Citizens against fascism

Ten days ago, in Zagreb, Puli, Rijeka i Zadar large anti-fascist protest marches were held, in which about 15 thousand people participated, which for the hitherto politically dormant civil society Croatia - is by no means a negligible number. Marches was organized by the platform “United against fascism", in order to warn the ruling political elites, but also to draw the attention of all citizens of the Republic of Croatia to the dangerous escalation of (neo)fascist tendencies in Croatian society, which is accompanied by the growing violence of various Ustasha-like, black-shirted groups "decorated" with phantoms on their heads: they attack and insult everyone who does not understand their radical right-wing "patriotic enthusiasm" and unhindered shouting "Za dom spremni" (ZDS), the Ustasha greeting that has become home as in In the parliament and in the public space, they threaten the right to deal with all the powerful enemies, the "haters" of Croatia, led by the Yugoslavs, the Serbs, the LGBT community, and similar vermin who do nothing but slander the "purity of the Homeland War", i.e. how to harm and destabilize the "one and only Croatia". actor Damir Markovina, on behalf of anti-fascist cultural workers and artist, read a cautionary text (by the writer Olja Savičević-Ivančević), with which he called, while it was not too late, "democratic and civil Croatia" to defend general human and civilizational values, saying: "We want a better Croatia, we don't want to be ashamed of our country, we don't want it to sink into fascism and barbarism. We are here to change the future of the Republic of Croatia, because the past is impossible to change, no matter how much it is not clear to some. And it was in that past that the anti-fascists wrote the most glorious chapters We refuse to be held hostage by those who want the war to never end. Today, thirty years after the war, we are hostages of the real haters of Croatia, war profiteers, preachers of hatred, hooligans and thugs who do their dirty work for them". In short: the mass demonstrations against fascism are a voice against the intolerable normalization of violence in Croatian society, against the relativization of the aggressive revisionist narrative that unscrupulously turns historical lies into truth and vice versa, and the uncontrolled spread of national intolerance, especially towards Serbs, as well as shameless imposition of the Ustasha, clero-fascist "image and frame" of default patriotism, following the model of the NDH and the rigid Stepin Church.

WEAK LOGIC

Croatia's greatest shame wants to be presented as the pinnacle of national history, the supreme natural good in which and when some "minor mistakes" (euphemism for Jasenovac, racial laws, genocide of Jews, Serbs and Roma, etc.) were made, they were actually a tribute to the war nightmare, the inexperience of the newly born NDH, and which the communists, at the end of the Second World War, as the greatest evildoers of the Croatian people, demonized everything just to cover up their own mass crimes. Bleiburg, the Way of the Cross and other execution sites throughout Yugoslavia where primarily the Croatian, Roman Catholic regiment suffered only because it did not want to renounce its national and historical identity. On this occasion, it is important to warn about the common political "span" according to which the extreme Croatian, i.e. Serbian right-wing operates even today, which they claim in unison: Tito and his partisan group are the biggest bloodthirsty of the Croatian, i.e. Serbian people against whom the communists committed the most terrible crimes, because in the name of strengthening "socialist Yugoslavia" it was necessary to weaken Croatia as much as possible to the detriment of Serbia and vice versa and thus "totally" defame the Ustasha and Chetnik movements as traitors and collaborators, i.e. "shorten for the head" every future attempt of some new affirmation of dangerous national ideas in the auspices of these two largest South Slavic peoples. A feeble-minded logic with which, without any relevant evidence, the opposing Croatian and Serbian nationalist visions of history are abundantly fed, according to which only the Croats, that is, only the Serbs, are its biggest victims.

photo: ap

AND WHERE ARE THE MAYORS??

