Violence and masculinity amongst left-wing ultras in post-Yugoslav space

Abstract

In this article, I discuss confrontations involving violence and discourses of masculinity in a left-wing ultras group – White Angels Zagreb – on the basis of observations made as a group member involved in a number of overlapping antifascist activist engagements in Serbia and Croatia. Building my argument up from an ethnographic vignette, I discuss the historical context underlying the production of masculinities and heteropatriarchy in the post-Yugoslav context. I then examine material concerning violence and masculinities gained through participant observation. I argue that whilst not initiating violence against other groups, talk about violent incidents with other groups plays a similar role to that documented in right wing groups in cementing collective identifications, and that group concepts of masculinity are embedded within dominant discursive hegemonies established in post-Yugoslav space, whilst simultaneously rejecting enforced ‘hard’ masculinity, an important observation which differentiates them from many right-wing ultras in the region.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Čarna Brković, Dr Jonah Bury and three anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful comments on earlier versions of this article and to Dr Ivana Spasić for her comments on themes with which this article deals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The group has now changed its name to the Women's Antifascist Network Zagreb (Mreža Antifašistkinja Zagreba).

2. The group has approximately thirty members. Typical home attendance ranges from 10 to 15 members, whilst 4–5 typically attend away games each time.

3. See Pearson (1984) for a discussion of the origins of the use of the word ‘hooligan’.

4. Several of these aspects, in my experience, also apply to antifascist activist groups such as the Zagreb-based group mentioned. Nevertheless, a detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this article.

5. See Blagojević (2013) for a discussion of an ontological approach to masculinities in the Balkan semiperiphery.

6. This resonates strongly with Puar’s (2007) concept of homonationalism.

7. I choose not to use the term 'collective memory' as it reifies a group form, or 'group ego', a move I find unsettling due to its links with nationalism.

8. I find this problematic due to its connections with 'banal' nationalism (Billig 1995), that the social world is made of up collective groups, each with their own separate history and identity.

9. http://www.fanseurope.org/en/ (accessed on 09/3/15).

10. More precisely, ‘izjebati’ means ‘fuck until you cannot go on’.