), LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-­Yugoslav Space. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 23–58. Čapo Žmegač, Jasna. 2015. Conflicts over past heritage and memory in Croatia: an academic-­lay publication in the grips of ideology.  Studia ethnologica Croatica 27(1), 105–129. Cleland, Jamie A. 2010. From passive to active: the changing relationship between supporters and football clubs. Soccer & Society 11(5), 537–552. Clifford James and Marcus, George E. (eds) 1992. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. California, USA: University of California Press. Čolović, Ivan. 1996. Fudbal, huligani i rat. In Srpska strana rata. Trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju. Beograd: BIGZ, 419–444. Đorđević, Ivan. 2012. Twenty years later: the war did (not) begin at Maksimir an anthropological analysis of the media narratives about a never ended football game. Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU 60(2), 201–216. Fijačko, Marko. 2017. Uloga navijačkih skupina u rušenju Jugoslavije i Domovinskom ratu. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Zagreb. Department of Croatian Studies. Division of Sociology.

38   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia Giulianotti, Richard. 1999. Football: A Sociology of the Global Game. Cambridge, UK; Oxford; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Guțu, Dinu. 2018. World going one way, people another: ultras football gangs’ survival networks and clientelism in post-­socialist Romania. Soccer & Society, 19(3) 337–354. Hockenos, Paul. 2003. Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism & the Balkan Wars. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press. Hodges, Andrew. 2017. The importance of being patriotic: enregistered connections in Croatian minority activism. East European Politics and Societies 31(3), 615–636. Hodges, Andrew, and Stubbs, Paul. 2016. The paradoxes of politicisation: fan initiatives in Zagreb, Croatia. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe: People, Passions, Politics. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 55–74. Hughson, John. 2000. The boys are back in town. Soccer support and the social reproduction of masculinity. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24(1), 8–23. Jansen, Stef. 2000. Victims, underdogs and rebels. Critique of Anthropology 20(4), 393–419. Jansen, Stef. 2005a. National numbers in context: maps and stats in representations of the post-­Yugoslav wars. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 12(1), 45–68. Jansen, Stef. 2005b. Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-­Yugoslav urban self-­perceptions . Ethnologia Balkanica 9, 151–167. Jansen, Stef. 2015. Yearnings in the Meantime: ‘Normal Lives’ and the State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex. Vol. 15. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Jovanović, Zlatko. 2017. The 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics and identity-­ formation in late socialist Sarajevo. The International Journal of the History of Sport onlinefirst, 1–16. King, Anthony. 2000. Football fandom and post-national identity in the New Europe. The British Journal of Sociology 51(3), 419–442. King, Anthony. 2017. The European Ritual: Football in the New Europe. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. Kobiela, Filip. 2011. From state socialism to free society: sport in Poland from 1945 until present day. The Interaction of Sport and Society in the V4 Countries, 85–93. Kovačić, Davor. 2016. Nogometni profesionalci u udruženom radu. Casopis za suvremenu povijest 48(1), 67–95. Lalić, Dražen. 1995. Bad Blue Boys i Torcida. Erasmus – Časopis za kulturu demokracije, no. 10, 51–55. McManus, John. 2016. Building a Turkish fan community: Facebook, Schengen and EasyJet. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mihailović, Srecko. 1997. The war started on May 13, 1990. The War Started at Maksimir: Hate Speech in the Media: Content Analyses of Politika and Borba Newspapers, 1987–1991 5, 97. Mills, Richard. 2009. ‘It all ended in an unsporting way’: Serbian football and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, 1989–2006. The International Journal of the History of Sport 26(9), 1187–1217.

Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia   39 Mills, Richard. 2018. The Politics of Football in Yugoslavia: Sport, Nationalism and the State. London; New York: I.B. Tauris. Millward, Peter. 2008. The rebirth of the football fanzine using e-­zines as data source. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 32(3), 299–310. nkzagreb041. 2015. White Angels Zagreb: O nama. Retrieved from http://nkza greb041.hr/o-­nama-who-­we-are/o-­nama-who-­we-are Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2009. Red stars, black shirts: symbols of commemoration and the conflicts of World War Two history in Croatia. Pamćenje i nostalgija: Neki prostori, oblici, lica i naličja. IP ‘Filip Višnjić’ ad. Pearson, Geoffrey. 1984. Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. New York: Schocken Books. Perasović, Benjamin, and Mustapić, Marko. 2014. Football, politics and cultural memory: the case of HNK Hajduk Split. Култура/Culture: International Journal for Cultural Researches 6, 51–61. Petrov, Ana. 2017. How doing sport became a culture: producing the concept of physical cultivation of the Yugoslavs. The International Journal of the History of Sport onlinefirst, 1–14. Prnjak, Hrvoje. 1997. Bad Blue Boys–prvih deset godina. Zagreb: Marjan Express. Roversi, Antonio, and Balestri, Carlo. 2000. Italian ultras today: change or decline? European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 8(2), 183–199. Sindbæk, Tea. 2013. ‘A Croatian champion with a Croatian name’: national identity and uses of history in Croatian football culture – the case of Dinamo Zagreb. Sport in Society 16(8), 1009–1024. Smith, Neil. 1995. Remaking scale: competition and cooperation in prenational and postnational Europe. In Competitive European Peripheries, Advances in Spatial Science. Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer, 59–74. Stubbs, P. 2007. Civil society or Ubleha? In H. Rill, T. Smidling and A. Bitoljanu (eds) 20 Pieces of Encouragement for Awakening and Change: Peacebuilding in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia. Belgrade: Centre for Nonviolent Action, 215–228. Testa, Alberto, and Armstrong, Gary. 2010. Football, Fascism and Fandom: The Ultras of Italian Football. London: A&C Black. Totten, Mick. 2015. Sport activism and political praxis within the FC Sankt Pauli fan subculture. Soccer & Society 16(4), 453–468. Totten, Mick. 2016. Football and community empowerment: how FC Sankt Pauli fans organize to influence. Soccer & Society 17(5), 703–720. Tregoures, Loïc, and Šantek, Goran. 2018. A comparison of two fan initiatives in Croatia: Zajedno Za Dinamo (Together for Dinamo) and Naš Hajduk (Our Hajduk). Soccer & Society 19(3), 453–464. Unkovski-­Korica, Vladimir. 2016. The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-­Alignment. London; New York: IB Tauris. Vrcan, Srđan. 2002. The curious drama of the president of a republic versus a football fan tribe: a symptomatic case in the post-­Communist transition in Croatia. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1), 59–77. Vrcan, Srđan, and Lalić, Drazen. 1999. From ends to trenches, and back: football in the former Yugoslavia. In Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (eds), Football Cultures and Identities. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 176–185.

40   Football fandom in Zagreb, Croatia Vukušić, Dino, and Miošić, Lukas. 2018. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society, 19(3), 440–452. Wood, Shay and Lalić, Dražen. 2014. Football hooliganism in Croatia: a historical and sociological analysis. Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift Für Politik Und Gesellschaft, no. 2, 145–169. Woodward, Susan. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yeomans, Rory. 2015. The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia. Vol. 15. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Zec, Dejan, and Paunović, Miloš. 2015. Football’s positive influence on integration in diverse societies: the case study of Yugoslavia. Soccer & Society 16(2–3), 232–244. Zečević, Ivan. 2013. Moralna panika kao čimbenik zakonodavnog procesa: primjer Zakona o sprječavanju nereda Na športskim natjecanjima. Undergraduate Dissertation, University of Zagreb. Žižek, Slavoj. 1997. Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism. New Left Review, no. 225, 28. Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Liberal multiculturalism masks an old barbarism with a human face. The Guardian 3 October 2010 www.theguardian.com/commentis free/2010/oct/03/immigration-­policy-roma-­rightwing-europe (accessed 26 February 2018).

Chapter 2

Ethnography Positionality, approach, methods

Fieldwork: entry and positioning From my arrival, in 2007, in the Balkans, I have been impressed by the powerful presence of fan murals and graffiti across the various urban neighbourhoods of the cities in which I lived. I spent 18 months in Belgrade (Serbia) before moving to Zagreb (Croatia), and later living between the two locations before settling in Zagreb for five years.1 Throughout these early years, my spare time was frequently spent with activists in radical left and/or LGBTQ social movements. In such circles, organized football fans were often negatively referred to as ‘nationalist extremists’ and/or ‘gay bashers’. This blurring of categories between ‘hooligans’ and ‘right wing extremists’ reflected both a real existing overlap between the membership of football fan groups and the far right, with skinhead groups recruiting people for their initiatives from the ranks of fan associations (Razsa 2015, 43). In addition, there was the presence of a hegemonic operator labelling fans and constructing them as ‘primitive others’ in the media. Sporadically, attacks occurred in both Belgrade and Zagreb by skinheads on people who dressed in a style that might be considered homonormative.2 However, such homogenizing of the membership of organized fan groups also related to the isolationist and identitarian tendencies present among many radical left groups in Serbia and Croatia (Razsa 2015. 59), through which all people identifiable with a football fan association might be viewed as a potential threat. This frequently resulted in a monolithic imagining of such groups, which scholars of football fan groups have warned against (Hughson 1996, 29), and which I absorbed in those early years. Upon moving to Zagreb in 2008, I first met members of White Angels Zagreb (WAZ) while at a meeting with the Zagreb Young Antifascists. I had become involved with this group via contacts in the left-­wing organizations in Serbia with whom I had worked. I had earlier attempted to contact them by email via details on their website, but had received no response, suggesting that personal connections were key. When I first

42   Ethnography

started attending football matches in Croatia in 2011, I had been living in Zagreb for over a year and spoke fluent Croatian, including the use of local dialectal features and Zagreb slang, both factors – along with my gender, political orientation and enthusiasm for living in Zagreb – that enabled me to quickly establish a rapport with members of WAZ. At that point I had no intention of writing about the group, and it was only after several years of participating in group activities that I first decided to write an article about them. This pattern of several years of ‘informal’ involvement before orienting myself in the academic literature mirrors the entry into the field of several other anthropologists of football fan cultures, with Giulianotti (1995) and Armstrong (1998) also having described several years of participation before transforming their interest into a topic of academic study. However, while Hughson described how Armstrong grew up in such a milieu, only differing from the other fans in terms of educational level (Hughson 1998, 47), I had significantly more distance from several of my interlocutors. First, I became involved at an older age (around 26), without a strong previous football fan background, and with an open bisexual/queer identification differentiating me from the vast majority of group participants, almost all of whom identified as heterosexual, yet LGBTQ friendly. I had also grown up in a different state (the UK), and was not a first language speaker of Croatian. However, like many of the other group members, I had been involved for several years in transnational, internationalist left-­wing movements. I also had a reasonable knowledge of UK football. Over time, I built up a thorough knowledge of the Zagreb political, subcultural and football fan scene, and developed a ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1984) through involvement in the regional football fan scene and left-­wing activist traditions, as well as in radical left and antifascist initiatives in Zagreb. At this point, I also successfully found employment in a Croatian anthropological research institute,3 where I worked for three years, while attending football matches and participating in various initiatives with WAZ. In the final years (2016–2017), I started to attend Dinamo Futsal and Dinamo matches. As concerns the Bad Blue Boys (BBB), I had no connections with BBB for several years, before giving a university lecture on my research with WAZ, at which I met some students and lecturers who had been involved with the BBB. When I decided to conduct interviews and follow Futsal Dinamo and Dinamo games on the terraces, I also sent an email to the address on their official website, describing myself as researcher who wanted to do some interviews, to which I received no reply. As with WAZ, this suggested the importance of personal connections. The fan habitus and knowledge made it easier for me to later approach BBB members for interview, and prevented me from appearing ‘out of place’ on the North Stand terraces at Dinamo’s Maksimir stadium. This became particularly obvious to me when, upon attending a match with a friend from the UK, I was

Ethnography   43

s­ urprised to see him carrying a glass water bottle. As a result, he was searched by security much more thoroughly than I, and had his Croatian identity card (osobna iskaznica) details taken by the security team present. In contrast, this never happened to me and only once did security take an item (a pen) off me, bemusedly asking me what I needed it for. Had I attempted to attend football matches, or conduct interviews with heavily-­ involved fans after having just arrived in Croatia, I believe I would have found it much more difficult to establish any kind of shared concerns. I would not have had enough subcultural knowledge to ask relevant questions, and would likely have been more fearful at matches, given the monolithic, threatening stereotype of organised fans I had gained at first through involvement in left-­wing and LGBTQ organizing. I considered myself increasingly ‘at home’ over the course of living in Zagreb, given that I had moved to the Balkans at the age of 22 and spent the vast majority of my adult life living in Croatia and Serbia. Following Narayan (1993, 671), I analytically reject insider/outsider dichotomies, in favour of viewing the anthropologist in terms of shifting identifications The ideas of ‘native belonging’ and identity, particularly collective identity, sat uncomfortably with my political and anthropological positioning, particularly given the ways in which nationalist arguments were mobilized along such lines during the recent wars. However, the extent to which I was viewed as ‘at home’ varied in the eyes of my interlocutors. Many members of WAZ and a significant minority of academics came to view me as ‘native’ (domaći), whereas more nationalist interlocutors viewed me as a guest (gost) in Croatia, with a small number even expressing incredulity at my decision to ‘uproot’ myself from my ‘national culture’ in this way. Such a biographical account of my trajectory through the various field sites and academic institutions permits a more reflexive (Free and Hughson 2003; Hughson 1998; Poulton 2012; Davies 2008; Salzman 2002) understanding of how I related to the contexts in which I was working, and of how much ethnographic distance I had from the two groups. This is of particular relevance given that they sometimes came into conflict with one another, and that I moved across them, albeit with peripheral (primarily match-­day) participation on BBB’s North Stand, in contrast to in-­depth involvement in WAZ, a methodological issue I consider later in this chapter. Such reflexivity also permits me to engage more deeply with gendered, class, sexuality, race and other hierarchical relationships that affected how fans engaged with me and shaped my experience of fieldwork. Before considering these in more depth, I now describe the two approaches to anthropological writing I came to use, shaped by my earlier activist involvements: activist anthropology and anthropology as cultural critique.

44   Ethnography

Critical and activist approaches Ethnography consists of narrative accounts based on in-­depth fieldwork, typically across some kind of socio-­historically constructed difference (Brković 2017). It aims to generate empirically grounded descriptions of human experience, through careful observation and note-­taking of the everyday life of a particular group or situation. Ethnographic research (including Perasović 2012, 2001; Lalić and Pilić 2011; Vukušić and Miošić 2017) to date on football fan subcultures in Croatia is largely in the vein of the new ethnographies of football (Giulianotti 1995; Armstrong 1998), combining an (at least) partial insider positioning, with in-­depth, detailed descriptions of subcultural activities and practices.4 Lalić’s study of Torcida makes a strong argument for participant observation (Lalić and Pilić 2011, 57–77) from a perspective seeking to offer interpretations and explanations of the fan subculture so as to promote better public and media understanding of the phenomenon, in contrast to the popular demonization of fans (Obradović 2007). Perasović (1989, 61) also refers to a lack of tradition in the post-­Yugoslav region in the vein of the participant observation methods of the Chicago School’s (Whyte 2012) street-­corner society analysis of an Italian slum in Chicago. While present in this literature, cultural critique is not so frequently directed at the fan subculture itself, but at the mainstream negative reception of fan activities. This study brings cultural critique of the fan subcultures into focus more centrally, partly influenced by Paul Willis’ (1977) discussion of ‘the lads’ and his description of the articulation of an ‘oppositional culture’ in the classroom in 1970s’ England, along with McRobbie’s (1991) feminist critique, and various related studies of subcultural and everyday working class life which came to be collectively referred to as the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and its critiques (e.g. Hebdige 1995; Williams 1957; Clarke 1976; Hall 1980; Hall and Jefferson 1993; McRobbie 1991). Such approaches combine a focus on a detailed sociology of everyday life, alongside detailed descriptions of political and cultural processes that seek to criticize the power inequalities that are present. For example, through examining the everyday activities and discourses of ‘the lads’, Paul Willis aimed to reveal everyday criticisms, and strategies of resistance and accommodation by those being socialized (through schooling) into working class adult life in the UK. Such cultural critique constitutes ‘an approach to research and writing in which political alignment is manifested through the content of the knowledge produced, not through the relationship established with an organized group of people in struggle’ (Hale 2006, 98). Its strength lies in an  awareness of the power inequalities built into the research process; a critical scrutiny of how anthropological writing has obscured those

Ethnography   45

inequalities and bolstered the analyst’s authority; an explicit alignment with subordinated peoples who have been anthropology’s traditional subjects; and the energetic deconstruction of powerful ideas, institutions, and practices that these peoples confront.  (Hale 2006, 101–102)  This knowledge might then form a basis for possible action, or further research, comparison and critique. Yet, as Hale (2006, 101) continues, ‘For all its epistemological radicalism, cultural critique introduces very little change in the material relations of anthropological knowledge production. Once such change has occurred, both anthropological science and cultural critique could have crucial roles to play.’ The blind spot – of paying attention to the researcher’s material positionality in global economic and academic hierarchies as well as in the field context – has come into focus recently, including in post-­Yugoslav anthropology (Brković and Hodges 2015), and will be discussed in concrete situations when it emerges throughout this study. Activist anthropology is an approach based on active participation in more or less formalized political struggles when conducting fieldwork. Activist approaches arguably have greater appeal under conditions of crisis, and the post-­Yugoslav region has been marked by a series of crises, as discussed in Chapter 1, ranging from nationalist war and secession during the 1990s through to contemporary economic crisis and the growth of far-­right politics and historical revisionism regarding the Second World War. For this reason, it is unsurprising that a significant social sciences literature exists examining recent changes in the region through an activist positionality (e.g. Stubbs 1997; Bilić and Stubbs 2015; Razsa 2015; Baća 2017; Hodges 2016a; Hodges and Brentin 2018; Golubović 2007). Activist approaches frequently maintain less ethnographic distance compared with the cultural critique approach, and this can result in the formation of blind spots and dangers associated with ‘going native’, understood as a complete loss of distance between the researcher and her interlocutors. ‘Going native’ is widely viewed as resulting in negative effects, such as ‘the apparent loss of validity, integrity, criticality, necessary distance, formality and, ultimately, reputation’ of the researcher (Fuller 1999, 226). When working with organized football fans – the topic of a film named I.D. based on a policeman going native5 – this collapsing of distance might entail leaving a certain view of the police they hold unquestioned. In a more tempered version, where a small amount of distance is still maintained, it may still lead to severe and specific dangers. This is especially true, as Free and Hughson (2003) commented, in fan cultures where sexist, homophobic, racist, and other offensive comments are accepted, which contrast with the frequently humanistic researcher criteria:

46   Ethnography

Publicly ridiculing another man as a fag or a woman as slut is perfectly acceptable behavior in some subcultural contexts. Raising questions about such behavior during fieldwork risks jeopardizing rapport with the group, and to expose such behavior in a critical way in write-­up might leave the researcher feeling that he or she has betrayed the group’s trust. However, avoiding such issues produces potentially larger problems, risking overidentification with the group and involving the researcher in a self-­deceptive form of underdog sympathy, fueled by selective readings of concepts such as ‘carnival’, which tend to celebrate the subversive potential of supporter behavior and overlook potentially disturbing or contradictory aspects of the data. (Free and Hughson 2003, 152) In this vein, Free and Hughson examined the fan ethnographies of Armstrong (1998) and Giulianotti (1995), writing from a perspective that both appreciated the insights and ethnographic detail they offered, whilst being critical of unarticulated assumptions regarding a discussion of gender, a discussion that McRobbie (1991) argued ought to also take place in studies of predominantly male, spectacular subcultures. One further danger with activist approaches is that an over-­identification with a group or activist initiative can lead to the imposition of a ‘moral vision’ (D’Andrade 1995; Scheper-­Hughes 1995), and ethical issues concerning, for instance, breaking the law. To date, activist approaches have largely remained on the margins of anthropology and football research, despite recent strides in this direction (Doidge, 2018, Totten 2015). Finally, it is worth pointing out that the drawbacks of an activist approach share many features with that of the hooligan literature genre (see Dart 2008; Redhead 2009), namely a strong commitment to a cause and a relative lack of distance between the writer and the groups she writes about, although the hooligan literature genre is often also not considered to be in an academic genre. This book, whilst grounded in the cultural critique tradition, grew out of earlier activist commitments, including earlier descriptions of WAZ written in an activist anthropological vein.

Researcher positioning In the next section, various aspects of my positioning and identifications are discussed, insofar as they are relevant to the cultural critique, positionality and activist dimensions to the field experience. These include, gender and sexuality, citizenship, language and cultural knowledge, race and class.

Ethnography   47

Gender and sexuality My identification as male made it much easier for me to assume an active role in WAZ and my ethnographic inculcation of gendered practices and ways of behaving made it easier for me to demonstrate a familiarity and partially shared habitus in the interviews conducted with members of BBB. The number of active women participants was small in both WAZ and BBB, but increasing in both groups. I argue that, in public space, the fan habitus was strongly gendered, with a typically aggressive gait and, when gathered in numbers, behaving as a group, for instance with chanting and assuming a dominant and – to many bystanders – an aggressive presence. In some ways, this dimension of the habitus was common to some members of WAZ and many more of the BBB. On my part, it often resulted in the careful image management of my self-­presentation, often in line with heteronormative expectations (BBB), or broadly heteronormative performances (WAZ and BBB) of group members, reminiscent of Poulton’s (2012) methodological insights into being a female researcher working with hooligans and retired hooligans in the UK. My explicit identification within WAZ as queer/bisexual was accepted within the group, although it wasn’t always taken for granted by all members, especially those who did not know me so well given that I was ‘straight-­acting’ in everyday situations, or more accurately non-­ homonormative. Over the years of fieldwork, and depending on whom I spoke with, I moved between queer and bisexual labels. One problem with queer was its radical history in Anglo-­Amer­ican (Bilić and Dioli 2016) contexts, which many people weren’t familiar with in the Balkans, where the term itself had different connotations, especially in the Zagreb context where it had lost its radical meaning and was used as an umbrella term for lesbian, gay, bisexual and perhaps transsexual, and had an association with a yearly event focused on avant-­garde cultural performances. Later, I came to use bisexual more as it was more easily understood and also relatively radical in the post-­Yugoslav context in terms of challenging patriarchal homonormative identifications (see Hura 2016; Maljković 2016). When conducting interviews and attending matches with BBB, I did not discuss my sexuality as I knew it would be an issue for some and I regularly heard homophobic insults at football matches. My public persona as ‘straight-­acting’ aided me here.6 Two skills I acquired through years of living in such a context were flexibility/adaptability to a wide range of different social situations in terms of self-­presentation and an ability to quickly gauge people’s ‘socio-­political’ habitus, and consequently see what amount of self-­disclosure might be possible when getting to know them and, ultimately, how closely (or not) we might become friends. Both of these skills were also useful in negotiating access to, and participating in the activities of WAZ and BBB.

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As mentioned earlier, in Zagreb (and even more so in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia) gay bashing occurred on an occasional basis, especially in the centre of Zagreb, and with a high concentration of attacks in the immediate area close to BBB’s social centres.7 On the gay pride marches, opponents – who, on the occasions I attended, did not attack directly but made threatening gestures – were dressed in clothes suggesting they were involved in fan and/or skinhead subcultures. It is therefore unsurprising (and compounded owing to negative comments by WAZ members), that I was somewhat nervous before my first interviews conducted with members of BBB, and when entering the social spaces for the first time. However, such fear quickly dissipated after a short period of social familiarization and I became aware of a diversity of opinion and came to realize that the issue for many was the unambiguous performance of alternative sexualities (particularly homonormative) in public space, an issue I discuss in Chapter 6, and which for some was even interpreted as a threat to Croatian statehood. A second realization concerning sexuality when coming into contact with right wing groups was that, whilst some members held homophobic attitudes in general when directed towards strangers, such views were not necessarily used to drive wedges between subjects already interpellated as a friend or acquaintance. When socializing with WAZ – a group that was LGBTQ friendly but mostly heterosexual – although the group was accepting of alternative sexualities, sometimes a lack of awareness of the difficulties non-­straight people faced implicitly manifested itself in conversation. For example, some members would recite to others their female sexual encounters or relationship issues. Upon reflection, I realized that there was an asymmetry here and that I would not have felt comfortable relating similar accounts to them as a group in the same way. On a couple of occasions I received half-­serious invites for bisexual experimentation and later on found out that a couple of members of the group had experimented with one another, although this was not discussed in the open by members of the group. There was also a punk performance artist who played around with transsexual themes in her work. In contrast, when conducting relatively distanced interviews with members of BBB, sexuality was not discussed and I would have only revealed my bisexuality had I been directly asked and felt it would have been safe to do so. For the interviews, I considered this to be of little importance and that it would only have become important had I struck up a deeper friendship with some members, which is a key reason why I did not pursue deeper relationships with the BBB or choose to do in-­ depth ethnography. I suspect that I would have been accepted by the majority of members once personalized connections had been established, but that making explicit remarks at social gatherings wouldn’t have been possible. Studies of BBB in other contexts, such as Australia, described a stereotypical view of academics as feminized and a need for the researcher

Ethnography   49

to ‘prove’ his heterosexuality (Hughson 2000). These considerations significantly affected my choices regarding friendship and involvement, and allowed for a much closer relationship with members of WAZ.

Citizenship, language skills and cultural knowledge My UK citizenship and Croatian language skills gave me a certain kudos with fans as I was associated with knowledge of UK football leagues and, for some, with the hooligan tradition. Despite the fact that my knowledge was patchy, certainly at the start of fieldwork, my opinions and statements on UK clubs were consistently viewed with authority. My very strong knowledge of Croatian, including the use of local dialect, compensated for the lack of football knowledge on occasion. This made it much easier to arrange meetings, negotiate access and strike up conversations with people I did not know. I suggest this was easier than Testa and Armstrong’s (2010) experience in Italy due to a ‘Balkanist’ logic. Balkanism here refers to a feeling of inferiority when making comparisons with Western Europe (Jansen 2008), which possibly led to a greater fan desire to ‘tell their story’ to others from outside. As one colleague from Serbia described it, he believed I would find it relatively easy to organize interviews as fans ‘love to show off to foreigners’, a comment which resonates with Poulton’s (2012) reference to ‘ego-­ massaging’ when negotiating access with certain members of the hooligan subculture. This contrasts with the relative difficulties that Testa and Armstrong experienced in Italy, although they succeeded through making use of personal connections combined with cultural expectations.

Race and citizenship hierarchies Race (see Baker 2018) was arguably the least discussed yet most significant ascribed identification affecting access to the field. Following the ‘Homeland War’, in which a large number of Serb-­identified people were forcibly relocated to what is now Serbia, Croatia was remarkably ethnically homogeneous, shifting from around 80 per cent Croat identified before the war to 90 per cent following it. Second, whilst there were a significant number of people from Africa present during the socialist Yugoslavia, through non­aligned connections, such people were mostly in Belgrade. Whilst the Croat-­identified population was heterogeneous in appearance, with skin and hair colour varying from red hair and light skin with freckles to dark tanned Mediterranean, to many people I looked identifiably paler. On several occasions strangers would speak German to me, assuming I was German or Scandinavian (presumably given greater contact between Austria/Germany and the region), although I was most frequently addressed in English by strangers, as English was the lingua franca and I was often simply identified as ‘foreign’. When I mentioned researching BBB

50   Ethnography

with one left-­wing activist, she replied (eliding the links between the group and the far right) that I would be quickly accepted because I look ‘Aryan’. On another occasion, when I mentioned that several BBB members in my neighbourhood had recognized me and struck up conversations/bought me a coffee in the neighbourhood café, following an interview I gave as a bisexual member of White Angels, the comment was made that ‘they are more likely to be okay with you, as you are from the West – if you were from Russia it might be a different story’. This view was based – not specifically on race – but on a hierarchy of citizenship/national cultures (Jansen 2009), with Western states privileged given their stance towards Croatian elites during the recent wars. Another important aspect here which I often came across with more right-­wing fans, was that of being considered a ‘guest’ (gost) in Croatia. This was a status different to being considered ‘a local’, which some members of WAZ attributed to me. Guests were viewed as essentially different and deserving of preferential treatment (e.g. having drinks being bought for them, etc.). There was a clear hierarchy of citizenship implied here, as Roma and refugees from the Middle East and Africa were rarely given this ‘guest’ status. If I were to come across fan-­activists with far-­right views then, if my own positioning was not explicitly known to them I could firstly expect to be viewed as Aryan and placed in a positive (in their view) hierarchical relation to them, possibly being given a special status given my in-­depth knowledge of Croatian, in a context where Balkanism sometimes manifests itself in a sense of having been ‘ignored’ by the West.8 Second, I would expect this to make it much easier for me to approach and gain access to such groups. For some, the positive dimension to this might outweigh the negative connotations of my sexuality (if known to research subjects – sexuality can be ‘hidden’ more easily than race). Indeed, Tregoures (personal communication) occasionally came across a narrative of Dinamo fans using openness to alternative sexualities to distinguish themselves from ‘primitive’ Serb fans – and, as discussed in Chapter 7, WAZ used such a strategy of distinction to separate themselves from BBB. WAZ worked with asylum seekers and had done so over a period of several years. However, in my experience, there was little socializing with asylum seekers, certainly before the founding of the community club. In addition, group banter, which I later came to participate in, relied on an extensive knowledge of the Croatian state context, and Croatian. Race is worth highlighting as an issue relatively little tackled in the ethnography that follows, but worthy of in-­depth analysis in future studies in this context.

Class My UK broadly lower middle-­class origins were not, I contend, a key factor enabling or constraining access, nor shaping my research encounter

Ethnography   51

significantly. On a personal level, my relocation to the Balkans was liberating in taking me out of the UK class system, to a context where the primary class-­based discriminations made were on imputed rural (primitive, rough) or urban (educated, cultured) origins. As I was from the UK, I did not sit within the post-­Yugoslav rural/urban dichotomy and could not have been considered a ‘peasant’, but members of WAZ occasionally included me in banter surrounding such oppositions, such as mentioning ‘sheep-­shagging’ (which would have a rural, peasant connotation) when I mentioned I had family in Wales. As a result of my relocation, I was presumed to have an urban and more cosmopolitan alignment, and to be relatively well off. Consequently, a small number of WAZ members would ask me to buy them a beer, or more likely, to purchase a beer that I would share with them, on match days, but they also received criticism from others in the group for this.

Methodological issues Moving between groups This study is comparative in moving across two fan groups, and two different positionalities with respect to the groups. It does not claim to be an ethnography of the BBB, given that participation on the terraces was always peripheral and no lasting relationships with heavily involved members were formed, but it does nevertheless include ethnographic observations and descriptions of BBB activities and events. The two positionalities may be described as heavy with sometimes activist involvement (WAZ), including the sharing of many perspectives on football and politics articulated within the group, to distanced observations of the BBB based on a position of respect towards the group, alongside strong discomfort as regards certain perspectives and political orientations frequently articulated in the group. This raises a methodological question of whether comparison is possible under these conditions and, if not, what the limits of contrasts might be. One deep issue for the analysis of the material was that my heavy participation in WAZ would distort my view of BBB, wherein a lack of distance would result in viewing BBB solely through categories circulating among the WAZ membership and the subcultural scenes and social movements in which they were involved. I contend that this tendency was, to an extent, present in my earlier writing on WAZ (Hodges 2016a, 2016b). To combat this, I distanced myself from the group for a certain period, which also coincided with a growing disillusionment with the direction taken by the group, surrounding the founding of a community club. In so doing, my positionality within the group changed from being an active member to being an ‘old’ (long-­standing) member on the side. Other issues included

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the following: emotional and cognitive dissonance (Jansz and Timmers 2002; Pollard 2009), issues concerning trust and researcher self-­disclosure, difficulties relating to group rivalries or strong dislikes of the Other’s politics and/or platform, and the acquisition of sectarian (group-­think) habits. Emotional dissonance emerges when fieldwork includes engaging with the ideas and commitments of interlocutors, which strongly differ from the perspectives held by the researcher. This may cause significant emotional discomfort, which manifests itself in feelings of betrayal of certain interlocutors, or strong anger or disgust with some views expressed. Trust and self-­disclosure also feature, namely when and how to reveal oneself as a particular kind of subject. When first communicating with a member from the BBB core, this person identified me as a member of the White Angels and stated that this may be a problem for the group. What level of self-­ disclosure was appropriate was therefore an important issue and was difficult to gauge. With all BBB members, I mentioned my contact with and involvement in WAZ before the end of the interview, but never identified myself in initial emails as ‘a member or active member of WAZ’, as I was concerned this might create difficulties with access. Some of the members knew of me and mentioned it before I reached the topic, which emphasizes one feature of Zagreb, namely the difficulties of being anonymous due to the web of personal relationships across the city and various scenes, which led to its characterization by some of my interlocutors as being ‘one big village’. The later research focus on BBB, whilst being accepted by the members of WAZ, led to some feelings of distrust among certain members, including one who joked that I worked for the UK intelligence service, and other members, for whom Hajduk Split (Dinamo’s main rival) was the second team they followed, relating to a strong dislike of Dinamo and its fans. When I mentioned meetings with some people involved in BBB, one close friend in the group jokingly described my actions by saying ‘opet šuruješ s krivim’ (šuruješ, with the wrong people again) where the verb šurovati refers to making secret agreements, and pursuing hidden friendships with people with whom one officially, publicly, does not agree. For some members of WAZ, visiting BBB’s North Stand was considered anathema given the presence of far-­right graffiti and people promoting such ideas, and I was told in one interview with a BBB member that there would be people there who would want to physically confront me if they knew I was involved in WAZ. On the other hand, some members had previously attended the North Stand, and one close friend in WAZ who had previously followed Dinamo with BBB gave me a scarf and strip when I started going to Dinamo matches. The fact that I remained on good terms with the WAZ membership during this period (despite distancing myself a little) is testament to the depth of my relations with many group members.