Of course, these anti-fascist marches were secured by strong police forces, but numerous incidents were not absent. True, there were no direct physical confrontations, but the black shirts with phantoms did not stand still. In Zadar, they insulted and poured (red) paint on the participants of the march, in Rijeka, they threw firecrackers and torches at the column and even at peaceful passers-by, shouting "ZDS" while cursing, and the police did not react to all of this. Later it turned out that a dozen anti-anti-fascists were taken into custody, and Police Minister Božinović justified himself by saying that everything was recorded by cameras and that the police "will certainly, as always, do the job they are in charge of". If it really is like "until now", it means that no one will be punished. As "up to now", the black-shirted players will receive only mild reprimands (if even that), possibly "yellow", but certainly not "red" cards, which they have long deserved. While in Pula, to all praise, the mayor Peđa Grbin (until recently the head of the national SDP and their current parliamentary representative) was at the head of the anti-fascist column, unfortunately, this did not happen in Zagreb, Rijeka and Zadar. The mayors of the aforementioned cities did not feel the slightest need to join their fellow citizens in peaceful protests, after all, just as it did not occur to President Milanović, and even less to Prime Minister Plenković, although they certainly should have met there and thereby sent a clear anti-fascist message. The leader of Zagreb, Tomašević, excused himself that he did not want to overshadow the organizers of the march with his arrival, the mayor of Zadar, Šime Erlić from Hadze (former minister in Plenković's government), mockingly called the Social Democrats (SDP), the largest opposition party, that he wanted to use the protest demonstrations to score political points that they dramatically lack and that it is time for everyone who they do not like, or who do not think like them, to stop calling them Ustashas, ​​and it is about sincere patriots who are only bothered by the transformation of anti-fascist and gender-dubious and unacceptable parties into an open celebration of Yugoslavia (calling for its restoration under the guise of some kind of Balkan federation), the criminal Tito, defeated, radical leftist anarchist and communist ideologies, ignoring official national insignia and replacing them with a five-pointed star. In addition, some banners written in Cyrillic about one, common/unitary BiH language are perceived as a dangerous negation of the official Croatian language and national culture, and no normal person understands - the future law does not forbid it - why the Cyrillic, pentacle or flag, by the way, of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (which was flown during the Tuđman regime at state, military parades and marking anti-fascist celebrations), and not "hateful" Yugoslavia, were they crimes? The mayor of Rijeka, Iva Rinčić, lamented her absence in a nebulous way, saying that she clearly condemns the "ZDS" greeting, but even though she is an anti-fascist, she does not want to align herself with those who "step" under the five-pointed star, since by doing so they express regret for Yugoslavia, minimize the values ​​of the Homeland War, and above all, she said: the question arises as to what kind of anti-fascism the protesters are advocating: the communist one, designed in Stalin's ideological laboratory, or the real one, of the "western", liberal/humanist type that she herself accepts, but which obviously "does not belong" in the ranks of the current left and protestors. When Mrs. Rinčić declares that anti-fascism in our country has never been what it claims to be, she, even though she is a university teacher, does not seem to see, that is, rather she does not want to see how she actually feeds the revisionist neman, relativizes the foundations on which modern Europe rests, and then the Republic of Croatia as its integral part. interpretations.

photo: ap

COMIC TRAGEDY

While the Ustasha salute "ZDS" for Plenković and the right has "double connotations", the anti-fascist five-pointed star has only one, anti-Croatian connotation, which, let's recall, was carried by Franjo Tuđman, the "father of an independent and sovereign Republic of Croatia", at his head during the war as a partisan and later as Tito's general, and today it causes foaming hysteria among his followers, because mass crimes were committed under that symbol in Bleiburg and in Vukovar. But didn't the partisans liberate (i) Croatia from foreign invaders and Ustasha butchers in 1945 under the five-pointed sword? Our right-wing, as usual, pretends to be silly and imposes a new paradigm: the South-Communist movement under Tito's leadership and under the guise of anti-fascism did not liberate itself, but once again, now under the five-pointed star, occupied Croatia.

