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Dylan Versus The Ustachi (“Bob Dylan’s Nightmare”)

 

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: For decades, we’ve been research­ing the Croa­t­ian fas­cists known as Ustachi. (There are var­i­ous spellings–one will see “Ustashe,” and oth­er vari­ants.) Hold­ing sway in Croa­t­ia after the Ger­man inva­sion of Yugoslavia, they were sup­port­ed by the Vat­i­can and incor­po­rat­ed into the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion after the war.

Fol­low­ing the breakup of Yugoslavia, Croa­t­ia man­i­fest­ed “neo-Ustachi” ele­ments returned to pow­er in Croa­t­ia. A Croa­t­ian foot­ball (socci­er) play­er recent­ly stirred up those revan­chist sen­ti­ments fol­low­ing Croa­t­i­a’s defeat of Ice­land in a World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match. Joe Šimu­nić led the crowd in the “Za Dom Sprem­ni” Ustachi World War II polit­i­cal cheeer.

In an inter­view in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine, Bob Dylan made a ref­er­ence to the Ustachi slaugh­ter of Serbs (as well as Jews and gyp­sies) by the Ustachi. Sub­se­quent­ly, Dylan was charged with a hate crime by France/EU! A num­ber of thoughts in con­nec­tion with this:

  • Bob Dylan is an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, not a cit­i­zen of any EU coun­try.
  • Rolling Stone is an Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tion.
  • What Dylan said is not a vio­la­tion of Amer­i­can law.
  • The French indict­ment would thus have pro­found inter­na­tion­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions if it were allowed to stand.
  • None of the sto­ries about the French indict­ment have pro­vid­ed his­tor­i­cal back­ground.

 

“Bob Dylan Charged With ‘Incit­ing Hate’ Under French Law” by Allan Kozinn; New York Times [blogs]; 12/03/2013.

EXCERPT: To peo­ple who fol­low the pro­nounce­ments of Bob Dylan, his com­ment in a Rolling Stone inter­view in Sep­tem­ber 2012 sug­gest­ing that Amer­i­can blacks could sense whether whites had slave-mas­ter blood “just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croa­t­ian blood” may have seemed just the sort of vaporous­ly impres­sion­is­tic, emo­tion­ally point­ed kind of thing that Mr. Dylan has been known to say for decades.

But to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Coun­cil of the Croa­t­ian Com­mu­nity and Insti­tu­tions in France, an orga­ni­za­tion that looks after the inter­ests of France’s 30,000 Croa­t­ians, those were fight­ing words. Now they have led to Mr. Dylan, who built his ear­ly career singing songs that denounced racism, being charged under a French law pro­hibit­ing “pub­lic insult and incit­ing hate.”

On Tues­day, Agnes Thibault-Lecuiv­re, a spokes­woman for the prosecutor’s office in Paris, told The Asso­ci­ated Press that the French gov­ern­ment had filed pre­lim­i­nary charges. Mr. Dylan’s last encounter with the French gov­ern­ment was just over two weeks ago, when he was award­ed the Legion of Hon­or, France’s high­est prize.

The French gov­ern­ment must have known that the charges were brew­ing when they gave Mr. Dylan the award: Vlatko Mar­ic, the sec­re­tary gen­eral of the coun­cil, announced in Novem­ber 2012 that his group had filed a com­plaint with the French gov­ern­ment. That com­plaint led to the cur­rent charges. . . .

“Croa­t­ian Play­er and Fans Cel­e­brate World Cup Birth with Pro-Nazi Chant” by Bar­ry Petch­esky; deadspin.com; 11/20/2013.

EXCERPT: This is video of Aus­tralian-born Croa­t­ia defend­er Joe Šimu­nić lead­ing fans in a chant after Croa­t­ia beat Ice­land to qual­i­fy for the world cup. “For the home­land,” Šimu­nić calls, and the crowd responds, “Ready!” But it’s more com­pli­cat­ed than that.

The salute—“Za dom spremni”—dates back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, giv­ing Šimu­nić plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty. But it only became famous, and noto­ri­ous, dur­ing the Sec­ond World War as a sym­bol of the Ustaše, a fas­cist and ultra­na­tion­al­ist group that ruled Croa­t­ia as a Nazi pup­pet state and advo­cat­ed and under­took geno­cide against Serbs, Jews, and Romani.