Ethnography   53

I never had any trouble on the North Stand terraces, although I didn’t move into the centre of the mass, where I assumed, and had been told, that most of the fans knew each other and looked out for one another, and where it was more likely that I would have been noticed and possibly kicked out. I rather stood on the side, where some families and older BBB ‘veterans’ stood. One sociology professor (of football) suggested I present myself more as an interested researcher from the UK rather than a member of WAZ, which would then seem more interesting and exotic given the hooligan association with the UK. However, I didn’t want to lie about my previous engagements and so presented myself as a researcher writing about fan initiatives in Zagreb, and having written about White Angels and other initiatives. Some of the interviewees, following the interview, mentioned to me that they knew I was in/had been in the White Angels group and asked me a few questions about the group, but the tone was always friendly. One aspect of participation in organized fan groups such as WAZ and BBB, which also relates to wider issues in left-­wing organizing in the region specifically (see Razsa 2015), but also more widely, is sectarian/ identitarian modes of thinking. Heavy involvement in a small activist group such as WAZ, a ‘sub-­group’ of BBB or a political initiative or cell can result in a kind of tunnel vision or sectarian ‘group-­think’ which has been analysed in a Durkheimian vein by the anthropologist Mary Douglas (2003). Douglas argued that sectarian groups are often small and are faced with the task of retaining members’ commitments in the face of few tangible benefits, such as salaries, that more established, typically hierarchical, organizations can offer. Hence, these groups often emphasize the goodness and importance of their causes, magnifying the gravity of – for instance – environmental danger, or the evils of capitalism – in order to ensure continued participation. In my experience, such sectarian modes of ‘group thinking’ were endemic among NGO (non-­ governmental organization) actors and in the fan scene. On a social psychological level, I suggest a key test for such involvement was the extent to which one experienced feelings (e.g. of guilt, or of ‘missing out’) when not being able to attend important meetings, match days or key events. Looking back, I experienced this dynamic intensely when working with WAZ (over one season being one of a small number attending meet­ ings consistently and being critical of much of the rest of the membership for not taking the group seriously enough, and displaying a perceived lack of commitment). With BBB, I noticed this dynamic residually (e.g. starting to make value judgements about the number of people attending Futsal Dinamo decreasing over time, particularly following the end of the boycott of the North Stand). In contrast to Douglas, who viewed such organizational dynamics as inferior to organizations with clear hierarchy, I view such dynamics as key in effecting positive social change in certain

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historical moments, and as only possibly dangerous when experienced unawares. As Pearson (2012, 32) argued, during a period of immersive fieldwork, close connection and a convergence with the values of a group (what might be called, in a social psychological sense, ‘strategic symbiosis’), and entering into participants’ life-­worlds is key ‘if the researcher is to truly understand the social reality of those in the field and achieve interpretive validity relative to the research participants’. I suggest that this convergence should be coupled with a reflective awareness of when it is occurring, for instance when one has dropped into such ‘group-­think’ habits, and maintaining the autonomy to pull out and draw boundaries between selves and others when required. In this context, such sectarian perspectives were both isolationist and identitarian, with parts of the WAZ membership understanding themselves as living in hostile territory, a tendency which ‘also served to cut off Zagreb’s radicals from their neighbours by reinforcing some of their isolationist and identitarian tendencies and therefore precluding the possibility of a stronger and more inclusive movement’ (Razsa 2015, 59). As Rasza, writing about the radical left activist scene in Zagreb, further elaborated: …if activists understood their own cultural production as thoroughly open, internally diverse, and contested, they certainly did not usually see mainstream Croatian society in this way: Croatian nationalism was monolithic, unified, and almost universally contemptible in the eyes of radicals – understandably perhaps, given recent history. Ironically then, given what I have argued above, anarchists were often at their most subcultural, identitarian, and rigid when describing the dominant culture, or when they viewed the Croatian state as their tangible and mortal enemy. (Razsa 2015, 60) Such a description strongly resonates with views I encountered among the more left-­wing activist oriented sections of WAZ and, over my first few years in Zagreb (2008–2012), these were views I also held. For example, I received the comment that I should ‘be careful’ when attending Dinamo games in the North Stand as I have been active in the national media and people might know who I am and create problems (over the course of a whole season, this was never the case). Comments went so far as to warn me off any kind of interaction or social situation in which I might encounter BBB. On another occasion, comments were made about my wearing a rucksack with a Dinamo badge and an antifascist badge, stating that they ‘don’t go together’. This was then contested by a female friend outside the group who commented positively on it, as it undid the isolationism of the left. Such isolationism is an artefact of both small group sizes and to

Ethnography   55

­ erceived and real threats of physical violence from the far right, with skinp heads dominating on the street during certain periods (e.g. in Zagreb this was strong particularly around 2008). An awareness of the dangers isolationism could promote also led me to spend a final period revising and reconsidering this text, both outside of Zagreb and out of contact with participants in both groups. Methodological nationalism Working and living in a context in which a recent war had occurred with a nationalist dimension has led many academic researchers, myself included to confront and think through certain assumptions often left unnoticed by scholars working in less overtly politicized contexts. One such issue concerns methodological (Wimmer and Schiller 2002) and banal nationalist (Billig 1995) assumptions when conducting research. Methodological nationalism refers to the explicit or implicit framing of social scientific research in a national frame, e.g. discussing ‘Croatian’ or ‘English’ society, while banal nationalism denotes the implicit flagging of a national collective. These issues are compounded when searching for a narrative strategy for dealing with narratives produced by groups that refer to national collectives, and where, in the case of BBB, such narratives formed part of their political orientation. The first point to make here is that, for scholars not researching nationalism, national modes of thinking are often implicitly present in their descriptions of football fan cultures and activities, for example: They did not take themselves seriously all the time, and banter within the groups and between the groups and outsiders was a fundamental part of being an English football fan. Kate Fox contends that ‘the most noticeable and important ‘rule’ about humour in English conversation is its dominance and pervasiveness … In essence, it is the ‘default mode’ for the English’ (2005: 61)… (Pearson 2012, 63) The powerful creativity of the Italian soul has always manifest a ‘dark heart’, evident in a penchant for political turmoil, organised crime and a willingness to embrace political extremism and its concomitant violence. At the same time, the Italian nation has fascinated the world with its style, cuisine, sensuality and its obsession with il calcio (football). (Testa and Armstrong 2008, 1) In drawing attention to this tendency, my intention is not to critique these authors as ‘nationalists’, but rather to point to the frequent implicit

56   Ethnography

acceptance of a national frame when the topic is not in focus. This tendency is also common in fieldwork in the region, for as described by Rasza: …while some dissidents developed unflinching critiques of the dominant politics of nationalist hatred – despite being treated as traitors in their societies’ mainstream media – they did not typically challenge the underlying conception of ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ on whose behalf the nationalists claimed to act. Ironically, critics of nationalism sometimes asserted that the nationalists had betrayed the nation’s true interests. In this and other ways, they reinforced the idea that there were national interests. (Razsa 2015, 5) Working in a context shaped by recent war and nationalist aggression urges a confrontation with such habits, and this led to my rejection of this underlying logic.9 Nevertheless, the presence and importance of such ideas in the field requires the finding of an appropriate narrative strategy.10 Given the context of the recent wars, I therefore avoid the analytical use of these terms, choosing instead ‘self/group understandings’ and ‘identifications’ which convey process rather than reify form (see Bowman 2001; Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Where terms such as Croatian or English feature, they are used as placeholders for state contexts, rather than relating to specific cultural regularities. In viewing fandom or a club such as Dinamo as relating to a national culture in a symbolic manner, my approach rather resonates with Rasza’s description of understandings of culture mobilized by anarchists (including those in Zagreb whose engagements overlapped with the WAZ membership) in Croatia and Slovenia, which is more fluid, practice and process based: Rather than only reject ‘national culture’, activists affirmed a do-­ityourself (DIY) culture. This reflected an understanding of culture as a participatory field of struggle, of culture as a domain for making meaning – and new political subjects. (Razsa 2015, 215) This approach foregrounds fan organizing as a creative and productive force which may sometimes feed into wider political processes occurring in fields such as those produced by state-­like operators, and, when reflexively applied to political practice and academic knowledge production, it contests ‘national traditions’ (Bošković 2008) within disciplines such as social anthropology and the use of national labels perhaps except for their pragmatic use in referring to an existing state name (e.g. the Croatian state refers to an existing state with an ethnicized label, and not ‘the state of the Croatian people’).

Ethnography   57

Illegality and other ethical issues Similar to Pearson’s (2012, 13–37) experiences, most of the research participants (and all of WAZ) were not hooligans in the sense of seeking to engage in violent disorder, but many were regularly engaged in low-­level criminal activity. Such activities included the consumption of alcohol in prohibited public spaces, possessing and using drugs (primarily cannabis), painting graffiti across the urban neighbourhoods of Zagreb and very occasionally engaging in criminal damage to property. WAZ did not chant racist, sexist or homophobic chants, but I did come across these practices when on the North Stand terraces with the BBB. More serious offences included low-­level drug dealing (again, primarily cannabis) and assault. When conducting research, I felt no obligation, moral or otherwise, to report any crimes, a feeling compounded by my initially close relationship to radical leftist initiatives and organized fan activities, both domains in which a cynicism and suspicion towards the social role of the police persist, with an understanding of their role as ‘a group of armed, lower-­echelon government administrators, trained in the scientific application of physical force or the threat of physical force to aid in the resolution of administrative problems’ (Graeber 2009, 446). In addition to more general critiques of their structural role, suspicion was also shaped by negative experiences in both the UK and Croatian state contexts, including the 2011 student protests in London where police activities, such as heavy kettling, received heavy criticism. Only in interviews at the end of the project did I come into contact with fans with a football disorder associated criminal record, and a categorization (with one mentioning a category C classification). Whilst drinking alcohol was a large component of socializing with members of WAZ (despite one member who often led the terraces being teetotal), cannabis was not, and only a minority of group members regularly smoked at matches. I therefore did not feel under any pressure to participate in this. At the North Stand, it was an unspoken rule that the police (in riot gear, typically at the top of the terraces) would not seek to arrest people smoking cannabis on the terraces, and certainly not try to remove anyone from the crowd for this offence. Cannabis freely circulated, including among strangers united by their support for Dinamo, and I was occasionally offered a smoke. For other minor legal offences, I implicitly subscribed to a similar logic to Pearson, ‘identifying the crimes that I considered the least harmful in a utilitarian sense, and that were less serious in terms of likely legal response’ (Pearson 2012, 36). For more significant offences, such as physical encounters with other fans and fascist activists, I only ever acted in self-­defence. Furthermore, I never reported any such incidents to the police or authorities, an act that would have distanced myself from those around me and created possible issues with other group members.

58   Ethnography

As concerns insults, including sexist, racist and homophobic chants, on the Dinamo North Stand, it was generally easy to not participate, and non-­ participation was far more likely to go unnoticed than modified participation. I learnt this rule quickly when the group had been asked by the person leading the terraces (vođa navijača) to lift their right hand, an action which I associate with the Hitler salute. Irrespective of whether there was any ambiguity of meaning in the action, I didn’t want to make such a salute and so rose a clenched fist (which could have been interpreted as left wing) instead. This drew a comment from one of the people standing behind me ‘samo klošari i pederi dignu pesnicu’ (only tramps and faggots raise a clenched fist). The tone was not provocative in looking for a fight, but was insulting and I quickly realised that non-­participation was a better option than modified participation, and pursued joking responses that moved away from direct confrontation. Apart from chants directed at Zdravko Mamić and Dražen Medić, I never shouted offensive insults at individuals and in my (peripheral) participation, I never came across discriminatory situations in the street, although I did read about incidents in the press, such as attacks on Roma and LGBTQ individuals in areas near to fan organized events/social spaces from time to time. Concerns over the implications of being arrested also affected my approach to fieldwork. Being arrested may have cut short my participation, and resulted in further bureaucratic difficulties, especially given my residency status in Croatia, which was temporary with either a short-­term or tourist stay granted. On a number of occasions I experienced incidents with the police, and on two occasions was accosted by them. On one occasion I was arrested and taken in for questioning, when at an antifascist demonstration, I was found in the possession of antifascist stickers. This resulted in questioning and I received an infringement (prekršaj) and fine for not having been registered in Croatia (necessary before EU accession), but no further action was taken. This did not directly relate to my fieldwork with fans, but with overlapping political and subcultural initiatives. On another occasion, at a football match attended as a member of WAZ, my details were taken by the police upon entry to the stadium (discussed in Chapter 4), but no action was taken. On a later occasion when registering at the police station, I noticed that they had a dossier on me, but the contents were not available for me to view. Finally, my status as overt or covert researcher should be considered. My observations of the North Stand were covert, but any conversations with other fans were relatively superficial and I distanced myself from the BBB core, given that my objectives were to gain a deeper understanding of the context, of how the terraces are organized and policed, and a sense of the match-­day experience, whilst not pursuing social relations with the group. This conscious decision limited the kinds of knowledge I could generate about their activities. Over the first two years of involvement in

Ethnography   59

WAZ, I did not write about, or intend to write about the group. Other members knew me as both a political activist and a social anthropologist doing fieldwork on scientific knowledge production in Croatia and Serbia. As noted, and as a consequence of moves towards accountability motivated in part through fears of litigation, academic research institutions in Western Europe and the USA have somewhat fetishized the importance of ‘informed consent’, either in spoken or written form (Dilger 2017). However, this is near impossible for anthropologists to gain, especially in less ‘institutionalized’ settings, where there is no gatekeeper (e.g. an institute director), or clearly defined audience (e.g. the parents of a class of schoolchildren) from whom to seek informed consent. Furthermore, this research did not begin as a project funded by a Western European research institution, but was autonomous and an ‘aside’ to formal fieldwork, before being later formalized, becoming a focus when employed in Croatian research institutions, where informed consent has historically not been fetishized in the same way. This situation is now changing as a result of ‘projectization’ using bureaucratic structures directly related to, or conceptualized along, EU guidelines. I therefore did not seek any informed consent, except in qualitative interviews conducted with those involved in the BBB. In contrast to Pearson’s (2012) approach, my fieldwork was not covert, but I would not speak of my presence as ‘distorting’ the field significantly, but rather as intersubjectively constructing certain aspects of it – with my presence as a foreigner and my sexuality arguably shaping how people responded to, and engaged with, me to a greater degree than my presence as an (at the time ambiguous) social scientist. As concerns the writing process, I shared early texts I wrote in WAZ’s online Facebook group. Most group members were not interested in reading the texts or commenting on them, and a few more only read them once published, and were positive about them. As concerns material on the BBB, for interviews conducted with individuals involved, I used informed consent forms, explaining the project and emphasizing that the material would primarily be used in one chapter (on police repression) of a book about fandom in Zagreb. The number of interviews was small (N=5) and was designed to supplement the ethnographic observations and gain new insights into certain events, such as Bloody 1 May (see Chapter 4). For one interview, conducted with a member of the BBB core, they asked for authorization (that they see and endorse the text before publishing), expressing a fear that I might misrepresent their views. This fear was based on genuine concern over media misrepresentations. I granted this authorization as I believed that an interview with authorized material was preferable to no material at all, but the limitations of this should be highlighted, and I only use this material in Chapter 4.

60   Ethnography

Notes   1 Football fans were not the focus of my first project, researching the politics of academic and scientific networks, based at a UK university (Manchester) with a well-­known anthropological tradition (Evens and Handelman 2006).   2 The presence of such groups was stronger on the streets of Belgrade but, in contrast, forms of everyday and banal nationalism were, in my experience, more frequent in Zagreb.   3 Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Research: www.ief.hr/ (accessed 30 January 2018).   4 Interestingly, these scholars make more use of empirical immersive ethnographic methods than many scholars who work as social anthropologists or ethnologists in the region. This is because other methods, including in-­depth interviews and ‘back and forth’ short, repeated ethnographic trips to nearby locations are common.   5 www.imdb.com/title/tt0113375/ (accessed 30 January 2018).   6 I understood this as an authentic aspect of my personality stretching back to before moving to the Balkans, rather than a social adaptation to an often homophobic context.   7 www.libela.org/vijesti/618-draskoviceva-­najopasnija-lokacija-­za-homoseksualce/ (accessed 30 January 2018).   8 This was more pronounced in Serbia, given the economic sanctions.   9 This is an example of how ethnographic and field experiences may result in a redefinition of the theoretical intellectual ‘apparatus’ that the ethnographer brings to her analysis. 10 A theoretical consequence of this position is a firmly maintained analyst-­actor (etic-­emic) distinction, which situates this study in more ‘modernist’ currents in anthropology.

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Ethnography   61 Brković, Čarna. 2017. Epistemological eclecticism: difference and the ‘other’ in the Balkans and beyond. Anthropological Theory, November (online first). Brković, Čarna, and Hodges, Andrew. 2015. Rethinking world anthropologies through fieldwork: perspectives on ‘extended stay’ and ‘back-­and-forth’ methodologies. Anthropological Notebooks 21(1), 107–120. Brubaker, Rogers, and Cooper, Frederick. 2000. Beyond ‘identity’. Theory and Society 29(1), 1–47. Clarke, John. 1976. The skinheads and the magical recovery of community. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-­War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 99–102. D’Andrade, Roy. 1995. Moral models in anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3), 399–408. Dart, Jon. 2008. Confessional tales from former football hooligans: a nostalgic, narcissistic wallow in football violence. Soccer & Society 9(1), 42–55. Davies, Charlotte Aull. 2008. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London; New York: Routledge. Dilger, Hansjörg. 2017. Ethics, epistemology and ethnography: the need for an anthropological debate on ethical review processes in Germany. Sociologus 67(2), 191–208. Doidge, Mark. 2018. Refugees united: the role of activism and football in supporting refugees. In T.F. Carter, D. Burdsey and M. Doidge (eds), Transforming Sport. London: Routledge, 39–52 Douglas, Mary. 2003. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London; New York: Routledge. Evens, Terry M.S., and Handelman, Don. 2006. The Manchester School: Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Fox, Kate. 2005. Watching the English. The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder. Free, Marcus, and Hughson, John. 2003. Settling accounts with hooligans: gender blindness in football supporter subculture research. Men and Masculinities 6(2), 136–155. Fuller, Duncan. 1999. Part of the action, or ‘going native’? Learning to cope with the ‘politics of integration’. Area 31(3), 221–227. Giulianotti, Richard. 1995. Football and the politics of carnival: an ethnographic study of Scottish fans in Sweden. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 30(2), 191–224. Golubović, Zagorka. 2007. Objektivna ili subjektivistička interpretacija ‘otpora’. Filozofija i društvo, no. 1 (32). Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Oakland; Edinburgh: AK Press. Hale, Charles R. 2006. Activist research v. cultural critique: indigenous land rights and the contradictions of politically engaged anthropology. Cultural Anthropology 21(1), 96–120. Hall, Stuart. 1980. Cultural studies: two paradigms. Media, Culture & Society 2(1), 57–72. Hall, Stuart, and Jefferson, Tony (eds). 1993. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-­War Britain, Vol. 7. London; New York: Psychology Press.

62   Ethnography Hebdige, Dick. 1995. Subculture: the meaning of style. Critical Quarterly 37(2), 120–124. Hodges, Andrew. 2016a. The hooligan as ‘internal’ other? Football fans, ultras culture and nesting intra-­orientalisms. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51(4), 410–427. Hodges, Andrew. 2016b. Violence and masculinity amongst left-­wing ultras in post-­Yugoslav space. Sport in Society 19(2), 174–186. Hodges, Andrew. 2017. Cosmologies in Transition: Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia. Podgorica: Aquamarine Press. Hodges, Andrew, and Brentin, Dario. 2018. Fan protest and activism: football from below in south-­eastern Europe. Soccer & Society 19(3), 329–336. Hughson, John. 1996. A feel for the game: an ethnographic study of soccer and social identity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of New South Wales. Hughson, John. 1998. Among the thugs: the new ethnographies’ of football supporting subcultures. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 33(1), 43–57. Hughson, John. 2000. The boys are back in town soccer support and the social reproduction of masculinity. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24(1), 8–23. Hura, Radica. 2016. Against bisexual erasure: the beginnings of bi-­activism in Serbia. In Bojan Bilić and Sanja Kajinić (eds), Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 55–76. Jansen, Stef. 2008. Cosmopolitan openings and closures in post-­Yugoslav antinationalism. In Maria Rovisco and Magdalena Nowicka (eds), Cosmopolitanism in Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 75–92. Jansen, Stef. 2009. After the red passport: towards an anthropology of the everyday geopolitics of entrapment in the EU’s ‘Immediate Outside’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(4), 815–832. Jansz, Jeroen, and Timmers, Monique. 2002. Emotional dissonance: when the experience of an emotion jeopardizes an individual’s identity. Theory & Psychology 12(1), 79–95. Lalić, Dražen, and Pilić, Damir. 2011. Torcida: pogled iznutra. Profil multimedija. Maljković, Dušan. 2016. Queer struggles and the left in Serbia and Croatia: an afterword. In Bojan Bilić and Sanja Kajinić (eds), Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 213–224. McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Settling accounts with subculture: a feminist critique. In Feminism and Youth Culture. London: Palgrave, 16–34. Narayan, K. 1993. How native is a ‘native’ anthropologist? Amer­ican Anthropologist, 95(3), 671–686. Obradović, Đorđe. 2007. Nasilnici stvaraju medijski događaj. MEDIANALI – Znanstveni časopis za medije, novinarstvo, masovno komuniciranje, odnose s javnostima i kulturu društva 1(1), 45–72. Pearson, Geoff. 2012. An ethnography of English football fans. Cans, Cops and Carnivals. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Perasović, Benjamin. 1989. Nogometni navijači kao dio omladinske subkulture. Beograd: Potkulture, br 4 Perasović, Benjamin. 2001. Urbana plemena: sociologija subkultura u Hrvatskoj. Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada. Perasović, Benjamin. 2012. Pogo on the terraces: perspectives from Croatia. Punk & Post Punk 1(3), 285–303.

Ethnography   63 Pollard, Amy. 2009. Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters 11(2), 1–24. Poulton, Emma. 2012. ‘If you had balls, you’d be one of us!’ Doing gendered research: methodological reflections on being a female academic researcher in the hyper-­masculine subculture of ‘football hooliganism’. Sociological Research Online 17(4), 1–13. Razsa, Maple. 2015. Bastards of Utopia: Living Radical Politics after Socialism. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Redhead, Steve. 2009. Hooligan writing and the study of football fan culture: problems and possibilities. Nebula 6(3), 16–41. Salzman, Philip Carl. 2002. On reflexivity. Amer­ican Anthropologist 104(3), 805–811. Scheper-­Hughes, Nancy. 1995. The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3), 409–440. Stubbs, Paul. 1997. NGO work with forced migrants in Croatia: lineages of a global middle class? International Peacekeeping 4(4), 50–60. Testa, Alberto, and Armstrong, Gary. 2008. Words and actions: Italian Ultras and neo-­fascism. Social Identities 14(4), 473–490. Testa, Alberto, and Armstrong, Gary. 2010. Football, Fascism and Fandom: The Ultras of Italian Football. London: A & C Black. Totten, Mick. 2015. Playing left wing; from Sunday league socialism to international solidarity. a social history of the development of Republica Internationale FC. Sport in Society 18(4), 477–496. Vukušić, Dino, and Miošić, Lukas. 2017. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society 19(3), 440–452. Whyte, William Foote. 2012. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: IL: University of Chicago Press. Williams, Raymond. 1957. Working class culture. Universities and Left Review 2(1), 31–32. Willis, Paul E. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House. Wimmer, A., and Schiller, N. Glick. 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-­state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 2(4), 301–334.

Chapter 3

Everyday fandom in Zagreb

Introduction: Zagreb, neighbourhood belonging and class Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, with a population of approximately 800,000, experienced rapid industrialization, urbanization and population growth following the Second World War. This was accompanied, from the late 1950s onwards, by the construction of a series of planned housing estates mostly across the river Sava, which divides Novi Zagreb (New Zagreb) from the old centre (Gulin Zrnić 2009, 259). These housing estates were purpose built and consist of relatively self-­contained units or ‘mini-­villages’ within Zagreb, often with strong neighbourhood identifications. Many of the most well-­known subdivisions within the Bad Blue Boys (BBB) are based in these areas, with Travno, Utrine and Trnsko (see Figure 0.1) housing more prominent subdivisions, while on the side of the river closer to the city centre, Trnje had a reputation as a ‘dangerous neighbourhood’, home to skinheads and a strong BBB group, with the membership of these two groups somewhat overlapping (Razsa 2015, 50). Trnsko, one of the oldest Novi Zagreb neighbourhoods (Bužančić, 2012, 21), is famous for its music (mostly punk) and sport, with several famous Croatian bands, such as Azra coming from there (Golemac, 2013). This neighbourhood, in which I lived for several years, was home to a well-­known active BBB subgroup who frequently organized trips to matches. In almost all neighbourhoods in both the centre and Novi Zagreb, graffiti and fan murals can be seen (Vukušić and Miošić 2017), with the murals often being the collective organized effort of groups of fans living in the neighbourhoods, simultaneously marking territory and celebrating group, club and fan association belonging. Figure 3.1 gives a sense of the large open spaces and tall blocks of flats that characterize many of these neighbourhoods. Black and blue spray paint is most often used by Dinamo fans, and clothes of these colours (with blue associated with Zagreb) are also frequently worn. Figure 3.2 shows the building in which the neighbourhood council (mjesni odbor) meets. A

Everyday fandom in Zagreb   65

Figure 3.1  Trnsko neighbourhood, Novi Zagreb.

Figure 3.2  BBB mural at local council building, Trnsko.

few years ago, the Trnsko BBB subgroup had a social space in that building. Figure 3.3, taken in the Trešnjevka neighbourhood, displays a mural relating to the ‘Homeland War’, remembering those who died. The water tower of Vukovar is often used to symbolize ‘Croatian’ suffering and victimhood during the siege of Vukovar, a town near the border with

66   Everyday fandom in Zagreb

Figure 3.3  BBB ‘Homeland War’ mural.

Serbia which was subjected to a massacre of mostly Croatian-­identified people by the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) during the recent wars. It now frequently symbolizes, in nationalist discourse, the sacrifices made in Vukovar for the Croatian state. Figure 3.4 includes more controversial graffiti in an underpass at a tram stop in Novi Zagreb, displaying a ‘trinity’ of Dinamo, the Nazi swastika and the Ustaše ‘U’ sign, where the Ustaše were Croatian nationalists and Nazi collaborationists during the Second World War.1 Chapter 5 deals with such combinations of signs, which I refer to as an ‘oppositional patriotic register’. Figures 3.5 to 3.10 show the respective groups’ fan support, including a White Angels mural outside the Kranjčevićeva stadium, fan support for the new club (in the Dugave neighbourhood) and for Futsal Dinamo, and a banner relating to a cult Zagreb band (Tram 11) and symbol, the blue tram. Outside of Zagreb, fan groups supporting the main teams exist in many other towns and villages, including the urban periphery and with certain geographical strongholds, such as Western Slavonia for the BBB.2 Prnjak (1997, 35–36) argued that there is a stronger, specifically neighbourhood, focus with the BBB. He later suggests that this is a relic of their oppositional positioning as regards the club management, with whom they have never been on good terms. More recently, Vukušić (in Vukušić and Miošić 2017) has argued that among Dinamo futsal fans who largely overlap with the BBB, neighbourhood divisions were not always the most important, and friendships cross-­cutting geographical proximity were also present. As well as neighbourhood messages, some groups would spray graffiti around

Everyday fandom in Zagreb   67

Figure 3.4. The ‘oppositional patriotic register’ (see Chapter 5) – Dinamo ‘d’, Nazi swastika, Ustaše ‘U’.

the city centre, where several social clubs also existed in which members socialized and prepared for matches. This level of formal organization, with social spaces organized, renovated and often funded by members, suggests comparisons with the Italian ultras movement (Dal Lago and De Biasi 1994; Roversi and Balestri 2000). An analysis, drawing on the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies’ (CCCS) concept of a spectacular subculture (Hebdige 1999) making masculine (McRobbie 1991) claims over urban, public space might suggest that the neighbourhood visibility and activities of such fan groups and neighbourhood identifications can be analysed in terms of the production of a form of ‘working-­class subculture’, drawing on a democratic understanding of

68   Everyday fandom in Zagreb

Figure 3.5  BBB fan support at Futsal Dinamo match.

Figure 3.6  The North Stand (on a boycott day), Maksimir Stadium.

culture (Williams 1957) contrasting with elite forms of high culture. However, I suggest this is not the case, and even in the UK context where this approach was developed, this model has received extensive criticism. The sociologist Anthony King challenged the assumption that a working-­ class, masculine solidarity often features in such groups in the UK (King

Everyday fandom in Zagreb   69

Figure 3.7  Fan support at NK Zagreb 041 match, Dugave, Novi Zagreb.

Figure 3.8  Fan support at NK Zagreb 041 match, Dugave, Novi Zagreb.

2017, 175–179) and he is especially critical of studies, such as Robson’s (2000) study of Millwall fans, which claim that the fan culture is a masculine, working-­class culture in an authentic and enduring sense. Disputes have also emerged between the protagonists of the ‘new ethnographies’ of fandom (Armstrong 1998; Giulianotti 2002), and the promotion of more theoretical,

70   Everyday fandom in Zagreb

Figure 3.9  White Angels mural outside Kranjčevićeva Stadium, Trešnjevka.

Figure 3.10 White Angels banner with theme drawing on the Croatian rap group Tram 11.

perhaps ‘armchair’ models understanding hooligan activities as a rejection of the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias 2000) by the ‘rough working class’ (Elias and Dunning 1966). In Croatia, participation in fan organizing is strikingly cross-­class, with support ranging from local-­level drug dealers to various kinds of professionals, including those who have later gone on to assume

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academic careers and – as discussed in Chapter 5 – even political roles in government. Furthermore, the political economy of the post-­Yugoslav region makes any kind of initial comparison with contexts such as the UK difficult. For example, what kind of ‘magical recovery of community’ (Clarke 1976) could there be in urban neighbourhoods that were not, in strict Marxist terms, considered to be alienated until very recently, and in a context where urban belonging was widely associated with prestige and wealth? Post-­socialist ‘transition’ and the mass influxes of refugees, often from rural areas of what are now neighbouring states (Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia) during the 1990s, resulted in dominant distinctions being made (which approximate a class distinction) between urban and rural inhabitants of towns, with refugees primarily moving from rural locations. This distinction forms one dominant axis of identification, and whilst members from all kinds of social and class backgrounds participated in fan associations, underlying hierarchies of claims to urbanity and urban belonging persisted and were used (as discussed in Chapter 6) to exclude others. More recently, given the economic crisis, the extensive grey economy, the indebtedness of many citizens and relatively expensive cost of transport, spheres of everyday familiar movement (e.g. primarily across a neighbourhood or part of town, such as the East (Istok), to frequent inter-­city or international travel with work), comprise one noticeable axis along which class distinctions are manifest. A deeper attachment to a particular neighbourhood might constitute one element, with local ties of support, in part shaped by economic necessity, and in part by less frequent travel resulting in a longer-­standing relation with and the cultivating of a ‘reputation’ within a particular neighbourhood. The concept of a ‘reputation’ suggests a persisting everyday presence, built over time, in a particular neighbourhood and a recognition by others. Among the White Angels Zagreb (WAZ) membership, members with such an orientation were sometimes referred to as ‘neighbourhood rats’ (kvartovski štakori), or ‘peasants’ (seljaci). These members were more often associated with low-­level grey market activities, such as selling items or drugs in the neighbourhood. They were more likely to have friends in other local subcultural scenes, and play up their local belonging through bragging or boasting practices about their neighbourhood reputation. For others in the group, and in line with the observation that the membership cross-­cut class and status positions, a ‘neighbourhood’ habitus was a performance pursued by those with higher social or educational capital, a tendency sometimes emphasized by members coming to the group from the young antifascists. There were also performers, such as the rap group fetbojsi (lit. Fat Boys), who were active among the White Angels during the transition to founding a new community club. The possible relative lack of leisure travel connects with an increase in meaning attached to practices associated with such travel, such

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as ispraćenje – travelling to bus/train stops with friends about to depart on a long journey to send them off, or a celebration (oproštajka) before a friend leaves on a long journey. There was also often an exaggerated use of local dialectal features and slang such as šatrovački (as with the French subcultural language game verlan (Lefkowitz 1991), they reversed the order of words, e.g. dobro (good/well) became brodo). This distinction along the level of neighbourhood identification was the most visible descriptive class difference discernible through socializing with football fans in Zagreb. Finally, whilst the CCCS understands subculture in structuralist Marxist terms as a form of resistance through rituals (Hall and Jefferson 1993), some parallels may be drawn in this respect with fandom as a form of oppositional protest movement and fandom as a productive activity (in contrast to a recent focus on consumption – see Guțu 2017; Numerato 2015). However, this protest is directed at different opponents by different fans, which makes any kind of homogenizing generalization problematic.