While Milanović, our good president of the country, still did not deign to comment on the march and the unpleasant events surrounding it, Prime Minister Plenković spoke up and in wonder, as naive as a French maid, asked: where do citizens, especially those of left origin, see non-insurgency when in fact it does not exist at all, and therefore does not represent any danger to the survival of the state, and they do not see the increasingly strong and radical leftist tendencies and groups, gathered also around anti-fascists, who are actually all they are more seriously trying to destabilize Croatia. If it wasn't tragic, it would be comical. So, the black shirts who hide their faces from phantom girls (why?) and shout "ZDS", they are patriots, and citizens who calmly, without hiding, publicly express their dissatisfaction and concern for the future of their children and the society in which they live, they are "disruptive factors" dangerous for the security and stability of the state led by Plenković and HDZ. According to the Prime Minister, HDZ is "the last barrier of normal Croatia" against all, especially left-wing extremism. After such words of unprecedented hypocrisy, every rational discussion loses its meaning, the only thing left is a juicy curse, with a single request addressed to the head of the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the HDZ: look in the mirror with your thug gang and you will see those who you claim do not exist in the Republic of Croatia. It is HDZ, under the leadership of Andrej Plenković, the generator of all those evils and demons, in a wide range, from corruption to (neo)ustatism, that beset Croatia today, and in this they are greatly helped by his benevolent nonchalance in the performance of his duties by President Milanović, who flirts and woos all parties on the current political scene, regardless of ideological sign, in order to (un)strengthen his, unfortunately, by nature of function, completely marginal influence. And even the few real powers he does not use for the benefit of the community, but exclusively for the benefit of his own, future political interests and the gains he is counting on after the end of his second (and last) presidential term. While Iva Rinčić says "yes" to anti-fascism, but at the same time wonders what kind of anti-fascism and thereby consciously blurs completely clear and clear things and concepts, the Minister of Defense Ivan Anušić, the leader of Hadeze's "angry" right, called the anti-fascists Yugoslavs, and the member of parliament, former mayor of Split Andro Krstulović Opara called them "Yugoslav vermin". The current Osijek-Baranja prefect (and former minister in Plenković's government) Nataša Tramišak asserted that there were never Ustashas or Nazis in our country, and if there were, the anti-fascists were worse than all of them together. And so they could line up right-wing pearls endlessly, but it is quite enough for the conclusion that Plenković shamelessly and cleverly denies: the extreme Croatian right is not only part of the current ruling coalition, but it also forms the very core of the HDZ, and for Plenković - regardless of the fact that (for now) he holds all the levers of power in his hands - a problem that he clearly does not know how to deal with. When, in order to retain power, he formed a coalition with the Ustashoids from the Homeland Movement (DP), Plenković (in)thought that his "Endehazian" concept could "crush" them, neutralize them, by making them to some extent "volunteer" by fulfilling the demands that he could control. But, as we can see, it was a bill without an innkeeper, because the "patriotic" ideas were wholeheartedly embraced by the Taliban from Hadze, and it is precisely them that Plenković fears the most. For the HDZ and the extreme right in general, Croatia is their war booty that they have no intention of giving up at any cost. After all, it was not for nothing that the citizens (re)baptized the Homeland Movement as the Property Movement in mocking jargon, and therefore it is never and never out of the question for them to face their own false, as well as real, historical truth.

REBELLION

Anti-fascist Croatia finally woke up and rebelled in order to oppose all these, not only historical, but also other powerful manipulations and malfeasance that have become the norm of our daily life. People are fed up with Plenković's kilava, double-connoted, rotten politics and (im)morality in Croatian society. Croatia is sliding faster and faster in a dangerous direction, hatred and lies are becoming normalized and apparently the time has come to stop being silent about this policy of the pests who carry it out. It is time to resolutely oppose the silencing, the increasingly frequent bans of various cultural events, first of all organized by the right-wing hated Serbian minority of the Republic of Croatia, racist attacks by black shirts on Serbs or foreign workers who irritate the "fetiv Rvata" with their skin color or slanted eyes, we must say enough to the various (pro)defence associations that have been doing nothing else for thirty years, but "sucking" money from the state, because "they created it" and that allegedly they have every right. Decent, anti-fascist Croatia finally reacted and showed its other, humane, better half of courage. Like what true patriotism is.