Chwedoruk: the stadium does not forget

PAP: If we were to believe what some media outlets are reporting, Polish fans have an extremely anti-immigrant attitude... What do you think?

Rafał Chwedoruk: Let's start with who a fan is, and in the case of Poland, a trialist division would be most appropriate. First, there are those who simply attend matches, who generally benefit from the embellishments created by fan movements, who identify to some extent with fellow participants, but are primarily consumers. This is the largest group.

The second group consists of the so-called ultras, who cover the stadium's events vocally and visually. These groups are usually small—ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred people in individual clubs—but they have a huge impact on fan life.

And somewhere in all this there are also groups resorting to organised violence, although only incidentally interested in violence within the stadiums themselves, seeking to fight against people like themselves, only from other clubs.

The bond between these three groups in many clubs is the official, legal fan associations, which help, for example, organize travel to away matches, conduct activities outside the community, and help with various issues, such as veterans or children from orphanages, but their power and influence vary greatly between clubs.

However, when we use the word "fans", we are talking primarily about what is generated by the second and, to some extent, the third of these groups, i.e. a group of people who, quantitatively, on a macro-social scale, are not of great importance.

PAP: Can you estimate how many of these "hardcore" fans there are? And which political side do they belong to?

R.Ch.: A decade ago, the movement included about 150,000 people, now slightly fewer, although it is currently experiencing another renaissance after several years of crisis.

However, what you are asking about, i.e. the problem of politicization, is broad and quite complex, and it also presents itself differently in different countries.

For example, in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal and in some Nordic countries, politicization is incidental or almost zero, while in Cyprus and - to some extent - also in Greece, Spain, France and our part of Europe it is very, very high, although in different ideological configurations.

Poland is one of those countries, like most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where the right wing, a very eclectic one, dominates the political arena - from the most extreme of the extremes to, I would say, intuitively conservative.

This is due to historical reasons: fan movements emerged in the early 1970s and matured in the 1980s and 1990s, in a situation where the authorities originating from the Polish United Workers' Party had a very low level of legitimacy and right-wing politics was perceived as an ideology of opposition.

Moreover, from its inception in Poland, this movement has taken over a lot from the prison subculture, which has always been directed against the authorities and at the same time remained morally conservative.

Those fans who took over the legacy in the 1990s were shaped in the realities of the domination of the anti-communist "fourth brigade" - they were a new generation, they themselves did not know the rule of the Polish United Workers' Party and the realities of the bygone era, but their radicalism in criticizing the previous system surpassed their elders.

All this has led to the Polish tribunes being infiltrated by the right wing.

PAP: Infiltrated?

R.Ch.: Yes, infiltrated, at various levels. Both by small, far-right groups that have no significant impact on mainstream politics, and sometimes by groups bordering on mainstream politics, or at least having close ties to it, which is usually incidental, action-based, and sometimes local in nature.

So the first thing that explains the negative attitude towards migrants is precisely this right-wing bias of the stands. The second is that football is, by its very nature, a territorial sport.

We root for a team from somewhere. The beginnings of fandom—which changed, but not entirely, only in the age of globalization—were tied to attending matches of the team geographically closest to us. It was a "visible community" of people, generally similar to us, living nearby.

When another team arrived, for example from another city, they were inevitably looking for the difference between "us" and "them."

PAP: This is pure anthropology.

R.Ch.: Although football began as a sport of the aristocracy, then the middle class, at the turn of the 20th century it became a working-class sport. While the working class is fading in the traditional sense, diversifying, and so on, much of the ethos of this social group remains, which is related, among other things, to concerns about competition in the job market combined with a bond with a local community of people with similar fates and life experiences.

To this I would add the so-called Bosman Law, a ruling of the European Court of Justice that abolished limits on the employment of players within the European Union and globalization. This process resulted in a flood of teams with foreign players.

Initially, in Poland it was often received with enthusiasm, as something new, a positively understood exoticism, but in the 1990s, when the fascist skinhead subculture was experiencing its golden years, various stereotypes quickly developed, which may be one of the reasons for the reluctance to migrate on a broader scale.

Some researchers also emphasize the masculinist nature of football subculture, which fosters attitudes of aversion to diversity.

PAP: I'll return to the anthropological thread again: aliens will come, kill the men, rape the women, and seize our crops. But let's stick to the political thread.

R.Ch.: Football is never a catalyst for anything political. It's only a symptom. It doesn't change history, but it shows that change is just beginning.