Everyday aspects of group participation The remainder of this chapter considers various dimensions of group participation, ranging from enrolment, meetings, group symbols, fan habitus, local and national belonging, terrace activities, mythmaking, surveillance and relations with other groups. The material is primarily based on fieldwork, and for this reason some aspects mainly focus on WAZ. Enrolment Similarly to Testa and Armstrong’s (2010) description of ultras in Italy, it was relatively easy to become a ‘member’ of the BBB, simply through paying a fee and filling in a membership form either online or in the fan shop. Consequently, ‘peripheral’ membership was fluid while a clear hierarchy existed between the large number of engaged fans, and the activists at the centre of the group, often referred to as the prva ekipa (first team) or jezgro (core). When joining BBB or initiatives such as Futsal Dinamo, your name, address and email would be given to the club. Soon after joining Futsal Dinamo I started receiving friend requests on Facebook from accounts associated with BBB.3 These accounts were used to promote and invite members to matches and other Zagreb sporting events with which there was an overlapping fan membership (e.g. basketball, with Cibona’s smogovci). Members also worked as administrators on various Facebook groups promoting BBB and there was a forum, although my experience was that this format became less popular over the years, as it did with WAZ. After a longer period of engagement and match attendance, I started receiving occasional Facebook friend requests from individuals involved in

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the subculture who regularly attended matches. In contrast to BBB, the WAZ membership was much more tightly policed, partly because of the minority left-­wing ideological positioning of the group. Among WAZ, less diversity of opinion was permitted among the whole membership: members had to be explicitly committed to anti-­homophobic, anti-­racist and anti-­ fascist positions, which were policed by longer standing members, both informally, through challenging and discussing comments made, and more formally – for instance by removing people from the group if they made serious infractions. These practices arguably resulted in a monolithic imagining of other groups and the ‘mainstream’, and in interpreting various subtle behaviours as problematic. For instance, members who talking positively of fan choreographies by other ultras groups with right-­wing tendencies (e.g. Lazio), were charged with being ‘latent fascists’ on occasion. This policing was compounded by occasional attempts by right-wing activists to infiltrate the group and the occasional ‘right-­wing’ exiting of members, mostly from the punk scene. For example, two members participated for a few months before attending a meeting wearing T-­shirts with SS written on them and, after an argument, they were thrown out of the group and later founded a small and short-­lasting ‘anti-­anti-fa’ group. Related to this, my experience of WAZ over several years was that large numbers of people (relative to the group’s size) quickly passed through the group.4 After getting involved, there would frequently be a period of intense involvement accompanied by a strong identification with the group. Following this, some members would ‘burn-­out’ and stop participating, or there would be an oscillation between light and more heavy involvement over time, depending on the person’s life situation and challenges the group faced. This mirrors the dynamic of activist involvement that Graeber (2009, 251) described in his discussion of anarchist activists in the USA during the 2000s. Meetings WAZ-­organized meetings occurred on a regular basis, roughly once a month, with more formal ‘assemblies’ (skupštine) – a requirement due to formalization as a citizen association (udruga) – occurring a couple of times per year. Less formal meetings to design and produce banners and occasionally do graffiti runs took place in the Young Antifascists’ space, often accompanied by the consumption of alcohol and cigarettes. The formation of the community club (NK Zagreb 041) resulted in an influx of members and more frequent meetings connected with running the club, with working groups (radne grupe) set up to focus on the different activities, including the team, logistics, administration, finances, marketing, fan (terrace) support, and so on (‘041 & Direktna Demokracija |’ n.d.). The nature of the group changed as it switched from being primarily a fan

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group involved in some activist initiatives, to a full club. Drawing on connections established with the student left-­wing activist scene, centred on direct democratically organized student protests at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, which gathered steam around 2008 (see Stubbs 2012, 24), calling for free publicly funded higher education, the new club sought to organize in a direct democratic manner, which in small meetings entailed listening carefully to all members’ suggestions, whilst a direct democratic process was more formalized in larger meetings, and formats such as the working groups were set up. There were hierarchies around participation, with those doing the most work often being listened to more carefully than people on the edge, and an informal hierarchy surrounding a small number of members who planned a future direction for the club and cultivated links with the Centre for Peace Studies. Futsal Dinamo also held regular assemblies on several occasions per year, which all members could attend, and employed a one-­member one-­vote principle (which they argued the Dinamo management should also use). They also had a number of subgroups, with a greater focus on commercial sponsors than NK Zagreb 041. Their social activist activities were also focused on a more humanitarian (charity) paradigm in comparison with the solidarity focus of NK Zagreb 041. I have no information about the frequency, formality and organization of BBB core meetings, but BBB often organized events for the membership and there were clear, tight agreements made among a small number of people governing how to organize trips to away matches, and match day strategies, with instructions often being circulated on Facebook groups, as well as through private communication channels. Group symbols The use of and recognition of a wide variety of symbols relating both to football, ultras, hooligans, punk, politics and Zagreb all helped define levels of participation and understanding. A small number of symbols, including the words ‘BBB’, ‘dinamo’ and a stylized ‘d’ (for Dinamo) were found scrawled in pen in public transport and graffitied across walls. WAZ was also often scrawled by members across walls and stickers placed in bar toilets, cultural venues, on drainpipes, in trams and on walls. Such scrawling indexed a primary identification with the group and made claims over public space. Sometimes, the dinamo scrawls were accompanied by far-­ right symbols as in Figure 3.4. Both groups had a repertoire of images they often used, including a ‘British bulldog’ (BBB), a football with angel wings attached (WAZ), the Zagreb town crest (both). Such symbols were often policed, especially those connected with left- and right-­wing ideologies, as mentioned earlier. One symbol – that of Zagi – a squirrel with a rainbow tail, which had been the mascot of the final student Olympics held in Yugoslavia, in Zagreb 1987, was particularly cherished by members of

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WAZ and was appropriated as a left-­wing symbol of Zagreb, and jokingly referred to in English as a ‘faggot squirrel’, given the rainbow tail. When this was re-­appropriated by BBB with Zagi in an aggressive, fighting mode, this drew criticism from members of WAZ. The blue trams and the town crest are also strong symbols of Zagreb. The blue tram logo formed part of a band logo and name – Tram 11, who despite having lyrics that were occasionally homophobic, was liked by members of both WAZ and BBB, demonstrating how a degree of ideological flexibility was present when other connotations of symbols (such as primary identification with Zagreb) were present. Subtle distinctions were often discussed. For example, at one football match, I wore a hoodie with the Zagreb crest emblazoned on the back. This immediately drew commentary as there were a small number of producers of such hoodies in Zagreb, some of which were ex or current BBB. Several of their hoodies incorporated messages with ambiguously far-­right connotations (grey zone) with slogans such as ‘Zagreb über alles’. One member of WAZ looked at the crest carefully to see whether the castle doors were open or closed. One current brand associated with the Bad Blue Boys often used a crest with the castle doors shut. This symbolically implied that the city was not open to newcomers and that only ‘real Zagrebians’ (pravi purgeri) were permitted. The version of the crest I was wearing had the doors open, but the portcullis was down, which resulted in joking comments, asking whether it means only small people who can fit through the portcullis are welcome in Zagreb. Fan habitus In addition to symbolic references, modes of organizing and the political platforms (discussed in Chapter 5) of the groups, there were also various quotidian, inculcated logics (Bourdieu 1986) which fans drew on, both in informal socializing and in the interviews. Five aspects which stood out were: (1) an oppositional positioning; (2) passion; (3) an ethic of personal responsibility; (4) seriousness; and (5) joking relations (banter). The first was the most obvious and overwhelming and consisted of disgust and contempt for the current situation in Croatian football. When accompanied by a deeper analysis (which was not always the case5), this contempt and oppositional positioning was directed at the political leadership and the new elite, in a history dating from the clashes with President Tuđman over the club name to critiques of crony-­capitalism (BBB) and capitalism more generally (WAZ), with crony privatizations understood as ‘legalized robbery through different forms of fictitious or politically dictated transactions’ (Baletić 2003, 287). Passion was directly connected with ultras-­style references to following the club and the football scene as much more than a weekend activity, or

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even lifestyle, but as something they lived for. This echoed Pilz and WölkiSchumacher’s description of ultras: [B]eing an Ultra means having a new attitude to life (their Ultra identity), being ‘extreme’, having fun and being part of a separate new football fan and youth culture. Unlike other fan club activities, a person is an Ultra not only at a weekend game but also during the entire week. Everything is subordinated to football and/or the fan movement. (Pilz and Wölki-Schumacher, 2010, 6) In one of the BBB interviews, a fan made the following comment: Look, you live this, you live this 24 hours a day, you have to be ready for every call, how can I say it, it’s totally different from going to matches at weekends, my best friends to this day are those I met at the stadiums, some still go, some don’t go anymore, but that is where those friendships began…6 Among the WAZ membership, only those members familiar with the ultras tradition, and those who followed the fan scene in depth made such comments, and these were used to draw a distinction between ‘real’ fans, and the others who attended for ‘political reasons’ or because they were part of the NGO (non-­governmental organization) scene. Sometimes BBB were commented upon positively by members of WAZ who followed the ultras scene. On one occasion when drinking in a park in Zagreb city centre, one member compared BBB’s love for the club with a romanticized image of a soldier remaining devoted to his wife while serving on military duty, a powerful image that resonates with the military organization and motifs with which the BBB were associated. A related logic, which repeatedly emerged in the interviews, was the ethic of personal responsibility (Trnka and Trundle 2014; Preiss 2017). This was a view, reminiscent of accountability, that if individuals commit to any course of action, they ought to carry out what they commit to competently, and, relatedly, they ought to realistically appraise whether they had the capacity to carry out such courses of action before committing to them. Such a logic was invoked when referring to the police, when one fan said: The thing is, you must have the level [of competence required] to do your job, if you don’t have that level then you can’t carry out your duties…7 It was also used to critique crony-­capitalist logic in which ‘incompetent’ individuals did not carry out the tasks they were employed to carry out.

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This ethic has a historical basis in right-­wing libertarian thought (Preiss 2017, 622–623), despite being mobilized by people across the political spectrum. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, this logic appeared stronger among the BBB with whom I spoke. Among WAZ, comments were frequently made about how ‘lefties’ (ljevičari) have trouble organizing events, often arrive late and that, for instance, some of the working groups were often inactive for long periods. The motives of some WAZ members were criticized, with the suggestion that they primarily attend meetings for the feeling of collective belonging, but when asked to do things for the group, they would typically say they would help, but then do nothing. Indeed, sometimes a lack of such ‘quality’ people (kvalitetni ljudi), in terms of personal responsibility, was referred to by WAZ members. This also invoked the lack of an ethic of personal responsibility among group members as being a problem with the kinds of people the group attracts. Members who were viewed as ‘high quality’ were particularly encouraged and their involvement was promoted. By the wider public, this argument was sometimes scaled up and offered as an auto-­racist critique of Croatian ‘national mentality’.  A fourth aspect was a seriousness – bordering on arrogance – that was sometimes encountered. Members of WAZ often complained that the BBB take themselves too seriously. Taken to an extreme, this was understood as a propensity for arrogant, extremely self-­confident assertions of oneself and of one’s group as playing a vanguard-­like role. This logic was particularly criticized by members of WAZ when it was applied to the promotion of Croatian national ideas, as in slogans such as ‘Mother Croatia, father Dinamo, and me – BBB’ (Majka Hrvatska, tata Dinamo, a ja BBB), and ‘my club is sacred’ (moj klub je svetinja8). When BBB members posed seriously in photos, WAZ would often joke about the homoerotic aspects of such photos. Seriousness is connected with a desire to preserve and promote an individual reputation within a group, and a group reputation on a wider ultras scene (Spaaij 2008). It is therefore unsurprising that this was not present among the majority of the WAZ membership and was only occasionally referred to by those members who considered themselves ultras, and in situations where alleged threats from other groups emerged. Finally, banter and joking relations were also key, and these are discussed separately in Chapter 7. Place and identification The anti-­nationalist positioning of WAZ meant that whilst the town level (Zagreb) was championed, the national level (Croatia) was ignored – I came across few expressions of patriotic feeling, in contrast to Perasović and Mustapić’s (2017) observations with fans of Hajduk Split. Crucially, nor was there a consensus in WAZ regarding the ‘Homeland War’, as

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Perasović and Mustapić report among Hajduk Split fans, and as was present among the BBB. I also came across BBB members who disliked or did not follow the national team (repka). Rather than promoting or viewing themselves as building on the legacy of the new Croatian state, some members of WAZ asserted an indifference, with the feeling that it was the latest creation in a series of many, with outside forces playing a large role in shaping the outcome, as summarized in the provocative phrase made by the Social Democrat leader Zoran Milanović, that Croatia was an ‘accidental state’ (slučajna država) (B.D. 2012). On this view, the ideologies motivating war sacrifices and enshrining hierarchies of both Croatianness (Čapo Žmegač 2007) and of war veterans were viewed as silly and were even pitied by some. Such a positioning might be compared with King’s (2000) ‘post-­national’ description of Manchester United fans. Similar to Manchester United fans, the majority of WAZ members were not anti-­national in the sense of a complete rejection of national categories,9 in the case of WAZ they were rather against a political system organized around national categories. For the Manchester United fans, this may relate to their economic marginalization in comparison with the South of England – for the WAZ membership, it often related, in my experience, to family Partisan heritage, minority status (e.g. as Serbian identified), or as a rebellious reaction to a right wing conservative family environment. Amongst members of WAZ, the attachment to Zagreb varied amongst group members from a serious tendency to idealize one’s town, neighbourhood and/or club strongly, assert its superiority in the face of others, to a more gentle and jokey affection. In turn, this related to the level of engagement with ultras’ definitions of football. The often-­exaggerated use of local dialect was used to index local identifications and belonging. The membership was far from exclusively Zagreb based, with members including myself and individuals from other towns in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Among the BBB, members of the Croatian diaspora also regularly attended matches and buses were organized from fan clubs set up in different parts of Croatia (recently, in the towns of Vukovar and Slavonski Brod). Terrace activities Fan activities on the terraces were primarily modelled on ultras’ activities, with a clear hierarchy, including a leader (vođa), the frequent use of a megaphone, choreographies, banners (transparenti), written messages (poruke), which appear at opportune moments, flags, props (rekviziti) such as balloons, and regular use of pyrotechnics, including flares (bengalke) and smoke bombs (dimne bombe). BBB’s style was often referred to as ‘military’ (vojno) suggesting disciplined strong and group homogeneity

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movements as opposed to a more anarchic chaos on the terraces, which was used to describe certain other groups in the region (e.g. Torcida, Grobari). Because of the relatively small number of people in WAZ and the difficulties in retaining membership, it was relatively easy to lead the fan support, and this became a subject of ridicule within the group, with one member joking that in BBB and other groups you have to participate for years and prove yourself to ever lead the terraces, whereas in WAZ you just have to turn up and say you want to do something. At Dinamo’s north stand I often noticed what I called ‘scouts’ – mostly young people who would move around the terraces up and down looking at the crowd and what was going on in an informal manner. Terrace displays were also carefully regulated – for example, on one occasion I was stood by a father and son who had brought flags with them. When the son started waving them at one point, one of the BBB members stood close to the core ran up and told them ‘no flags’. The various subdivisions were represented, many with banners, and (presumably) in advance they would agree to bring sets of flags that would then be distributed at key moments, passing from one person to the next along a row. Despite sometimes attending alone or with friends not involved in BBB, it was easy to participate in these activities. The core of the BBB occupied the central area of the North Stand, while families and older members stood on the sides. Holding together as a group was crucial when it came to actions such as letting off flares, given the heavy police surveillance. Taking photographs of the crowd close-­up was looked down on. At the Dinamo Futsal matches, where there was relatively little police surveillance and matches were inside, the terrace organization was more fluid and less hierarchical, adapting to the different locations and it being easier for an outsider to join the main mass of people. On the terraces, chanting and singing were also used to provide support for the team and, at the end of matches, the team often addressed the fans, sometimes even throwing their shirts into the crowd. As Percio and Duchêne (2012) commented in their study of FC Basel fans and the relationship between language ideologies, authenticity and commercial profit: ‘An ideology of language as a medium for motivation and power emerges from behind this practice.’ In this ideology, language was a medium promoting collective force, flow experiences (focused, deep, enjoyable immersion and involvement) and strengthening feelings of collective identity. Several chants and songs spoke of love towards the club: Život svoj, ljubav svu, dat ću mu Dinamo Zagreb, Dinamo Zagreb, Ti činiš me sretnim kad tužno je

My life, all [my] love, I will give him [Dinamo] Dinamo Zagreb, Dinamo Zagreb You make me happy, when things are sad

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I stvarno ne znaš koliko te volim, Dinamo Zagreb volim te!

And you really don’t know, how much I love you Dinamo Zagreb I love you!

The following song was sung with the right hand raised (dignuta desnica) in a style reminiscent of a Nazi salute: I znaj da te volim Dinamo ja,

And let it be known that I love you Dinamo Jer ti si ponos hrvatskog naroda Because you are the pride of the Croatian people I neka cijeli svijet zna za to, And let the whole world know it Ja volim samo Dinamo, I only love Dinamo Ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo Nanananananananananana Nanananananananananana Ja volim Dinamo, ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo, I love Dinamo. I opet će se naše pjesme pjevati And again our songs will be sung I opet će se naše baklje paliti And again our flares will be lit I neka cijeli svijet zna za to, And let the whole world know it Ja volim samo Dinamo, I only love Dinamo Ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo Nanananananananananana Nanananananananananana Ja volim Dinamo, ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo, I love Dinamo I neka moja pjesma tebi snage da And let my songs give you strength I znaj da samo s tobom sretan bit And know that only with you will ću ja I be happy I neka cijeli svijet zna za to, And let the whole world know it Ja volim samo Dinamo, I only love Dinamo Ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo Nanananananananananana Nanananananananananana Ja volim Dinamo, ja volim Dinamo. I love Dinamo, I love Dinamo. Some of the chants referenced the battle against Mamić: Poslušaj nas čovječe iz svečane lože, nama nitko Dinamo uzeti ne može Listen to us you [man] in the manager’s box, nobody can take Dinamo away from us One song sung by both WAZ and BBB was an old song about Zagreb with local dialectal features:

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Serbus dragi Zagreb moj Kaj se skrivaš v megli toj Kaj da bi se nekaj sramil Ti se nemaš sramit kaj I sad sem tu i pak sem tvoj Serbus dragi Zagreb moj I sad sem tu i pak sem tvoj Serbus dragi Zagreb moj

Hello my dear Zagreb What are you hiding in that mist As if you were ashamed of    something You have nothing to be ashamed of And now I am here and I am yours Hello my dear Zagreb And now I am here and I am yours Hello my dear Zagreb

Finally, in an ironic vein, some of the songs mocked the current situation in Croatian football: Ma kakav Liverpool, ma kakav Manchester, ma kakav Arsenal, ja volim HNL… Forget Liverpool, Forget Manchester, Forget Arsenal, I love HNL…10 (WAZ) Mythmaking 11 Many ultras groups included on their murals the year in which the fan club was ‘officially’ founded; e.g. BBB 1986, Torcida 1950. This pointed to the importance of history and historical claims. Records of activity stretching back over longer periods of time were respected. Amongst the right-­wing ultras groups, the claim to longevity was perceived to make a claim to authority. Similarly, respect and authority was also attributed to long-­ standing members of the group and fans who had followed NK Zagreb for many years. Some members of WAZ thought similarly, whilst others thought that deliberately ‘making up’ a long history of your club and/or association was pointless, and referred to members of other ultras groups who engaged in activities such as mitomani (mytho-­maniacs). The issue relates to the importance of invented tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992) in defining group belonging; heroizing a long history could create a moral charge on individual members to build and develop the group and produce a sense of honour – a process commemorated via statues and monuments, several located near football grounds and frequented by fans in the former Yugoslav region (Mills 2012); an issue touched upon in the discussion of others and the importance of narrating violence and skirmishes with other groups, in shaping a sense of collective memory. Such a process was directly parallel to nationalist politicians’ reliance on a national mythico-­history (Malkki 1995). Historical continuity came up as a topic for discussion when debating club history. Whilst the name White

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Angels was first used in 1989, the platform and orientation of the group has changed a great deal since then. These questions also related to club history – could clubs that ceased operations during the Second World War and which then recommenced, at the same ground, but with a different name, different management and a completely new set of players after the war, be considered ‘the same team’? Some members of the group argued not, whilst others argued for the importance of a long club history in earning more respect from fan clubs associated with other teams in the supporters’ world, whilst others argued that having an aura of ambiguity surrounding the origins of the club/group could create a sense of mystery. Amongst left ultras, claims to enduring historical continuity were therefore contested. Relations with other groups A significant amount of hatred exists between members of the larger fan associations, such as BBB and Hajduk Split’s Torcida. However, when faced with a common enemy members would collaborate, on one occasion organizing a collective protest in Zagreb against the proposed introduction of a voucher system for attending matches (Tregoures 2017), whilst another instance is at the Vukovar commemorations every November, attended by fans as a group. Smaller groups were often ignored by larger groups and were sometimes ridiculed. Some smaller groups modelled themselves on larger groups, such as Osijek’s Kohorta, who modelled themselves on Torcida. Some people followed a bigger team and a smaller team. Among the WAZ membership, some also followed Hajduk Split, whilst during the 1990s, when the dispute over Dinamo’s club name was taking place, more members of BBB attended NK Zagreb matches. On one occasion I spoke with a member of BBB who lived in my neighbourhood, and who said that some members were aware of the activities of WAZ and that they knew some members by name, but that they had left a space for them as they understood them as supporting a Zagreb tradition. However, their politics was disliked and particular issues such as supporting LGBTQ rights were particularly disdained, and when they were reported on, they received frequent negative comments on fan forums and Facebook groups. WAZ was mostly considered an irrelevancy and subject of ridicule for the BBB, whereas the BBB were an ever-­present and large ‘Other’ for WAZ. Some members of WAZ strongly disliked BBB, whilst others had a measured amount of respect for them, as earlier described. Both groups were friends with individuals involved in other groups across Europe, and these relationships are considered in Chapter 8.

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Surveillance Upon entering the stadium each match day, WAZ would pass through a security check by the main gates at the front, where several members of stadium security, who wear bright-­yellow jackets, complete a body search and check bags for flares and other such items. They are familiar with the group and always check the messages on the banners as well – messages allowing broader political messages were typically allowed, whereas messages bringing WAZ into conflict with the management were not permitted. Several police officers were also often positioned there by the stadium entrance and occasionally enforced additional checks. With smaller groups such as WAZ, one police strategy was to ask for one member of the group to give them their ID details upon entering the stadium. If there was any crowd disorder during the game, the police then had the details of a fan whom they could pursue or even arrest. Consequently, fan solidarity sometimes acted to minimize disorder on occasions where one of the group had been ‘ID-­ed’ (traženje evidencije, legitimiranje). For instance, on one occasion, I was the last person to go through, with a friend. We were carrying the banners. On this occasion, the police stopped us and asked to look at the banner. They then asked for identification. I had to give my passport whilst my friend gave his ID card. They noted down our details and the date that I entered Croatia, before letting us through. I asked why they had taken our details as we had not committed, or were suspected of committing any offence. Other members of WAZ told me that the practice is a means of police surveillance at football matches. If something were to happen during the course of the match, the people whose details had been taken would be sought out by the police and questioned. A consequence of the identity search was that the police were able to modify WAZ’s behaviour at this particular game, to which WAZ had brought flares they intended to set off, but subsequently chose not to. Police officers also sometimes pursued a strategy of softening the boundaries between personalized interaction, even bordering on banter, and their official roles as law-­enforcement officers. For example, on one occasion the White Angels organized and gained a permit for a stand selling paraphernalia associated with the White Angels outside the football ground. It was located by the entrance, stood next to other sellers, the stadium security staff and a police van. The vendors were selling polystyrene squares for people to sit on so they would not be cold at the football match, and snacks such as peanuts and seeds for consumption during the game. A police officer walked up to the White Angels on the stand and started to joke informally, taking a look at the items on the stand, being friendly and recognizing the group effort. He then joked, smiling, ‘I’m sure you are paying PDV (Value Added Tax) on all these goods.’ The smile was returned, before he then continued,

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‘no I’m serious, can I see your permit?’ When a member of WAZ pulled out the permit, he looked surprised, grabbed hold of it and then turned, smiling, to the other sellers. ‘Look at this, you could learn something from these guys,’ he called out before walking away without asking the other sellers whether or not they had permits. These examples illustrate various ways in which specifically police surveillance was achieved and the particular challenges the stadium space presents in avoiding possible surveillance, actions such as legitimiranje exerting a Foucauldian disciplinary effect reminiscent of the ‘gaze’ associated with Bentham’s Panopticon (Foucault, 1997). These examples resonate with Brković’s discussion of how state officials in Bosnia were able to place or remove obstacles, often on the basis of personalized connections between state officials and individuals in need (Brković, 2015). The relationship between the police and the Bad Blue Boys is considered in the next chapter. Concerns over surveillance by other ultras groups and certain political actors and organizations were also part and parcel of group participation. Besides surveillance by the police (particularly at the stadium), surveillance by other ultras groups (particularly when gathering in other locations before entering or after leaving the stadium) and a wider, European level of political surveillance, through sanctions against teams imposed by organizations such as UEFA, and surveillance by organizations such as (as they have no power to impose sanctions), Football Against Racism in Europe (hereon FARE) and the Hrvatski helsinški odbor (hereon HHO) were regularly discussed.12 Surveillance on the part of other ultras groups was also factored in when considering where pre-­match socializing and drinking were to take place. In the case of BBB, who had some extreme subdivisions, primarily through their links to the skinhead scene, there were occasional concerns over the safety of drinking in ‘usual spots’. Nevertheless, the group was small and although concerns over larger ‘others’ were voiced regularly, it was generally accepted that many such groups largely ignored WAZ due to its their small size. WAZ did not actively seek conflicts or confrontations with other ultras groups, as the mainstream groups did on occasion. The third mode of surveillance was on the part of the club management. As mentioned earlier, stewards at the club grounds would not permit messages criticizing club management onto the terraces. Some members of the group also stated that they had been threatened by members of the club management, citing an instance where they were chased and then one member was attacked on a tram, with the attacker taking their banners from them. The fourth mode of surveillance was indirect and at the European level. This mode of surveillance was based on expected codes of fan behaviour at football matches and criticism was mostly directed at right-­wing ultras

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groups using phrases or gestures deemed discriminatory, most often racist.13 Amongst WAZ and almost universally amongst football fans with whom I spoke, the HHO (Hrvatski helsinški odbor) was viewed very negatively in its monitoring of fan activities, having little insight into football in Croatia, and organized as a professional NGO. UEFA was largely regarded as corrupt and as having links with the local political elite, including Zdravko Mamić, the executive director of Dinamo until 2016, yet still a powerful and influential figure. Opinions within WAZ were divided over  FARE. FARE developed from a string of independent fan football initiatives drawn from the left-­wing fan scene in the 1990s, which then received significant external funding and scaled up their activities. They organize a week of football against racism activities each October, in which WAZ participates, organizing a football tournament. However, a minority of group members shared BBB’s concerns that FARE had connections with UEFA and that Mamić had deliberately asked them to put pressure on BBB, most recently over the use of the phrase Mamiću cigane (Mamić, gypsy) at two football matches, which the majority of BBB members and a small minority of WAZ argued was not discriminatory towards the gypsy minority, and that the pressure was an application of political correctness that was killing the game. This fourth, European mode of surveillance, resonates heavily with the anthropologist Greenberg’s (2010) work with an NGO based in Niš, Serbia, wherein she picked apart the meanings behind the attributions and opinions some students made of her, being a US citizen in Serbia conducting social research shortly after economic sanctions and the 1999 NATO bombings. She described the preconceptions of some of the students as interpreting her as embodying a ‘judging Western gaze’ who was monitoring (nadziranje) the situation in Serbia and prescribing what was and what was not appropriate behaviour. This was echoed in the Hague War Crime Tribunals that were taking place, in which military and political leaders were being put on trial, sentenced and judged. Connections with the punk and skinheads scenes The relationship between fan organizing and other subcultures, most notably the punk and skinhead scenes, has been extensively researched by the sociologist Ben Perašović (1989, 2001, 2012). Such connections were important ethnographically throughout the research I conducted, where I occasionally attended and received frequent invitations to punk concerts and festivals. The punk scene in Zagreb has a strong masculinist component, which, as other scholars of punk have noticed, is not present in certain Western European contexts. This strong masculinist component likely enables greater crossover and links between the punk and fan scenes. In Zagreb, broad political alignments existed and, when conducting

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­ eldwork, a left and right punk/metal scene existed, the right having taken fi over many of the subcultural symbols and styles that had previously been associated with left-­wing punk. Indeed, as punk assumed a counter-­cultural positioning and emerged during the 1970s, in other Eastern European contexts it came to occupy an anti-­socialist position, with frequent far-­right and Nazi connotations (Pilkington 2012). The politicized nature of the punk scene in Zagreb – also present in other European contexts such as Berlin, Germany – nonetheless differed in that the relatively small size of Zagreb led to a strong personalization of relationships across neighbourhoods. Consequently, punks with left/right-­ wing sympathies frequently knew one another and, on occasions, socializing was facilitated by personal relationships or perhaps a generalized punk identification. This crossed over into football fandom. For instance, when WAZ was attacked at the stadium after a match (discussed in Chapter 6), one member of the group recognized the perpetrators as having been in his class at school. On another occasion, I was surprised to find myself in a car with a friend from WAZ driving to a punk festival on the coast (described in Chapter 7), with a punker in the back who had the Nazi eagle tattooed on his chest – a tattoo he supposedly regretted. He had been in hiding for several months after a well-­known member of BBB had pulled out a gun, fired a shot and threatened him at a well-­known alternative bar (Krivi put) several months earlier. At the punk festival on the coast, there was a mixture of far-­left and far-­right symbolism circulating among the participants, an overlap I found difficult to comprehend. Another subculture that has emerged in waves in Croatia from the 1990s onwards is a skinhead subculture, most prominently Nazi skinheads, but also the SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) as well. ‘Skinheads’ refers to both a subcultural style, the use of political insignia, organizing of concerts, fanzines, etc., and, in the case of Nazi skinheads, street violence primarily but not exclusively targeted at those of a different colour skin or nationality. Numerous interlocutors cited periods when skinheads had been active in towns, notably around 2004 in Pula – which resulted in a mass reaction by antifascists and citizens of Pula, and in Zagreb around 2007–2008 – just before I first arrived. This was a period when several of my friends were left-­wing punk teenagers, and they mentioned being beaten up or punched on numerous occasions on their way to and from school. Such attacks persist intermittently to this day. Related to the skinhead culture is the existence of a punk scene that is not explicitly Nazi or far-­right oriented, but which includes the use of such symbolism and ambiguous references to such traditions. This is referred to globally as the grey-­zone (siva zona). Among punk friends who were not football fans, similar transformations occasionally occurred among certain individuals. In WAZ, merchandise connected with local companies perceived to have grey zone links (e.g. the Zagreb Rules brand, which had T-­shirts with some

Everyday fandom in Zagreb   87

suspicious logos, such as Zagreb über alles) were shouted down when group members wore them.

Notes   1 The use of such symbols is discussed in Chapter 5.   2 In Eastern Slavonia there is typically more support for Hajduk Split, as a consequence of earlier population movements from the Dalmatian Coast to that region.   3 For example, with names such as ‘Purger Zagreb’.   4 This was also true of the Young Antifascists (MAZ).   5 For example, when conducting a workshop with school pupils in a technical school in Zagreb on football and racism, the vast majority of pupils expressed disgust and strong dislike when Zdravko Mamić was mentioned, but did not articulate reasons underlying that dislike.   6 Pa, gle kao ti to živiš, to živiš 24 sata na dan, moraš biti spreman na svaki poziv, to je, kako bih reko skroz drugačije nego kad ti ideš vikendom na utakmice, moji najbolji prijatelji su mi dan danas oni koji sam upoznao zapravo na stadionima, neki idu, neki nejdu više, ali tu su nastala ta prijateljstva...   7 Stvar je u tome sto moras biti na razini svog zadatka, ako nisi na razini svog zadatka onda nemozes obaviti svoju duznost…   8 Imprecise translation conveying sense. Svetinja is a noun meaning sanctity/holy object, while sacred is an adjective.   9 This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. 10 Literal translation of ‘Ma kakav’ is ‘what kind of/what’. This translation is not precise but preserves the pragmatic sense in which the expression is used. 11 This section, and certain other parts of sections in this chapter are revised and developed versions of an earlier article, Hodges (2016, 410–427). 12 See www.uefa.com/, www.farenet.org/ and www.hho.hr/ (accessed 24 April 2018). 13 Media representations also play an important role here, and such a discussion is beyond the scope of this book.

Bibliography ‘041 & Direktna Demokracija |’. n.d. 041 & Direktna Demokracija | NK ZAGREB 041. Accessed February 1, 2018. www.nkzagreb041.hr/041-direktna-­ demokracija/041-direktna-­demokracija. Armstrong, Gary. 1998. Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score. Oxford; New York: Berg. Baletić, Zvonimir. 2003. A wrong conception of stabilisation. In Matko Meštrović (ed.), Globalization and its Reflections on (in) Croatia. New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 275–299. B.D. 2012. Prepušteni smo slučaju, a država prepuštena slučaju je slučajna država’ – Dnevnik.Hr. http://dnevnik.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/milanovic-­o-susi-­prepustenismo-­slucaju-a-­drzava-prepustena-­slucaju-je-­slucajna-drzava.html (accessed 24 February 2018). Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

88   Everyday fandom in Zagreb Brković, Čarna. 2015. Management of ambiguity: favours and flexibility in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Social Anthropology, 23(3), 268–282. Bužančić, Vladimir. 2012. Novi Zagreb jučer i danas. Centar za kulturu Novi Zagreb Galerija. Čapo Žmegač, Jasna. 2007. Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Clarke, John. 1976. The skinheads and the magical recovery of community. In Sturat Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-­War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 99–102. Dal Lago, Alessandro, and De Biasi, Rocco. 1994. Italian football fans: culture and organization. In Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth (eds), Football, Violence and Social Identity. London: Routledge, 73–89. Elias, Norbert. 2000. The Civilizing Process, 2nd edn. Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell. Elias, Norbert, and Dunning, Eric. 1966. Dynamics of group sports with special reference to football. The British Journal of Sociology 17(4), 388–402. Foucault, Michel. 1997 (1958, trans. 1969). Panopticism. Discipline and punish. Reprinted in Neal Leach (ed.) Rethinking Architecture. London: Routledge, 360–367. Giulianotti, Richard. 2002. Supporters, followers, fans, and flaneurs. A taxonomy of spectator identities in football. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 26(1), 25–46. Golemac, Sandra. 2013. Azra, najbolji mali nogomet… Po tome je poznato Trnsko – Večernji.Hr. www.vecernji.hr/zagreb/azra-­najbolji-mali-­nogomet-po-­tome-je-­ poznato-trnsko-­548019 (accessed 24 February 2018). Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Oakland; Edinburgh: AK Press. Greenberg, Jessica. 2010. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do about it’: participation, apathy, and ‘successful’ democratic transition in postsocialist Serbia. Slavic Review 69(1), 41–64. Gulin Zrnić, Valentina. 2009. Kvartovska spika: značenja grada i urbani lokalizmi u Novom Zagrebu. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku–Naklada Jesenski i Turk. Guțu, Dinu. 2017. Casuals’ culture. Bricolage and consumerism in football supporters’ culture. Case study–Dinamo Bucharest Ultras. Soccer & Society 18(7), 914–936. Hall, Stuart, and Jefferson, Tony. 1993. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-­War Britain. Vol. 7. London; New York: Psychology Press. Hebdige, Dick. 1999. The function of subculture. The Cultural Studies Reader 2, 441–450. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence (eds). 1992. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hodges, Andrew. 2016. The hooligan as ‘internal’ other? Football fans, ultras culture and nesting intra-­orientalisms. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51(4), 410–427. King, Anthony. 2000. Football fandom and post-­national identity in the New Europe. The British Journal of Sociology 51(3), 419–442. King, Anthony. 2017. The European Ritual: Football in the New Europe. New York; London: Routledge.

Everyday fandom in Zagreb   89 Lefkowitz, Natalie. 1991. Talking Backwards, Looking Forwards: The French Language Game Verlan. Vol. 3. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Malkki, Liisa H. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania, 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Settling accounts with subculture: a feminist critique. In Feminism and Youth Culture. Heidelberg: Springer, 16–34. Mills, Richard. 2012. Commemorating a disputed past: football club and supporters’ group war memorials in the Former Yugoslavia. History 97(328), 540–577. Numerato, Dino. 2015. Who says ‘No to modern football?’ Italian supporters, reflexivity, and neo-­liberalism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 39(2), 120–138. Perasović, Benjamin. 1989. Nogometni navijači kao dio omladinske subkulture. Potkulture, Beograd, br 4 Perasović, Benjamin. 2001. Urbana Plemena: Sociologija Subkultura u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada. Perasović, Benjamin. 2012. Pogo on the Terraces: Perspectives from Croatia. Punk & Post Punk 1(3), 285–303. Perasović, Ben, and Mustapić, Marko. 2017. Carnival supporters, hooligans, and the ‘against modern football’ movement: life within the ultras subculture in the Croatian context. Sport in Society 21(6), 960–976. Percio, Alfonso Del and Duchêne, Alexandre. 2012. Commodification of pride and resistance to profit language practices as terrain of struggle in a Swiss football stadium. In Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller (eds) Language in Late Capitalism: Pride & Profit. New York; London: Routledge, 43–72. Pilkington, Hilary. 2012. Punk – but not as we know it: punk in post-­socialist space. Punk & Post Punk 1(3), 253–266. Pilz, Gunter A. and Wölki-Schumacher, Franciska. 2010. Overview of the Ultra culture phenomenon in the Council of Europe member states in 2009. Document Drafted for International Conference on Ultras: Good Practices in Dealing with New Developments in Supporters’ Culture. Preiss, Joshua. 2017. Libertarian personal responsibility: on the ethics, practice, and Amer­ican politics of personal responsibility. Philosophy & Social Criticism 43(6), 621–645. Prnjak, Hrvoje. 1997. Bad Blue Boys–prvih Deset Godina. Zagreb: Marjan Express. Razsa, Maple. 2015. Bastards of Utopia: Living Radical Politics after Socialism. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Robson, Gary. 2000. ‘No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care’: The Myth and Reality of Millwall Fandom. New York: Berg Publishers. Roversi, Antonio and Balestri, Carlo. 2000. Italian ultras today: change or decline? European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 8(2), 183–199. Spaaij, Ramón. 2008. Men like us, boys like them violence, masculinity, and collective identity in football hooliganism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 32(4), 369–392. Stubbs, Paul. 2012. Networks, organisations, movements: narratives and shapes of three waves of activism in Croatia. Polemos 15(30), 11.