Think of it as the equiv­a­lent of “Sieg Heil”. The Croa­t­ian Con­sti­tu­tion does, ban­ning it in cer­tain instances. So do FIFA and UEFA, who have pre­vi­ous­ly fined the Croa­t­ian Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion for the chan­t’s use by fans, often accom­pa­nied by the Nazi salute. (As in many East­ern and South­east­ern Euro­pean coun­tries, soc­cer and ultra­na­tion­al­ism have a cozy, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship.) . . . .

. . . . . Damnit, we could have had adorable lit­tle Ice­land in the World Cup instead. Now we just get fas­cism.

Discussion

3 comments for “Dylan Versus The Ustachi (“Bob Dylan’s Nightmare”)”

  1. G’day Dave,
    Do you know about that man?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAmqiXoLsoA
    Right at the begin­ning, in the first minute or so he says jour­nal­ists are not always to blame since it is broad­cast­ers which con­trol what comes out — ok so far — then adds that in the case of the BBC, it is owned by Siemens. What ??!! Did I hear that right?

    Posted by de_lec / goelette (changing to the latter!) | December 7, 2013, 1:15 pm
  2. Also, a piece of news from pret­ty Switzer­land: l’Af­faire has been “white gold” to Swiss data host­ing com­pa­nies (using bunkers under the Snowy peaks) which have since tripled their busi­ness.

    http://www.lematin.ch/high-tech/web/snowden-beurre-hebergeurs-suisses/story/17612911

    Will keep an eye peeled about the Dylan sto­ry, although with France at such a his­tor­i­cal low point, and so much incom­pe­tence and ridicu­lous­ness from the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, I won­der if it should be tak­en all that seri­ous­ly? But the EU con­nex­ion is sig­nif­i­cant of course, espe­cial­ly giv­en Croa­t­i­a’s recent join­ing of the EU.

    Posted by goelette | December 7, 2013, 1:48 pm
  3. When Croa­t­i­a’s new gov­ern­ment was assem­bled back in Decem­ber, the out­go­ing prime min­is­ter, Zoran Milanovic, had a rather frank way of char­ac­ter­iz­ing the new gov­ern­ment: crim­i­nal and pro-Ustachi:

    B92

    Ex-PM blasts new author­i­ties as “crim­i­nal, pro-Ustasha”

    Zoran Milanovic said on Mon­day he was con­cerned that “peo­ple from a crim­i­nal, spy­ing, and pro-Ustasha coali­tion” are com­ing to pow­er in Croa­t­ia.

    Tan­jug Mon­day, Decem­ber 28, 2015 | 13:42

    The leader of the SDP, who until today served as Croa­t­i­a’s prime min­is­ter, spoke as his par­ty joined the oppo­si­tion, and as the Croa­t­ian par­lia­ment elect­ed its new pres­i­dent — while prime min­is­ter-elect Tihomir Oreskovic said he was con­vinced he would put togeth­er a new gov­ern­ment with­in 30 days.

    Last week, post elec­tion nego­ti­a­tions between SDP and an inde­pen­dent list dubbed “Most” (“Bridge”) broke down just as it seemed an agree­ment would be reached to make the Most leader, Bozo Petrov, Croa­t­i­a’s next prime min­is­ter. Instead, Petrov struck a deal with the HDZ-led Patri­ot­ic Coali­tion, giv­ing Oreskovic the chance to form the coun­try’s next cab­i­net.

    “There are some things in life we can­not choose,” Milanovic told reporters on Mon­day, adding that “this gov­ern­ment is the choice of the Most list — one they will have to live with.”

    Milanovic accused Zagreb May­or Milan Bandic of being “respon­si­ble” for the out­come of the post-elec­tion talks, and described him as a man accused of seri­ous crimes.

    Accord­ing to the for­mer prime min­is­ter, Croa­t­ia has reached “the nadir, in the demo­c­ra­t­ic sense.”

    “This is not a return to the old — this sit­u­a­tion is worse than the old,” he said, adding, “no mal­ice or irony intend­ed, we have a prob­lem.”

    “Ours is a small coun­try, we are not rich, and the way we are rep­re­sent­ed abroad is very impor­tant — whether or not as polit­i­cal­ly strong per­sons, and when that is lack­ing they know there are no clear demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es in the coun­try, and that some­body else is mak­ing the deci­sions,” Milanovic stat­ed.

