It all started in the early nineties, with a statement Franjo Tuđman in Zagreb's Lisinski, at the Parliament HDZ, that "NDH was not only a criminal creation, but also an expression of the historical aspirations of the Croatian people for their independent state". Those words caused the frenetic enthusiasm of those present, but also astonishment in a good part of the citizens of the Republic of Croatia at the time. Later, this bombastic and politically extremely dangerous sentence was "softened" by the leadership of the HDZ with various hypocritical explanations: it was allegedly taken out of context, it was forced by the danger of increasingly aggressive Greater Serbian pretensions towards the appropriation of parts of Croatian territory and the threatening war conflict, which soon came to an end and in which Yugoslavia fell apart in blood, but once "inserted" into the public space, over time, as is more than evident today, it completely "normalized". True, Tuđman, as a former partisan and Tito's general, but also as a pragmatic nationalist, personally insisted that the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia include the position(s) that anti-fascism is one of the foundations of Croatian statehood, and he was strongly opposed to uncontrolled surrender to Ustašoid resentments, so he strongly condemned the radical, national-chauvinist HSP (then Paragine Pravaše), which also organized its own paramilitary, black-shirt units (HOS). and he openly referred to the NDH and Ante Pavelić, and used Ustasha iconography abundantly, above all the infamous Za dom spremni (ZDS) greeting, and finally dealt with him.
READY FOR HOME
Under that greeting, mass brutal crimes against Serbs, Roma and Jews were (committed) during the Second World War in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which the Jasenovac death camp is a tragic and terrible symbol. But soon the forces of the HOS were incorporated into the regular army of the Republic of Croatia, and Tuđman himself, when he needed to, knew how to make a fool of himself and manipulate historical facts, ignore and even encourage various, numerous Ustašlukas within the HDZ, and then deny them and claim, lie that everything is wrong, misinterpreted. And that hypocritical strategy of "double connotations" grew over time into the foundation of HDZ's political practice, so that today under Plenković's leadership, it has spread and gained wings. An example of the (un)official legalization of the ZDS salute in the public life of the Republic of Croatia is disastrously illustrative; Namely, under the pressure of the increasingly present, creeping fascisization/Ustashaization of Croatian political life, Plenković, in order for the HDZ to remain firmly nationalist mainstream of the right, formed the famous Council for dealing with the consequences of the rule of non-democratic regimes, at which it was concluded that the said greeting, after the so-called The Homeland War (1991-1995) has a "double connotation". If it is used as an affirmation of the NDH and the Ustasha movement, then it is prohibited and punishable (according to the verdict of the Constitutional Court from May 2020). But when the HOS members who died defending the Republic of Croatia from Great Serbian aggression are commemorated with that salute, and (or) important anniversaries of their units are commemorated, then it is allowed, and thanks to their sacrifice, the ZDS was "washed" of Ustasha connotations, and even, to the shame of the truth and common sense, it was presented as the "old Croatian salute". Equally, if that greeting is incorporated into some artistic work, for example in Marko Perković Thompson's Ustashoid poems ("Cavoglave" and similar), then it has a "passage", no doubt that in this particular case it openly invokes anti-Serbism ("butchers" by Maks Luburić and similar abominations) and the most primitive criminal urges. Although the aforementioned Council's recommendations have no legal basis, the ZDS entered the public space with a bang, "normalized" and became a commonplace and a cover for a series of (neo)Ustasha scumbags of Croatian politics, which the general public hardly pays attention to anymore. And perhaps this "unbearable ease of indifference" towards evil is the worst thing that happened to Croatian society, which thus lost moral landmarks and values, or at least became deficient in those landmarks and contents. Before and during the recent spectacular concert by Thompson in Zagreb, an icon of the Croatian right but also of a far wider audience, it became notorious that ZDS is used in public without any hesitation and fear of possible legal sanctions. As in the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia, after all, in which representatives of the right are simply competing to see who will shout an embarrassing salute more energetically and loudly at the sessions of this upper house, and the Speaker of the Parliament, Jandroković from Hadeze, does not react to all this at all. Indeed.