90   Everyday fandom in Zagreb Testa, Alberto and Armstrong, Gary. 2010. Football, Fascism and Fandom: The Ultras of Italian Football. London: A&C Black. Tregoures, Loïc. 2017. Beyond the pattern: corruption, hooligans, and football governance in Croatia. In Borja García and Jinming Zheng (eds) Football and Supporter Activism in Europe: Whose Game Is It? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 165–186. Trnka, Susanna and Trundle, Catherine. 2014. Competing responsibilities: moving beyond neoliberal responsibilisation. Anthropological Forum 24, 136–153. Vukušić, Dino and Miošić, Lukas. 2017. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society 19(3), 440–452. Williams, Raymond. 1957. Working class culture. Universities and Left Review 2(1), 31–32.

Chapter 4

Police practices and repression

Introduction Passing through the electronic turnstiles, the ground staff scanned my personalized ticket. I had purchased it earlier, following an identity check. Behind the entrance stood more stewards, checking people over before they could enter the stadium, and several specijaljci (police dressed in riot gear) stood by them. I walked up the steep stairs, the walls scattered with stickers, before reaching the North Stand. More riot police were gathered by the space at the top of the North Stand, by a stall where (frequently non-­alcoholic) beer, soft drinks and hotdogs were available to buy. On the terraces, the various subdivisions were putting up their banners on the front fence. I stood at the back on the left-­hand side, among a few families and older fans. The match was about to begin and a group of cheerleaders walked out onto the pitch, shortly followed by the team. On the terraces, the leader (vođa) was sat on the fence, megaphone in hand, a security camera towered above him to his right where the Bad Blue Boys (BBB) were all crammed closely together. ‘Dignite ruke’ (Hands up) he screamed and the terraces burst into chanting and singing, with practically everyone in the centre section of the North Stand getting involved, while older members, families and odd groups of friends scattered across to the sides, joined in from time to time. Someone asked me for a light, then offered me the end of a spliff, several of which were being passed around from time to time, metres from the riot police huddled at the top of the terraces. Over at the far left-­hand end of the stand, around 20 pro-­Mamić fans – named the Plaćenici (Sell-­Outs) – were gathered, enclosed in a pen completely surrounded by police and stewards, with a policeman filming from a balcony above them. The chanting, flags, arms, scarves, occasional flying paper beer holders or beers in plastic cups all merged into one as the stand came alive, transforming itself into a mosh pit seconds before being engulfed in flares and blue smoke which continued in waves throughout the game. The final whistle blew and slowly the sea of black and blue tracksuits and casual shirts left the stadium, many supporters moving on for more drinks, towards the city centre or home.

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This moment, with a small group of fans enjoying police protection, separated from the masses, is the outcome of the struggles the Bad Blue Boys have faced over several years in what fans described as a personalized war directed by Zdravko Mamić against certain members of the Bad Blue Boys, in addition to more generalized modes of repression directed against all fans. The Plaćenici (Sell-­outs) symbolized incorporation into this crony capitalist system which members of the BBB understood as morally repugnant, anti-­patriotic and against the spirit of Dinamo. The police, through political connections to the club management, had played a role in this ‘personalized war’ in recent years, following more generalized repressive measures against fans in the 2000s.

Generalized repressive measures General police repression had always been present in some form. The fans with whom I spoke stated that it intensified during the early 2000s, and in particular when Croatia had placed a bid and was under serious consideration for hosting the UEFA Euro 2012 championships. The bid was lost in April 2007, yet this – more than other factors, such as the ruling elite’s prioritizing of the EU accession process – was considered to be at the root of the increasingly harsh punishments which followed the passing of strict legislation and included large fines for fan misdemeanours (Zečević 2013). One fan involved argued that football fans constituted a trial group (probna skupina) for the testing of new repressive measures against citizens. If these measures succeeded against football fans, they were very likely to pass across the remainder of the population. The football fan subculture can therefore be considered a laboratory for testing new authoritarian measures and technologies of state control. Such actions did not only include physical crowd control measures, but bureaucratic and psychological measures as well. The attempted introduction of a voucher system for match attendance similar to the Italian fan card, the Tessera (Guschwan 2013; Zagnoli and Radicchi 2010), constituted one such attempt, which in the Italian context served not only crowd control and security purposes, but also sought to deepen the commercialization of football, offering targeted marketing and offers. The Croatian voucher system sought to ban fans from attending away matches unless the hosting club had applied at least 24 hours in advance and registered travelling fans’ details (Croatia Week 2013). This was bypassed by rival fans collaborating and buying tickets for the away fans (Tregoures 2017), and the experiment was then abandoned. Police practices formed a key focus of Pearson’s (2012) study of ‘carnival fans’ in the UK. Some of Pearson’s findings hold true in this context, for instance the observation that ‘police were often aware of illegal activity by fans, but were not interested in taking action unless they felt compelled

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to do so by public displays of illegality’ (Pearson 2012, 113). Had a fan lit a spliff in front a police officer at the top of the terraces, the officer would likely have been compelled to take action, but lighting a spliff in the crowd was often ignored. There was likely a pragmatic calculation here too, as smoking cannabis would arguably, in contrast to excess alcohol consumption, likely decrease the likelihood of violent disorder. While the police generally did not enter the crowd to retrieve individuals, e.g. when lighting flares, such fans would sometimes be identified via videocamera, with later consequences – however, other illegal acts were ignored completely. Nevertheless, Pearson’s finding cannot be directly translated to Croatia, where fans are operating a different, more explicitly politicized context, and ‘crowd control’ on a more general level is secondary to enacting repressive measures designed to discourage organized fan attendance at football matches. The tipping point for the shift from more general repressive measures to what fans described as a personal war (osobni rat) against the BBB came around the year 2010, in the event which came to be known as Bloody 1 May. It followed the brutal police response to a flare being thrown on the pitch and clashes between fans and police on the North Stand terraces, which led to an exploding pyrotechnic device hitting a policeman, blinding him in one eye and damaging his hearing, with the fan arrested (Nikica Marović) being used as an example to deter others. As Nikica described to me,

Do you think that this was an incident which influenced the fan movement? After that incident, after that match, they started to crush [gasiti] the BBB. What do you mean by ‘crush’? They first began, well, there was also the PAOK, that match when fans set fire to a bus, that was also one of the cases which was the last straw, they started issuing those black lists, they began detaining fans for long periods, two hours before the match, two hours after, with the precise numbering of seats tied to identity cards so you had to register, with more thorough frisking, having to take off all clothes, they introduced measures to bring about a situation whereby people would not want to come to a football match in general.1

This shifting in gears marked the escalation of a personalized variety of repression directed at key individuals in the BBB, which one interlocutor called ‘abnormal repression’, in the sense of a repression you wouldn’t expect to see in a ‘normal, democratic country’:

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There are two phases of repression, one is a kind of normal repression, normal in its relationship between fans and the police, which you are used to from the moment you begin going to football matches. This is being treated as if you are a second-­grade citizen, you can’t fight this, it’s just how it is. The second is the repression which the BBB have experienced because of Zdravko Mamić [dotični gospodin], and it has been used as his apparatus; those are the key differences, for examples the Bloody 1 May, what you spoke with Nikica about, that falls under the first part, a kind of score-­settling, police warfare. And this [second] repression directed at certain people, that is a war of one man.2 Another fan described the police in similar terms, using a comparison between normal and abnormal: Everywhere else the police are normal, well they’re not normal, but they have that human factor. Ours break walls, if you get what I mean!3 These narratives draw on common themes which anthropologists often came across in other contexts across the post-­Yugoslav region, both in Serbia (Greenberg 2011) and Bosnia & Herzegovina (Jansen 2015). They rely on parallels with a ‘normal democracy’, contrasted here with the Croatian ‘crony capitalist’ system. A normal democracy is built on principles of transparency and the rule of law, where citizens expect to be treated in an appropriate manner in line with their actions. ‘Normal police repression’ is what one expects of the police when ‘doing their job’ and playing the role expected of them, while ‘abnormal’ repression is when they participate in personalized measures directed at individual fans.

Clientelism and the economy of favours The understanding that the police had been compromised by certain powerful individuals points to a system in which spaces of ambiguity existed in a state bureaucracy, where personalized relations and an economy of favours, sometimes referred to as clientelism, or understood as corruption, persisted. Roudakova defined clientelism as ‘a form of social and political organization where access to public resources is controlled by powerful “patrons” and is delivered to less powerful “clients” in exchange for deference and other forms of service’ (Roudakova 2008, 42). The level of clientelism involving managers is different to the everyday economy of favours, for example in an urban neighbourhood, as the inequalities over access to state resources are much sharper. More powerful patrons with connections to high level government profit directly and extensively from these activities, to the detriment of the social needs of the wider population.

Police practices and repression   95

These forms of state-­organization and power have been documented in numerous other contexts (Ledeneva 2011; Brković 2017; Sajo 1998), including in professional football (Doidge 2018; Paradiso 2016), and whilst such practices are present in certain domains the world over, including in top-­level professional football institutions such as FIFA (Pielke Jr 2013), such practices are widespread on more everyday (as well as elite) levels in Croatia and South East Europe more widely. Paradiso (2016, 491) has highlighted how in Europe, typically, organized fan groups are on the political margins, rather than deeply connected to patrons, whilst in Argentina ‘the barras are linked to businesses to a surprising extent. They own player transfers, they manage the merchandising on the streets, they are in charge of parking lots, they sell drugs and have astounding ties to political power’ (Grabia, 2009). The BBB’s marginal position in relation to political power structures, and strong opposition to this network led Zdravko Mamić and those close to him, to try to crush the BBB. Various techniques were employed. These included direct repressive measures, the manipulation of bureaucratic grey zones, creating deliberate unpredictability, excessive violence towards fans, and introducing thorough, unnecessary checks to discourage match attendance. Finally, Mamić attempted to ‘buy’ the favour of certain fans, and a small pro-­ Mamić faction called the Plaćenici (Sell-­Outs) emerged. These aspects, and the BBB’s responses, will now be considered in turn.

Bureaucratic grey zones Excessive legislation and bureaucratic requests was one mode through which power was exerted over football fans. Where excessive and ambiguously worded legislation existed, grey zones emerged surrounding acts that were illegal but almost always ignored, except for in situations where the police or authorities wished to target someone. Low-­level activities among fans might include smoking cannabis, laws regarding the consumption of alcohol in public spaces, the use of pyrotechnic devices, and the painting of murals on neighbourhood walls. When the police wanted to create particular problems for certain fans, they could simply break the ‘implicit agreement’ that certain acts in certain times and places were to be ignored – arresting a fan, for instance, while painting a mural. As one heavily involved member of the BBB described: They make use of informal possibilities to repress [fans]. This is specific for the Zagreb police, those police officers outside of Zagreb aren’t as problematic as the Zagreb police, but that is again connected with the structure in football … they are ‘intertwined’ as Castells would say, a network society. The thing is, those police officers used to sit on Dinamo’s management and some of them sit there today, and all

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of them have indirect work connections with certain people from the football milieu, especially with Mamić and Dinamo, and there is a certain state consensus that the score has to be settled with fans, with hooliganism…4 At the same time, grey zones or holes in the law were manipulated by figures such as Zdravko Mamić to stay in power, using their personal connections and privileged access to lawyers. As the same fan continued: In Croatia [kod nas] the majority of laws have been created in such a way that there are lots of grey zones, in which idiots such as Mamić can swim, and legally at that – is it morally questionable? Yes it is. But is it all legal? Yes again.5 The fans with whom I spoke stated that these grey zones were employed by the judiciary as well as the police. For example, as another fan recounted, upon discussing his being arrested and charged following a fight: The judge, she told us that we have a choice; that if we admit to the offence, she will give us a six-­month suspended sentence and another year-­long ban, and if we don’t admit to the offence then we will go to prison, as she decides. She told us this informally, and said we have five minutes to agree between us which two of us had been there. One lad had really been in the fight, I won’t give his name as it isn’t important. Even though I hadn’t been present, I took the blame as they were under eighteen, and I was an adult.6 Alongside excessive bureaucracy and grey zones, a second technique used to create problems for certain individuals was what Čelebičić (2017) refers to as institutionalized unpredictability. This is a technique especially mobilized by bureaucracies in the Balkan region to disrupt plans, routines and aspirations, by disrupting and changing routines and procedures at the last minute. This was part of the strategy used when the Dinamo management was discouraging fans from attending matches. As one fan put it ‘Dinamo hides its matches from its fans’. He was referring here to the last minute announcing of match slots. Such unpredictability had real implications for him as he had received a match ban and had to register at the local police station before every match, with at least one later check-­up, and with failure to do so resulting in arrest. This unpredictability led him to miss out occasionally on registering when he was not aware a match was taking place at that time, and it also made match preparations more difficult as well. In addition to unpredictable match schedules, other measures employed to discourage fan attendance included pointless checks (bezveze provjere)

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such as being detained for drinking a beer, for standing in a particular location, and the match day experience being drawn out through more extensive checks before, and waiting after the game. In addition, police use of force was sometimes extreme, as the following account demonstrates: We were supporting, chanting against Mamić, and we chanted ‘Mamić, gypsy, leave the stadium’ [svetinja – lit. sacred place], which is a very clear message, it doesn’t call for any kind of lynch, neither of gypsies nor of anyone else. One week earlier, they [the club management] had made the decision that, if there will be any of that kind of shouting, the police will empty the stand because of racist messages – in principle, this was organized by one of Mamić’s best friends [kum], and then the whole stand was detained, we were the youngest there, we didn’t know what to do and at the end there were five of us left down there and they beat us with police batons until we left the stand, which we didn’t want to do as it is humiliating…7 Unwarranted arrests were sometimes made, tactics that are completely at odds with the strategies Pearson (2012) suggests the police should assume on the basis of his ethnographic work conducted with so-­called ‘carnival fans’ in the UK. Pearson argued that carnival fans under some circumstances welcomed the presence and role of the police, and that an ‘us/them’ mentality could be undone by the police engaging in mild, friendly banter and humour with fans, and coming to be seen to be – where possible – part of the carnival. However, he also described how aggressive sights, such as police dog handlers and police in riot gear were despised by carnival fans (Pearson 2012, 113). In the Croatian, and especially Zagreb context, roles were much more clear-­cut in contrast to carnival fans. The fact that the BBB was an organized group in a struggle against the club management and the client–patron networks that linked to the police, resulted in a much stronger ‘us/them’ mentality and the deliberate and frequent use of police force. The fact that riot police were positioned at the top of every North Stand match demonstrates this different dynamic, which is closer to Doidge’s description of police roles in Italy, where ‘excessive legislation and police actions are effectively criminalizing all fans and contributing to the articulation of localized identities’ (Doidge 2015, 139). The BBB made the decision in Summer 2010 to boycott the North Stand at a large meeting in one of their spaces in the centre of Zagreb (Draškovićeva) (BBB 2013). The decision was made following a defeat in Europe against Sheriff Tiraspol, following which Zdravko Mamić, according to the fans’ accounts, sacked the coach in a mobile phone conversation, which led the BBB to conclude that Mamić considered himself larger than the club. When they returned to the North Stand, Mamić’s answer was a ‘black list’ (crna lista), including the names of people not permitted to

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attend games. Many on the list had no police record, opening up the question of how the club management came to identify those individuals. T-­shirts were printed by the BBB in protest against the black list, with the words ‘Sjever uz odsutne’ (The North [Stand] alongside those absent). During this period, the BBB responded with a variety of strategies designed to break this deadlock, including calls for club democracy and a legal battle undertaken by the Zajedno za Dinamo (Together for Dinamo) initiative (Tregoures and Šantek 2018). The Futsal Dinamo initiative (Šantek and Vukušić 2016; Vukušić and Miošić 2017) also sought to provide an environment with a heavily reduced police presence and a more pleasant, carnival atmosphere than was present on the North Stand, drawing on aspects of the Against Modern Football movement and allowing fans to continue gathering and supporting a team during the period of the boycott. As part of the ‘personal war’ against the BBB, Mamić attempted to make inroads into the group, with some persuaded to adopt a positive stance towards him, receiving various benefits in return, including a social space. Yet in contrast to other contexts such as Argentina where such links are widespread, this grouping received little support from the fan base, and the group typically numbers 10 to 20 on match days. The process of their formation was painful for some, as they had been heavily involved in the BBB: I grew up with some of them, we were friends. At one time, around five years ago, these weren’t active and then Mamić, who has his own influx among fans, he got them out of jail, and then those who were from the core, they left and went for negotiations with Mamić, he offered them some money if they give up, and they presented this in front of us, how they managed to go there without anyone knowing … and then we found out that they had already made a deal with him. And after that we split, and a street war began with them. Some of those people had been leaders [vođe] on the terraces.8 Other fans stated that they were not just offered money, but also free transport to away matches, business connections and a social space at the grounds beneath the North Stand. In 2014, the disputes between these factions resulted in a scuffle whereby two BBB members were shot at and injured in the East Zagreb neighbourhood of Retkovec, and the Plaćenici were held responsible. The head of security at Dinamo who worked for the Zagreb police in the narcotics department before later becoming chief of the Zagreb crime (kriminalitet) department, Krešimir Antolić, was widely regarded to have been a key figure liaising with the plaćenici, with a strong street knowledge and connections across the Zagreb neighbourhoods. As one fan mentioned:

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Antolić, he has connections, he was the ex-­chief of the police and he has connections in the police to this day.9 Although these divisions continue, the plaćenici have not succeeded in gaining any kind of mass support among the fan base, and whilst present on match days, they are often heavily insulated by police and stewards, and kept firmly away from other fans, as demonstrated at the start of the chapter.

Conclusions All fans referred to attempts to crush the BBB, and the ‘personalization’ of the repression exerted against fans, which was specific to Zagreb. The narratives that emerged in conversation with the more highly educated members of the BBB with whom I spoke often endorsed the formation of a legitimate private sector, criticized the crony capitalism of veze, particularly in institutions that taxpayers funded, whilst seeking to distance themselves from black market activities in which certain sections of the membership inevitably participated. This orientation mapped onto understandings of what a ‘normal’ state should look like, and the crony capitalist set-­up in Croatia was often blamed by them on the socialist heritage. Fan responses, such as the legal initiative (Zajedno za Dinamo) and Futsal Club (Futsal Dinamo) took steps in this direction, and towards the creation of a more pleasant atmosphere at football matches. Finally, in contrast to neighbouring states, such as Serbia, the links between football fandom and organized crime appeared to be weaker, with the BBB articulating political demands and calling for a clear separation of roles and a reduction of grey zones in which organized criminals thrived.

Notes 1 Jel misliš da je to bio incident koji je utjecao na navijački pokret? Nakon tog incidenta, nakon te utakmice su krenuli s gašenjem BBB-­a. Što se podrazumijeva pod gašenjem? Prvo su krenuli s tim, dobro bilo je i PAOK-­a, one utakmice kad su zapalili autobuse, on je isto bio jedan od slučajeva koja je bila kap koja je prelila čašu vode, krenuli su s tim crnim listama, krenuli su s dugim zadržavanjem, dva sata prije utakmice, dva sata poslije, s točnim brojanjem sjedalica s osobnom iskaznicom da se mora čovjek prijaviti, s detaljnjijim pretresom … skidanjem do gola, do nekih manevara koji su pružali, da ne bi doveli da ljudi imaju želju uopće doći na utakmicu. 2 Ima po meni dvije faze represije, jedna je neka normalna represija, normalna u tom nekom odnosu navijača-policije na koji si naviknut od početka kad kreneš na utakmice. To je jedno postupanje kao da si građanin drugog reda na koji si naviknut, tu se ne može ništa boriti, to je tak. A druga je ova represija koja grupa

100   Police practices and repression BBB doživljava zbog dotičnog gospodina i to se koristilo kao njegov apparat; to su te razlike, naprimjer 1.5 (Krvavi prvi Maj), ono što si pričao s Nikicom, to spada po meni u ovaj prvi dio, neki obračun, to je bilo ratovanje policije. A ova (druga) represija što se radi pojedinačnim ljudima, to je rat jednog čovjeka. 3 Policija svugdje drugdje su normalna, pa nisu normalna ali imaju onaj ljudski faktor. Oni naši lome zidove shvaćaš! 4 Kroz neformalne mogućnosti one vrši represiju. To je specifično za Zagrebačku policiju, čak oni policijski službenici van zagreba nisu toliko problematični koliko Zagrebačka, ali to je opet povezano sa strukturom u nogometu … oni su ‘isprepleteni’ kako bi rekao Castells, umreženo društvo, stvar je u tome što su ti policijski službenici nekada sjedili u upravi Dinama i neki dan danas sjede u upravi Dinama, i svi imaju indirektne povezane poslove s određenim ljudima iz nogometnog miljea, pogotovo s Mamićem i Dinamom, a i postoji određeni državni konsenzus da se mora obračunati s navijačima, s huliganizmom… 5 Kod nas je većina zakona kreirana na način da ima puno sivih zona, gdje idijoti poput Mamića mogu plivati, i to po zakonu – da li je moralno upitno – je. a i je sve po zakonu, opet je. 6 Sudac, sutkinja, koja nam je u tom slučaju rekla da imamo izbor, da ukoliko prije priznamo, da će nam dati šest mjeseci uvjetno i godinu dana zabrana ponovno, ako ne priznajemo da ćemo ići u zatvor, kako ona odluči i to je ona nama neformalno rekla i da imamo 5 minuta da se dogovorimo nas dvoje koje smo bili tamo, jedan dečko je stvarno bio u tučnjavi sad neću navoditi njegovo ime jer nije bitno, i iako nisam bio…ja sam preuzio krivicu, jer su maloljetni, a ja sam bio punoljetan. 7 I sad, mi smo navijali protiv Mamića, i skandirali smo ‘Mamiću cigane odlaze iz Svetinje’, što je vrlo jasan, poruka, ne poziva na nikakav linč, ni cigana ni … oni su tjedan dana prije donijeli odluku da, ukoliko će biti takva vikanja da će policija isprazniti tribinu zbog rasističkih poruka – u principu to je bio kum Mamićev, u stvari tada je cijela tribina privredena, mi smo bili najmlađi tamo, nismo znali što da radimo i bilo na kraju nas 5 ostalo dole i nas su u principu ispendrećili dok nismo izašli, jer nismo htjeli otići jer je to ponižavajući… 8 S nekim od njih sam odrastao, mi smo bili prijatelji. Jedno vrijeme, nekih 5 godina, nisu bili ti ljudi aktivni i onda je Mamić, pošto je Mamić imao svoje… priliv među navijačima, pošto on ih izvlači iz zatvora, ….i upravo takvi koji su zapravo iz jezgra, izašli su i išli na pregovore s Mamićem, i on je ponudio toliko i toliko pare ako oni odustaju, oni su to prezentirali ispred nas … kak se mogu ići bez ičeg znanja tamo…i onda smo saznali da su već stigli napraviti dogovor s njim. I onda nakon toga smo se podijelili, kreće rat, ulični s njim. Tu su bili ljudi koji su bili vođe navijanja… 9 Antolić, on ima veze, on kao bivši načelnik policije ima veze u policiji dan danas.

Bibliography BBB. 2013. FELJTON KRONOLOGIJA JEDNOG LUDILA – 3. DIO ‘ Bad Blue Boys’. www.badblueboys.hr/feljton-­kronologija-jednog-­ludila-3-dio/ (accessed 6 February 2018). Brković, Čarna. 2017. Managing Ambiguity: How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Čelebičić, Vanja. 2017. Institutionalized unpredictability and café routines: the case of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Гласник Етнографског Института САНУ 65(1), 111–123.

Police practices and repression   101 Croatia Week. 2013 www.croatiaweek.com/rival-­fans-help-­each-other-­workaround-­new-law/ (accessed 21 February 2018). Doidge, Mark. 2015. Football Italia. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Doidge, Mark. 2018. ‘Either everyone was guilty or everyone was innocent’ 1: the Italian power elite, neopatrimonialism, and the importance of social relations. Journal of Sport and Social Issues. Grabia, Gustavo. 2009 El problema más grave de barras está en la Argentina [The Most Serious Problem with Barras is in Argentina]. Olé, March 4. Greenberg, J. 2011. On the road to normal: negotiating agency and state sovereignty in postsocialist Serbia. Amer­ican Anthropologist 113(1), 88–100. Guschwan, Matthew C. 2013. La Tessera Della Rivolta: Italy’s failed fan identification card. Soccer & Society 14(2), 215–229. Jansen, Stef. 2015. Yearnings in the Meantime: ‘Normal Lives’ and the State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex. Vol. 15. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Ledeneva, Alena. 2011. Open secrets and knowing smiles. East European Politics & Societies 25(4), 720–736. Paradiso, Eugenio. 2016. Football, clientelism and corruption in Argentina: an anthropological inquiry. Soccer & Society 17(4), 480–495. Pearson, Geoff. 2012. An ethnography of English football fans. Cans, Cops and Carnivals. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Pielke Jr, Roger. 2013. How can FIFA be held accountable? Sport Management Review 16(3), 255–267. Roudakova, Natalia. 2008. Media-­political clientelism: lessons from anthropology. Media, Culture & Society 30(1), 41–59. Sajo, Andras. 1998. Corruption, clientelism, and the future of the constitutional state in Eastern Europe. East European Constitutional Review 7, 37. Šantek Goran Pavel and Dino, Vukušić. 2016. This is Dinamo!’ – the phenomenon of Futsal Dinamo as an alternative fan club. Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU 64(2), 289–302. Tregoures, Loïc. 2017. Beyond the pattern: corruption, hooligans, and football governance in Croatia. In B. Garcia and J. Zheng (eds), Football and Supporter Activism in Europe. Football Research in an Enlarged Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 165–186. Tregoures, Loïc and Šantek, Goran. 2018. A comparison of two fan initiatives in Croatia: Zajedno Za Dinamo (Together for Dinamo) and Naš Hajduk (Our Hajduk). Soccer & Society 19(3), 453–464. Vukušić, Dino, and Miošić, Lukas. 2018. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society 18(3), 440–452. Zagnoli, Patrizia, and Radicchi, Elena. 2010. The football fan card: a new management tool for sport venues. Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 13(10), 1532–1551. Zečević, Ivan. 2013. Moralna panika kao čimbenik zakonodavnog procesa: primjer Zakona o sprječavanju nereda na športskim natjecanjima. Undergraduate Dissertation, University of Zagreb.

Chapter 5

Political ideologies and the fan movement

Introduction: cross-­c utting codes and practices At the end of December 2015, on the first day of a new conservative government comprising a ‘Patriotic Coalition’ of political parties from the centre to the far right, a protest was organized by several groups, including the Zagreb Antifascist Network, against a Catholic mass held for Ante Pavelić, who was leader of the Nazi-­ruled Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska – NDH) during the Second World War. Whilst this mass had been conducted for several years, it acquired a stronger political meaning that year, given the change of government and especially the inclusion of certain far-­right elements in the ruling coalition. The protest was a few streets away from the Zagreb antifascist group’s social and organizing space in the city centre. They shared this space with White Angels Zagreb (WAZ), and so everybody gathered there before the protest. Shortly before the mass was due to commence, those of us protesting left this space carrying several banners and walked in the direction of the nearby church where the mass was due to be held. As we passed a street corner, a young man walked by and grabbed one of the banners before running off about ten metres to a group of around 20 young lads, mostly in their teens and early 20s and dressed in black, with hoodies on and/or scarves around their faces and mostly wearing tracksuit bottoms and branded trainers in a ‘casuals’ (Redhead and Redhead 2012) style. Seconds later they ran towards us and a fight kicked off in the street. Most of the fighting involved kicks and punches and while our group was larger (around 30), we were not prepared for, or expecting a fight. Several members of WAZ became more involved, acting in self-­defence and after a couple of minutes there were metal trash bins flying through the air, people (including myself ) knocked to the floor and punches flying. A few minutes later, the opposing group retreated having achieved their objective, and presumably moved to an agreed location. Our group continued – somewhat shocked and shaken up – towards the protest location outside the church, where we stayed for about another hour before being escorted by

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the police to Zagreb’s main square.1 Following this incident, which was in keeping with the conservative shift taking place, WAZ chose to remove its banners (which hadn’t been taken) from the antifascist space in the city centre. They considered the space compromised and vulnerable in a context where stealing banners off other fan groups was considered a mark of honour and a trophy that ‘emasculated’ other groups through having lost the fight to keep it (Lalić and Pilić 2011).2 The lack of police intervention (who were two streets away watching over the mass and counter protest) when the fight broke out was also discussed intensely by the activists and interpreted as a subtle sign in keeping with the conservative shift taken by the new government. Both the dynamics and discussions surrounding the above encounter emphasize the multiple roles and overlaps in this context between fan, activist and sub-­cultural positioning. The two sides in the fight were mobilized around two political causes, namely fascism and antifascism, with concrete goals in mind which merged with certain fan subcultural practices common in the Balkans, such as stealing banners and other items from rival groups. Indeed, on an earlier occasion a member of WAZ had been ambushed and his group banner taken, and later displayed upside down on social media pages followed by fans. The uniformity of the casual style which the attacking group employed indexed subcultural belonging, which also criss-­crossed with a fan repertoire, yet none of the attackers wore any explicit BBB (Bad Blue Boys) or Dinamo insignia. The overlapping of politics and fan subcultures in this way bears similarities with the Italian ultras, where a strong ideologization has often been present with certain clubs understood as left- or right-­wing, and the membership as being in broad agreement around a platform or ideology, and with Spaiij and Viñas’ (2013) work on left ultras in Spain. This contrasts with other contexts, such as the UK where single issue supporter groups, focused on shared interests, and often contesting the commercialization of football, have emerged (King 2017, 169–183). Consequently, the intersection of class distinctions, combined with ideologized platforms broadly based around concepts ranging from national identity to anti-­fascism and anti-­ discrimination makes it impossible to broadly label such fan movements as drawing on a particular single class or tradition. Nevertheless, the formation of class distinctions inside groups remains an important topic, considered again in the next two chapters, while this chapter examines the groups’ characteristics as social movements and the political symbols used as part of a politicized subculture.

Organised fans as social movement? Flacks (2004, 145) defines social movements as ‘social formations that involve large numbers of people who are seeking change in what they

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define as their shared interest (although they usually claim more universal benefit as well)’. The various BBB and Dinamo Facebook groups illustrate the massive level of support the fan association and club enjoy, with some groups numbering 30,000 to 40,000 members. The fact that groups such as BBB and Torcida have also mobilized several thousands of people on the streets of Zagreb and Split relating to the battles with the Croatian Football Federation also demonstrates their force as social actors. As Perasović and Mustapić (2013, 263) also commented, ‘the biggest groups of football supporters (Torcida from Split and BBB from Zagreb) have from 300–500 core members but are able to mobilize thousands of people (much more than most political parties or trade unions)’. Despite claims frequently being made concerning active involvement over long periods of time, and the importance of history visible in the groups’ reference to their founding year, the fluidity present among the active membership resonates with a social movements definition, based around ‘networks of informal interaction between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in a political and/or cultural conflict, on the basis of a shared collective identity’ (Diani 1992). Tilly argues that key features of social movements include making a campaign, having a repertoire of actions and making a public display of numbers. Numerous fan activities in Croatia, ranging from demonstrations against the Croatian Football Federation and the club leadership (Zdravko Mamić) fall into this category, whilst the ‘Against Modern Football’ movement may also be considered a social movement. Tilly and his colleagues, who later revised the original model claiming that the earlier work was too structuralist and static, have been criticized by Flacks (2004) for attempting to shape and direct a research paradigm that has been taken up by a variety of scholars in a relatively uncritical way, with little talk about the limitations of the paradigm (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2003). In a classic sense then, large organized football groups in Croatia may be considered to be social movements, and BBB’s message that ‘Dinamo belongs to everyone who loves it without a selfish motive’ (Dinamo pripada onima koji ga vole bez interesa),3 resonates with Flacks’ (2004, 145) observation that such ‘causes are forms of collective actions whose participants seek change that they define as socially (rather than personally) beneficial’. Such movements typically encompass a smaller group of activists who promote the cause, deeply consider the direction of the movement and invest large amounts of time and energy into it, with activism defined as ‘movement participation that entails leadership activity, organizing, conscious concern about the direction of the movement, and conscious long-­term commitment of time and resources and energy to the movement’ (Flacks 2004, 143). Bad Blue Boys and other large groups such as Torcida have a clear hierarchical structure which consisted of a core (jezgro) in which participants were referred to as the first team (prva

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ekipa), who in social movement terms might be considered ‘activists’. Involvement in the core was a result of years of having proven oneself through one’s engagements on and off the terraces, with special emphasis placed on attending away matches, in line with Bjelajac’s observation: The fans’ subculture is spontaneous, goal-­oriented, inventive, excessive and chaotic at the same time, but also organised, hierarchical and rigid. This makes it easy to transform from a state of chaotic spontaneity and unboundedness to one of very strict military discipline and command. (Bjelajac 2004, 2) In this vein, one question which emerges concerns to what extent fans in the core assumed a vanguard stance towards the others, as the sociologist Županov suggested was characteristic of the post-­socialist political class in Croatia. Županov claims that the new political elite in Croatia have not accepted a pluralist conception of ‘elite’, wherein they are but one of several social elites in society, but in continuity with the socialist period, they understand themselves as a ‘leading elite’ or avant-­garde, pushing society forwards (Županov 2011, 147). This was indicated when I officially contacted the BBB core for an interview and was told by the member of the BBB core with whom I spoke that, unlike some others, he does not differentiate between his views and the views of BBB as a collective. In contrast, WAZ were much smaller and less popular, and organized in a different manner. They were only able to muster up to 25, at most, on match days, although the new community club has frequently drawn crowds of over a hundred. This group might therefore be considered an activist group with social movement pretensions, yet is incapable of large-­ scale mobilizations in the same sense as ‘mainstream’ groups. This issue sometimes emerged in group meetings, with members fantasizing about possible futures, where large-­scale mobilizations might one day become possible. As concerns organization, the focus on ‘non-­hierarchical’ organization entailed no formal ‘core’ deciding on the future of the group. Nevertheless, a small number of members formed an informal core and often directed fan activities, including towards the formation of a community club. Relationships among the WAZ membership were more fluid and once a person was viewed as politically reliable and had participated for some time, perhaps a season, they could take a central role in the group. Agreeing explicitly with the political platform was necessary here, although with the community club and concomitant expansion these criteria became more flexible. Nevertheless, this explicit insistence is different from an implicit commitment to Croatian nationalism among the BBB. This explicit politicization led to criticism from members of WAZ who came to the

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group through footballing interest rather than political activism, and these disputes are the focus of Chapter 8.

