Paolo Di Canio is a dedicated follower of fascism – but only on the playing field In Paolo Di Canio’s autobiography, published in 2000, the Italian footballer says he is “fascinated by Benito Mussolini”. The late fascist dictator is the person he would most like to have a “one-on-one” with. “I own dozens of Mussolini biographies,” Di Canio continues. “I think he was a deeply misunderstood individual.” The footballer admires Mussolini for rallying “an entire country behind him”, and trying to save Italy. Admittedly Mussolini wasn’t perfect: “He deceived people, his actions were often vile or calculated. But all this was motivated by a higher purpose. At stake was the fate of a nation.” Di Canio acquired tattoos honouring Mussolini on his back and right arm, and while playing for Lazio of Rome gave several on-field fascist salutes.
All this has now become a touch embarrassing. After Sunderland appointed Di Canio manager last Sunday, David Miliband, the UK’s former foreign secretary, resigned from the club’s board “in light of the new manager’s past political statements”. Britons have long debated racial issues through football, and The Sun printed a Di Canio salute over its front page.
There is confusion because Di Canio’s fascism means different things in three different contexts: in the UK, in Italian politics and in 1970s Rome where he grew up.
In Britain, politicians subscribe to two basic propositions: fascism and racism are terrible; and immigration is terrible. When the singer Billy Bragg said, “well, I’ve got a message for you, Mr Di Canio: all you fascists are bound to lose”, no one was going to disagree. In the UK, opposing fascism is a no-lose proposition, like opposing cannibalism.
It’s different in Italy. Probably no other European country, perhaps not even the US, is so polarised between right and left. Much of the Italian squabble is over fascism. John Foot, professor of modern Italian history at University College London and an authority on Italian football, says: “The idea that Mussolini was basically OK until the anti-semitic laws in 1938 has quite a wide political constituency in Italy.”
In today’s Italian culture wars, rightwingers often affirm their folksy anticommunist credentials by praising Mussolini. Silvio Berlusconi, speaking at a ceremony on Holocaust Memorial day this January for Jews killed by the Nazis, said that despite the regrettable racial laws, Mussolini “in so many other ways did well”. Gianfranco Fini, Mr Berlusconi’s former deputy prime minister, once named Mussolini as the “greatest statesman of the century” (before disowning the view years later). During this winter’s election campaign, comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo flirted with the fascist-inspired “CasaPound” movement. Di Canio’s view of Mussolini as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” seems ordinary in this company.
Yet the footballer’s beliefs go beyond Italy’s mainstream right. Clearly he is a fascist, albeit a fascist in the sense the word had in the Rome of his childhood.
Italy in the 1970s was consumed by far-left and far-right violence. Prof Foot says: “People were getting killed for their beliefs because they were walking down the street with the wrong newspaper under their arm.” Di Canio was a hardcore fan of Lazio, and like most hardcore Lazio fans chose the far-right option. Many of them scarcely distinguished between the words “fascist” and “Lazio fan”. Football symbols were more meaningful than political symbols. Some would not have recognised a real fascist if one had tortured them in a prison cell. Fascism for them was a badge of local macho belonging, like a gang tattoo. Within Roman fan culture, Di Canio’s salutes (to the saluting fans) meant: “I love Lazio, just like you.”
Still, he understood he was using historical fascist symbols. Challenged on this, he once responded: “I’m a fascist, not a racist.” Given fascist Italy’s anti-semitic laws, colonial massacres in Africa and axis with Adolf Hitler, that may appear a hairsplitting distinction. Grumbling about Italian politicians in 2002, he said: “With Mussolini I’m sure we would have had a better situation,” but added that he wasn’t a fascist. This isn’t a coherent political philosophy. It’s just ugly.
Now he is pretending it never happened. He began this week insisting his statements about fascism had been misquoted (including in his autobiography?). He said some of his best friends were black. However, on Wednesday, he said: “I do not support the ideology of fascism.” Prof Foot says: “I would have respected him more if he’d said, ‘I am a fascist’. But he ducked it. It was very unhardmanish.”
Di Canio’s spinning is strangely reminiscent of Woody Allen’s sketch Remembering Needleman, a mock defence of a fictional Jewish philosopher who briefly supported Nazism. “It is easy to criticise his position on Hitler at first,” Allen writes, “but one must take into account his own philosophical writings . . . Needleman’s intellectual integrity convinced him that he didn’t exist, his friends didn’t exist and the only thing that was real was his IOU to the bank for 6m marks. Hence, he was charmed by the National Socialist’s philosophy of power, or as Needleman put it, ‘I have the kind of eyes that are set off by a brown shirt’.”
Di Canio’s political thought is about as sensible as Needleman’s. Thankfully this fascist sympathiser is just a harmless football manager rather than, say, a leading politician in a troubled European country.
simon.kuper@ft.com
Simon Kuper - Financial Times Another good read on Paolo Di Canio.