    As for the Most coali­tion, Milanovic said:

    “That’s their choice, they will have to live with it, get up and pray to God or to what­ev­er they believe in. The coali­tion they chose, which was unfor­tu­nate­ly put togeth­er by Bandic, who is accused, and by for­mer chiefs of secret ser­vices, con­tains trans­par­ent­ly Ustasha ele­ments.”

    The Ustasha regime was in pow­er in the Nazi-allied Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia (NDH) dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    Milanovic also said that his par­ty will “con­tin­ue to fight and not give up” while in oppo­si­tion, and that the coun­try’s new author­i­ties are being formed “thanks to (par­lia­ment) rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ fear of repeat­ed par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.”

    ...

    “That’s their choice, they will have to live with it, get up and pray to God or to what­ev­er they believe in. The coali­tion they chose, which was unfor­tu­nate­ly put togeth­er by Bandic, who is accused, and by for­mer chiefs of secret ser­vices, con­tains trans­par­ent­ly Ustasha ele­ments.”
    So was that just sour grapes by the leader of the pow­er los­ing pow­er, or might Croa­t­i­a’s new gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly be pro-Ustachi? Well, if the selec­tion of Zlatko Hasan­be­gov­ic, the new cul­ture min­is­ter, is any indi­ca­tion of the gov­ern­men­t’s Ustachi sen­ti­ments, it’s pret­ty pro-Ustachi:

    Balkan Tran­si­tion­al Jus­tice

    What were the Ustasa for Min­is­ter Hasan­be­gov­ic?

    It is hard to see how Croatia’s cul­ture min­is­ter can be called an ‘anti-Fas­cist’, giv­en the evi­dence of his unam­bigu­ous nature of his links to the far-right over many years.

    Hrvo­je Sim­ice­vic Zagreb
    12 Feb 16

    In the text pub­lished for a pro-Fas­cist bul­letin in his stu­dent days in 1996, Croatia’s new Cul­ture Min­is­ter wrote about the wartime Fas­cist Ustasa fight­ers as “vic­tims” and “mar­tyrs”.

    Zlatko Hasan­be­gov­ic unam­bigu­ous­ly glo­ri­fied the Ustasa and advo­cat­ed the estab­lish­ment of the Greater Croa­t­ia in the month­ly mag­a­zine, “The Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia”, pub­lished in the 1990s.

    He was pho­tographed in it with Mladen Schwartz, Velimir Bujanec, and the son-in-law of for­mer Fas­cist dic­ta­tor and Ustasa leader Ante Pavel­ic. In one pho­to­graph he wears an Ustasa cap.

    The then edi­tor-in-chief of the month­ly, Srecko Psenic­nik, was the son-in-law of Ante Pavel­ic, and Pres­i­dent of the Croa­t­ian Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment, HOP, a pro-Ustasa par­ty found­ed by Pavel­ic.

    In 1996, Hasan­be­gov­ic wrote at least two arti­cles for the month­ly that prop­a­gat­ed Pavelic’s work and ideas and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly denied the crimes com­mit­ted by the Pavelic’s pup­pet state, The Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia, NDH.

    As a his­to­ry stu­dent at the Fac­ul­ty of Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties, Hasan­be­gov­ic wrote about the his­to­ry of Mus­lims in Croa­t­ia, empha­siz­ing their polit­i­cal and social renais­sance dur­ing the reign of Pavel­ic and under the NDH.

    In a short com­men­tary, illus­trat­ed by a pho­to­graph of the open­ing of the mosque in Zagreb fea­tur­ing Pavel­ic in the com­pa­ny of Mus­lim dig­ni­taries from the Ustasa move­ment, Hasan­be­gov­ic crit­i­cized the sep­a­ra­tion of Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina from Croa­t­ia.

    He said the advo­cates of this pol­i­cy were “abus­ing the hon­ourable sym­bols and names of Ustasa heroes whose bones… are now turn­ing in their graves from the shame and mis­ery inflict­ed upon them fifty years lat­er by their so-called fol­low­ers”.