Organized fans as (sub-)political actors? Vrcan (2002) drew on Ulrich Beck’s concept of sub-­politics to explain the political power wielded by football fans in Zagreb, Croatia, especially during the 1990s when the earlier discussed disputes over Dinamo’s club name were taking place. The term sub-­politics refers to modes of political action and decision-­making outside of official political structures, which are defined as those structures largely viewed as legitimate by a population (Beck 1992). Social movements constitute what Beck refers to as an ‘active’ mode of sub-­politics, in contrast to ‘passive’ modes which emerge in response to new challenges brought about, for example, by the impact of new technologies and situations. Beck argues that sub-­politics, which includes social movements, are of particular relevance in periods when the hegemony of dominant political institutions is under threat or challenged, which he frames in terms of popular consent: Whenever consent can no longer simply be bought but is made dependent on insight, foresight, objectives, side effects, fun, thrills, reasons, discussions, recognition, identity, cooperation, and so on, that is, whenever it can be granted conditionally, then system autonomy loses its supporting pillars of consent, and two things happen. System formation becomes recognizable as power formation, and the disintegration of power opens up scope for sub-­political action. (Beck 1992, 57) Vrcan interprets the activities of organized fans as a mode of sub-­politics manifest during the 1990s when the new Croatian state was attempting to consolidate its hegemony. This was a period in which the nationalist political elite sought to establish the legitimacy of the new state, and Vrcan highlighted the contradictions that emerged between the promise of a new democracy and the authoritarian government that emerged over that period. As Vrcan commented: It has been demonstrated again that football and the football stadium do take over the role of a political arena where and when there is no pluralism of political parties and no other way to express legally and legitimately some autonomous political attitudes and requests, but also occasionally where and when there is political party pluralism and a functioning multi-­party parliament with a rigid distinction, imposed from above, between political ideas and values considered to be legitimate and ones considered to be non-­legitimate and a closed political

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horizon, leaving no room for alternative and autonomous initiatives (Sugden and Tomlinson 2000). (Vrcan 2002, 73) Recent years, and especially since the start of the protracted economic crisis, have simultaneously seen a rise in conservative voices, fears of challenges to the legitimacy of the new Croatian state, and a significant increase in fan experiments with new forms of participatory democracy, from legal routes (Zajedno za Dinamo) to organized clubs (Futsal Dinamo, NKZagreb041). Far from being transitory movements associated with the performance of consumed identities, as concepts such as Maffosoli’s neo-­ tribes suggest (Maffesoli and Foulkes 1988; Bennett 1999), organized fan activities constitute a productive activity in this context and a creative experiment. Such creative experiments challenge ideas hegemonic in wider society, whilst, internally, hegemonies are established between those most involved (the activists) and the often much larger groups they mobilize. In this view, fan organizing can be understood as a kind of prefigurative politics (Yates 2015) that organized fan activities and movements, such as Against Modern Football, attempt, in a variety of different ways and guises drawing on traditions ranging from Italian interwar fascism to anarchism. The content and possible futures being prefigured vary across groups, and these will now be covered in more depth.

Political ideology among the White Angels The membership of both the White Angels and the Bad Blue Boys displayed a large degree of ideological flexibility, with a small degree of overlap among participants with socially liberal views but little deeper interest in politics – a view that echoes Spaaij and Viñas’ (2013) observations of the Spanish left-­ultras scene. Among WAZ, symbols associated with the political right and Croatian nationalism were forbidden and the fact that the group shared a space with the Zagreb Young Antifascists illustrated the cross-­over between political activism and subcultural participation. Croatian national symbols and the national flag were not permitted on the White Angels’ terraces, although banal nationalist (Billig 1995) comments sometimes crept into conversation, with members implicitly reifying the existence of national collectives. For instance, at a meeting in Amsterdam organized by a European fan network (FSE – Football Supporters Europe), members of the group were spoken to by the organizers, following criticism for their not being present at many of the group discussions, except for one member who was heavily involved with FSE. To compensate for this, they offered to help put away the stands and project displays that various organizations had brought at the end of the day.

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When disassembling a particularly high-­tech stand with a metal frame that compactly collapsed into itself, one of the group members joked that ‘only Germans [“Krauts” – “Švabe”] could think up a contraption like that’. Banal nationalism also featured through the unambiguous use of the first-­person plural ‘we’ in connection with a national collective (e.g. Croats), for example in stickers such as ‘Svi Hrvati antifašisti’ (all Croats Antifascists!). Banal nationalism was common in left political circles, whilst I sometimes heard comments that, in light of the recent wars, leftist politics ought to be both anti-­capitalist and anti-­national. Despite the banal flagging of national collectives, political nationalism – the use of national identifications as a political principle of governance or basis for citizenship – was rejected. Likely because of the post-­war hegemonies established in Croatia, fans on the terraces and left-­wing activists focused more on promoting positive changes rather than challenging the legitimacy of the recent wars and military campaigns,4 which were overwhelmingly understood by the mainstream as having been defensive in Croatia. The relatively small size of the White Angels and its explicit focus on being against right-­wing politics resulted in a tighter policing of symbols. Far-­right symbols were heavily policed and commented upon, with ambiguous symbols referred to as ‘grey zone’. ‘Grey zone’ (or ‘greyzone’), featuring in academic discussions of the punk scene in Germany (Dornbusch and Raabe 2002), refers to ambiguously far-­right references that create a zone of ambiguity in which far right ideas and/or aesthetics may be promoted ‘under the radar’. Famous examples drawing a greyzone crowd might include band names such as Joy Division or Laibach, although these bands used such references for shock value rather than being structurally connected with the far right. In Zagreb, the fashion brand Thor Steinar, whose use of runes in the brand logo was perceived by many as drawing upon fascist imaginaries, was popular among the BBB. Consequently, the wearing of such Thor Steinar items has been banned in some German stadiums (Perasović 2015, 197). A café bar in the New Zagreb neighbourhood of Travno, run by an old member of the BBB, included several pieces of Thor Steinar memorabilia in its displays. The semantic ambiguity of the grey zone has been used as a device by the far right, sometimes in conjunction with irony to permit the presence of racism, sexism and homophobia in public settings. On the other hand, it has also provided antifascist groups, and particularly those with isolationist and/or identitarian tendencies, with opportunities to engage and overindulge in interpreting sub-­ cultural references among non-politicized punks and fans, as being latently fascist. On the North Stand terraces, in addition to the brands, I interpreted certain fan actions as ‘grey zone’ actions. For instance, putting one’s right hand up in the style of a Hitler salute could be interpreted in this way, particularly when combined with the chant ‘Ja volim Dinamo’ in

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which the emphasis was placed on the first two syllables, connoting the German military exclamation, Jawohl. Ambiguous messages that had a double entendre were common, such as a banner put up to protest against the banning of minors attending matches without parental permission on the North Stand. The banner was black with U18 (Under 18) written on it. This could be interpreted as also relating to the Ustaše U symbol, with 18 representing Adolf Hitler’s initials, A being the first and H the eighth letter of the alphabet, in a code often used by far-­right groups (e.g. Combat 18), especially in contexts where direct references have been banned. The use of symbols that could be construed as relating to the far right was heavily monitored by WAZ, particularly among new members. Brands of clothing were commented upon and when grey zone symbols appeared, they aroused concern and suspicion. As mentioned in Chapter 3, two punks who participated in activities for approximately six months came to a meeting once, one of them wearing a jacket with a subtle SS logo on it. Shortly after, the two punks – who later described, or reinterpreted, themselves as ‘undercover’ from the right-­wing punk scene, left the group and set up an ‘anti-­anti-fa’ initiative. In addition to this, there were also sporadic instances, typically with people on the edge of the group and closer to the punk scene making Nazi gestures. One specificity of the Zagreb alternative scene was a zone of ambiguity and cross-­over between left and right, compounded by the strong personalization of relations and the relatively small size of the city, which meant that members of both subcultures almost always came across friends and schoolmates of theirs in the other groups. Occasionally, acquaintances shifted allegiances (e.g. from left to right) and friendship groups. Finally, references to the socialist Yugoslavia were rarely, if at all drawn on by members of WAZ, who rather sought to emphasize present day connections with similar initiatives, predominantly in Germany, in a state context where the recent socialist state had been discredited and vilified by a nationalist elite, with national categories and a Croatian mythico-­history both being promoted and being taken up by young people. When references were made, they were relatively subtle, such as to the Zagi squirrel, a mascot and symbol strongly associated with Zagreb which was used during the 1987 student Olympics held in Zagreb. The colours used in the squirrel’s tail were used in the kit design for the new club, and the telephone area code for Zagreb during Yugoslavia (041) also became part of the new community club name, although some members expressed concerns that it might be mistaken for referring to Zagreb in the year 1941, the year when the Ustaše assumed power.

Political ideology among the BBB Members of the core stated to me that BBB was a political group and that its politics was Croatian nationalism. However, what this meant to

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different sections of the membership varied widely and the membership included members of various national minorities. In contrast to Hughson’s research with the BBB in Melbourne, in my more limited engagements with members I never came across social spaces with pictures of controversial figures such as the Second World War general and ruler of Croatia, Ante Pavelić (Hughson 1996, 88). Many people with whom I spoke emphasized how the Australian diaspora were the most right-­wing, with the general rule of thumb that ‘the further away the diaspora were from Croatia, the more right-­wing they were’. However, military figures from the recent Homeland War did feature and were displayed on the outside of BBB spaces in Zagreb city centre, with Ante Gotovina – who led the Oluja military campaign – prominently displayed. References to certain Second World War events, including the Bleiburg massacre,5 were also visible, for instance in the fan shop. Analyses of BBB’s written materials have stressed the active reproduction of myth-­making accounts, including in the recent war in which those fallen members assumed a martyr status.6 Yet, in everyday action, broader possible interpretations of ‘Croatian’ were also mobilized, which did not invoke national myth-­making, but rather asserted the continued legitimacy of the new state and of Croatian as the dominant political category in use. As concerns far-­right activities, some sections of the membership were involved in Zagreb skinsi (skinheads), with links to far-­right political parties such as the HČSP, as mentioned earlier. These links were visible in some activities organized by the BBB, including a football tournament where several groups had names associated with far-­right traditions. These included names such as Ustaše, anti-­ZG041, and Crna legija (Black Legion), the latter named after a famous Ustaše youth division known for its particular brutality (Yeomans 2013), and presumably taking its name from the Amer­ican fascist movement active in the 1930s. The younger generation were purportedly far more extreme in their views than the older members, perhaps a relic of the fact that they had largely absorbed the new (nationalist) political status quo but had not experienced the war directly. Older members of the group commented on having to rein them in. However, they understood the young member’s radicalism as relating to a perceived increasing presence of left-­wing provocations (understood by some as a direct challenge to Croatian statehood) which had pushed younger members into assuming more radical positions, amidst deepening splits in Croatian society that more moderate members complained was a negative trend not conducive to national cohesion. The responsibility for the increasing radicalization of younger members was placed on the perceived provocative actions of left-­wing groups, who over the past few years, have increasingly found a voice and grown significantly, not only in Croatia but across the region. I subsequently became aware that the core of BBB had explicitly forbidden wearing BBB and Dinamo symbols to

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direct actions organized by far-­right activists, which explains why, despite talk of close connections and the sharing of subcultural style, none of the assailants described at the start of the chapter wore any BBB or Dinamo insignia. Certain ex-­members of the BBB also promoted extreme-­right ideas. Following elections in late 2015, a politician and former heavily involved member of the BBB named Zlatko Hasanbegović was appointed Minister of Culture. He was successful in waging what has been described as a ‘cultural war’ against liberal and left-­wing NGOs and non-­profit media, through removing funding, and the possibility of applying for funding, for such initiatives, redirecting it instead towards other causes, such as Catholic magazines. He is qualified as a historian and works at an institute in Zagreb known for its more right-­wing sympathies. In an interview for Le Monde, he referred to the existence of a ‘cultural war’ over interpretations of the Yugoslav past in which, from his perspective, there had been a continued ‘leftist hegemony’ in Croatian society following the end of Yugoslavia. His connections with and earlier heavy involvement in the BBB and political figures who have entered government have been extensively commented on. Headlines such as ‘Bad Blue Boy who has become a Minister’ (Körbler 2016) described his trajectory from being one of the first generation of BBB, part of a subgroup called New Blue Generation, with various comments made by him occasionally shared in online BBB Facebook groups. Nevertheless, the BBB were more politically heterogeneous than WAZ. Echoing Perasović and Mustapić’s (2017) discussion of patriotism and the legacy of the recent war as forming part of a common repertoire among Torcida fans, beyond the BBB’s broad consensus on Croatian nationalism, patriotism and its first cousin, nationalism, formed just one part of a much wider repertoire of fan perspectives, practices and engagements. In addition to far right and skinhead currents, there was also a significant libertarian current among the membership with whom I spoke, several of whom worked in the private sector. One public figure and BBB leader, named Thomas Bauer, advocated libertarian politics and was involved in the founding of a website, liberal.hr, promoting socially and economically liberal ideas. I suggest that this libertarian, anti-­ authoritarian positioning combined with a more-­or-less patriotic identification constitutes a broad ideological base of the BBB, whilst recognizing that the group and dispositions of the membership are far from monolithic. Another member, Marko Sladoljev, was active in the centre-­right political party Most, who opposed the opportunistic HDZ and promoted a mixture of neoliberal, technocratic and patriotic political solutions to the current social situation in Croatia, whilst rejecting far-­right approaches and symbolic struggles.

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Far-­r ight symbols and the oppositional patriotic register Fans regularly completed graffiti runs of Zagreb neighbourhoods during the night and the symbols feature a mixture of far-­right messages, such as Za dom spremni, often shortened to ZDS (Brentin 2016), swastikas, the sign of the Croatian Ustaše, and so on. When these messages are written in large print in areas with frequent passers-­by or on public property, they are usually painted over either by people living in the neighbourhood or by the local authorities. In addition, the Zagreb Young Antifascists would sometimes organize a day of action, painting over such graffiti during the day with white paint. They often complemented this with a graffiti run, spraying left-­wing messages over the white paint during the night. This process creates a dynamic between the two groups. The right-­wing graffiti did not always signal the presence of political activists promoting such ideas in a traditional sense, but rather certain symbols were sometimes used by fans as part of a subcultural register, used in certain contexts to make an oppositional statement. I refer to the use of such signs as constituting an ‘oppositional patriotic register’. At the neighbourhood level, this register – primarily consisting of the Dinamo ‘d’, swastika and Ustaše ‘U’ – denoted a claim over the urban space. The referential meaning of the symbols was often secondary to their highlighting this claim over the neighbourhood and local oppositional subcultural belonging. This register contrasted with the use of other far-­right symbols and slogans such as Juden raus! (Jews out!), which were occasionally found in Zagreb. Such slogans drew sharper reactions and deeper emotions when seen as they were not part of this register and were almost certainly a more conscious, hateful political message, in contrast to the oppositional patriotic register, which was largely about daring to use ‘forbidden’ signs to make subcultural claims over neighbourhoods. The appearance of far-­right symbols across football fan subcultures has been extensively commented on from a variety of perspectives. Academics, politicians and representatives of numerous organizations and political institutions living outside of Croatia have been quick to condemn such appearances, on social media and in academic discussions of Croatian nationalism (Brentin 2016). Whilst alternative subcultures in Western European contexts have often drawn on left-­wing motifs and symbols against capitalism, in Eastern European contexts, where left-­wing symbols are frequently associated with politically authoritarian and repressive government, such subcultures have more frequently drawn on religious and right-­wing nationalist symbols (Pilkington 2012). Researchers based in the region have been more cautious. They have highlighted the instrumentalization of far-­right symbols to sabotage the HNS (Croatian Football Federation), such as the swastika that appeared on Hajduk Split’s pitch in 2015

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before a Euro 2016 qualifier, and to attack the crony capitalist networks at the top of Croatian football. Such symbols are used as they incur large penalties. In this view, the oppositional patriotic register is a subset of a wider repertoire of protest behaviours, others of which do not make use of such symbolism, such as the action of throwing lots of flares onto the pitch in order to interrupt the game. This happened during a game played against the Czech Republic in 2016 at the Euro championship, which resulted in scuffles breaking out between fans protesting against the HNS and mostly diaspora, who were angry that other fans had interrupted the game. As the political scientist Dario Brentin described: The thesis that Ustaša ideology is only portrayed by a very small section of Croatian fans was also supported by Benjamin Perasović. The sociologist with a long track record of dealing with football subcultures argued that the chanting should be understood as an expression of politicized sections of fans against the ‘mafiesque-corruption structures’ within the HNS. According to him, it was a conscious and intentional act of fans who felt disempowered to punish the HNS. (Brentin 2016, 7; see also Lalić and Wood 2014, 160) Yet the instrumentalization thesis only pertains to far-­right symbols visibly used in the context of top-­level games. Members of the BBB with whom I spoke also brought up this topic spontaneously, arguing that the register’s meaning to fans did not always relate to far-­right politics: When you hear ‘ZDS’ or ‘Kill the Serb’ at football stadia, you automatically think that it is extremism. In most cases, it isn’t. When something is not permitted, then we do it intentionally in our group.7 This view corresponds with other observations made by social scientists. Đorđević and Žikić (2016, 7) argued that the use of chants such as ‘Kill the Serb’ formed part of a fan repertoire used, but when, in the matchday context, Đorđević asked (in a Serbian accent) those singing for a cigarette light, the fans responded positively and seemed more concerned with directing their hatred towards the Croatian Football Federation, suggesting once again that the use of the oppositional patriotic register is not always referential. However, a focus solely on individual use of the register as sometimes not relating to the presence of far-­right ideology, but rather as (i) pointing to the production of a (mostly) homosocial sociality, and (ii) waging war on the Croatian Football Federation, leaves the wider political effects of this register’s presence undiscussed. What, then, are the social conditions of production of the oppositional patriotic register as the primary,

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anti-­establishment and countercultural position available? In addition, as noted in other arenas, the banalization of these registers helps cultivate a familiarity with their presence, which may then be channelled by the small number of political activists, or used to transform more mainstream political arenas, precisely in times of crisis when sub-­political actions have the possibility of exerting an influence on wider arenas, as exemplified by the success of figures such as Zlatko Hasanbegović with close links to some of the BBB. Other studies (Taylor 2008) have described how the use of controversial national symbols in certain arenas plays an important role in sensitizing people to such symbols, and even cultivating affect towards them whereby they come to be viewed as familiar and mundane. This then provides an arena in which far-­right activists, however few, can act. Second, in sub-­political moments, a dialectic may occur between an oppositional patriotic habitus, and the authoritarian nationalists (e.g. members of the HDZ) who use patriotic tropes as a code through which to access resources and benefits in the clientelist veze system. This occurred in the battle over Dinamo’s name during the 1990s. It also enables the production of a dialectic between those claiming that the authoritarian nationalists are ‘false patriots’, a fact that is compounded because of the interrelation between the patriotic register and the pursuit of networks of personal connections. These grey zones of ambiguity, in both the economic sense (with greater ambiguity existing than in Western European contexts between ‘organized criminals’, ‘the government’, ‘the police’, ‘the judiciary’) and the use of far-­right symbols, therein overlap and lead to a reinforced authoritarian versus oppositional patriotic register which shifts political discourse more widely further to the right. Consequently, a discussion sensitive both to the internal meanings of such symbols within the fan culture and the dangers of their wider political instrumentalization urgently needs to take place in Croatia.

Notes 1 The incident received substantial media coverage and discussion on social media. 2 Similar practices took place between war brigades during the 1990s wars as well. 3 www.badblueboys.hr/mnk-­dinamo/ (accessed 2 March 2018). 4 The Oluja and Bljesak military campaigns in which large sections of Serb-­ identified populations were forced to leave the territory of what is presently Croatia to live in newly defined ‘national states’. 5 Bleiburg is a town in Austria where a massacre of collaborationist forces occurred, undertaken by the Communist Partisan forces after the end of the Second World War, when the collaborationists surrendered and handed themselves over to UK forces, who then delivered them to the Partisans. A commemoration takes place every year in Croatia (Goldstein and Goldstein 2011; Pavlaković 2009).

Political ideologies and the fan movement   115 6 By referring to myth-­making, I am not suggesting aspects of the accounts are untrue. Rather, the myth-­making refers to what Malkki calls mythico-­historical production, where accounts are selected to tell a particular moral story, invariably about a national collective. See Malkki (1995). 7 Kad čuješ Za dom spremni ili Ubij Srbina na stadionima, automatično misliš da je to ekstremizam. U masi slučaja, to nije tako. Kad se kaže da ne smiješ, onda mi to radimo namjerno u našoj grupi. (My translation.)

Bibliography Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications. Bennett, Andy. 1999. Subcultures or neo-­tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style and musical taste. Sociology 33(3), 599–617. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Bjelajac, Slobodan. 2004. The Social Structure of Football Fans in the City of Split. Kakanien Revisited. http://www.kakanien-­revisited.at/beitr/fallstudie/SBjelajac1.pdf. Brentin, Dario. 2016. Ready for the homeland? Ritual, remembrance, and political extremism in Croatian football. Nationalities Papers 44(6), 860–876. Diani, Mario. 1992. The concept of social movement. The Sociological Review 40(1), 1–25. Đorđević, Ivan and Žikić, Bojan. 2016. Football and war in Former Yugoslavia. Serbia and Croatia two decades after the break-­up. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe: People, Passions, Politics. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 39–54. Dornbusch, Christian and Raabe, Jan. 2002: RechtsRock. Bestandsaufnahme und Gegenstrategien. Hamburg/Münster: Unrast. Flacks, Richard. 2004. Knowledge for what? Thoughts on the state of social movement studies. In Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper (eds), Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion. Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 135–154. Goldstein, Slavko, and Goldstein, Ivo. 2011. Jasenovac i Bleiburg nisu isto. Zagreb: Novi Liber. Hughson, John. 1996. A feel for the game: an ethnographic study of soccer and social identity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of New South Wales. King, Anthony. 2017. The European Ritual: Football in the New Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate. Körbler, Jurica. 2016. Zlatko Hasanbegović: Bad Blue Boy koji je postao minister: ‘Komunisti su mojoj obitelji uzeli 19 kuća i novac, a djeda Su ubili’ – Jutarnji List. 2016. www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/zlatko-­hasanbegovic-bad-­blue-boy-­koji-je-­ postao-ministar-%E2%80%98komunisti-su-­m ojoj-obitelji-­u zeli-19-kuca-­i novac-­a-djeda-­su-ubili%E2%80%99/30691/ (accessed 26 February 2018). Lalić, Dražen, and Pilić, Damir. 2011. Torcida: pogled iznutra. Zagreb: Profil multimedija. Maffesoli, Michel, and Foulkes, Charles R. 1988. Jeux de Masques: postmodern tribalism. Design Issues 141–151. Malkki, Liisa H. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

116   Political ideologies and the fan movement McAdam, D., Tarrow, S. and Tilly, C. 2003. Dynamics of contention. Social Movement Studies 2(1), 99–102. Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2009. Red stars, black shirts: symbols, commemorations, and contested histories of World War Two in Croatia. In Pamćenje i nostalgija: neki prostori, oblici, lica i naličja. IP ‘Filip Višnjić’. Perasović, Benjamin. 2015. Subculture, movement, or (neo) tribe? On theory implications of recent research on football supporters. In Demokratski Potencijali Mladih u Hrvatskoj. Institut za društvena istraživanja & Centar za demokraciju i pravo Miko Tripalo. Perasović, Benjamin and Mustapić, Marko. 2013. Football supporters in the context of Croatian sociology: research perspectives 20 years after. Kinesiology 45(2): 262–275. Perasović, Benjamin and Mustapić, Marko. 2017. Carnival supporters, hooligans, and the ‘Against Modern Football’ movement: life within the ultras subculture in the Croatian context. Sport in Society, 1–17. Pilkington, Hilary. 2012. Punk – but not as we know it: punk in post-­socialist space. Punk & Post Punk 1(3), 253–266. Redhead, Steve and Redhead, Steve. 2012. Soccer casuals: a slight return of youth culture. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 3(1), 65–82. Spaaij, Ramón, and Viñas, Carles. 2013. Political ideology and activism in football fan culture in Spain: a view from the far left. Soccer & Society 14(2), 183–200. Sugden, John, and Tomlinson, Alan. 2000. Football, ressentiment and resistance in the break-­up of the former Soviet Union. Culture, Sport Society 3(2), 89–108. Taylor, Mary N. 2008. The Politics of Culture: Folk Critique and Transformation of the State in Hungary. City Doctoral Dissertation, University of New York. Vrcan, Srđan. 2002. The curious drama of the president of a republic versus a football fan tribe: a symptomatic case in the post-­communist transition in Croatia. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1), 59–77. Yates, Luke. 2015. Rethinking prefiguration: alternatives, micropolitics and goals in social movements. Social Movement Studies 14(1), 1–21. Yeomans, Rory. 2013. Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press Županov, Josip. 2011. Hrvatsko društvo danas–kontinuitet i promjena. Politička Misao: Časopis Za Politologiju 48(3), 145–163.

Chapter 6

Gender, sexuality and violence

Introduction In May 2013, the White Angels participated in a pan-­European fan initiative named Football Fans against Homophobia. This was a campaign conceived by a Berlin-­based fan group supporting Tennis Borussia Berlin. It included the action of circulating a banner featuring two male footballers kissing, across football matches in various locations with collaborating fan groups, with an emphasis on Central and South-­Eastern Europe. As part of the campaign, two activists from Germany arrived in Zagreb, bringing the banner with them. We met them in the city centre of Zagreb before the game and, as usual regarding hosting arrangements when members of other fan groups visited Zagreb, the members of White Angels Zagreb (WAZ) were invited to spend time with them and offer them accommodation, usually on someone’s couch or floor. As we entered the stadium on match day, we had to show the banner to the stadium staff, who had no problems with it. The banner was then lifted during the game against NK Zadar as a message (poruka). After the match had finished and we were packing away the banners, three young men walked up to us. One of them turned to me and a friend and said, ‘Let’s have a look at that banner’. I unfolded it to show them. ‘Are you fags [pederi]?’ one of them then asked. ‘Is that really important?’ I replied, ‘the point is that we support them.’ The next few seconds were a blur, after which two White Angels and two of the three men were fighting on the floor of the stand near the rails at the front by the pitch. A minute or so later, a police officer came and broke up the scuffle and took two of the men and one White Angel to a police station. This event was commented on extensively over the evening whilst we were drinking in the yard of an alternative cultural centre called Medika. Several members of the White Angels asserted that the provocateurs were BBB members. One member, Andrej said that they had likely come to watch the match as they had placed bets on NK Zagreb, whilst Vjeko described how he recognized one of them as having been in his class at school. Vjeko continued with the joking, asking me – who had

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only participated in the confrontation verbally – ‘Doctor, why are you fighting with the BBB’ (Doktore, zašto se tučeš s bojsima) playing on the contradiction between the altercation and expectations of my behaviour on the basis of my academic qualifications. The main conclusion drawn1 was that they were the aggressors whilst the White Angels had stood their ground, and it was also jokingly mentioned that WAZ had finally been noticed by the Bad Blue Boys (BBB). The fact that an anti-­homophobia message resulted in this kind of attention from other fans is not coincidental. Homophobia in the post-­Yugoslav region is significant (Moss 2014), and relates to both patriarchal legacies (Bilić and Stubbs 2016) and the effects of the recent wars. Within the new nationalized citizenship regime, a masculinist mode of citizenship (Greenberg 2006) predominated, and a need to define new ‘Others’ and ‘enemies within’ (Kahlina 2011), in a context where the attempted normalizing of homosexual visibility was occurring through alliances formed between socially liberal local groups, initiatives and NGO actors, such as Zagreb Pride. Furthermore, international pressure strongly influenced by Croatia’s hope for EU accession led to a strong external motivation for such change, frequently packaged in a discourse of ‘Europeanization’ (Butterfield 2016). I reject the hypothesis – as discussed by Sugden and Tomlinson (2002) – that football subcultures constitutes a ‘special context’ in which a social subsystem is created outside of everyday social codes and rules, perhaps one in which certain transgressive, yet selective (Free and Hughson 2003) interpretations of ‘carnival’ operate. Instead, I align myself with the view that fan subcultures are part and parcel of socio-­politically inflected lifeworlds and culture operating in concrete socio-­historical settings (Tomlinson 2005). Gender and sexuality – understood both as embodied practices and as fan perspectives – are therefore considered to be embedded in the wider social context. This chapter begins with a discussion of hegemonic masculinity and citizenship in Croatia. It then considers masculinist dimensions to the ultras tradition. Certain masculine motifs in the Croatian fan scene are then briefly discussed, before a detailed discussion is given of gender and sexuality in WAZ, with observations, where possible, of the BBB. Finally, the connections between gendered relations, violence and the surveillance of public space is considered.

Hegemonic masculinity in the Croatian state context Just as football fan subcultures are embedded in concrete historical and social contexts, football fans do not simply have a life on the terraces, and there has been relatively little focus in the literature situating fandom in the wider contexts of their subjects’ lives (exceptions exist, such as Marsh, Rosser and Harré 2005), with much ethnography tending to be white

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middle-­class men researching ‘deviant’ groups on the terraces. In Croatia, wide-­ranging social transformations have included a shift from a political system claiming to promote class equality to one promoting Croatian national identity (at least discursively), the effect of a war fought directly on large swathes of the territory (a key difference with neighbouring states such as Slovenia and Serbia), and – as discussed in Chapter 1 – the promotion of authoritarian nationalisms. In the post-­Yugoslav region more widely, these nationalisms had a strong masculinist component (Milićević 2006), wherein ‘the rise of masculinist nationalism provided a powerful linkage between an emerging post-­socialist citizenship and male identification and privilege’ (Greenberg 2006, 322–323). Citizenship hierarchies, articulated through gender and war experience resulted in a populist clientelism with redistributive claims over national wealth asserted, successfully, by organized war veterans (Stubbs and Zrinščak 2015), and particularly those with links to the far right making claims to be ‘authentic patriots’ in the dialectic discussed in Chapter 5. These activists claim a privileged position in a hierarchy of citizenship claims, followed by other ‘good’ Croatians, with national and sexual minorities and other ‘enemies within’ further down in the hierarchy (Čapo Žmegač 2007, 107). The involvement of football fan subgroups in the recent wars, including on the front lines, means that some members of the fan groups also assert such claims, and stickers from fan groups were visible at sites of war veteran protests. In addition, members of the BBB participated in Vukovar commemorations alongside members of a military unit named HOS, who began as a paramilitary group with neo-­Ustaše sympathies when the war broke out in 1991, before being later incorporated into the Croatian Army. In the post-­Yugoslav region more widely, men have experienced a drop in their status since the beginning of the 1990s’ wars. This is due to the ongoing economic crisis and the resulting drop in living standards and working conditions, which has resulted in a ‘compensatory’ masculinity in some domains, with a focus on excessive displays of masculinity often combined with a materialism visible in trends such as the ‘urban peasant’ (Jansen 2005). This aspect is more attenuated in Croatia, where an economic recovery occurred relatively quickly, and a ‘victors’ narrative’ is present, but it has resurfaced following the protracted economic crisis. Third, and specific to the post-­Yugoslav context, is the emergence of a series of nested discursive oppositions concerning Europe and ‘European identities’, wherein more Eastern ‘Others’ were viewed as less European and less civilized (Bakić-Hayden 1995). In Croatia, the dominant nationalist narrative during the 1990s contrasted a European, cultured, Croatia grounded in a central European cosmopolitanism with its more ‘primitive’ Balkan neighbours (Obad 2010). In this dynamic, a feminized citizen came to stand for elite politics, for, as Jessica Greenberg described in the case of Serbia, ‘homosexuality had come to stand in for new democratic forms,

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elite political agendas, an active NGO and human rights sector, Europe and the West’ (Greenberg, 2006, 326). In this imaginary, Europe and European belonging were aligned as feminine and associated with elites. This connotation persists in Serbian fans’ characterizing of Croatian fans as faggots (pederi), whilst in the opposite direction, Serbian fans might be stereotypically be characterized as more ‘wild’ or ‘primitive’. Whilst such an imaginary may have led some mainstream fans in Croatia to tolerate non-­straight identifications as evidence of a European openness, my experience was that many did not, on supposed (Catholic) religious grounds, given the close connections between religious belief and national identification in this context, with many young people attending church and the BBB even sometimes boycotting football matches when they are played on Catholic holidays.

Ultras, hooligans and hypermasculinity ‘Hard masculinity’ has been discussed as a key aspect defining membership of many organized fan groups, as elaborated by Spaiij (2007, 2008) in his research interviewing fans in the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. In Hughson’s (2000, 10) discussion of a Bad Blue Boys group in Melbourne, Australia, the group might be considered as an émigré wing, or a group that looks up to the Zagreb Bad Blue Boys, but which is ultimately involved in different struggles. Hughson identified ‘machismo, chauvinism, misogyny, and homophobia’, as the basis of a masculine identity. Whilst these ultras do not live in the Balkan region, they were nonetheless influenced by the war situation and certainly by Croatian nationalist ideology. National stereotypes and expected gender roles frequently perpetuate hetero-­patriarchy, with ultras’ groups ‘hyper-­masculinity’ being complicit in this process. At one extreme, anthropological and social theorizing on gender describes the existence of a hegemonic masculinity inscribed in the actions, behaviours and thinking of social actors. This view is compatible with an, in my view problematic, culturalist view that there exists a specific ‘Balkan’ masculinity – sometimes described as homo balcanicus (for a discussion, see Bechev 2004), as well as with a Marxist view, which understands such a dominant masculinity as resulting from state hegemonies established over the course of, and following, the recent wars. At the other extreme is the view that there exist multiple individual and/or group masculinities in lots of different local contexts. Raewyn Connell’s (Connell and Connell 2005) concept of hegemonic masculinity, closer to the Marxist view, is particularly useful here. For Raewyn Connell, gender describes ‘a way of structuring social practice in general, not a special type of practice’ (Connell and Connell 2005, 75). In her view, the state is substantively, not metaphorically, masculine, based on ‘the masculinity that occupies the hegemonic position in a given pattern

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of gender relations, a position always contestable (Connell and Connell 2005, 76). In different settings social actors engage with elements of hegemonic masculinity, whilst simultaneously discarding or even contesting elements of it.

