Communicating vessels
It is a common secret from Russia to Latin America and from Eastern Europe to the Western Balkans that hooliganism and common crime often tread common ground; that hard-line associations of fans of the rituals of war and violence are sometimes the reservoirs from which extremist formations and organized crime recruit executioners.
Young people who blow off steam by attacking fans of competing sports associations with crowbars, flares and knives can easily be seized by the mafia to provide dark services, such as drug delivery, extortion, protection and special security services.
Recent research by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime showed that of 122 fan associations in the Western Balkans – where hooliganism is acute – 78 were identified as “ultras” – with fanatical, violent, often radicalized fans – and 21 were involved with organized crime and politics. They are described as explosive social subsets because of their connections with the underworld and their propensity for religious and far-right extremism.
Behind the havoc caused by the substance-inflated sports superego, hide not only the intoxication of the soccer club, the chants and symbols, but also dark intentions or ideologies of a ‘superior race’ and ‘pure’ identities
In recent months, a soccer hooligan and cocaine trafficker named named Veljko Belivuk, known by the nicknamed the Trouble, and his 15 gang members have been on trial in Serbia, accused of heinous murders, as well as rape, kidnapping, drug and arms trafficking and money laundering. Belivuk had connections with powerful figures and nationalist and paramilitary groups.
He sold and received protection, terrorized political opponents, moving through a labyrinthine gray network. He and his deputy chief denied the charges, saying they were performing an ordered duty.
That is to say, sometimes, behind the murderous tension generated by hooliganism, behind the havoc caused by the substance-inflated sports superego, hide not only the intoxication of the soccer club, the chants and symbols, but also dark intentions or ideologies of a “superior race” and “pure” identities.
Greece is by no means the Western Balkans, but neither is it Denmark. If the judicial investigation into the serious injury of a police officer by a hooligan is conducted according to the standards used in the case of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn – i.e. if the crude instigators of the bloody hooligan violence are accused of forming a criminal organization – we may find one of the tips that will unravel the elusive incendiary tangle of sports-related violence.
