Even marches against fascism cannot pass peacefully in Croatia. Rade Šerbedžija also spoke about the situation in society
Attacks on marches against fascism, and the Minister of Defense is also active - with absurd claims. That's how it ends in 2025 Croatia.
Last week, more than 20.000 people united in the streets of four cities in Croatia in a march against fascism. Not without incidents - in Rijeka, masked persons attacked a group of citizens with firecrackers and flares, while in Zadar, red paint was thrown at the participants of the march. No incidents were recorded in Pula and Zagreb, reports Deutsche Welle.
With the "United Against Fascism" march, the participants respond to the current situation in Croatian society, the rise of neo-fascist ideas, the attack on Serbian cultural manifestations and writers, to the situation when it is said at a round table in the Parliament that the Jasenovac concentration camp was a place where children went to practice, or to the departure of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to Thompson's concert, where the Ustasha rallying cry "for a ready home" is shouted.
Finally, the Minister of Defense Ivan Anušić himself stated in Brussels that the protests were "anti-Croatian and pro-Yugoslav", and that he "even saw the Cyrillic alphabet", which clearly made it clear that this otherwise legally legitimate script in Croatia is in fact not desirable.
Irena Burba, president of the "Green Istra" association, which was one of the organizers of the march in Pula, estimates that the ruling elite allowed hatred, intolerance and fascism to creep into the pores of Croatian society.
"Croatia is not isolated from the rest of the world - we see what is happening in America, all that right-wing extremism has spilled over here, and we think that these are someone's political agendas, and even more so, self-interested agendas. Because, while citizens are fighting over social media, we still have enormous corruption, theft, a bad health system, problems in education. So, the focus is shifting from those important things," says Burba.
Analyst Žarko Puhovski told DW that citizens showed dissatisfaction and frustration with the march, and even fear, which, in his words, is caused by the normalization of right-wing extremism, which has been happening in Croatia since last summer. This, he believes, is an understandable reaction, although not reasonable because of some of the messages, such as calling for a Balkan federation.
He believes that both the left and the right, when it comes to the latter, are ready to insist on marginal phenomena, not central ones. "This is where Prime Minister Plenković, aligning himself to the right, missed the opportunity when he began his speech on Monday to say that the HDZ is the only barrier to normality. Now we have an outburst of right-wing comments, including scandalizing the Cyrillic alphabet, which is a legitimate script in Croatia," notes Puhovski.
He reminds that this was stated by the Minister of Defense Ivan Anušić, who calls for young people to do some kind of military service from the beginning of next year. Among those young people there will probably be a number of people who write in Cyrillic, and that apparently did not occur to him, Puhovski reminds.
However, as he adds, even the left political option is not immune from stupidity. "On the other hand, they insist on advocating for a Balkan federation, which is also stupid, because it is really a failed idea. But such things are found at all protests in all countries of the world. The organizers of the march were simply not able to remove that banner from their sight, and then it turned out that they insisted on that - instead of the key issue, which is the normalization of right-wing extremism that refers to the NDH," says Puhovski.
Despite the attacks in Croatia in recent weeks, Puhovski believes that the fear of right-wing extremism in Croatia is "exaggerated, but not invented and there is a reason for it."
"I can say that some of the reactions are over-emphasized, but what happens is that the attackers in Split prevent a group of children and old people from Novi Sad from demonstrating a folk dance. And that in Vukovar, an exhibition in which a Serbian woman appears in the main role is not allowed in November. Now November, as in some kind of Islamic calendar, has become the 'holy month'. So we no longer have holy days related to the fall of Vukovar, but we have a holy month, and I guess soon there will also be a holy year of piety and it will not be possible to do anything that someone will consider as an injury to the victims. What is sadly specific for Croatia is a kind of reverse chronology," says Puhovski.
He states that, according to the atmosphere in the public, Croatia today is more like 1991 than ten years ago. "Ten years ago, no one would have thought of declaring an entire month as a month in which such or such things should not be done, nor would anyone have dared to publicly say that the very fact that someone is a Serb offends the Vukovar majority. Why?" asks Puhovski rhetorically.
His answer is: because the atmosphere of approaching the events of the nineties is reproduced. On the one hand, this is reinforced by official propaganda, so every day a victim from the war is mentioned on the public service. And at the same time, this corresponds with the strengthening of militaristic hysteria in Western Europe, so Croatia suddenly found itself at the level of the most developed countries from its backwardness.
"We haven't had that militaristic hysteria for years, because we were tired of war. Now suddenly it appears, and from the highest place - from Brussels, Berlin, London. It gives a wind at the back of local actors who care about insisting over and over again on the heroic past and the war," explains Puhovski.
Commenting on the fact that Pula and Istria stand out from other parts of Croatia when it comes to tolerance towards minorities, not only national ones, Puhovski assesses: "After the 1950s, when the Italians were driven out, Istria had a tradition of peaceful coexistence of the Slavic and Croatian population. Then a lot of people from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina immigrated, so that from the 1970s tolerance was extended to the Italian population, which was not the case until then."
According to his judgment, the Italian minority in Croatia today has a higher reputation than the Croatian majority, because it is the only minority whose school members of the majority nation want to go to.
Actor Rade Šerbedžija, one of the participants of the Pula march who himself was a victim of nationalist hysteria at the beginning of the war in the nineties, which is why he lived abroad for a while, says that, according to his experience, Pula and Istria, as far as all that nationalism and chauvinism is concerned, are "the cleanest and most correct in the entire region."
He comments on the growth of neo-Nazi ideas with the increase of unhappiness in the world, when people justify their own failure with their nationalism and hatred for people of a different religion, of a different upbringing and of a different mentality.
"Istria has always stood out from the rest of Croatia. Istria remembers not only those Italians who were fascists, Istria remembers the Italians who were neighbors, best friends. Istria is used to multiculturalism. The mass of Istrians speak Italian, so that's not something bad, it's something good, noble. People in Istria have developed that cosmopolitanism, which I particularly like and that's why I have my house in Istria," Šerbedžija told DW.
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