Masculine motifs in the Croatian fan scene One danger with certain uses of hegemonic masculinity as a concept lies in the overly monolithic portrayal of masculinities, drawing attention to a powerful collective understanding that is present, and which draws attention away from its contestation through establishing other masculinities, such as inclusive masculinities (Cashmore and Cleland 2012). A form of hegemonic masculine performance based on compulsory heterosexuality was present, and discernible in some of the chants: ‘Volim samo Dinamo, alkohol i žene, ništa više u životu ne zanima mene’ (I only love Dinamo, alcohol and women, nothing else in life interests me). Yet various masculine motifs circulated on the North Stand terraces and among WAZ, many associated with a particular slang word, and incorporating aspects of hegemonic masculinity to various degrees. The first is a mrcina, or big tough guy, and this motif most closely maps onto ‘hard masculinity’. Such figures, who might assume leading positions on the stands, would typically be either muscled and/or moderately overweight, possibly with tattoos and ready for street confrontations. A second motif, the frajer, is more closely associated with entrepreneurial figures who enjoy a certain amount of success in crony-­capitalist networks. They may be promiscuous, or construct a social performance that hints at promiscuity. One example illustrating this performance was when Vjeko, a member of WAZ, was placed in charge of dealing with money for an organized trip to Amsterdam. He lined all the euro notes up in front of a suitcase on his bed and took a photo of himself lying on the bed with all the euro notes and an open suitcase lying around him and then joked about visiting a prostitute there, although this all remained at the level of ‘window-­shopping’ bravado during the trip.2 A third motif is the zajebant (joker), who constantly makes jokes and messes around, ducking and diving and perhaps making up for a lack of physical strength and power through constantly throwing verbal insults and jokes around. Given their distancing from forms of hard masculinity and the ‘serious’ fan habitus, this motif was especially visible among WAZ. A fourth motif was that of a šminker, similar to the sociologist Dražen Lalić’s (2011, 118) concept of a ‘trend fan’ (navijač iz trenda) who might wear designer clothes, sunglasses and, nowadays, exude a hipster appeal. I was sometimes identified in this way for wearing Henri Lloyd branded products, which were expensive and difficult to obtain in Croatia. This association also overlaps with the frajer and Serbian concept of dizelaši,

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which was a subcultural style ‘centred [on] a group of criminals who wore Nike Air Max trainers, expensive sport brands clothing, lots of thick golden chains and drove luxurious cars’ (Papović and Pejović 2016, 81), living off the smuggling of goods – to push the stereotype, this might include stolen cars from Germany, cigarettes and designer clothes. A fifth motif is the luđak (a nutter), who may be violent and/or present themselves as psychologically unstable to varying degrees. One such example was one member of BBB who recognized one member of WAZ from a match day altercation. From that moment on, whenever he came across him anywhere in Zagreb, he moved towards him and tried to attack him. A sixth motif is that of the žrtva (victim). This motif applies to those fans who have being treated unjustly, typically by the authorities. This might include Nikica in Zagreb, whose name and motif adorns many facades in Zagreb, while also referring to members of BBB who have died. One notable example is Frano Despić, for whom commemorative events were organized from time to time. Frano was knifed to death during a violent conflict between a group of punks and a group of young BBB who attacked them, when socializing in a Zagreb park one evening. This motif would also apply to those members of BBB who lost their lives in combat during the recent wars. The above motifs have completely excluded any discussion of a female or non-­binary presence on the terraces, yet women frequently and increasingly attended football matches. Among WAZ, this presence was mostly limited to partners of group members and a small number from the Zagreb punk, alternative and activist scene. Women typically participated less in the joking around (zajebancija) and homosocial banter that accompanied match day activities. ‘Banter’ regarding women – who was dating who, etc. – was common at the meetings and matches. In WAZ, there was little homophobia or racism, but misogyny was sometimes present, particularly among half involved members, in a degree comparable with that of the left Zagreb punk scene, with which the group membership heavily overlapped. ‘Macho’ banter was sometimes employed, largely but not exclusively ironically to refer to other group members, as discussed in the next chapter. The lack of women in the group was occasionally commented on negatively by group members, who claimed they wished for greater female involvement, but that women simply did not join the group, and the homosocial dimension to match day banter certainly contributed to this exclusion. More recently, following the founding of a community club by some of the WAZ membership, the number of women on the terraces, and people more generally, increased significantly and a women’s football club was organized as part of the new club. Despite these developments, problems persisted from time to time. At one football match, one of the people in the crowd shouted at the female referee, ‘ajde kraljice u shopping’ (go shopping, princess3). This was recognized as misogynistic by many in the

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club and a detailed discussion over how to tackle such chauvinist comments took place, with one stream arguing that it should be directly tackled when it occurs on the terraces, and another arguing that such forceful tackling would dissuade people (who could later be educated through club participation) from the neighbourhood from attending. As concerns women participants in BBB, terrace observations resonated with Perasović and Mustapić’s (2013, 270) observations, in that the women who participated tended to submit to the masculine style present. I noticed the presence of a distinct ‘street’ substyle, with many of the women attending matches dressed in tracksuit tops and bottoms, sometimes wearing a baseball cap and Bad Blue Boys T-­shirts. This was a style that largely mimicked the casuals or sportswear styles of the male-­ identified participants and, in my experience, these women members behaved in the same way as men on the terraces, participating in the chants and other activities. When I conducted an interview with a female participant in BBB, her husband also attended, whilst wives and girlfriends never attended when conducting interviews with male participants. There was no subcultural presence in this sense among the WAZ membership – a small number of women from the Zagreb punk scene attended from time to time, but were not ‘incorporated’ in this way. Those women on the terraces were either ‘visiting’ from the punk scene, or the partners of group members, with one taking photographs for social media. There were more women present on the terraces once the community club had started, but this fact was also criticized by some of the members focused on an ultras performance, who stated that the terraces had become too ‘femmie’. A relative lack of political correctness was also found by Jones (2008) in her UK-­based study of women fans. Jones analysed women’s strategies and responses to sexism and homophobia. In her study, she found that female fans used three strategies, which often overlapped in performing fandom; these were (1) defining sexist and homophobic abuse as disgusting; (2) down-­playing sexist and homophobic abuse; and (3) embracing gender stereotypes as part of the game (Jones 2008, 321). In downplaying misogynous comments as ‘just’ a part of the game, whilst not accepting them outside this context, her research suggests that football fandom constitutes a special context in which certain actions or behaviours, which are deemed unacceptable in everyday situations, are permitted in the match-­day context. This is a view compatible with a Durkheimian focus on fan rituals (Lalić and Pilić 2011, 135) wherein violence, insults and certain offensive behaviours are understood as ‘fan rituals’ perhaps specific to a fan culture: there may be order and structure within the apparent disorder (Marsh, Rosser and Harré 2005).

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Left-­w ing and LGBTQ politics as emasculating One dimension specific to the White Angels was a simultaneous desire for recognition as an ultras group, and to promote left wing and LGBTQ politics. This left the group in a contradictory position, simultaneously seeking (non-­hierarchical) recognition and being open to hierarchical surveillance. Despite the White Angels’ overwhelmingly male identified membership, the group was symbolically emasculated by both other fan groups on the terraces, describing them as ‘bimbos’ (fifice) and by the club management. One example by the club management occurred at the start of the 2014–2015 season. Before the game started, someone came up to the group with a bunch of flowers and an envelope, inside of which was a bunch of season tickets for members of the group. The tickets incensed several members as it was an open acknowledgement of the fact that the club tolerated their presence in the stadium. This is because, despite the conflict with the club management, the ground staff had let us use old or forged season tickets to enter, meaning the White Angels almost always attended games for free. This action was widely perceived as a bribe by group members and angered several members of the group who threw the tickets on the floor and pitch and after playing around with the bouquet, threw it away as well. In Croatia, flowers are rarely given to men, and the manager had attempted to emasculate the group as ‘you buy women flowers’. This demonstrates how insults make use of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Connell 2005), through which in this case internal hegemony (Demetriou 2001) has been established. Being recognized as a participant in the ultras scene – desired by some members – required a certain amount of code-­sharing with other groups, groups that were clearly complicit with hegemonic masculinity at the level of group performance on the terraces. This raises the question of in what ways White Angels confirmed and/or contested hegemonic masculinity. Whilst male homosocial ‘banter’ was an element of left-­oriented ultras’ groups in Zagreb, such as the White Angels, hard masculinity was not. The fans with whom I spoke drew on aspects of state established discursive hegemonies – such as hegemonic masculinity, as well as other social contexts of importance to them – such as being considered part of the ultras scene as well as the importance of local traditions. As concerns local traditions, the area of town around the stadium, Trešnjevka, was understood by some White Angels as their territory, although the Bad Blue Boys also had a lot of graffiti in, and a regional subdivision for this part of town, and due to the relative size of the groups, as earlier mentioned, the White Angels were largely ignored by the BBB – a fact that irritated some WAZ members. This led the group to attempt to subvert, yet also be partially complicit with hegemonic masculinity. This was particularly visible when some White Angels talked about other groups. Guests, primarily from

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other European cities, visited Zagreb and came to matches from time-­totime. There were often activists from Berlin or Hamburg, as well as members of organizations such as Football Supporters Europe.4 Some of these fans insisted on vegan diets and/or used ‘politically correct’ language in a way that irritated some members of the group. Some of these individuals were sometimes derided as being hipsteri (hipsters) or šminkeri (trend-­following, wearing designer brands), which implied a mixture of the following attributes: conspicuous consumption; paying attention to cultivating a fashionable, perhaps metrosexual, image; following a vegan diet; insisting on political correctness; focusing on activist aesthetics and forms more than – in their opinion – concrete action. There was a sense that those who were ‘hipsters’ were less ‘authentic’ fans and activists, having a view of activism as a ‘trendy subculture’ and often coming from more economically privileged backgrounds and behaving in a more individualist manner. This lack of authenticity contrasts sharply with Michael’s (2013) research with cultural consumers deriding a category of ‘hipsters’ on the grounds of them not making individual, authentic consumer choices, but instead following trends. Rather, the distinction between the ‘hipster’ and ‘authentic’ activist cited by some White Angels mirrors Greenberg’s (2006) opposition between the ‘feminine, homosexual, elite European institutions’ and the ‘authentic, Serbian, male voice of the people’. Despite identifying as queer and coming from what was understood as Europe, I was rarely positioned by group members in the same way as some of the fans who visited, presumably because I was fluent in Croatian and engaged in local practices and organizing. I was only once or twice referred to in banter as a hipster, suggesting that such an involvement in local (White Angels’) practices was central in defining a person’s position and not a perceived geographical belonging, as might be the case with some groups oriented around nationalist ideology, which the White Angels completely rejected. This activist association was likely exacerbated in the Balkan context due to two important details. First, there existed a class of professional activists, including LGBTQ activists, connected with an expanded and at times lucrative NGO industry, some of whom received wages well above the national average for their work, several of whom cultivated this ‘hipster image’. The second was that, amongst some visiting activists, there was a feeling that some of them had not sufficiently questioned their European privilege, having different understandings of what was expensive and cheap, spending money on some expensive vegan products in health food shops for example, in a context where there was less consumer choice and such vegan products were often a luxury item, compared with in Berlin for example. These political economic differentials were particularly obvious when attending the earlier mentioned event in Amsterdam, where the exorbitant prices highlighted economic inequalities between different regions of Europe, along the lines of east/west and north/south divides. In summary,

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post-­Yugoslav discursive hegemonies concerning gender shaped the background upon which individual group members interpreted their concepts of gender and sexuality. Whilst having relatively coherent gendered expectations, their acceptance of alternative sexualities radically differentiated them from the right-­wing groups. For those accepting – consciously or not – hegemonic masculinist discourse within the ultras scene, behaviours and attitudes understood as not fitting in with normative understandings of masculinity could result in being interpreted as gay (pederski). As the anthropologist Mary Douglas may have described it, such individuals constituted a symbolic threat to individuals’ masculinity in hetero-­patriarchal constructions of social reality, being ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 2002). The relative individualism of the category – being ‘gay’ was commonly understood as an individual identification, rather than an organized social group with specific, local qualities – such as a ‘nation’ or ‘the people’. This may also have grated with a construction of the social world in terms of groups with specific local or national identities. This emasculating dimension did not only occur in relation to other fan groups and the club, but also with the police. Following the arrest described in the introduction to this chapter, the arresting officer supposedly retorted, ‘oh, you’re those football fans who support gays, we’re gonna give you the smallest possible fine.’ This was emasculating as the policeman was suggesting that the presence of the group was welcomed by the police, therein deconstructing the oppositional identification to the police that was present among the White Angels. A further comparison that can be used to make the argument that the group’s masculinity had some features in common concerns an insult used to refer to rape. In Belgrade, there is a widely circulated urban legend that, on one occasion, male fans of Partizan (Grobari) came across a male Red Star ultra (Delije) and during the violent confrontation that followed, as an ultimate mark of humiliation, one of the male fans raped him. Another version of this tale, concerning a Partizan fan and a fan from Torcida Split in Croatia, is also related by Partizan fans in the TV programme The Real Football Factories International: Croatia and Serbia. I found this comment was often used by some students and friends to point to the absurdity of the ‘hard masculinity’, which is present amongst many of these ultras groups – they would question why such an act is viewed as macho whilst some individuals in these same groups provoke verbal or physical confrontations with the non-­straight population. Of course, the perpetrator of such an act plays a symbolic role as an ‘aggressive, masculine tormenter’, imposing his power on a ‘passive feminized victim’, a discursive opposition discussed in the war context with respect to Serbian nationalist victim narratives that Serbian women were being raped, primarily by Albanian men, in Kosovo (Bracewell 2000). Amongst the White Angels, one popular chant shouted at the opposition was ‘these cunts/faggots will fuck you

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[up]’ ‘izjebat će vas ove pičke pederske’. Such a comment preserved the underlying discursive opposition prominent amongst right-­wing groups, but reversed it back on their opponents with whom the group are, or wish to be, in confrontational dialogue, through the White Angel’s assuming, and being proud of assuming, a subordinated position. Such comments, particularly when making use of irony, implied the existence of clear reflexive moments concerning the social context in which such masculinities were articulated and a mocking of the nationalist, politicized dimensions of the context in which they were working. Numerato’s (2014, 14) conclusion that ‘the reflexive discursive practices diffused in late modernity are not necessarily viewed as deliberate and emancipating forms of social action’, also holds true for the White Angels, wherein such insights were primarily enacted through the use of performed chants and banter in the match-­day context rather than direct, serious discussion within the group at meetings – such discussion being restricted to formal situations, such as round table discussions the group occasionally organized, in which social issues were debated alongside academics and activists.

Sexuality in the White Angels and Bad Blue Boys Among the White Angels, an openness towards non-­hetero sexualities was present and promoted by the core members, and was sometimes used – as discussed in the next chapter – to reinforce an urban identification whereby members of other fan groups were othered as nationalist peasants for their lack of openness and/or tolerance. However, heterosexuality was sometimes presumed by new members in the group. On one occasion, at an antifascist punk concert in Novi Sad, Serbia, a new member was surprised when I introduced my boyfriend. On a later occasion, his girlfriend told me how he had asked one of the core members, Petar, why I hadn’t mentioned I was not straight, to which Petar replied, ‘when did you tell him you were heterosexual?’, in so doing undermining the presumption of heterosexuality. However, almost all members were, to my knowledge, heterosexual and, on occasion, I perceived my bisexuality as a welcome, but perhaps ‘token’ addition to the group, which confirmed its credentials. There was another group member who described herself as transsexual. This member was also a punk performer and it was commented on that this was not an authentic manoeuvre but related to a desire for attention and to put on an act, an attribution which resonates with transphobic critiques of non-­binary gender identities. Two members revealed their bicurious tendencies to me, relating an occasion when they kissed one another, whilst one related a one-­off homosexual encounter, but these members defined themselves as heterosexual and frequently talked about or had girlfriends over the several years in which I was closely involved in the group. In WAZ, homosexual joking behaviours were sometimes used by some

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members of the group, performing the openness of which they talked in an ironic fashion. One suggested name for the WAZ fanzine was WAZ-­eline, drawing on Vaseline, in an explicit reference to its use as a lubricant, historically among gay populations. In contrast, when I conducted interviews with members of the BBB, I was told they have issues with WAZ when they promote fags (pederi) on the terraces. On BBB’s Facebook forums, followed by many thousands of people, the page administrators would sometimes advocate homophobic views explicitly, describing homosexuality – primarily male – as against nature and sick. One example was the heteronormative statement publically made by Dinamo’s famous coach Miroslav ‘Ćiro’ Blažević: ‘Men who don’t like football are mostly faggots’ (Muškarci koji ne vole nogomet, uglavnom su pederi). On the Facebook forums, such statements received a large number of likes, but also criticism. Such dissent was sometimes commented on by the group administrators, but I never noticed people being removed from the group for expressing positive attitudes towards the LGBTQ population. When at a round table workshop on fan activism, a representative from Futsal Dinamo was confronted with the question of homophobic messages on the terraces, his reply was simply that ‘homophobia is present among the BBB’ and that he does not participate in such chants. Others I interviewed on the edge of the group emphasized that there are members who do support LGBTQ rights. One member even used the greater tolerance in Zagreb of LGBTQ expression to Other Serbian fans as more primitive.

Violence and surveillance In many locations in the post-­Yugoslav region, visible signifiers denoting membership of an ultras group or identification as a gay male, particularly items of clothing, could result in problems when passing through public spaces. In both of these instances – membership of an ultras group or identification as gay – surveillance of visual signifiers relates to a threat of possible physical violence. Such signifiers marked myself out as having a particular relationship with hegemonic masculine and state orderings. The effect of such surveillance was to alter codes of dress, behaviour and corresponding social identifications made, at least at the level of public performance. Surveillance here presupposes a dominant and threatening male gaze on the part of certain individuals hidden in the crowds that traverse urban spaces. This gaze is associated with a hard and hegemonic masculinity. In the context of war fought on the territory of a state, hegemonic and hard masculinity often converge; it is therefore unsurprising that they are closely linked in a post-­war context where war had been fought nearby. The threat is reinforced when sporadic violent incidents between fan groups, or attacks on LGBTQ individuals occur.

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This gaze and associated surveillance might be considered through the lens of Foucault’s concept of a Panopticon. As Foucault (1997, 362) commented, The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen … There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.  Such surveillance was only panoptic in the case of those identified as LGBTQ traversing public space, as panoptic power is asymmetrical and this gaze influenced LBGTQ members’ self-­performance, with the possible exception of small radicalized LGBTQ individuals seeking conflict. In the case of fan group members, the gaze was frequently reciprocal and often based on a common and mutual (symmetrical) recognition of a ‘worthy’ opponent, with corresponding expectations of behaviour. As Spaiij commented: A shared cultural practice of self-­styled hardcore football hooligans is their involvement, to varying degrees, in violent confrontation with opposing hooligans. A key aim of all hooligan groups is to successfully challenge their rivals through intimidation and violence as a way of securing or enhancing their status as a good ‘firm’ in the hierarchy of hooligan oppositions (Armstrong, 1994, p. 299). (Spaaij 2008, 373) Whilst there is a hierarchy, depending on the value and reputation of each ultras subdivision, there is also recognition of a common masculinity and common structure of practice, even if the ‘cultural’ content of those practices differed in different fan groups. For those who identified as non-­ straight, no claims were made to public space in the same fashion. Public display was made for different reasons. There were a small number of places designated as safe spaces – cafes and clubs, largely hidden from public view. Public displays of affection between partners were possible only in locations where it was clear no one was able to see them at that moment. Public space was experienced as liminal and many chose not to display visible signs of their sexuality, so as to avoid possible conflict. Whilst public space was not liminal for members of ultras culture, many also covered up, so as to avoid possible conflict in an inappropriate context (e.g. walking home through an ‘enemy’ part of town at night by oneself ). Both groups had a conception of certain spaces as identified with their subculture/group: for ultras, this was public space and the stadium grounds; for non-­straight individuals, this was particular, often commercial or activist, spaces. This situation resonates strongly with McRobbie’s (1991a,

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1991b) critiques of ‘male’ spectacular subcultures. Describing developments in UK society during the 1970s, she contrasts the gendered dimensions of subcultures making claims over and/or operating primarily in public space, with what she described as the ‘magazine culture’ of many teenage girls, who would congregate in small groups in private spaces (e.g. girls’ bedrooms), where they would discuss crushes, pop culture, etc. However, the question remains as to what extent such insights can be applied to post-­Yugoslav contexts, given the different history in which liberal divisions between public and private do not clearly map on to understandings of the post-­socialist transition currently occurring. Indeed, in the UK, Armstrong (1998, 175) described the ‘patches’ or ‘manors’ associated with hooligan groups. He argues that in the UK context, such spaces were contingent, moving around over time, and that no fixed ‘territorial’ claims persisted. The tagging of neighbourhoods and the murals laying claim to them, combined with the neighbourhood style of organization and different concepts of and scales of movement led to a different dynamic in Zagreb. This is to be expected if, following Lefebvre, space is understood as a social product, caught up in specific means of production, and embodying social relationships (Lefebvre and Nicholson-­ Smith 1991, 289). Public spaces depend on the social relations underpinning concepts such as ‘public’. I suggest that public/private distinctions, implicated in discussions of gender (Gal and Kligman 2000) in Western senses – around which there is no clear agreement – do not apply to the post-­Yugoslav states for two reasons. First, as noted earlier, the post-­socialist path taken by these states is not a convergence on Western European market capitalism. The application of changing ownership regimes, privatization and neoliberal reforms resulted, in some domains, in an intensification of the pursuit of personalized connections (Brković 2017), which was also important during the SFRY, resulting in an amalgam that might be described as ‘neoliberal capitalism with feudalist characteristics’. To understand this meshing, looking at concepts of ‘public’ during feudalism is instructive. As Weintraub described: Both the notion of citizenship and the notion of sovereignty went into eclipse in the Middle Ages, for reasons which are understandable. For one thing, neither of them is compatible with the feudal system of rule, based on a web of personal dependent ties and the absence of any significant distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’. (Weintraub 1997, 13) In the post-­Yugoslav case, a relational notion of public as visible and relating to particular forms of belonging and sociability may be more appropriate than ‘spheres’. Such a combination of modern and premodern elements resonates with Šantek’s (2017) description of fandom as postmodern in Croatia.

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In turn, the concept of ‘public’ is implicitly based on a concept of collective community, defining citizenship, with possible political (the people) or ethnicized (the nation) inclusion/exclusion criteria used to define membership (for a critique, see Joseph 2002). Yet the Croatian word for community, zajednica, also conjures a different set of associations. Zajednica more strongly connotes a network of support, based on building sets of relationships rather than inclusion/exclusion criteria. If we apply these different understandings to the public/private distinction in reference to space, an emphasis on ‘spheres’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘inclusion/exclusion’ is replaced by public and private as relational categories in which claims are made over spaces that are more or less visible (Guțu 2018). Citizenship here is not ‘objectified’ nor anonymized, but is processual, built and negotiated through interactions, with a gendered, vanguard sociality inculcated in understandings of the surveillance of public spaces. Some organized fan responses to events in Croatia point to the intertwining between fan practices, claims over public spaces and such a relational definition of citizenship. One example was the recent outbreak of large forest fires on the edge of Split, which threatened certain neighbourhoods on the edge of the town and led to a call from firefighters for help from the public, to which members of Torcida collectively responded and the Bad Blue Boys also sent a bus of collective help. Such events, and especially collaboration between two fan groups who are in regular conflict with one another, demonstrate a vanguard position articulated with respect to protecting the ‘Croatian homeland’. Such actions might be considered a sub-­political moment in which members of the fan groups make claims which go far beyond the fan sub-­culture itself, in asserting a form of relational citizenship claim, a claim that is clearly gendered as male. When taken to this extreme, groups that challenge the hegemonic masculinity inherent in this relational citizenship are viewed as a threat to the Croatian state itself.

Notes 1 This was discussed in an earlier article where the above vignette and some of the material in this chapter was presented from a more activist perspective. A reprint of sections of this article has been permitted with the kind permission of the publisher, Taylor & Francis Ltd (www.tandfonline.com). The original text is called ‘Violence and masculinity amongst left-­wing ultras in post-­Yugoslav space’, Hodges, published in Sport in Society 19(2) (2016), 174–186. 2 Linking to the themes in the next chapter, upon seeing that a Serbian ultras group had put a sticker above the door to one brothel, Vjeko started commenting on how they were ‘peasants’ for having done that. 3 Kraljice literally translates as queen, but this has another connotation (with homosexuality) in English. 4 www.fanseurope.org/en/ (accessed 2 March 2018).

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Bibliography Armstrong, Gary. 1998. Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score. Oxford; New York: Berg. Bakić-Hayden, M. 1995. Nesting orientalisms: the case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54(4), 917–931. Bechev, Dimitar. 2004. Contested borders, contested identity: the case of regionalism in southeast Europe. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 4(1), 77–95. Bilić, Bojan and Stubbs, Paul. 2016. Beyond EUtopian promises and disillusions: a conclusion. In LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-­Yugoslav Space. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 231–248. Bracewell, Wendy. 2000. Rape in Kosovo: masculinity and Serbian nationalism. Nations and Nationalism 6(4), 563–590. Brković, Čarna. 2017. Managing Ambiguity: How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood. New York: Berghahn Books. Butterfield, Nicole. 2016. Discontents of professionalisation: sexual politics and activism in Croatia in the context of EU accession. In LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-­Yugoslav Space. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 23–58. Čapo Žmegač, Jasna. 2007. Strangers Either Way: The Lives of Croatian Refugees in Their New Home, Vol. 2. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Cashmore, Ellis and Cleland, Jamie. 2012. Fans, homophobia and masculinities in association football: evidence of a more inclusive environment. The British Journal of Sociology 63(2), 370–387. Connell, Robert William and Connell, Raewyn. 2005. Masculinities. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.  Demetriou, Demetrakis Z. 2001. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity: a critique. Theory and Society 30(3), 337–361. Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, 1st edn. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1997 (1958, trans. 1969). ‘Panopticism’. Discipline and punish. Reprinted in Neal Leach (ed), Rethinking Architecture. London: Routledge, 360–367. Free, Marcus and Hughson, John. 2003. Settling accounts with hooligans: gender blindness in football supporter subculture research. Men and Masculinities 6(2), 136–155. Gal, Susan and Kligman, Gail. 2000. The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative-­Historical Essay. Illustrated edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Greenberg, J. 2006. Nationalism, masculinity and multicultural citizenship in Serbia. Nationalities Papers 34(3), 321–341. Guțu, Dinu. 2018. World going one way, people another: ultras football gangs? Survival networks and clientelism in post-­socialist Romania. Soccer & Society 19(3), 337–354. Hodges, Andrew. 2016. Violence and masculinity amongst left-­wing ultras in post-­ Yugoslav space. Sport in Society 19(2), 174–186.

Gender, sexuality and violence   133 Hughson, John. 2000. The boys are back in town. Soccer support and the social reproduction of masculinity. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24(1), 8–23. Jansen, Stef. 2005. ‘Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-­Yugoslav urban self-­perceptions’. Ethnologia Balkanica 9, 151–167. Jones, Katharine W. 2008. Female fandom: identity, sexism, and men’s professional football in England. Sociology of Sport Journal 25(4), 516–537. Joseph, Miranda. 2002. Against the Romance of Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kahlina, Katja. 2011. Nation, State and Queers: Ethnosexual Identities in the Interface between Social and Personal in Contemporary Croatia. In Anna G. Jónasdóttir, Valerie Bryson and Kathleen B. Jones (eds), Sexuality, Gender and Power: Intersectional and Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Lalić, Dražen and Pilić, Damir. 2011. Torcida: Pogled Iznutra. Zagreb: Profil multimedija. Lefebvre, Henri and Nicholson-­Smith, Donald. 1991. The Production of Space, Vol. 142. London: Oxford Blackwell. Marsh, Peter E., Rosser, Elisabeth and Harré, Rom. 2005. The Rules of Disorder. London: Routledge. McRobbie, Angela. 1991a. Jackie magazine: romantic individualism and the teenage girl. In Feminism and Youth Culture, Youth Questions, 81–134. London: Palgrave. McRobbie, Angela.1991b. Settling accounts with subculture: a feminist critique. In Feminism and Youth Culture. London: Routledge, 16–34. Michael, Janna. 2013. It’s really not hip to be a hipster: negotiating trends and authenticity in the cultural field. Journal of Consumer Culture 15(2), 163–182. Milićević, Aleksandra Sasha. 2006. Joining the war: masculinity, nationalism and war participation in the Balkans War of Secession, 1991–1995. Nationalities Papers 34(3), 265–287. Moss, Kevin. 2014. Split Europe: homonationalism and homophobia in Croatia. In Phillip Ayoub and David Paternotte (eds), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 212–232. Numerato, Dino. 2014. Who says ‘No to modern football?’ Italian supporters, reflexivity, and neo-­liberalism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 39(2), 120–138. Obad, Orlanda. 2010. The importance of being Central European: traces of imperial border(s) in Croatian accession to the EU. The Path Dependence of Borders’ Making and Breaking. EastBordNet Working Papers 1:1, www.eastbordnet.org/ working_papers/open Papović, Jovana and Pejović, Astrea. 2016. Revival without nostalgia: the ‘Dizel’ movement, Serbian 1990s cultural trauma and globalised youth cultures. In Matthias Schwartz and Heike Winkel (eds), Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 81–93. Perasović, Benjamin and Mustapić, Marko. 2013. Football supporters in the context of Croatian sociology: research perspectives 20 years after. Kinesiology 45(2), 262–275. Šantek, Goran-­Pavel. 2017. We Are Dinamo! Anthropological Studies of Dinamo Zagreb and Its Fans. Zagreb: FF Press. Spaaij, Ramón. 2007. Football hooliganism as a transnational phenomenon: past and present analysis: a critique – more specificity and less generality. The International Journal of the History of Sport 24(4), 411–431.

134   Gender, sexuality and violence Spaaij, Ramón. 2008. Men like us, boys like them violence, masculinity, and collective identity in football hooliganism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 32(4), 369–392. Stubbs, Paul and Zrinščak, Siniša. 2015. Citizenship and social welfare in Croatia: clientelism and the limits of ‘Europeanisation’. European Politics and Society 16(3), 395–410. Sugden, John Peter and Tomlinson, Alan. 2002. Power Games: A Critical Sociology of Sport. London: Routledge. Tomlinson, Alan. 2005. Sport and Leisure Cultures, Vol. 6. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Weintraub, Jeff. 1997. The theory and politics of the public/private distinction. Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy 1, 7.

Chapter 7

Banter, urban–rural hierarchies and political correctness

Introduction: on the road to Knin The sun is beating down and I am drinking a can of cheap beer in the front passenger seat of a car as we pass through several villages on the outskirts of Zagreb. One of the members of White Angels Zagreb (WAZ), Vjeko, is driving and there are two guys dressed in punk attire sat in the back. We are off to an away match in Zadar, having chosen to take the cheaper option of the old road instead of the toll-­paying motorway. After a little while we come to the edge of Krajina (lit. Frontier), a region of present-­day Croatia in which many Serb-­identified people lived before the 1990s’ wars, and where an independent state-­like entity,1 the Republic of Serbian Krajina, was established. It lasted from 1991 to 1995, when it was integrated into present-­day Croatia with the help of the Croatian military operation Oluja (Storm), in which checkpoints were established to facilitate the forced relocation of Serbian identified civilians out of the region, the majority moving to present-­day Serbia. Vjeko starts to point out the number of abandoned houses and buildings, some of which he claims are Serbian Orthodox Churches by the side of the road. He speaks in a slightly military yet sarcastic tone, describing strategy: who was positioned where, what happened when, whilst at the same time chastising the whole series of events that took place, referring to the Serbian and Croatian nationalist forces as ‘peasants’. After an hour or so, it becomes tiring listening to him relentlessly talking about the front line. We pull the car up by the side of the road in a small village on the edge of a wood before going to grab something to eat and get some more beers. After we return and stand by the car, one of the punks raises his eyebrows and sighs as Vjeko starts to talk about the Republic of Serbian Krajina again. After eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, I open the front passenger door and moments later we resume our journey. I unzip my blue rucksack and pull out a pair of boxer shorts with Serbia written on them in Cyrillic script, a script currently associated with Serbian nationalism and not used in Croatia, and with the Serbian crest visible on the front and back. The car collapses into laughter,

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and shouts of ‘gaće najjače’ (super pants, lit. ‘strongest pants’). A little while later we traverse a rocky road and stop off by a secluded fresh-­water river to have a break and bathe. I pull out the Serbia emblazoned underwear and put them on, planning to go for a dip in the river. Vjeko laughs at the way the crest is positioned around my bum, before his expression hardens and he warns me not to wear them in public on the Dalmatian coast, especially around Zadar, the town to where we were headed, and where a battle took place between primarily Serbian nationalist forces in the Yugoslav National Army and primarily Croatian nationalist forces, in late September and early October 1991. The game in Zadar brings a victory and we, alone in the away stands, draw the attention of the winning players who, following the game, run over to where we are standing and throw their shirts over the fence to us. Two days – and nights – later, after having spent the weekend at the Martinska punk festival near a town named Šibenik on the Dalmatian Coast, five of us are packed in a car, planning the route back to Zagreb.2 First we drop Vjeko’s girlfriend off in Šibenik. Shortly after she has left the car, someone in the back farts. Vjeko thanks those sitting in the back for showing some real manners by waiting and not doing that in his girlfriend’s presence. He then decides we will take a detour via Knin, a small town with a fortress on a hill. During the 1990s’ wars, Knin was the capital of the earlier mentioned Republic of Serbian Krajina (Republika Srpska Krajina). Following the expulsions that accompanied the end of this Republic’s existence, the wartime President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, gave a famous nationalist speech as he lifted the Croatian flag at the fortress on the hill, towards which our car is heading. I groan, feeling tired and wanting to get back to Zagreb as quickly as possible, having spent two nights sleeping in the car boot. My complaints are ignored and we continue on our way. About an hour later, still in the Krajina region, we pass through a small village called Kosovo, which is also the name of a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, and which has special significance in Serbian nationalist narratives. I signal with three fingers (a nationalist symbol associated with Serbian orthodox belonging and also with the Holy Trinity) out of the window as we move towards the sign and everyone in the car laughs. We slow down as we draw up to the sign and Vjeko points out the graffiti on the sign, which has ‘independent’ (neovisno) written below Kosovo (with the implication that at least this Kosovo is indisputably not part of Serbia).3 ‘This was here last time we passed through’, Vjeko says. However, something had changed since the last visit: some Serbian ultras football fans had put a sticker over the ‘ne’ in ‘neovisno’ so that it reads ‘ovisno’ (dependent) Kosovo, implying that this village and area is also part of Serbia, a provocative nationalist claim in the context of this area, associated with the Republic of Serbian Krajina. ‘Stoka’ (cattle), one of the guys in the back of the car mutters, referring to

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the nationalist claims. We carry on towards Knin and buy some ice lollies at a service station before driving on. Vjeko is driving and I am sitting in the front so he asks me to hold the ice lolly and he takes a lick or a bite every minute or so. ‘This is a bit homoerotic’ (malo mi je ovo homoerotično), he jokes. ‘Yeah, I’ve got an erection’ (da, meni se digao), I joke back. A little while later we arrive in Knin and start heading up the hill to the fortress where there is a spectacular view of the surrounding area. The two punks, who had been seated in the back of the car get out and ask me to take a photo of them in front of the Croatian flag, mocking Tuđman’s speech. Vjeko walks past at this point and when he sees my camera and figures out what is going on shouts out ‘you’re real peasants’ (baš ste seljaci). Following this we go on to look at the view for a few minutes before heading back to the car and travelling back to Zagreb.

Banter As discussed in the previous chapter, an interplay between hegemonic and alternative masculinities (Connell and Connell 2005) is visible in the above description, interwoven with a dynamic relating to group banter and joking relations (Graeber 1997; Radcliffe-­Brown 1940) and the heavy use of an irony reliant on a deep familiarity with Serbian and Croatian nationalist themes, both of which are ridiculed. Such a mode of sociality could be interpreted as a form of cultural intimacy (Herzfeld 2005), understood as ‘the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality…’ (Herzfeld 2005, 3). Herzfeld viewed such forms of sociality as constitutive of everyday ‘nation-­state’ production, describing them as a cultural or social poetics of the nation-­state. In the context of violent state production along national lines (where the very label ‘nation-­state’ innocuously codes and normalizes the one nation, one state ideology) as is the case in the Balkans, it is therefore unsurprising that there are contested registers used in different, often highly politicized ways. All such fan registers likely share a knowledge of the context (i.e. topics discussed are likely to be the same among other ultras groups, although the extent to which a specifically ‘Croatian’ or more ambiguously ‘regional’ frame may vary), and a field of shared concerns, but not perspectives. Specific to White Angels Zagreb (WAZ) is the excessive use of irony and mocking of the newly forged dominant field, including a mocking of ‘seriousness’ as part of an inculcated mainstream fan habitus (see Chapter 3). The fact that such discourses continue to be highly politicized and contested in Croatia and Serbia many years after the wars, is an artefact of the return to conditions of political crisis and increasing challenges to state legitimacy that has occurred in recent years.