The biggest fight, in fact an all-day fight, in the history of Polish football took place in May 1980 in Częstochowa, when the Polish Cup final was played between Legia Warsaw and Lech Poznań, two very popular clubs that were attended by thousands of fans – according to various estimates, there were between 7,000 and 10,000 of them.

Warsaw residents and Poznań residents, pardon the expression, were fighting among themselves all day long and the communist authorities lost control of the voivodeship capital for almost 24 hours.

Let me remind you: it was May 1980, and since April there had been an uproar in Warsaw's workplaces, while two months later the Lublin region and the Coast started working.

Similarly, in Great Britain, the emergence of organised hooligan groups, bent on violence, was associated with Margaret Thatcher's reforms, stadium monitoring and other reforms aimed at limiting access to the stands to wealthy spectators.

The response was camouflaged, semi-underground hooligan groups, which, in the seclusion of train stations, stadiums, or pubs—as is still common today—fought among themselves and then promptly disappeared. This reflected the disintegration of traditional social bonds in Great Britain and the changes in social structure.

It is also no coincidence that stadium violence in its broadest sense is currently on the rise in many Western European countries, such as France, Switzerland, Germany and the Nordic countries.

PAP: If you were to look at the current roster of players in Polish football teams, you'd find that foreign-sounding names dominate. And there's no problem with that.

R.Ch.: Acts of racism do occur, but they are incidental. This isn't the xenophobia of the 1990s, when fans would throw bananas at dark-skinned players. This wasn't the case for most stadium-goers, although there was a degree of acceptance for such behavior within the fan community.

Today, we're witnessing what could be briefly described as the Argentinization of club football. This doesn't mean, however, that football in Argentina is highly politicized, not in an ideological sense, but rather in the ties between the so-called barra bravas groups, which combine business, gangsterism, and hooliganism with local politics.

Argentine fans organize huge, spectacular shows in the stands, events organized by them, but often detached from what is happening on the pitch.

PAP: When it comes to the fixtures, our fans have nothing to be ashamed of.

R.Ch.: When this movement was born in the 1970s or 1980s, the intensity of chants in the stands, whistles and chorus of vulgarities directed at the opposing team or the referee was directly related to the situation on the pitch.

I remember when Legia Warsaw played against the famous Inter Milan in the 1970s, which featured the legendary German footballer Karl Heinz Rummenigge - whenever he got to the ball, the stands howled, booed and chanted insults in German, including calling him a pig.

Everything changed in an era of commercialization of football, weakening clubs' ties with local communities, and the influx of players from distant countries. The stands took on a life of their own, reacting only to the most important events on the pitch, the scoring of goals.

Because fans don't really care who runs for their team. They've already accepted that these players aren't homegrown, that they're not from their city, or even their region. I remember an episode at Legia when a famous player was celebrating what was supposed to be his 100th match, and the cheering fan started chanting, to the amusement of some in the stands, "Tomasz Kiełbowicz" instead of "Tomasz Kiełbowski."

Compared to most European countries, Poland is at the forefront of this stadium show; colorful, singing stands are an attribute not only of big clubs from big cities, but can be found even in very low, de facto amateur leagues.

It is worth noting that preparing such settings requires a lot of work and the dedication of a huge amount of private time, and yet there are many people willing to do so.

In this context, the migration issue is just a fragment of a certain trend among football fans – right-wing and anti-establishment. This is a sign of tension, but not something that would attract large crowds. Demonstrations involving football fans on this issue were not numerous, usually numbering in the hundreds.

PAP: Don't you get the impression that when PiS was in power, fan circles were far less anti-establishment? Now, fans have radicalized again and are on the right. Is this a natural reflex, like the saying that a healthy fish always swims against the current, or is there something more to it?

R.Ch.: In Poland, the situation isn't the same as in countries like Germany or Italy, where groups with opposing views can sit in the "mill," in the sectors of the most ardent fans, and somehow coexist. And as for how Polish history unfolded, that in some sense the right wing has become a rebellion today, is somewhat of a paradox, because apart from episodes of SLD rule, the broadly defined right wing ruled for most of the time after 1989.

However, when it comes to the attitude towards current politics, it is marked by numerous twists and turns: few people remember that Lech Kaczyński was initially treated very reluctantly by the stands, because during his presidency the penal policy was made more stringent, so at that time the fans were open to formulas unfavorable to PiS.

However, PiS quickly realized that the demographic makeup of the electorate was unfavorable to the party, so it began searching for various niches. And it stumbled upon essentially the only active subculture (hip-hop had been enjoying a successful recent period), a truly mass, cohesive one: football fans – and occasional contacts began to occur between them.

