Ustasha movement it remained recorded in history as the absolute worst and darkest phenomenon in these areas. It was created in 1929 as an extreme political organization of Croatian fascists headed by Anto Pavelić. They fed on the repression of the Karađorđević regime against Croats, which they used to incite hatred towards to the Serbs and to build their own political capital on that hatred. They never gained more popularity among the citizens, but they used the Second World War and a complex of historical circumstances to become Hitler's mainstay in the Balkans.
With Hitler's decision, they created their own quasi-state, which never functioned in the full sense of the word because - first of all - it was based on terror and violence, which, quite logically, produced enormous resistance and an uprising of a large part of the population, both Serbian and Croatian.
In the very foundations of the Ustasha movement, hatred towards Serbs, Jews and Roma was embedded, which would produce an attempt to destroy these three groups during the war through the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, the radical extremism of the Ustasha movement attracted the worst that Croatian society could produce, so psychopathic personalities were given the opportunity within that movement to express their full potential, freed from the fear of sanctions. That is why the crimes of the Ustasha entered the annals as particularly cruel atrocities, which were feared even by their German masters.
Of course, that was not enough for Hitler's Germany to stop them, their outrage hypocritically stopped at the methods, as they Central European arrogantly believed that suffocating people in trucks was more civilized than Balkan murders with knives and sledgehammers. Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as Croats and Muslims who opposed the Ustasha movement, were killed by the Ustasha, who for this purpose organized their system of death camps such as Jasenovac or Jadovno.
The undivided negative perception of the Ustasha is also evidenced by the fact that the partisans usually shot them immediately after their capture. Chetniks and Home Guards were often citizens mobilized by those who presented themselves as legitimate governments - the refugee government in London or Pavelić's in Zagreb - so, in the event that there were no accusations of crimes, they were usually released home after being captured by the partisans.
The Ustashas, however, had a different treatment. The assumption was that by joining such a movement, a person rejected his own humanity, so such prisoners were mercilessly shot. It is assumed that a good part of the captured home guards who were shot by the partisans in 1945 died because they were wearing Ustasha uniforms.
photo: marija janković...
STUDENTS AS "SERBIAN USTASHES"
Serbian nationalists further reinforced this rightly acquired dark label of Ustasha by inventing fantastic numbers of Ustasha victims or even more unscrupulous methods of killing. It was a campaign that, since the 1980s, was led first by nationalists within church, cultural and scientific circles, and then by Milošević's regime when he decided to marry the ideology of nationalism and use it for his own purposes. Ustaše became a derogatory term for all Croats and a means of spreading hatred and vengeful mood, which would be the fuel for the wars of the 1990s. It was already a relativization of the real evil of the Ustasha movement. However, the successors of Milošević's policy who took power in Serbia in 2012 went, as in everything else, much deeper in that direction, digging a few more layers below what we thought was an unreachable bottom.
Metropolitan David of the Kruševac Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church published a text on his official website on February 25, 2025, in which he called the students "Serbian Ustashas". It was shortly after the visit of President Aleksandar Vučić. From then until today, this rhetoric has been completely taken over by the Vučić regime, marketing it non-stop through the media it controls. So, through almost all electronic and the vast majority of printed media. Metropolitan David's text provoked quite fierce reactions at the time because it seemed excessive even for the standard poisonous radical vocabulary. And six bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church publicly reacted by condemning this statement.
Today, the situation has changed drastically. Not only does nobody react to statements about students as Ustasha, but they have become a standard part of the political repertoire. For the first time in its history, Serbia got the "Ustasha".
Calling students, the opposition or anyone in Serbia Ustashas should be so meaningless that it belongs to the ranks of bizarre incidents that hardly anyone pays attention to. However, all of Serbia is covered with slogans that the students are Ustasha or that it is the rector of Belgrade University, Vladan Đokić. Officials of the government routinely use this word, even the highest ones like the mayor of Niš or numerous SNS councilors throughout Serbia.
The rhetoric has become so normalized that the SNS councilor in the city assembly of Novi Sad recently told the opposition: "You have slaughtered Serbs enough!". The degree of abnormality of this sentence is difficult to describe even from Vučić's perspective, a deeply poisoned and value-disturbed country. But she is there - both the sentence and its proud owner. And she won't lose a hair for this kind of insult, which means that the woman only correctly carried out the slogan that they are critics of the Ustasha regime. If they are Ustashe, then it is logical that they are slaughtering Serbs.
THE ROLE OF CROATIA IN VUČIĆ'S POLICY
Psychologist Žarko Korać, talking about all this, said that you have to be a "Vučić fanatic to believe in such nonsense."
However, the government not only continues the campaign, but also intensifies it. Which means that someone in Vučić's team has judged that it is worthwhile to sharpen social divisions to the end by bringing us to a situation where violence becomes everyday, whether it is carried out by criminals loyal to the authorities in civilian clothes or by those in police and other official uniforms. It is worth analyzing why this is so and what the consequences are for all of us. Vučić's regime, like every autocratic regime in the world, rests on spreading fear.
Autocrats frighten their citizens with a constant threat from outside, the imminent danger of war or any other disaster that would make people forget their own life concerns and turn to a strong leader. Such a leader offers people basic security - he is the one who prevents divisions within society, which in autocracy are associated with weakness; he is the one who defends the country from external threats because others fear or respect him and thus deters imaginary opponents from attacking; he is the one who has the role of a father, a caring master who is above political divisions and who cares for everyone, in short - strict but fair.