THE PAIN OF ANTI-FASCISM
It seems that the creeping Ustashaization of the Republic of Croatia, which had its ups and downs, definitely came to life and gained the right of citizenship, flooding the public space, all with the extremely hypocritical explanation that it is not about any Ustashaization of society, but that the ZDS and other Ustasha insignia are actually an expression of authentic patriotism, i.e. that they are a concentration of axiologically based Croatia that needs and seeks greater and stronger cohesion. And, ZDS, Ustasha, NDH, despite all their "weaknesses and mistakes" that were "forced" by historical circumstances, they are precisely the national backbone of that unity, which we need so much, in which there is no place for those who do not think like us. In this context, anti-fascism is the biggest historical lie and paralysis, it is a communist invention, a criminal aegis under which Tito's Stalinists and partisans did not free, but actually enslaved the Croatian people again, now within the SFRY, exposed them to systematic Serb-communist humiliation, and subjugated Croatia to Greater Serbian interests and unscrupulous economic exploitation. And therefore, the Day of Anti-Fascist Struggle in the Republic of Croatia (marked on June 22 to commemorate the formation of a partisan detachment in the Brezovica forest) should be abolished in its current form, because it represents an instrument for the rehabilitation of communism and Yugoslavism, i.e. the totalitarian and anti-Croatian regime. The advocates of this initiative, parliamentary representatives of the right-wing DOMINA, ask themselves: if Yugoslavia was attacked on April 6, 1941, why did the communists go to the forest only on June 22, and immediately give the answer: they waited for the guidelines of the Comintern and Stalin, and only when Hitler attacked the USSR and violated the non-aggression pact between Moscow and Berlin (signed in August 1939), did they raise an uprising. Croats do not need a national holiday associated with anti-fascism, because its values are already woven into the Day of Statehood (May 30), i.e. the Day of Victory and Homeland Gratitude, which is celebrated on August 5, on the occasion of the military-police action Oluja, which was undoubtedly legitimate because it liberated the occupied territories of the Republic of Croatia, but at the same time undoubtedly carried within itself elements of ethnic cleansing of the resident Serbian population, which, after the HDZ came to power, refused to accept the new the Croatian state. At the same time, the Croatian right suggests that instead of the Day of Anti-Fascism, a new holiday called the Day of the Croatian Flag be introduced, and April 10 (when Pavelić's NDH was proclaimed in 1941) be the Memorial Day of Independence. And from the current commemorative day of Europe Day, which is celebrated on May 9, the part of the text in which it is said that it is "also the day of victory over fascism" should be removed. Of course, there is still the other, civilized and civilized, anti-fascist-oriented Croatia. As a reaction to all the ongoing Ustashoid "Thompsoniads", a famous film festival was opened in Pula with a performance Song of the Partisans (better known as Hello Beautiful), a song by Italian partisans and anti-fascists, which was met with applause from the audience. After all, as well as the message that the festival wanted to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazism. A gesture worthy of respect, but of which there are fewer and fewer in everyday life in the Republic of Croatia, because anti-fascism has been reduced to a mere occasional manifestation to which Plenković and the state leadership attach almost no importance: if it had not been designed by Tuđman himself, it would have ended up in "the dustbin of history" a long time ago. In such and such a context, the partisans present themselves as the Yugoslav army and the new oppressors of the Croatian people, while the defeated Ustasha and Home Guards are perceived as the real, authentic Croatian army, and all of this together forms a new-age prevailing nationalist image of pro-Ustasha kitsch in which Plenković and his company, with the silent assistance of the opposition, participate, and they themselves increasingly set the tone with their own initiatives.
ATTACK ON LANGUAGE AND MONUMENTS
After the initiative of Matica Hrvatska, on January 26, 2024, the Parliament adopted (I will say right away: bad) the Law on the Croatian language, which has a purely political, demonstrative character, because it does not oblige anyone to do anything and evidently has the sole function of cementing "difference" in relation to the Serbian language, which of course exists, but not to the extent that we would need translators for mutual communication, although we who live in Croatia have witnessed idiotic examples of subtitling of Serbian films shown in our cinemas or in TV programs. Cyrillic, which many in Croatia perceive as an "enemy" script, is an additional frustration of our "short" minds. Although smarter Croatian linguists warn that it is also part of our literary tradition, it is still suspicious as a "Chetnik script" in the function of enslaving and denationalizing the Croatian people. That's probably why Cyrillic books from public libraries were thrown away, or at best deposited in damp basements of these institutions. And that is why the Government of the Republic of Croatia established the Council for the Croatian Language, which should care for and promote the culture of the language in official and public use, protect its wealth and diversity of dialect idioms, and their functional application. True, it is of an advisory nature, but it is clear from the content of the work that it has a purist task, that is, like Kerber, to watch over the purity of the Croatian language and move it to the standards of its originality, which during the NDH took on grotesque, caricature forms. Only, who ever learned anything from history?