Then the Civic Platform took over. One of its biggest mistakes was an attempted sweeping crackdown on the stadium subculture.

Since 2005, an on-and-off conflict has raged between Legia fans and the club's then-owners. Legia fans were supported by fans from all over Poland, even those most passionate about Warsaw. Everyone knew that the capital was attempting to Anglicize Polish football, turning it into an expensive hobby for the metropolitan middle class, disregarding the average fan and the clubs' traditions.

As the conflict gained media coverage, the right wing began to view it with interest, viewing Legia's owners as their adversaries. Overall, the conflict ended in an absolute victory for Legia fans, who ultimately received more than they bargained for. It was a war that ended in capitulation, not a truce.

During this period, the so-called "Operation Fork" took place, when hundreds of fans (often random individuals) were detained, which led, among other things, to civil lawsuits against the state.

In this already tense political situation in the stands, the Prime Minister tried to tighten the policy related to the security of mass events in the run-up to Euro 2012, which fans interpreted as an attempt to make them a "scapegoat" for the problems with preparing for the championship.

Protests against the Prime Minister became a hallmark of the 2011 election campaign, spreading across all fan groups across the country, taking the form of demonstrations, slogan-chanting, and happenings. Paradoxically, this helped the Civic Platform win the 2011 elections under slogans of order and security. But at the same time, support for the Civic Platform (PO) began to decline among young people.

PAP: Which did not translate easily into support for PiS.

R.Ch.: Of course, this did not mean simple sympathy for PiS, rather Kukiz and Korwin-Mikke capitalized on it electorally, because PiS was also perceived as a world of older people.

But subsequent generations were socialized on the Internet, in the backyard, into a dislike of the Platform as a party of older party activists who did not understand the youth and were eager to use repression.

Moreover, please note that this change in mood in the stands coincided with the de facto founding act of the Confederation, which was Janusz Korwin-Mikke's candidacy in the European Parliament elections in 2014.

Then, there was another generational change in the fan movement, old fans moved on to a different phase of life, and a demographic crisis made itself felt in the "mills".

Somewhat surprisingly, Covid has reactivated the fan movement, as the lifting of restrictions has resulted in Polish stadiums being filled to an unprecedented level.

PAP: But the COVID restrictions are the work of PiS.

R.Ch.: Yes, of course, and probably everything would have remained as before, if it were not for the fact that Donald Tusk - who is remembered in the stadiums in this way - returned to Polish politics.

During the elections, when fans tried to support anyone but the Civic Platform candidate, which was one of the channels for mobilizing normally apolitical, mainly younger voters, against Rafał Trzaskowski.

While it did not play a major role in the first round, it did matter in the second round and PiS did not even have to ask for it.

PAP: And again fans in stadiums are chanting "Donald, you idiot...".

R.Ch.: This is the result of failing to learn from the situation that happened over a decade ago. For those who are 20 or 25 years old today, it might have seemed abstract at first, but for those in their 30s, it's no longer the case. This demonstrates a phenomenon of this movement that reproduces itself – even though we're dealing with a generational shift, fans don't forget past wrongs. This group's support for Karol Nawrocki was a form of symbolic revenge against Donald Tusk.

PAP: Do politicians underestimate the power of the fan movement?

R.Ch.: First of all, most of them don't care at all. However, the example of the last campaign shows that this disregard can be costly.

The worst thing you can do is make this group your enemy. These groups, not very numerous on a macro-social scale, are incredibly creative, and they don't limit themselves to vulgarity, but will seek out the weaknesses of a given politician or political party.

And it can do the worst to them – start mocking, making jokes and perpetuating a negative stereotype online and in the stands.

But the internet isn't the only thing that fuels the fan community. For example, there's the monthly magazine "To My Kibice," which has been published for 24 years and remains afloat despite the internet's expansion.

This time, the Civic Platform (PO) paid a price for wading into the same anti-Kobić tide for the second time, through statements made by some politicians, when it should have avoided the topic. Donald Tusk's presence in the presidential campaign was not a good idea from the perspective of the PO candidate's interests.

PAP: The stadium doesn't forget?

R.Ch.: The stadium doesn't forget, despite the generational shift. It remembers that a certain footballer, now retired, was once a great, distinguished footballer.

He'll also remember that another footballer was suspected of selling a match some years ago. He has no mercy, even though this man has long since retired from professional sports. This is a phenomenon of fan collective memory.

Interviewed by: Mira Suchodolska (PAP)

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