All these are phrases that under normal circumstances are more difficult to pass, because, first of all, mature democratic societies recognize and debunk them, more or less successfully. In moments of crisis and uncertainty, the situation changes even in democratic societies. In transitional, pre-political societies like ours, the situation is even worse, and the autocrat's job is made easier. That's how Vučić had the opportunity to scare people for years. The front pages of the tabloids were constantly talking about the war that had just begun. Every crisis in the world has been used to present itself as the beginning of the apocalypse. Often with the addition that Serbia is one of the few that has a chance to get out. You guessed it - because of the master's wise policy.
If there was no world crisis, then a regional crisis was invented. You can't count the front pages and television primetime news in which Croatia almost attacked Serbia. Croats are buying rockets, which, according to experts from Vučić's tabloids, can reach Niš. Croats are forming a military alliance with Kosovo and Albania, and such an alliance can only serve one purpose. Croats are arming themselves, increasing their army, lobbying traditional Serbian enemies around the world, sending their spies...
Croatia is not the only one that, in this imaginary world of Aleksandar Vučić, threatens Serbia. There are also Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, and Bulgarians can always stab the proverbial knife in the back.
However, Croats are the most suitable for propaganda purposes. The latter are somehow too weak and we are used to looking down on them, even with a touch of racism, at least when it comes to Albanians. These are not enemies worthy of one Serbia from the nationalist imaginary, even when they have the support of their "traditional" principals from important world capitals.
Croats are a nation with which Serbian nationalists are often compared. They are members of NATO and the EU, they have always been a standard part of the conspiratorial repertoire of the "Comintern and the Vatican", and there is also a burdensome historical legacy that can be exploited indefinitely in the form of the already mentioned Ustashas. That is why Croatia was chosen by the regime as an obvious target and declared a dark force behind every rebellion against the corrupt Serbian regime.
photo: marija janković...
SOCIETY BEFORE SHOOTING
The student and civil rebellion against the system that Vučić built in Serbia, a system that leaves its bloody traces everywhere, was incorporated into this narrative in the regime's propaganda. Since the enemies have allegedly threatened until now, they have now taken a step towards the realization of the threat by organizing everything of their worth in Serbia to rebel against the regime. Thus, the protests became part of an international conspiracy to weaken Vučić, who in that narrative is equal to Serbia, and the Croats are the punching fist that organizes, trains and finances these protests.
Officials and bots of the ruling parties then began to see Croats everywhere, vehicles with Croatian license plates at protests, and even Croatian flags. The rhetoric deepened over time and reached more and more absurd proportions. As the regime weakened and increasingly entered the position of a cornered wounded beast, so did the plans turn into elements. Radical stormtroopers, otherwise not very well known for their intelligence and education, took the initiative, partly out of fear for their own positions, partly out of a desire to please their bosses. Just as overzealous raiders of the regime broke the head of a female student in Novi Sad and thereby caused the fall of Miloš Vučević's government, progressives throughout the country began to allow themselves an excess of creativity in implementing Vučić's policies. This, now completely crazy rhetoric, including the message of the unfortunate Novi Sad councilwoman, can be attributed to that. In their minds - the critics of the regime have really become Ustashas, because it is probably necessary to first convince yourself of something so senseless that you could publicly advocate such an idea.
The consequences of such rhetoric are obvious. Society is about to be shot, and political opponents have been made enemies, and they are such that it is okay to shoot them. Smashed heads, calls for ethnic cleansing, uttering sentences that make people feel ashamed even when they are robbed of a beer in front of a cooperative - all this is the reality of Vučić's Serbia today. But there is another consequence, important for everyone who tries to learn something from history. By lightly using the word Ustasha for everyone and everything, that term is so trivialized that it has almost no weight. If the Ustashas are everyone who is worth something - from rectors, professors, students, to cultural workers, civil society, journalists and critically oriented politicians - then it is probably not something very terrible. The true meaning of the word Ustasha is slowly starting to fade and disappear, especially among the younger generations. This is a process that started back in the 1980s by labeling all Croats as Ustasha. Today, when the majority of Serbian citizens joined them in "Ustašluk", the concept has completely lost its weight. This is how the radicals, not for the first time, also mutilated history.
BATTLE AGAINST COMMON SENSE
The combination of inertia, which logically led from the story of Croatia as an enemy to Ustasha students, and radical irresponsibility, which further radicalized an already sick political position, resulted in what we have today. And we have a society so divided, angry and charged with tensions that it is no longer even news that someone's head has been smashed. Turning society into a wolf's den, where the law of the stronger rules and where there are no basic values that hold a community together - such as solidarity and empathy - is a task that the Vučić regime is trying to bring to the very end. War has been declared on entire areas from which the regime expects any resistance, such as education, culture, professional media or civil society. In that order, students and all critics of the regime are enemies, even to the level of the Ustasha.
Part of the supporters of Vučić's regime convinced themselves that all this is true, primarily because they are trying to protect what they have been stealing for years. They are currently living their own dream, and one that they never dared to dream. Despite their very limited abilities and lack of knowledge and education, they became rich and powerful, enjoying the privileges of the ruling caste. They certainly have something to defend. The story of the alleged Ustashas helps them in this. No matter how unscrupulous a man is, he must find some justification for his own immoral actions. The government that gave them the opportunity to steal other people's lives and live their dream also gave them the appropriate justification for defending such a position. That is why such a story persists despite common sense.
After all, Vučić also rules despite common sense. Society needs to organize itself as well as possible and regain its sanity, removing the system that brings it to the brink of survival. The student movement moved the country in that direction. It would be good if we all help, as much as we can. And let's return the Ustasha to where they belong - in history textbooks and academic papers.
The author is a historian
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