Di Canio did the same in the Rome derby early last year, and avowed Giallorossi Alberto, who has kicked off his own blog with some quality conjecture, filled in with context from the Olimpico curves:

“After the parlous start of the season I was tempted to shift my attentions to curling, bobsledding or water sports (preferably with the likes of Di Canio on the receiving end), so my heart has hardly been beating red & yellow in the past few months. Alas, no proletarian clenched fist salute is forthcoming from Francesco [Totti], as Roma too has a ‘minority’ of fascists (with Lazio I would venture they might be edging towards a majority, though the best communist bookshop in Rome is run by a friend who, much to his chagrin, is a Lazio fan... a little like Toni Negri being a Milan fan, which is indeed historically justified by it being the urban prole team in the 60s and 70s).
“Alas, the Roma-Lazio rivalry can no longer be reinscribed in left-right terms, despite the fact that the boys in sky blue and eagles take their bigotry to grotesque levels (such as the banners defending the Serbian butcher Arkan or the ones about Auschwitz).
“We should rather look outside the capital: a few weeks back, in response to Roma fans (the shame...) singing ‘Faccetta Nera’ (a particularly unsavoury fascist colonialist anthem about a soldier's nostalgia for his Ethiopian rape victim, ehm, sweetheart), the Livorno curva answered without missing a beat with a full rendition of Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag). Respect.”

Which is what Livorno also did in the Lazio game. Cull was now more aware of the broader representation of political extremes within the tifosi of both Roma and Lazio. With football only ever the forum rather than the breeding ground for political belief, it’s inevitable that most clubs will have fans representing the full spectrum of allegiance, as well as the unaligned apathetic, as the following correspondence from a Lazio fan showed (it had stemmed from my saying on a club newsletter that Man City’s use of eagles in their badge was playing with fascist imagery):

“Hello, I'm the City fan from Italy… I want you to know a very important thing. Here in Italy I support [try to guess] SS Lazio and, despite the fuc**ing fascist following in the Curva Nord, many many many people Lazio fans are in NO WAY fascist! You really CANNOT think about all the fans as fascist because Rome is a very big city and the club has got so many fans.
“Further, the club was founded in 1900 (many years BEFORE Mussolini's regime) and even if the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) wanted to merge the club with the newly founded AS Roma in 1927, the then board wanted the sky blue club to remain ‘different’! So, not only NOT ALL THE LAZIO fans are fascist but, most of all, the club was hated by all the PNF board. I am sick and tired about all the people think us (real fans and not false ones always in search of some XXX with this fu**ing fascist thing) as a monolite fascist following!”
Whoops… “Thanks Dario for the correction.... I did not mean to imply that Lazio was a completely fascist club, just that it is associated in some small way with that (the irreducibles?). It’s like some City hardcore maintain that we are a club just for protestants, when you always see as many Celtic tops at City as Rangers’ ones – and the Kippax had great fun with such opposing chants in the 80s. As with Lazio, there is the image, and the reality.”
“Hi, thanks for your note indeed! I didn’t know City were linked with protestants! I like Celtic! Unfortunately the ugly “Irriducibili” are not true fans but people coming out of jail that “conquered” the Curva Nord only with violence back in 1991 and since then they are looking for cheap fame with the overall fascist link. I have to admit that always the boards have been too shy regarding them (maybe because they are afraid of their bad reputation)…
“Irriducibili have a strong link with other fascist groups such as Chelsea Headhunters and those fucking idiots in Madrid that booed the black players.”

So remember, try and banish any simplistic divining. We know some Chelsea fans who are alright as well.....