Orban gives rise to black-shirted ultras
Carpathian Brigade has become emboldened to push ‘racist narrative’ thanks to Hungary’s far-right leadership
With chants citing their own days of empire, Hungary’s black-clad ultras sing from almost the same hymn sheet as the National Front hooligans that blighted the England team in the 1980s.
The driving force for the increase in trouble, particularly in Budapest, is the Carpathian Brigade, an umbrella group of organised fan groups that came together around 12 years ago to make their presence felt internationally. Their black-shirted uniform is a nod to waves of fascism in the country tracing back to the 1920s, but experts claim not all fan groups who initially signed up had extremist leanings.
Instead, it is the hardline nationalist politics of Hungary’s government, and its tacit approval of discriminatory chanting at football, that is said to have emboldened the group in recent years. “The government has supported the Carpathian Brigade, so they officially sanction what goes on,” says Piara Powar, executive director of the monitoring network Fare, which had observers at Tuesday night’s game at Wembley Stadium.
Fascist fan groups have been attending Hungarian football matches since the 1950s. But reflecting a fresh upturn of nationalism across eastern Europe, numbers have increased in recent years. The Carpathian Brigade set up headquarters behind the goal at the Puskas Arena, where they lead hostile chanting to players kneeling for Black Lives Matter and even Uefa’s anti-homophobia messages.
Ultra groups also organise demonstrations away from football in support of the hardline anti-immigration politics of nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban, who has repeatedly refused to criticise them.
Little contrition can be expected from him or anyone else in government after gangs ran amok on the Wembley terraces. There had been none at all three weeks ago, when Hungary were fined £158,416 and ordered to play behind closed doors by Fifa over abuse directed at Jude
Bellingham and Raheem Sterling in Budapest. That punishment came on top of a two-match stadium ban and followed sanctions imposed on Hungary by Uefa for racist and homophobic incidents at Euro 2020.
Abuse monitors say the disorder and abuse on the terraces will keep intensifying while the nation’s farright leadership effectively condones extremist views. Prof Geoff Pearson, one of Britain’s leading experts on hooliganism and football crowd control, suggests, however, that the 700 away fans who arrived at Wembley may not have come intent on violence.
“I don’t think there’s any suggestion that the Hungarian ultras turned up to Wembley with the intention of fighting England fans or clashing with police,” said the senior lecturer in criminal law at Manchester University. “What we’ve seen here, from the sounds of it, is an intervention, which has been seen as illegitimate by the Hungarian
ultra group and, as a result of that, they have fought back.”
Pearson, who was on the ground to observe violence flaring in France at Euro 2016, said it was “easy to over-exaggerate” how organised fan groups operate. He suggested Hungarian ultras were less intent on “pre-planned violence” than Russian hooligans who ambushed England fans in Marseille five years ago.
“It’s unquestionable that those ultra groups following Hungary have a dominant racist narrative,” he said. “That’s not to say that everybody that wears that black shirt and goes into those groups will be racist, but the narrative is dominantly antiblack Lives Matter, for example.”
There should have been no surprise that Poland fans were mingling with the ultras at Wembley, too. Powar told The Telegraph of long-term “alliances” between the nations’ fans, with a shared “political ideology” of “ultra groups” and “far-right” sympathies. “There’s quite a lot of points of convergence,” he added.