Some time before that, in April, the Parliament passed the Law on Cemeteries, which foresees the "removal of gravestones and all other monuments erected after May 30, 1990 that in any way glorify the Serbian aggression against the Republic of Croatia", because it insults our veterans and defames the dignity of the victim. This law (under the control of the state) will be implemented by local (self-)government bodies and "inappropriate" monuments should be removed within the next six months. It is clear that the allusion is primarily to the tomb of Vukašin Šoškocanin, the former commander of the rebel Serbs in Borovo Selo (who allegedly "drowned" in the Danube under unknown circumstances), on which there is a truly provocative epitaph, but initiatives have already been launched in some areas to remove the Cyrillic inscriptions from certain tombs, which in themselves are taken as evidence of "glorification of Great Serbian aggression". Well, order should really be made on that issue, but I doubt that the law will refer to a series of newly erected monuments to Croatian soldiers, in fact Ustashas who died in the Second World War, which are often referred to as "victims of Bleiburg and the Stations of the Cross". The same goes for those monuments where figures from the NDH era are glorified directly, without any detours, which multiply to the extent that monuments, memorial plaques, statues and other anti-fascist memorabilia were massively (several thousand of them) systematically and draconianly destroyed, devastated, forcibly removed from public spaces, and that, although the perpetrators are generally known, no one was ever held accountable.
POLARIZATION OF CROATIAN SOCIETY
Recently (June 5, 2025), HAZU held a scientific meeting dedicated to the Croatian historical coat of arms and on that occasion proclaimed a Declaration in which this highest Croatian scientific institution highlighted its position on the various versions of the Croatian coat of arms: the use of the official coat of arms of the Republic of Croatia is prescribed by law, but, as Dr. Mario Jareb, "the checkered coat of arms with a white or red initial field was formed as a national symbol during the 20th century, until the period of the NDH and later the modern Croatian state", and that the color of the initial field throughout history was not treated as an ideological marker and in this context the coat of arms of the Republic of Croatia from 1990 cannot be identified with the coat of arms of the NDH. But opposition MP Anka Mrak Taritaš did not allow herself to be seduced by "academic" shenanigans: "One of the clearest symbols of the NDH is relativized by the quasi-scientific labeling of academics... and after listening to the political relativization of the coat of arms with the initial white field, now our most respected academic institution is rehabilitating it." But the "icing on the cake" is the newly formed Commission for determining the fate of victims of crimes committed immediately after the Second World War, headed by the mayor of Vukovar, Ivan Penava, otherwise the leader of the radical right-wing Homeland Movement (DP), a coalition partner of the HDZ, thanks to which Prime Minister Plenković has a minimal majority in Parliament. At the request of the DP, the Government established a Commission whose task, purpose, and even more the methodology of work represent a great unknown. The question is: how will this body determine the fate of the victims who were killed by communists and partisans immediately after the end of the Second World War? General responsibilities are prescribed (consideration of historical circumstances, facts related to the suffering of the victims, etc.), but how all this will be concretely determined 80 years after the end of the war, remains a puzzle. Mission impossible, but who cares? And if we stop pretending to be silly and (or) naive, the task is clear: to rewrite history according to the Ustaše, to at least equate anti-fascism and the Ustaše ideology and the state, and thus to cover up the terrible crimes of the NDH in Jasenovac as a death camp with Bleiburg. Therefore, to "counter the victims of Jasenovac", without going into the real basis and the nexus of partisan retaliation, which is more than a miserable and transparent game.
Ombudsman Tena Šimonović Einwalter - whose reports for 2023 and 2024 (with over 170 recommendations) on the disastrous state of human rights in the Republic of Croatia Plenković's majority in the Parliament still did not even consider - after Thompson's concert in Zagreb, she publicly "accused" the government of not, nor does it want to, clearly and decisively define itself according to the Ustaste, which "insulted" the Prime Minister so much that he told her that she should know that is at the head of the mentioned institution thanks only and exclusively to his good will. Moreover, after the celebratory celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Storm in Knin, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković shamelessly told the ombudsman (and all those who think similarly) that all those who went to Thompson's concert (over half a million people in Zagreb and about 200000 people in Sinj) "understood the foundations of Croatian statehood". So that these are the "real" Croats, and Marko Perković and his apology for the Ustasha are a measure of pure, unadulterated Croats. Whether someone likes it or not, it's clear that it couldn't be clearer: the polarization of Croatian society is intensifying with a clear tendency of a radical (s)move to the right, which is actually (still cautiously, so that the Vlachs don't get the idea) equated with Ustaštvo. The hitherto poorly concealed, creeping flirtation with the Ustasha of a significant part of Croatian society is growing faster and stronger into an open relationship, under the clear patronage of the ruling structures. Where it leads and with what consequences, only fools and crooks don't know and/or don't want to know.
The author is a Croatian philosopher and former parliamentary representative
