Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the critique of liberal politics articulated by a group of Italian football ultras, centred on the analogy between the securitization and commodification of football crowds and the disempowering and alienating effects of liberal representative democracy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper briefly discusses an instance of critique against contemporary liberalism and consumer capitalism centred on drawing analogies across scales between football and representative liberal democracy. My interlocutors, the ultras (hardcore, organized supporters) of Centro Storico Lebowski, a small football club based in Florence, Italy, saw the securitization and commodification of football crowds as structurally analogous with the passivisation, alienation, and limits upon choice imposed on political action by delegation-based representative liberal politics. As a counterpoint, they argued that the self-managed and collectively owned football club they had established could act transformatively on both scales by reappropriating and redistributing responsibility, and thus agency. Viewing the liberal state and the market as repressive and disempowering, in light of their experiences as ultras, my interlocutors re-framed and re-scaled trust and responsibility at a local and strongly personal level through the unlikely medium of a football club, whose workings were analogically understood to prefigure a potential alternative society.