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The importance of banter in fan interactions also highlights how inclusions and exclusions operate. Learning the meanings of sentences and being able to communicate fluently in a foreign language is a much easier task than being able to participate in banter, where context-­specific meanings4 and references to highly specific modes of sociality and historical events are referenced. To give one example, when visiting members of the Red Army fan group in Mostar (FK Velež Mostar), Bosnia & Herzegovina, members of the group gathered together down by the river and pulled out an upside-­down version of a Herceg-­Bosna flag. This flag, which looks similar to the Croatian flag, but with a differently designed crest, was used by Croatian nationalists (including fans) to make the political statement that they considered parts of Herzegovina to be Croatia. I had not come across this flag in Zagreb. While everyone else in the group understood all of those meanings, at that point I was unaware and wasn’t able to follow why this act was so funny, until one of the group members spelt it out for me. The use of such context specific references and language in this case excluded me as a legitimate participant, and whilst in Croatia I came to learn and participate in many of these subtle, culturally specific practices there, they did not easily translate into other contexts, particularly across the new state borders given the emphasis on mocking nationalist ideology. These shared features of the context, such as the violent wars and promotion of renewed national categories, therefore formed a key axis along which new forms of citizenship were deepened, and such ‘banter’ and joking played a role in naturalizing these new citizen identifications, at a much deeper and more personal level than the rewriting of history textbooks and changing language regimes promoted by ‘authoritarian’ nationalists.

Banter and urban–rural distinctions A further dimension to such banter in the above account is an urban self-­ positioning established through the use of insults such as seljaci, seljačina (peasants), and stoka (cattle), alongside irony criticizing norms of politeness and kulturan (well-­cultured) behaviour, such as not farting in the presence of women. In Croatia, and the post-­Yugoslav region more widely, the terms primitives (primitivci) and peasants (seljaci/seljačine) are often used in discursive oppositions whereby they are contrasted with urban belonging and/or possessing a greater civilizational level than others (biti kulturan/kulturna) (see Spasić, 2006; Jansen, 2005, 2008). Urban belonging in this context has both a class and a modernist connotation, given that the wealthy primarily lived in cities and that industrialization and the socialist modernizing projects all emphasized the importance of urbanity, with the recent wars characterized as a ‘revenge of the countryside’ (Bougarel 1999) on urbanity.

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The use of such labelling was endemic among the fan scene, partly as it was predicated on (often jokingly) denigrating others – a key aspect of fan cultures, and partly due to the specific context of the recent war. As the sociologist of sport Benjamin Perasović noted, such tensions persist among football fans in the region, given that ‘the tension between peasants [seljačina] and representatives of the “urban lifestyle” [urban đir] did also not disappear from the stadium, it was part of a continual redefinition and interaction’ (Perasović 2001, 291). During the 1990s’ wars, there were massive influxes of ‘peasants’ to the main cities, such as Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo, particularly following the military campaigns that consisted of forced relocations or ‘ethnic cleansing’. This intensified the already existing opposition between those possessing urban kultura and so-­called ‘newcomers’, or ‘urban peasants’. To push the stereotype, these peasants were often viewed as more nationalistic and materialistic. They were believed to make up a large number of war volunteers, and stereotypes mocking ‘peasant’-like practices among war veterans in Croatia (such as roasting pigs on spits when camping out at their Zagreb protests) persist to this day. Yet how urban–rural distinctions were negotiated differed substantially among WAZ compared with mainstream groups, given that mainstream groups often had large networks of fans that encompassed many living in rural locations for whom identification with a large club offered a slice of urbanity, and secondly given the appeal of Croatian nationalism to some subsections of the mainstream groups – an ideology sometimes inflected with an idealization of the rural and the de facto large war participation of people from rural locations. Among some members of WAZ, nationalist and right-­wing conservative views were projected onto the majority of mainstream organized football fans, who were then homogenized as nationalist ‘peasants’ (seljačina) and as more ‘primitive’, where rural primitivism was contrasted with urban culture. In assuming a specifically urban activist self-­definition, openness to difference, and especially sexual difference was key here – a claim that echoes Molz’s (2006) definition of cosmopolitanism. Hierarchies concerning long-­lasting family connections with the city of Zagreb, and especially those that pejoratively referred to people who had arrived from rural locations during the recent wars, were not regarded as acceptable, despite a mocking of national ‘peasant’ stereotypes. For instance, once I used the word dotepenec (newcomer)5 – used to refer to people who had recently arrived to live in Zagreb, and especially as a consequence of the war migrations – without being aware of its pejorative connotations. This was commented on sharply; I was asked where I had acquired the word and it was suggested I do not use it in future. When discussing other fan associations, and especially Bad Blue Boys (BBB), some group members would comment on various problematic behaviours, such as organized fights and carrying weapons such as knives, along with the right-­wing populism characteristic

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of many of their slogans, referring to those involved in such activities as neobrazovana stoka (cattle) or simply as primitivci or seljaci. A hierarchy of primitiveness was also at play when comparing the group with other leftist football fan groups in the region. For instance, I made arrangements to attend an antifascist punk festival in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina, staying with a member of the fan association, Red Army. Red Army is committed to an antifascist platform, but is not openly committed to an anti-­homophobia position. I was told to ‘watch myself ’ there, and not to mention my sexual orientation. And the reason attributed for this was that they were relatively ‘seljaci’, i.e. that they had not inculcated the same level of positive dispositions towards non-­straight people. Hierarchies around kultura and obrazovanje (education) were also present within the group. Some members – typically those with lower levels of formal education – were sometimes referred to as seljaci or kvartovski štakori (neighbourhood rats), whereas a long-­standing commitment to, and focus on, socializing in a particular Zagreb neighbourhood – or more precisely block (kvart) – was interpreted, not always positively, as a source of local-­level identifications that were sometimes championed, but negatively, as a commitment to a metaphorical ‘village’ within Zagreb. The counter-­discourse within the group was that certain members thought they were ‘intellectuals’ (intelektualci) more interested in having debates and turning the fan group into an NGO than getting stuck in on the terraces. Such a counter discourse placed an emphasis on formal education and a familiarity with practices acquired at universities rather than with parodying claims of urbanity. This resonates with the disdain of academics found in other fan contexts, such as Hughson’s study of the BBB in Sydney, Australia, where he encountered the stereotype that academic men have a homosexual propensity (Hughson 1996, 71). In this vein, we may speak of a cleavage between members who gravitated towards a position of being nekulturni ne-­primitivci (uncultured non-­ primitives) to describe the majority of WAZ members’ self-­positioning in relation to other fans, many of whom they considered to be nekulturni primitivci (uncultured primitives). A second, minority narrative in the group was that of ‘kulturni ne-­primitivci’. This was popular amongst those who wanted to distance the group from ultras associations. The point of common ground was the purported ‘fight against primitivism’ considered as synonymous with stupidity and/or ‘irrational’ thinking, for instance when referring to the strong emotive connections that nationalists, and certain football fans often drew. The rhetorical strength of positioning the group as fighting primitivism was that it permitted a broader political platform, uniting members who had different focuses to their involvement in WAZ, ranging from antifascist struggle, an ultras or a liberal anti-­nationalist focus. I will now give some more examples of this, before pointing to openness to non-­straightness as being of key importance for WAZ in consolidating this position.

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‘Compulsory’ openness to non-­straightness was a key dimension to the group, and it differentiated them from other fan groups in the post-­ Yugoslav region, by rendering them ‘less primitive’ than others. The relationship between accepting non-­heteronormative sexualities and hierarchies of primitivism is visible in the following discussion in an online forum between a group member and another football fan. I don’t know if you realize that you have just enrolled a fag in your group White Angels member (Zagreb dialect): Well those fags are creative and aesthetic, maybe he can be made use of to think up some decent choreography or something … And he will definitely take care of our style, so we don’t look like peasants … Right now we don’t have that many of our own materials, so we look like a circus, one of us wears football kit, another a hoodie, whilst the third dresses as a casual, and the tenth as an old school tramp … that blondie will bring everything into line. (Forum.hr 2007, emphasis added) Forum participant (Dalmatian dialect):

Once again, irony is made use of here in an attempt to engage with football fans with quite different views, alongside the use of commonly circulating gay stereotypes, which the WAZ member would expect other football fans to have knowledge of, but which is, from a queer perspective, unfortunately left unchallenged. As regards WAZ’s positioning as nekulturni ne-­primitivci, I suggest that openness to alternative sexualities was a central marker of distinction for the group because, in the post-­Yugoslav context, homosexuality had particularly pronounced political connotations. In a context (Croatia) that has become extremely ‘ethnically’ homogeneous following the forced relocations of many Serbian identified citizens during the recent war, homosexuality constituted – particularly amongst right-­wing activists, which included many ultras groups – a remaining ‘enemy within’. This was likely exacerbated amongst ultras, many of whom were adolescents, a period in which sexual insecurities are experienced by many, as evident in Hughson’s (2000) description of BBB in Melbourne, Australia, amongst whom there was an emphasis on ‘proving one’s heterosexuality’. What is interesting about organized football fan groups’ use of such discourses is that the groups insist (in group ‘performances’) on rejecting norms of ‘refined’ behaviour associated with kultura, obrazovanje (education) and therefore implicitly in this conceptual opposition with urbanity. More broadly amongst football fans, the Leicester School of Football Hooliganism (Elias and Dunning 1966) has pointed out, drawing on Elias’ concept of the civilizing process, that many fans define themselves against norms of ‘refined’ behaviour. The farting comment suggests that refinement is a source of

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humour and something to be mocked by group members. WAZ, along with many other ultras groups, could therefore be described as revelling in nekultura and being unrefined (biti nekulturan/nekulturna), to use terms in common everyday use in the post-­Yugoslav region. These can be explored as a strategy of self-­positioning which aligns an urban LGBTQ friendly fan positioning and habitus with participation in the group. Hierarchies surrounding the depth of connection with Zagreb, and associated urbanity, were present among members of the BBB. The claim of being an authentic ‘Purger’, i.e. a person ‘born and bred’ in Zagreb, could be substantiated through having several generations of Zagreb-­based family members, whilst the platform focus on Croatian nationalism also entailed a hierarchy surrounding Croatian belonging, although people who identified with other national groups were active among the BBB as well. In this view, newcomers – such as the waves of refugees who arrived in Zagreb during the 1990s – were looked down upon by some, despite BBB having a huge following in some rural areas far from Zagreb, such as parts of Herzegovina. With the BBB, the club provided an urban signifier that, for those who had lived in Zagreb, reflected local patriotic views, whereas for those living in the countryside – similarly to national signifiers – it provided a link and a means of forging a common bond with other people who were geographically separated from them. The national meaning of the club was arguably more pronounced among those living in rural locations, and I suggest on the basis of experience that those fans were also more likely to follow the national team and identify with the national team. When the numbers were low on the terraces, online comments were frequently made that it was difficult to find someone from Zagreb there, and – in my experience – diaspora and people from rural locations frequently attended, alongside a ‘core’ from Zagreb and the periphery. I contend that where ‘urbanity’ was contested, i.e. on the urban periphery on Zagreb, a compensatory overidentification with the town and with Dinamo and BBB would especially predominate and, for this reason, completing fieldwork in such locations may provide fascinating new insights. In summary, claims to being urban were also used as a form of discursive self-­positioning among the BBB, but in a different way, with openness to LGBTQ not forming an axis of distinction, and with claims to authentic Zagreb urbanity key.

Political correctness and the BBB Political correctness was a concept that emerged in conversations from time to time, and which was frequently viewed in a negative light by mainstream fans with whom I spoke, whilst opinion among WAZ was divided. Political correctness consists of the auto-­censoring of words with common pejorative social connotations, such as using the word Roma (Roma)

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instead of Gypsy (Cigan). Interestingly, it might be contrasted with another process of auto-­censoring – prescriptivism, which was often practised in Croatia and increasingly during the 1990s, whereby perceived ‘Serbian’ or ‘foreign’ words were replaced with good ‘Croatian’ replacements, a mainstream example being the use of the word vrećica (bag) instead of kesa (Hodges et al. 2016; Kapović 2011). The mechanism (auto-­censoring) was the same, although the motivations differed – promoting national identity and ‘linguistic hygiene’ in the case of prescriptivism; and not insulting minorities or those in unfavourable positions, in the case of political correctness. Prescriptivism was strongly associated with authoritarian nationalists, including those writing in the public domain (journalists, academics), linguists and editors. I rarely came across a strong insistence on prescriptivism with any football fans, irrespective of their political orientation, whilst ‘political correctness’ was often viewed as something imposed from ‘outside’ in line with expectations of what a Western democracy should look like. Political correctness has been commented upon as generally lacking in post-­Yugoslav contexts, the lack of political correctness being mapped onto ideas of ‘Balkan’ (Jansen 2001), often contrasted with ‘Europe’. In interviews conducted with BBB and ex-­BBB members, I frequently came across negative attitudes towards the use of politically correct speech and terrace chants that were explained, and often simultaneously justified, in a variety of ways. For example, a parallel was drawn with the use of far-­right symbols in that such words are ‘forbidden’, therein reinforcing the desire to use them (see Chapter 5). Others relativized the meanings of the words, individualizing their interpretation by stating that certain words, such as gypsy (cigan), were subjectively an insult or not depending on the individual’s interpretation (Hodges and Stubbs 2016). A third argument, echoing the instrumentalist argument made about far-­right symbols is that such words are not used referentially, but as a placeholder or generalized insult designed to direct insults against specific figures, such as Mamić. The content of the insult (e.g. attacking homosexuals, gypsies, and so on) was not considered important here, but simply the fact that the insult exists and can be used to attack Mamić. This oppositional stance towards the use of politically correct language was reinforced by surveillance via the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO), who wrote match reports citing insults chanted on the terraces, for example, ‘in the 33rd minute, the insult Mamić is a faggot was heard’. Snippets from these reports were pasted on the BBB Facebook groups and widely ridiculed. Furthermore, Mamić had instrumentalized anti-­racist initiatives in his fight against the BBB, by using police repression to make the terrace experience unpleasant on some occasions when insults were used. Mamić’s cooperation with a high ranking representative from a Roma association (Tofko Dedić (Toti)),6 who spoke positively of Mamić in the media, was

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also viewed with disdain, as a form of whitewashing, and when this representative appeared at a meeting on anti-­discrimination policy organized at the Center for Peace Studies, the WAZ members present walked out in protest.

Political correctness and WAZ Political correctness was most present amongst group members who had significant contact with mostly Austrian- and German-­based networks of antifascist and left-­wing football fans. When meetings began to take place concerning the form the new community club would take, one group member, who often travelled to Germany and was actively involved for several years in European fan networks such as FSE,7 raised the issue of whether the new club should continue to use the word momčad, a Croatian word meaning ‘team’ (tim, ekipa). His argument was that they should not, as it was a collective noun form based on the word for ‘guy’ (momak). This was for him exclusionary on gender grounds, as a female version – ženčad – did not exist. Later, when the new club came to found a female team, they referred to it (including in the local media) as a ženčad. Other group members, who had less contact with these networks and, especially those who disdained them and/or the ‘left’ fan scene in Europe, would either deliberately transgress or ignore political correctness, for instance by complaining that the terraces have become too ‘femi’ (feminine), and using phrases for women which were widely viewed as chauvinistic and/or objectifying (e.g. butra). Some members would turn politically incorrect phrases around in a conscious, ironic fashion. This was the case with chants such as ‘izjebat će vas ove pičke pederske’ (these [us] cunts/faggots will fuck you [up]). This approach employed banter and rejection of ‘seriousness’ among group members, but its use of words that had negative connotations, such as cunt (pička) to refer to a woman, or fag (peder) to refer to a homosexual, was criticized by some at the games, and also among left-­liberal NGOs promoting LGBTQ rights, with whom the group sometimes came into contact through work on common projects, such as the FARE action week. The use of non-­politically correct irony arguably both simultaneously mocked and legitimated the current political status-­quo. For instance, after returning from several months living in Belgrade, WAZ members commented that people could mock me as the ‘honorary Serb’ (počasni Srbin) in the group on the basis of the vocabulary I had picked up in Belgrade. As the linguist Kapović (2011, 50–51) discussed, the term ‘Serb’ in Croatia is often used jokingly as an insult, whereas the term ‘Croat’ is not so in Serbia. However, they did not use a stronger negative label (such as Četnik, which is metaphorically used to refer to ‘Serbs’ insultingly). Similar jokes were sometimes made about other group members on the basis of skin

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colour – joking that certain members are gypsies for example. Such phrases were never used and directed at people who might have been offended by such insults, rather they were used to promote homosocial bonding within the group, and they were never directed at individuals to whom the category actually applied. For example, I was never called a fag (peder), but sometimes presumed heterosexual members would jokingly introduce themselves to others as my boyfriend. On another occasion at a left-­wing meeting in Germany, a fan from Slovakia recounted how the meeting organisers had put up a sign stating ‘no racism, no misogyny, no homophobia, etc.’, and one of the members of WAZ had walked up to it and shouted, ‘what, no fun?’ sarcastically. This created a friction between the organizers from Germany, who adopted a serious tone with little space for irony, whilst the fan from Slovakia identified this as relating to a Balkan, non-­politically correct, but joking approach. Such banter may be interpreted negatively as reproducing what Feagin et al. (2001) refer to as ‘sincere fictions’: ‘processes through which individuals both employ a view of society that denies the existence of racism and position themselves as not possessing any form of prejudice, yet simultaneously engage in behaviors that reproduce racial stereotypes and maintain inequalities’ (Burdsey 2011, 269). It also resonates with the use of irony as a tactic by the alt-­right to legitimize the use of insults that were not commonly acceptable when used sincerely. A more positive interpretation would understand the use of such banter as a rejection of the norms of politically correct language associated with civil society organizations, from which the group’s radical leftist platform wanted to distance itself, in a context (Zagreb) where, following the wars, an NGO policy elite, promoting peace and ‘democracy building’ – within a depoliticized paradigm – appeared relatively conservative to a new wave of younger, more politicized activists (Stubbs, 2012). A second positive interpretation might suggest that its use enabled a form of homosocial bonding which reached out to other fans who might then get involved in WAZ. Yet in the same way that the appearance of far-­right symbolism among some sections of the BBB did not always relate to the presence of far-­right ideology, it would be a mistake to discard such talk as harmless ‘banter’, especially as the use of irony was not always conscious. Whenever homophobia or racism directed at individuals was encountered, either in the group or at the stadium, it was strongly reprimanded – NK Zagreb fans who were not in WAZ and who made racist comments were shouted down, and such attitudes were not permitted within WAZ. Strong links were maintained with a variety of ‘minority groups’ such as asylum seekers as well as with organizations in other states such as Serbia. There were a small number of openly non-­straight members in the group, including myself, who were all accepted for their sexual preferences, as ­discussed in the previous chapter. Such acceptance is viewed as part of the

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platform of WAZ and as an important feature that makes its members stand apart from the majority of BBB. In a significant way, discourses concerning political correctness and the limits of banter both reflect and help constitute the groups’ political orientations.

Conclusions Banter and political correctness are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin. Banter defines the limits of the permissible, whereas political correctness draws out the boundaries. The drawing of such boundaries sometimes, but not always, relates to forms of familiarity and intimate belonging relating to a shared state context and set of concerns. More broadly, the oppositional and libertarian aspects of the fan habitus of both groups acts against the incursion of political correctness, which is perceived to have European connotations. Yet, equally so, it acts against the adoption of prescriptivist practices circulating among authoritarian nationalists in Croatia. WAZ’s connections with European networks of leftist fans led some members to adopt an increased number of politically correct practices, whilst members of the group were also criticized for their lack of such practices by other European group members. The next chapter will consider these pan-­ European relationships in more depth.

Notes 1 I use the term ‘state-­like entity’ as it engaged in various state-­like practices (state-­ making) including implementing a currency, constitution, postal service; however it was not internationally legally recognized as a state (statehood), although it did have some support from political allies of Serbia. 2 This part of the vignette and some of the later discussion in this chapter was earlier included in Hodges (2016, 191–212). A reprint of sections of this chapter has been permitted with the kind permission of the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan. 3 For a picture of the sign and an article about the village, see Grubišić (2008). 4 The linguistic anthropologist (Silverstein 1976) uses the concepts of indexicals and shifters to explain this. 5 This is a kajkavian term similar to the word dođoš used in Serbia. 6 See Mamić najveći prijatelj manjina’ – B92.Net (n.d.); Tofko Dedić Toti: I Dalje u HNS-­Floti – Hrvatski Telekom Prva Liga (n.d.). 7 Football Supporters’ Europe: www.fanseurope.org/en/ (accessed 27 February 2018).

Bibliography Bougarel, Xavier. 1999. Yugoslav wars: the revenge of the countryside between sociological reality and nationalistic myth. East European Quarterly 33(2), 157. Burdsey, Daniel. 2011. That joke isn’t funny anymore: racial microaggressions, color-­blind ideology and the mitigation of racism in English men’s first-­class cricket. Sociology of Sport Journal 28(3), 261–283.

Banter and political correctness   147 Connell, Robert William and Connell, Raewyn. 2005. Masculinities. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.  Elias, Norbert and Dunning, Eric. 1966. Dynamics of group sports with special reference to football. The British Journal of Sociology 17(4), 388–402. Feagin, Joe R., Vera, Hernan and Batur, Pinar. 2001. White Racism the Basics. New York: Routledge. Forum.hr. 2007. White Angels – Stranica 9. Retrieved from www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=360630&page=9 Graeber, David. 1997. Manners, deference, and private property in early modern Europe. Comparative Studies in Society and History 39(4), 694–728. Grubišić, Petar. 2008. Naše Kosovo nikad neće biti neovisno! Večernji List 2008. www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/nase-­kosovo-nikad-­nece-biti-­neovisno-839178 (accessed 27 February 2018). Herzfeld, Michael. 2005. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-­State, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge. Hodges, Andrew. 2016. White Angels Zagreb: combating homophobia as ‘rural primitivism’. In Bojan Bilić and Sanja Kajinić (eds), Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 191–212. Hodges, Andrew and Stubbs, Paul. 2016. The paradoxes of politicisation: fan initiatives in Zagreb, Croatia. In Aleksandra Schwell et al. (eds), New Ethnographies of Football in Europe: People, Passions, Politics. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 55–74. Hodges, Andrew, Abercrombie, Amelia, Balažev, Marina, Costa, James, Kapović, Mate, Marković, Jelens, Petrović, Tanja and Spasić, Ivana. 2016. Croatian language standardization and the production of nationalized political subjects through language? Perspectives from the social sciences and humanities/Standardizacija hrvatskog jezika i stvaranje nacionaliziranih političkih subjekata kroz jezik? Pogled iz očišta društvenih i humanističkih znanosti. Etnološka Tribina, no. 39, 3–91. Hughson, John. 1996. A feel for the game: an ethnographic study of soccer and social identity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of New South Wales. Hughson, John. 2000. The boys are back in town. Soccer support and the social reproduction of masculinity. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24(1), 8–23. Jansen, Stef. 2001. Svakodnevni orijentalizam: doživljaj ‘Balkana’/’Evrope’ u Beogradu i Zagrebu. Filozofija i Društvo 33–71. Jansen, S. 2005. Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-­Yugoslav urban self-­perceptions. Ethnologia Balkanica 9, 151–167. Jansen, S. 2008. Cosmopolitan openings and closures in post-­Yugoslav antinationalism. In Cosmopolitanism in Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 75–92. Kapović, Mate. 2011. Language, ideology and politics in Croatia. Slavia centralis 4(2), 45–56. Mamić najveći prijatelj manjina’ – B92.Net. n.d. Accessed February 22, 2018. www.b92.net/sport/fudbal/vesti.php?yyyy=2013&mm=07&dd=30&nav_ id=737713 (accessed 27 February 2018). Molz, J.G. 2006. Cosmopolitan bodies: fit to travel and travelling to fit. Body & Society 12(3), 1. Perasović, Benjamin. 2001. Urbana plemena: sociologija subkultura u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada.

148   Banter and political correctness Radcliffe-­Brown, A.R. 1940. On joking relationships. Africa 195–210. Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. Meaning in Anthropology 1, 1–55. Spasić, Ivana. 2006. Distinkcija na domaći način: diskursi statusnog diferenciranja u današnjoj Srbiji. In M. Nemanjić and I. Spasić (eds), Nasleđe Pjera Burdijea:  Pouke i nadahnuća. Belgrade: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju and Zavod za proučavanje kulturnog razvitka, 137–171. Stubbs, Paul. 2012. Networks, organisations, movements: narratives and shapes of three waves of activism in Croatia. Polemos 15(30), 11. Tofko Dedić Toti: I Dalje u HNS-­Floti – Hrvatski Telekom Prva Liga. n.d. http:// prvahnl.hr/news/15682/tofko-­dedic-toti-­i-dalje-­u-hns-­floti/ (accessed 27 February 2018).

Chapter 8

Fan authenticity and international networks

Introduction In December 2014, some members of the White Angels founded a community club called NK Zagreb 041, drawing on inspiration from the German fan scene. There were several motivations for founding the club, including a dwindling number of people participating in the group, a perceived lack of ‘quality people’ involved, a desire by some members to consolidate the use of direct democratic principles and work on social activist projects, the success of Futsal Dinamo, and a realistic appraisal of NK Zagreb’s situation at that time, after a series of defeats and relegation, which exposed the group to the charms of the ‘village football’ approach, with little police presence and the unobstructed use of pyrotechnics on the terraces (Vukušić and Miošić 2018). However, not all the members of the White Angels – myself included at that time – were comfortable with the idea of a new club. The project was potentially risky, expensive, had been conceived by an informal ‘core’ of the membership, and would necessitate the consolidation of ‘project-­writing’ tendencies, which had divided the membership on previous occasions. This chapter begins by giving an overview of the White Angels’ involvement in NGO project initiatives, highlighting how they have changed in light of the move to a community club. Following this, the various criticisms are considered, and the argument is made that claims over fan authenticity (Davis 2015) shaped this discussion.1 Furthermore, fan authenticity was the mode in which dissatisfaction with socio-­economic distinctions among the membership was made manifest.

Informal fan networks When attending Dinamo matches on the North Stand, I noted the clear presence of fans from the Croatian diaspora, and especially those living in Germany, where a large number of people moved during the war and more recently to find work following the economic crisis in south-­east Europe. The Croatian diaspora living in Germany is stereotypically believed to be

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particularly right wing. Among the diaspora, there is one important distinction between those who have recently moved, and those who have grown up in other states. Those who have not lived extensively in Croatia often have a weaker grasp of the specificities of the fan struggles taking place there, and find the political-­economic system more difficult to navigate. The Croatian diaspora, and especially those living in relatively rich Western settings, were a key source of funds for the military mobilizations that took place during the 1990s, and often articulate the most extreme Croatian nationalist narratives, in contexts where such symbols, banned in Croatia, are more widely used. Individual members of the Bad Blue Boys (BBB) also cultivated friendships with certain other organized fan groups associated with clubs such as Rapid Wien and Celtic FC, as discussed elsewhere (Hodges 2016). Over several years of participation in the White Angels, I only remember one instance of contact with somebody who had a Croatian background – a punk living in Germany – and he didn’t ever identify himself as Croatian diaspora, a label that has an ‘ethnic’ connotation. The Facebook group, for which I was one of several administrators, was a portal to other fans (both sympathetic and opposed to the group) who would get in touch from time-­ to-time, often announcing visits to Zagreb, or inviting the group to tournaments organized in other parts of Europe. These included the antira, an anti-­racist football tournament organized by members of FC St Pauli, and small scale tournaments and events organized in locations ranging from Slovakia to Germany and the UK. Occasionally, group members established contact with other fan groups in the post-­Yugoslav region, notably in Novi Sad and Belgrade (Serbia), and Mostar (Bosnia & Herzegovina). Requests were also received to post stickers to fans living in more isolated parts of Croatia and these stickers were occasionally visible on Facebook forums where fans exchanged or sold stickers. Upon staying with a fan of FK Velež in Mostar, at the time of an antifascist punk festival, I was surprised to find out that fan stickers there were sold to children attending schools in the town. As many stickers could be received for free, through selling the stickers – which became desired consumer objects – the Red Army group raised funds which they spent on transport to away matches. Relationships with such groups across the ex-­Yugoslav region were cultivated, but the White Angels were the main group in the region who had begun participating in more formalized pan-­European initiatives, and the difficulties they faced, as regards the war and strongly right-­wing legacy, were recognized by the network organizers.

White Angels Zagreb and NGO project activities For several years, the White Angels have participated in a number of pan-­ European fan networks, principally Football against Racism in Europe,2

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Football Supporters’ Europe3 and Football Fans against Homophobia.4 FARE was founded in 1999 through the actions of supporter networks and distributes small amounts of money for an action week that takes place each year in October. As part of this action week, fan groups and some football clubs organize a typically recreational tournament during which they take a photograph of themselves with the FARE banner and promote racial equality in football. Asylum seekers, with whom members of the White Angels are in regular contact, are invited each year to participate, and the teams typically consist of various NGOs and left-­wing groups, mainly Zagreb based, such as the Young Antifascists, Queer Sport, Anarcho-­syndicalist Network and similar. From the White Angels’ movement to a left-­wing platform in 2008 onwards, some of the long-­standing members had cultivated links with the project-­based, NGO activist scene, which had been highly active in Croatia from the war period onwards, where it emerged both through forms of war protest, primarily through a paradigm of peace-­building, and through offering practical help, solidarity and humanitarian assistance to those directly affected by the war (Stubbs 1997, 2012). These were frequently funded by foreign donors, especially during the 1990s, whilst more recently European funds have been available for more radical left initiatives following the economic crisis and an increase in nationalism, populism and a far-­ right shift, which resulted in the EU and other funding bodies, such as political Foundations with close connections to German political parties – e.g. the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (SPD), Heinrich Böll (Die Grünen) Foundation and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Die Linke) – funding more radical political platforms, such as antifascism, as discussed by Stubbs (2012). Involvement in such initiatives has also been a significant cause of internal ‘brain drain’ from state institutions, which, during that period, often paid less than NGO project initiatives and were often closely connected, through the linked clientelist network, with the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), the nationalist party in power during the 1990s and intermittently since. During the 1990s, and in recent years, critiques of the non-­ profit sector as being ‘anti-­Croatian’ and/or funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation have circulated as right-­wing populist critiques have increased in intensity. The White Angels primarily cultivated links with one organization on this scene, the Center for Peace Studies (Centar za mirovne studije),5 culminating in a joint participation in an EU project (2014), focused on anti-­discrimination. This project involved a variety of activities, including filming a television advertisement against racism in sport with several non-­Caucasian Dinamo players, organizing workshops in primary and secondary schools on racism in football, anti-­racist punk concerts, workshops with members of other fan initiatives (e.g. Futsal Dinamo, Naš Hajduk) analysing common issues facing football fans in Croatia (direct/participative democratic models for fan participation,

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v­ iolence and human rights violations against football fans and racism/ homophobia in football), and finally writing a training manual for those interested in working on these themes and covering the discussions from the workshops. Through these connections with the Center for Peace Studies, the White Angels have also, over several years, cultivated relationships with refugees and organized training sessions from time to time on a friendly basis, with refugees occasionally attending the matches on the terraces, and participating in friendly tournaments with other leftist groups. However, it was not until the founding of the recent community club that these relationships deepened, with a significant number of asylum seekers participating in the training sessions in the first year, and a youth division set up in which children of asylum seekers participated. However, as Jurković (2018) described, this level of involvement did not last long, and after the first year there were very few asylum seekers, or those granted asylum, on the pitch, and decreasing numbers watching on the terraces. The choice of location for the home ground (Dugave) was close to the main Zagreb reception centre for refugees, in an old large hotel complex (Porin) on the edge of the Dugave neighbourhood. Members of the CMS highlighted the social role of sport in building relationships between refugees and the local population. Sport was transnational and could provide a depth of emotional connection between people without any common language. Second, because of the extensive racist chants, sport was viewed as a space in which there was lots of work to be done.

The impact of refugee flows The new club was founded at the end of 2014, whilst in 2015, refugee flows increased through Croatia along the so-­called Balkan route, with many fleeing war in Syria and Iraq.6 When these flows began, a centre left coalition was in power, which promoted the narrative that such movements should be accepted, particularly as many citizens of Croatia had been refugees fleeing from the violent break-­up of Yugoslavia around two decades earlier. Yet the managing of these flows had several effects on the political situation in Croatia, and the wider region of south-­east Europe. In the context of an increased public perception of possible terrorist threats, right-­wing parties gained in strength and power, promoting discourses of securitization and the stricter ‘profiling’ of refugees passing through Croatia, with only those from a small number of countries (Iraq, Syria) allowed to pass along the Balkan corridor (Tužinská et al. 2017, 22). The refugee flows through the region created a certain amount of public hysteria regarding ISIL threats. A Croatian citizen named Tomislav Salopek was caught up in an ISIL attack, where he was held hostage in Egypt by militants who later beheaded him. Tomislav, who was from Slavonia and

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who supported Dinamo and the national team, was memorialized by the Bad Blue Boys.7 I have no ethnographic observations of discourses towards the refugee flows among the Bad Blue Boys membership, but these events almost certainly reconfigured vernacular understandings of race circulating in the region. Given the recent context of war, relatively liberal attitudes to refugee flows are to be expected in Croatia, although a distinction between people passing through and people staying in Croatia was present. Interestingly, one person who had been granted asylum and participated in White Angels’ friendlies and CMS activities later cultivated a relationship with the military commander Ante Gotovina. Following the Hague tribunal, in which Gotovina was acquitted of war crimes against Serbs, an acquittal which legitimated widespread celebration in Croatia, Gotovina has sought to portray himself as a peaceful, humanitarian figure. The person who had been granted asylum accepted a summer job as a fisherman working on one of his ships and then gave a front-­page interview for the main Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list, discussing this job and talking positively of the ‘Homeland War’ and military actions such as Oluja. A positive perspective on the recent wars was completely at odds with many members of the CMS’s anti-­war activism and dislike of the founding of a state built along nationalist principles, and military actions in which many Serbian identified citizens were forcibly relocated. However, the CMS view is a minority view in Croatia, where the war is overwhelmingly viewed as a defensive act, and Ante Gotovina is viewed as a positive role model. The humanitarian crisis and refugee flows roughly coincided with the community club’s first year, resulting in a great deal of media attention for the club, which helped boost numbers at football matches and generate some funds for the club. Nevertheless, the large amounts of extra funds needed to manage and run a football team playing in a local Zagreb league necessitated increased involvement in NGO projects, which could be used as a source of funds for the club. This need for involvement generated some divisions among the members of the new club, these divisions in part relating to some members’ desire to be viewed as part of the wider Croatian Ultras scene, where the White Angels were often ridiculed.

Fan authenticity in the Croatian ultras scene The White Angels was almost universally regarded as not being an authentic participant in the Croatian ultras scene, and when ultras websites – such as the Facebook page izagola.hr or online forums such as ultras.tifo – reported or included pictures of the group, a sea of derogatory comments would invariably arrive. In addition to mocking the White Angels’ ideological platform and advocation of LGBTQ rights, viewed as offensive in either being ‘anti-­Catholic’, anti-­patriotic or unnecessarily politicizing the terraces, the group was also mocked as they were not considered to be

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‘up for a fight’ (nisu za frku, za šoru). In a forum discussion, a member of the group during the 1990s, before the White Angels had a progressive platform, commented on the changes: ‘The old guard would always respond to insults from other teams’ fans, they would never allow others to bad-­mouth them, and sometimes there were pyrotechnics too’ (Forum. hr 2007). These charges resulted in a cleavage within the group, between those seeking to claim subcultural authenticity and who followed the ultras scene – some of whom had been active in other groups, including the Bad Blue Boys on the North Stand, and those who were interested in the White Angels as a social project in its own right, with little interest in the activities of other ‘ultras’ groups. To give one example, just after New Year’s celebrations a few years ago, one of the White Angels who followed the ultras scene most closely received a text message from an old member, saying that he hopes he will find a fan group to join this year. The implication was that the White Angels was not a real fan club. This cleavage was compounded when the decision was made to set up a community club and to stop following NK Zagreb and attending matches. Whilst positive comparisons were drawn with Futsal Dinamo, as a participatory democratic initiative, the point was made that those attending Futsal Dinamo matches had not stopped following Dinamo, but were more attracted to Futsal as a vehicle for their fandom, particularly during the period of the Bad Blue Boys’ boycott. This cleavage was compounded as several of the more football oriented members found it difficult to understand the logic of simply ceasing to follow the original team, and also, as the community club initiative would take the fans away from any possible match-­day confrontation with (or even awareness of their presence by) other ultras groups – there would, for example, be no more derbies. In addition, negative acknowledgement of the White Angels’ presence was still a form of recognition. These members of the group differentiated themselves from others, some of whom were considered ‘fakers’ and ‘jazavci’ (lit. badgers). Among the White Angels, indicators of fan authenticity that were used in mainstream ultras groups, such as total number of matches attended (navijački staž), frequency of away matches (gostovanje) attended and match-­day performance were often commented upon ironically rather than held as a badge of honour. Concepts used in other groups, such as a ‘fan career’ (navijačka karijera), which referred to one’s history of organized fan participation, were rarely used in my experience by the White Angels, and those that did use the term were mostly part of the ‘ultras’ cleavage. For example, one member, Antun, related one occasion when he travelled to another Croatian city to receive a prize on behalf of the White Angels for ‘the promotion of pacifism, non-­violence and human rights’. He described this moment as ‘the most embarrassing event in his fan career’.

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Critiquing NGO involvement Within the new club and the White Angels, participation in professionalized NGO projects was criticized and supported from a variety of positions. Members who had joined the group from more radical left organizing circles were critical, arguing that such projects were a distraction from investing energy in more important struggles, and that they promoted class divisions and professionalization within the group. These issues were similar to those discussed by Graeber in his ethnography of radical anarchist organizing, where paid, professionalized activist work often coincided with joining a different kind of milieu (Graeber 2009, 252) and paid staff on activist projects often resulted in tensions between top-­ down and bottom-­up principles (Graeber 2009, 43). The first issue concerned what kinds of activities could be paid for, ranging from bureaucratic tasks to do with maintaining and running the fan association, to activities that might be characterized as ‘activism’. The second issue concerned hierarchies that emerged over who received paid work, typically one-­off sums for activities completed as part of the EU project. Activities such as writing and delivering workshops favoured members with higher educational capital, including those who had finished university. Given the egalitarian focus of leftist organizations, a tension emerged between group solidarity and unity, and a process of professionalization, which assisted certain members – often those who had more educational capital in the first place – therein potentially widening existing hierarchies. These splits echo disagreements that Totten described between more working and middle class subgroups involved in the socialist football club, Republica Internationale FC (Totten 2015). A second related criticism was that the disciplinary and bureaucratic regimes that accompanied project implementation were both excessive and sought to create particular kinds of disciplined subjectivities, i.e. that they were a neoliberal tool of governance (Rose 1990). A further criticism was that such activities would take the group further away from the terraces and tarnish the group’s reputation in a climate where ‘no ultras groups in Croatia take us seriously’. These members, several of whom also had lower levels of formal education, would deride hipster, intellectual and/or red bourgeoisie tendencies among other sections of the membership, who they believed looked down on them. Members opposed to these tendencies berated the ‘free tickets to matches’ some members received; for example, one member attending a Croatia v Serbia match in Belgrade in exchange for writing a match report for an international civil rights organization. ‘Ultras’ advocates believed football fandom should be kept free of paid funded activism, and some believed that politics should be kept at a distance as well. Antun used ‘ultras no politica’ as a resource to distance himself from both of these tendencies. This is a platform used by some ultras groups to distance themselves from ideological messages appearing on the terraces,

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arguing for a sole focus on football. The meanings of ‘ultras no politica’ differ across contexts, where it is sometimes used to conceal a political orientation, whereas on other occasions it is an expression of exhaustion with political conflicts with other groups or within the group. The football purist view differs from the radical left critiques in that football is perceived to be a special, perhaps ‘sacred’ domain which should be left untainted by corrupting interests. Of these football purists, some were attracted to the ‘village football’ model (Vukušić and Miošić 2018) of the new club, where the distance between fans and players was much less, and where they were able to drink and set off pyrotechnics on the terraces without fear of police reprisal or repression. Others were attracted to the thrill of top-­level HNL match days and argued that without a presence in top league football, the groups would never (or rarely) come across other ultras groups, meaning that their messages, unique in Croatian top league football, would be lost. Taken to extremes, some of these members complained that the group would come to resemble a ‘leftist commune’ or, in an attack on some members’ masculinity, a ‘hippy commune’ only speaking to itself, reflecting a wider concern that the (small) political left was very inward looking in the region. A division also emerged between the White Angels and newcomers who had only been involved in the new club. The White Angels’ members involved in setting up the new club, in contrast to Futsal Dinamo, had announced they were giving up on NK Zagreb completely, and would only ‘follow’ the new club. Some of the old White Angels’ members thought this was ridiculous, believing that other fans would not take them seriously, while still wanting to support NK Zagreb, even if they would not have an organized presence on the terraces. This grouping, while less keen on the move to a new club, did not reject the move completely, with only one member choosing not to attend at all. This division led to some members claiming that ‘White Angels Zagreb’ does not exist anymore, having been subsumed by the new club, whilst others sought to retain the White Angels as a separate group identity, currently following the new club, but somewhat autonomous from it. Financially and institutionally however, it had become subsumed and liquidated as a separate civil association, although those keen on the White Angels continued to raise funds separately for paint, materials and pyrotechnics, mostly through offering shots of rakija (fruit brandy) for suggested donations at the football matches. These distinctions, ultimately caught up in contestations over who was an authentic fan, were often the subject of discussion on match days. For instance, one member, Antun, related to me how another, Ivan, had arrived at a football match organized by the new club after having been absent for a long time. He walked down the car park behind the terraces, pointing at the new members and giving his verdict on each one of them, categorizing each person as potential ‘ultras’ or ‘NGO’. In later conversations, Ivan

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emphasized how, within the White Angels, there was a small group who had put the EU project proposal together, and who formed an informal hierarchy based around depth of participation – both in terms of hours contributed and in terms of attending and forming links with other actors in the Zagreb and regional NGO scene. Whilst he was critical of this hierarchy, he conceded that ‘at least they are doing something’. He suggested that ‘they’ wouldn’t function as a group without ‘us’ who turn up on match day as they couldn’t take convincing photographs without an ultras element. Finally, even before the shift to founding a new community club, project participation had also led to one member departing from the group after having been asked to help design and conduct workshops in schools. He left saying that ‘this was not a football fan group’. A few months later, he was seen in a newspaper photo on the Dinamo North Stand with the Bad Blue Boys, in an online news report on a scuffle with the Plaćenici (pro-­ Mamić Dinamo fans). Participation in NGO project activities compromised the group’s claims to fan authenticity, whilst, on the other hand, that authenticity was necessary for NGO actors to take seriously the group’s claims about events happening in the fan scene. Finally, critiques of NGO involvement often highlighted the connections that organizations and NGO actors – understood as ‘above’ the everyday world of football fandom – had with bodies such as UEFA. FARE involvement, as earlier mentioned, being one example that was criticized on these grounds. In so doing, the label NGO came to stand in for ‘elite politics’, drawing on a ‘politics-­people’ distinction as articulated by the anthropologist Stef Jansen: This paradigm almost seamlessly reflects widespread emic representations of a chasm between politika [politics] and narod [ordinary people]. Most of our interlocutors imagine these two in a vertical, unidirectional relationship to each other: politika, the subject, stands above and acts upon ‘ordinary people’, the object-­target it seeks to govern, exploit, transform, and so forth. (Jansen 2016, 170) The government, Dinamo management and crony capitalist networks were all imagined as ‘politika’ in this context, which frequently had a dirty connotation, whereas fans were ‘ordinary people’, in this case seeking to challenge ‘politika’. Certain football institutions, such as UEFA were also aligned using the same logic, as were, by implication, pan-­European initiatives with some form of connection with UEFA, including the FARE action week. The marking of NGO involvement as ‘politika’, and therein viewing it as dirty, was a perspective also articulated by right-­wing populists, and increasingly so, under the conditions of the political and economic crisis present in Croatia.

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Arguments for NGO project participation The fans who chose to participate in such initiatives did so to varying degrees and took differing stances towards such involvement. One member, who was heavily involved and cultivated close connections with the CMS was viewed by those reluctant to participate in projects as a ‘sellout’ who would likely work for the CMS in a few years’ time. At meetings with other NGO organizations on the civil scene, I noted his strategy of playing up the selling points of the White Angel’s positionality, claiming that other NGO organizations ‘did not understand the supporters’ world’ (navijački svijet), and that the White Angels were therefore well placed to make a unique and important contribution, therein constructing himself as a provider of niche expertise. Other members who emphasized involvement did so with a certain reluctance that displayed an awareness of the criticisms of others in the group. One member, Vjeko, justified his involvement by emphasizing his ‘deviant rational actor’ (Scott 1992) approach to project involvement. He jokingly stated that involvement in such projects was a vehicle for money laundering (pranje para), the funds of which were then directed at investment in the new community club, i.e. in more authentic social causes (practical and football related) compared with the meetings and professionalized activities such as seeking dialogues with ‘stake-­holders’. This view positioned him as tricking ‘politika’ in such a way as to help people without submitting to institutional authority. Whilst I have no data on whether such illegal ‘laundering’ or legal ‘funnelling’ occurred, I did observe a variety of practices among certain academics and members of the NGO activist circuit in Zagreb. These included double booking events, asking for payment for use of rooms that are ordinarily used for free, and adding dubious ‘adminstration costs’ to international project budgets. My counter-­argument to Vjeko was that the bureaucracy associated with such projects, and the need to be publicly accountable, disciplined those members most involved, and some of the disciplined engagements established through contact with the professionalized NGO scene, such as the television advert, moved away from any kind of everyday fan alignment, which then made it more difficult to bring about progressive change among fans. My reluctance to get heavily involved in such initiatives was also shaped by a critical stance I had developed towards the increasingly project-­based nature of academic work and precariat that often accompanied a move to a ‘bidding’ project model, prominent in the UK, and similar excessive bureaucracy, particularly with EU academic project funding. With the increasing imposition of similar bureaucratic regimes and managerialism in my day job, I did not want this to seep into this domain as well. However, for those members who had other day jobs, such as security guards or taxi drivers, who were not subject to this

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specific bureaucratic regime in their main line of work, they were therefore more likely to be attracted to the creative possibilities available through participation in such projects. Interestingly, even members of the White Angels who were more heavily involved in European networks continued to mobilize the politics–people distinction to describe tendencies they were not comfortable with. When we were in Munich for an FSE meeting in 2015, Petar – a member of the White Angels who had been heavily involved – told me that he didn’t want to participate anymore as, from his perspective, there were ever fewer real fans at the meetings, and ever more ‘professional’ activists who were distanced from the terraces and there to promote their organizations. This comment echoes Giulianotti and Millward’s (2013) concern that organizations such as FSE speak only to a certain subset of engaged fans. Finally, the move to the new club was also used to filter the membership, with a small number of people on the fringe of the group – deemed dubious either in terms of scrounging drinks, or occasional flirtations with grey zone symbolism – told they were not welcome to participate in the new club.

Class divisions and hipsters: subcultural contestation Alongside the disagreements over ultras, left-­wing and NGO tendencies, comments were frequently made discussing fashion choices and broader styles of dress. A casuals’ style, wearing branded sports labels, was favoured by many, and some members of the group ordered items, via the internet, from online casuals stores across Europe, some of which explicitly marketed themselves at football fan subcultures. One fan-­activistentrepreneur with his own business in such labels moved to Zagreb from France and would sometimes attend matches. Other members wore punk items, and the anti-­fascist and left ultras subcultures included patches and badges with anti-­fascist, anti-­racist and anti-­homophobic messages. A further style appropriated by some members, particularly those overlapping with the anti-­fascist group, was the wearing of quirky old clothes, such as from second-­hand shops and flea markets. This resonated with a hipster aesthetic and the activist Mate Kapović (Forum.net 2014) referred to this grouping as part of the hipsterijat or impoverished middle class (osiromašena srednja klasa). Some members of the White Angels were critical of this tendency, sometimes calling them the ‘red bourgeoisie’. As Antun described, why would relatively well-­off members deliberately wear old and/or second-­hand clothes when they could afford something nicer or smarter? For example, when some friends were at my house and wished to smoke, as I did not have an ashtray, I gave them an eggcup to use. This was commented on negatively by Antun as a hipster act, in that the object

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was not being used for its intended purpose, and this ‘creative re-­ appropriation’ in his view sought to express an individual quirkiness, which he understood as hipster. These differences were also marked out with respect to musical taste as well. The more left political wing of the membership were often into punk and hardcore, following both the vibrant post-­Yugoslav scene and other bands that were particularly popular in the left-­wing fan scene in Germany. The more ‘ultras’ members fiercely defended their definitions of sub-­cultural capital (Thornton 1996). This often included an interest in more ‘street’ aspects of group participation (murals, graffiti runs, designing T-­shirts, etc.) alongside an interest in the Croatian hip-­hop scene, which was largely trans-­ideological. For instance, they also followed groups such as Tram 11 who include some homophobic lyrics and who are broadly sympathetic to Croatian nationalism. This group was respected because of their strong association with a particular, difficult time in Zagreb and their ‘street’ habitus. These members generally had less financial resources at their disposal to attend events at home or abroad. They criticized the ‘spoilt punks’ who would go to Medika – an alternative cultural centre where gigs and club nights are often held – on a night out with a hundred kuna note in their pocket (which can buy six or seven beers in a bar). Their claims to subcultural authenticity were used as a resource defending their contribution, believing that the more ‘professional activist’ members could not create a convincing ultras performance without their more ‘authentic’ fan habitus , and they used anti-­racist skinheads and explicit appeals to working class culture as a means through which they positioned certain other group members as less authentic fans.

Conclusions: sub-­c ultural authenticity The different strategies and views on the White Angels’ social activist interventions and involvement in European networks (Cleland et al. 2018) highlight key cleavages between different sections of the membership, the most prominent in recent years being that between those (typically with less economic and educational capital) making claims over (sub-)cultural capital through assertions of fan authenticity, and those members who have close connections either with radical left organizing, or with the (professionalized) civic activist scene. As in other fan movements and more widely throughout the Balkans, the politics–people distinction was often mobilized, and the label ‘NGO’ was reified as ‘politika’. This was a strategy pursued by members of the White Angels with different levels of involvement in European networks and organizations such as FSE, namely to identify tendencies that were beyond those with which they were comfortable identifying. In a sense then, politika became a way of distancing oneself from ‘everything “above me” and outside of my network’, and fan authenticity was not a ‘really existing’ phenomenon, but a discourse of self-­positioning in which

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sub-­cultural knowledge and tastes were used to distance oneself from those perceived to be engaging with various kinds of hierarchies ‘above’ the social reality in which one was comfortable. Such distinctions were in flux over time, and so this definition is somewhat distanced from the sociologist Paul Hodkinson’s claim that subcultural authenticity was a structuralist assumption reflecting ‘not just Marxist theoretical preoccupations, as David Muggleton (2000: 14) would have it, but also an uncritical acceptance of the more exaggerated claims to authenticity of subcultural participants themselves (Thornton 1995: 119)’ (Hodkinson 2002, 12).

Notes 1 Davis (2015) discusses various understandings of fan authenticity. The understanding explored in this chapter is close to Birmingham School discussions over subcultural authenticity, rather than the reflexive and existential understanding of authenticity also discussed in his article. 2 http://farenet.org/?lang=de (accessed 2 March 2018). 3 www.fanseurope.org/de/ (accessed 2 March 2018). 4 http://fussballfansgegenhomophobie.blogsport.de/ (accessed 23 February 2018). 5 www.cms.hr/ (accessed 23 February 2018). 6 Despite the extensive flows through the region, the destination countries were primarily Austria and Germany, with only a very small number applying for asylum in Croatia. 7 ‘BBB se oprostili od Tomislava Salopeka: “Ti si jedan od nas.” ’ n.d. (accessed 22 February 2018). www.24sata.hr/sport/bbb-­se-oprostili-­od-tomislava-­salopeka-ti-­ si-jedan-­od-nas-­432699.

Bibliography Cleland, Jamie, Doidge, Mark, Millward, Peter and Widdop, Paul. 2018. Relational sociology, collective action, and football fandom. In Collective Action and Football Fandom. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–28. Davis, Leon. 2015. Football fandom and authenticity: a critical discussion of historical and contemporary perspectives. Soccer & Society 16(2–3), 422–436. Giulianotti, Richard and Millward, Peter. 2013. End of Project Report: Pro-­Supporters – Prevention Through Empowerment. Brussels: European Commission. Forum.hr. 2007. White Angels—Stranica 2. Retrieved from www.forum.hr/show thread.php?t=360630&page=2 (accessed 3 March 2018). Forum net. 2014. Dobrodošli na naš prvi sat našeg malog Kumrovca. Retrieved from http://forum.net.hr/forums/p/398093/12730489.aspx (accessed 3 March 2018). Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Oakland; Edinburgh: AK Press. Hodges, Andrew. 2016. The left and the rest? Fan cosmologies and relationships between Celtic’s Green Brigade and Dinamo Zagreb’s Bad Blue Boys. Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU 64(2), 305–319.

162   Fan authenticity Hodkinson, Paul. 2002. Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture. Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers. Jansen, Stef. 2016. First as tragedy, then as teleology: the politics/people dichotomy in the ethnography of post-­Yugoslav nationalization. Conflict and Society 2(1), 164–180. Jurković, Rahela, 2018. Integracija osoba pod međunarodnom zaštitom u hrvatsko društvo. Doctoral Dissertation, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Rose, Nikolas. 1990. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Taylor & Frances/Routledge. Scott, James C. 1992. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New edition. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Stubbs, Paul. 1997. NGO work with forced migrants in Croatia: lineages of a global middle class? International Peacekeeping 4(4), 50–60. Stubbs, Paul. 2012. Networks, organisations, movements: narratives and shapes of three waves of activism in Croatia. Polemos: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research on War and Peace XV(30), 11–32. Thornton, Sarah. 1996. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Totten, Mick. 2015. Playing left wing; from Sunday league socialism to international solidarity. A social history of the development of Republica Internationale FC. Sport in Society 18(4), 477–496. Tužinská, Helena, Baer, Roberta D., Holbrook, Emily, Hameršak, Marijana, Pleše, Iva, Podjed, Dan, Putniņa, Aivita and Jankŭ, Kateřina Sidiropulu. 2017. Anthropology as necessary unlearning: examples from camps, courts, schools and businesses. Ethnological Forum/Etnoloska Tribina 47, 3–85. Vukušić, Dino and Miošić, Lukas. 2018. Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo. Soccer & Society 19(3), 440–452.

Conclusion The ‘New Europe’ in crisis?

Conclusion Drawing on traditions in sociology and anthropology as cultural critique, this book has focused on football as an arena in which wider social and political processes are both visible, and shape the ongoing redefining of the political and economic direction unfolding in the Croatian state context. On repeated occasions, in times of political upheaval, organized football fans in Croatia have proven to be both significant political actors and a repository of ideas and experiments with new democratic forms. This study has foregrounded the creative potential of fans in bringing about positive change, whilst also drawing attention to problematic elements of fandom, and especially to the processes at play connected with a far-­right presence in the fan scene, and more widely in society. It has linked the growth of far-­ right ideas not only to the extended economic crisis and centre–periphery relations Croatia has experienced through its positioning on the European periphery, but also to the ambiguities, both political and social, generated by the logic upon which the crony capitalist system operates. While from a distance, fan cultures in Croatia and the post-­Yugoslav region more widely might appear to be an exemplar of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies male, ‘spectacular subculture’ (Hebdige 1999) model, the reality, upon closer examination, is quite different. The political economy of the post-­Yugoslav region differs from the strongly class-­based UK society in which those ideas were elaborated. For example, the co-­ optation of subcultures in Western European and US contexts by niche-­ marketing, commercialization and other neoliberal processes (Chasin 2000) is present in Croatia, but does not dominate to the same extent. In Croatia, these movements have a stronger politicized and oppositional character, shaped by the ambiguities of the grey market, crony capitalism and organized crime, therein characterizing them as somewhere between subculture and social movement. Commercialization is less pronounced, and some connections between fandom and organized crime are present, with these links likely even closer in neighbouring states such as Serbia

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(Nielsen 2013). This book therefore argues for deep ethnographic understandings of football fandom, built on long-­term forms of engagement and a critical approach to researcher positionality. This study has in places implicitly drawn on libertarian leftist traditions and some of the neo-­Marxist assumptions of the CCCS (Birmingham School of Cultural Studies), and particularly on its preoccupation with class, through the focus of this ethnography on grounded process, critical theory, hegemony, the contingent nature of social institutions and movements, as well as conflict and the formation of social divisions. In so doing, the seemingly self-­evident nature of certain concepts such as national ideas and collectives, circulating in Western European contexts, has been challenged. This contrasts with the Weberian approach of some of the earlier ethnographies (Armstrong 1998), and with the foregrounding of questions of style, consumption and identity (Thornton 1994; Hebdige 1995; Hodkinson 2002; Perasović 2001), visible in other subcultural studies – a trend perhaps most obvious during the rise and dominance of the New Right from the 1980s onwards, a period in which while ‘analyses of class were not abandoned, they did become subsumed to more pressing questions of consumption in an age where attention had been diverted away from economic inequalities towards the analysis of style-­based, mediated, market-­ segmented identities’ (Muggleton 2005, 213). It also contrasts with other approaches currently emerging in the football studies literature, drawing on a Durkheimian tradition, such as the identity-­fusion model (Newson, Buhrmester and Whitehouse 2016), particularly given the anti-­national rejection of group identity as analytically fixed. For this reason, ritual and religious aspects of fandom, such as the importance of Catholicism for certain sections of the BBB, has likely been downplayed in this study. Finally, it rejects the rigidity of the structural Marxism articulated in the early CCCS studies, as well as its implication of a ‘really existing’ dominant culture. All such approaches made methodological presumptions of ‘groupness’ (Brubaker 2004), either with respect to a parent ‘working class culture’ or dominant ‘national culture’ (Beck and Beck-­Gernsheim 2009; Threadgold 2011). In line with other authors (Pilkington, Garifzianova and Omel’chenko 2010; Hodkinson 2002) the concept of subculture has been retained, understood both as a fluid mode of counter-­cultural production, and as a mode of identification and social resource in struggles against regional permutations of global capitalism. These are sometimes ‘misrecognized’ (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) and redirected into radical right projects. More generally, this study has argued that, as in other social arenas, the post-­socialist path taken in Croatia has not been towards a convergence on Western European market models. Instead, certain practices have persisted and others intensified from the socialist period, under the new conditions, resulting in a crony capitalism that might be described, drawing on

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Verdery (1996), as ‘neoliberal capitalism with feudalist characteristics’. Within this political economy, in some domains there is no clear fixing of meanings, roles and relationships. This situation has resulted in a background that has, on the one hand, created an environment enabling historical revisionism, while on the other, more positively, it has also formed a laboratory and space of possibility for democratic experiments by fans in which forms of participatory and direct democracy have been elaborated as micro-­scale solutions for the wider social malaise. Yet, as emphasized, the fan movement and subculture is diverse in its orientation, aims, class composition, and modes of organizing.

Methods and knowledge production This study of ultras in Croatia is not a ‘view from nowhere’ (Nagel 1989) offering a general report on ultras’ activities in Croatia. It is a view from both a marginal ‘inside’ (WAZ) and from the margins of mainstream fandom (BBB). It illustrates the relative marginalization of left ultras in the Balkans more widely, alongside the ascendance of a right-­wing mainstream and anti-­communist rhetoric in the media. Certain aspects covered, such as banter and gaining a deep understanding of political and other divisions dividing the membership can only be gained via in-­depth fieldwork over an extended period. However, when combined with a detailed and practical (embodied) knowledge of the wider context, narratives and struggles can be elucidated through interview. The focus – true to the WAZ experience – includes material on the wider Zagreb fan scene, drawing comparisons and contrasts with larger groups such as the BBB. Certain topics were impossible to cover with the BBB using distanced observation from the margins. Banter depends on the formation of deeper social relations and the defining of implicitly agreed boundaries. Understanding the political divisions within a group and situating them in the wider context also requires both a deeper form of involvement and awareness gained through close participation. Finally, certain topics – such as fans’ involvement in illicit networks, organized crime and, in the case of the plaćenici, their capitulation to Zdravko Mamić – are also difficult to track, given their political sensitivity and the potential dangers involved both in terms of misinformation and researcher risk. A detailed ethnography of the overlapping grey zones of fandom, state institutions, crony capitalist figures and the police is perhaps beyond the reach of any study. Stylistically, the text moves away from the focus on detail and theoretical reluctance characteristic of other recent studies, mostly conducted in the UK context. Instead, it uses specific events, everyday descriptions and encounters to make wider arguments through inductive generalization, arguments relevant to understanding wider aspects of football’s (fans’) roles in wider society. It calls for a critical engagement with the concepts

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we use in our writing, ranging from methodological nationalism to the mobilization of politics–people distinctions, including reflection on the author’s positionality not only in the field, but also in the hierarchical world of academia. Aspects of the fan subcultures described, such as challenging ‘seriousness’, and at times radical egalitarianism, could also form a rough model for bringing about changes in academic research cultures. Mostly implicitly, this study consists of a comparison between Anglo-­ Amer­ican and post-­Yugoslav concepts as they are used in academic discourse and everyday life. A focus on the everyday activities of fans offers insights into the redefining of political concepts in public arenas, modes of critique of the current ‘crony capitalist’ status quo and their possible trajectories, hegemonic understandings of gender and sexuality, the interplay between banter, myth-­making and the production of citizenship, what the particular repertoire of criteria shaping fan authenticity reveals about deeper processes at work and intra-­group and societal cleavages, how the ways in which social relations are pursued shape the kinds of international networks established, and how concepts structuring understandings of Others are being reconfigured.

The ‘New Europe’ in crisis? Many of the changes that have occurred in the fan scene relate to processes of Europeanization (see King 2017) underway, resulting from the alignment with Central Europe, and the goal of EU accession, which has formed part of many liberal and Croatian nationalist projects over the past 20 years. Everyday consequences of these changes include the BBB’s reputation-­seeking trips across Europe, and WAZ’s cultivation of links with the German fan scene, which in turn affected practices within the group. The recent weakening of the EU, and the humanitarian crisis connected with refugee movements, have likely reconfigured ideas of race, humanitarianism and solidarity in the region, yet to date little research has been conducted on these topics. Other studies, such as an in-­depth ethnography of the BBB, would provide useful steps forward. What is clear is the domination of the people/elite politics distinction, which is reproduced at different levels, and in different ways, within the fan groups. Among WAZ, this distinction has intensified as the group has expanded and become closer to the professional NGO scene, a movement that was made possible by the increasing conditions of crisis and rise of conservative and illiberal politics throughout Croatia, particularly over the past six or seven years. Whether, and in what way, the creative potential of fandom will influence the post-­socialist path the region takes over the next few years remains to be seen.

Conclusion   167

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Index

activism 4, 41, 56, 59, 73, 102–107, 117, 125, 149–155 activist anthropology 45–46 Against Modern Football 4, 6, 98, 104, 107 alcohol use 1, 10–11, 30, 51, 57, 73, 91, 95, 121, 135, 136 anarchism 54, 56, 73, 107, 151, 155 antifascism 4, 31, 34–35, 41, 58, 71, 73, 102–103, 107–108, 150–151 antinationalism 4, 25, 55–56, 77, 107–108 Balkanism 49–50, 119, 143 Bandić, Milan 6 banter 50, 97, 122, 124, 127, 135–142, 144–145, 165 barras bravas 3, 95 Birmingham School of Cultural Studies (CCCS) 44, 46, 67–71, 129–130, 160–161, 163; cultural critique 44–45 casuals 102, 123 class 4, 50–51, 67–72, 103, 119, 138, 159–161, 164 community club 1, 4, 7, 69, 73–74, 105, 122, 149, 152 Croatian diaspora 5, 24, 48–49, 78, 110, 142, 149–150 Croatian Football Federation 7–8, 33–34, 112–113 crony capitalism 3, 5, 6–7, 9, 10, 12, 20, 29–30, 32, 75–76, 92, 94–99, 113–114, 121, 130, 157–158, 163–165 Despić, Frano 122

Dinamo: black list 97–98; Futsal Dinamo 7, 33, 42, 53, 66, 68, 72, 74, 98–99, 107, 128, 149, 151, 154, 156; name change 11, 26–28, 114; Plaćenici 91–92, 95, 98–99, 157; players 2, 151; symbolic features 20, 23, 54, 56, 66–67; Zajedno za Dinamo 7, 33, 98–99, 107 direct democracy 18, 31, 33, 73–74, 149, 165 dizelaši 121–122 emotions 11, 52–53, 112, 152 europeanization 25, 29–30, 32–33, 59, 118, 120, 165 ethics, research 57–59 fan: authenticity 125, 149, 153–154; category C 57; chants 79–81; disorder 30, 33–24; generational differences 110; group symbols 74–75; habitus 11, 28, 42, 47, 72, 75, 121, 137, 146, 160; networks 149–152; subcultural style 159; surveillance of 83–85, 143; surveillance of public space by 124, 128–131 far-right 29, 33, 35, 45, 50, 52, 74, 75, 86, 102, 108–114, 143, 145, 151, 163 fascism 35, 102–103, 107–108, 110, 112–113, 119 gender 2, 46–49, 68, 85, 103, 118–126, 130–131, 144 Gotovina, Ante 110, 153 Grabar-Kitarović, Kolinda 33–35 graffiti 5, 13, 41, 52, 57, 64, 66, 73–74,

Index   169 112, 124, 136, 160; murals 5, 41, 64–65, 70, 81, 95, 130 grey zone 75, 86–87, 108–109, 114, 159 Hasanbegović, Zlatko 35, 111, 114 hegemony 7, 12, 26, 106–108, 111, 124, 164 hierarchy 5, 32, 45, 50, 53, 72, 74, 78, 104–105, 119, 129, 140, 142, 157 hipsters 121, 125, 155, 159, 160 homophobia 4–5, 29, 33, 41, 47–48, 58, 108, 117–118, 120, 122–123, 128, 141, 145, 151–152 hooligan literature 46 illegality 57–59, 92–93; drug dealing 31, 57, 70–71, 95; drug use 57, 71, 91, 93 insults 47, 58, 123–124, 126, 138, 143–145 irony 127–128, 135–142, 144–145 legitimacy, state 24, 106–108, 110, 137 Leicester School of Football Hooliganism 141–142 LGBTQ rights 29, 41, 82, 117–118, 128, 144, 153; politics 29, 41, 43, 124–125 Mamić, Zdravko 3, 6, 7, 8, 29, 31, 58, 80, 85, 91–92, 94–98, 104, 143, 157, 165 Marxism 71–72, 120, 161, 164 masculinity 68, 85, 103, 118–126; hard 120–121, 126, 128; hegemonic 120–121, 124, 126, 128; hyper- 120; inclusive 121 Medić, Dražen 6–7, 29–30, 58 methodology: moving between groups 51–55; ‘native’ researcher 43; researcher positioning 42–43, 46–51, 53–55; self-disclosure 52–53 moral panic 3, 29 nationalism 5, 18, 20–22, 28, 32–33, 43, 66, 105–112, 114, 118–120, 135–139, 150, 165; banal 107–108; methodological 55–56, 164, 166; mythmaking 81–82; post- 78 Nazism 13, 26, 34, 66–67, 80, 86, 102, 109, 112 neighbourhood belonging 64–66, 71–72, 140

new ethnographies of football 9, 42, 44, 46, 69 NK Zagreb 2–4, 6, 22–23, 27, 29–30, 32, 82, 117, 149, 154, 156 non-governmental organizations 53, 76, 85, 111, 118, 125, 140, 144–145, 150–152, 155–159 orientalism 3, 26 Pavelić, Ante 102, 110 police: ACAB 6; arrest 58, 117, 126; connections with Dinamo 31, 92; matchday practices 83–84, 91–99, 117, 149, 156; repression 29, 31, 92–99, 126, 143; violence 23, 27, 94–95, 97; social role 57, 76; surveillance 3, 79, 83–84, 103 political correctness 85, 123, 125, 142–146 political economy 11, 71–72, 125, 163 populism 35, 119, 120, 151 post-socialist ‘transition’ 10–11, 32, 71, 105, 119, 130–131 primitivism 7, 31, 51, 119–120, 135–142 privatization 6–7, 75 professionalization 19–20, 155, 158 projectization 59, 149–159 public space 2, 5, 47–48, 67, 128–131 punk 2, 64, 85–87, 108–109, 122–123, 135–137, 140, 150, 159–160 race 49–50, 118, 166 racism 4–5, 58, 97, 108, 122, 127, 142, 145, 151–152; auto- 77 refugees 2, 4, 27, 50, 71, 152–153 Republic of Serbian Krajina 135–137 religion 3, 33, 102, 111, 120, 153, 164 revisionism 34, 45, 165 semi-periphery 3, 6–8 sectarianism 52–54 sexism 108, 120, 122–123, 144 sexuality 47–49, 59, 117–118, 124–131 socialism 8, 19–22, 109 social media 59, 72, 74, 82, 104, 111, 123, 128, 143 sub-politics 11, 27, 106–107, 114, 131 Torcida 3, 9, 21–22, 44, 82, 104, 111, 126, 131 Tuđman, Franjo 22–28, 75, 136–137

170   Index ultras 4, 5, 13, 21–22, 67, 72–73, 75–76, 77, 78–79, 81–82, 84–85, 103, 107, 124, 128–129, 136–137, 140–142, 153–155, 160, 165; ultras no politica 155–156 urban–rural divisions 7, 27, 51, 71, 119, 127, 135–142 Ustaše 26, 35, 66–67, 102, 109–110, 112–113, 119 violence 27, 86, 94–97, 102–103,

117–118, 128–131, 139, 154; Bloody 1 May 31, 93–94 Vukovar 33–34, 65–66, 78, 82, 119 war 3, 8, 23–24, 33, 65–66, 77–78, 119, 128, 135–136, 150, 152; ‘Homeland War’ 8, 24–25, 49, 65–66, 77–78, 110, 153 Yugoslavia 8, 18–24, 26, 49, 74, 109, 152