    As an alter­na­tive to those fake fol­low­ers, Hasan­be­gov­ic offers the Ustasa “heroes and mar­tyrs” who, like the author, are dri­ven by a desire to cre­ate a Greater Croa­t­ia as envi­sioned by Pavel­ic.

    “In the name of those true heroes… who gave their lives for our Home­land… we, the true Croa­t­ian nation­al­ists… the deceived and defeat­ed Mus­lims and Catholics, should expose those hyp­ocrites and moral freaks for who they real­ly are, and show the peo­ple the way out of this dark tun­nel towards peace and uni­ty and reli­gious tol­er­ance which can only hap­pen in a tru­ly free and uni­fied Home­land, stretch­ing from the Mura, Dra­va and Dri­na rivers to the Adri­at­ic,” he wrote.

    The Min­is­ter is list­ed as an asso­ciate writer for the NDH pub­li­ca­tion from April to Novem­ber 1996, but fea­tured as an author already in the Feb­ru­ary edi­tion of the NDH as well as, in the first edi­tion print­ed in Croa­t­ia after being issued abroad for many years.

    Psenic­nik, pres­i­dent of the HOP, had man­aged to trans­fer pub­li­ca­tion of the NDH from Cana­da to Croa­t­ia, and reg­is­ter the HOP as a legit­i­mate par­ty in Croa­t­ia, despite its polit­i­cal plat­form affil­i­at­ing it to the Ustasa move­ment and to the acts of ter­ror­ism.

    The par­ty is still active in Croa­t­ia and it still pro­motes the polit­i­cal agen­da of Pavel­ic. Its activ­i­ty is not sub­stan­tial, but accord­ing to the lat­est data, it has 650 mem­bers.

    In his most recent appear­ances, Hasan­be­gov­ic has denied his pre­vi­ous involve­ment with HOP. How­ev­er, in one of the pho­tographs fea­tured in the NDH month­ly, he is described as a “young HOP mem­ber”. In oth­er pho­tographs, he is described as a mem­ber of a par­ty called the Young Croa­t­ian Right­ists, head­ed at the time by Velimir Bujanec.

    He was also pho­tographed in the com­pa­ny of Mladen Schwa­trz, a right-wing polit­i­cal activist who in the 1990s advo­cat­ed a Fas­cist regime in Croa­t­ia. What­ev­er the for­mal nature of his con­nec­tions to Pavelic’s and Bujanec’s par­ties, the fact is that Hasan­be­gov­ic had inten­sive social con­tacts with some of their most promi­nent mem­bers and attend­ed events orga­nized by the rad­i­cal right.

    The pho­tographs in the month­ly cor­rob­o­rate this. They show Hasan­be­gov­ic protest­ing against the 1995 Day­ton Agree­ment on Bosnia, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Bleiburg com­mem­o­ra­tion, and pos­ing on the Split prom­e­nade wear­ing an Ustasa cap.

    At Bleiburg, he was pho­tographed with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of HOP and with Psenic­nik, author of the text accom­pa­ny­ing the pho­tographs. In a report from Bleiburg, illus­trat­ed by this and oth­er pho­tos with numer­ous Ustasa insignia, Psenic­nik open­ly glo­ri­fies the Ustasha move­ment.

    In Split, Hasan­be­gov­ic pos­es with five young men all described as “young nation­al­ists” in the cap­tion. Among them is Bujanec, who in the fea­tured inter­view pro­claims: “The future is ours”, just before the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Octo­ber 1995.

    In all three pho­tos, Hasan­be­gov­ic is in the com­pa­ny of Bujanec, a man who would lat­er become a mem­ber of the HOP youth frac­tion, a board rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the NDH mag­a­zine and their pub­lic rela­tions offi­cer.

    At that time, Bujanec, who now hosts the TV show Buji­ca, was one of the many mem­bers of the Croa­t­ian Par­ty of Right, HSP, and of the Young Croa­t­ian Right­ists who sub­se­quent­ly joined the HOP. Pavelic’s son-in-law, Psenic­nik, wrote in NDH that there were many rea­sons for their mas­sive trans­fer to HOP, but the key rea­son was dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the fact that Pavelic’s pho­tos had been removed from all the HSP’s offices.

    ....

    The recent­ly appoint­ed min­is­ter spent a con­sid­er­able part of his polit­i­cal life in extrem­ist polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and has nev­er dis­tanced him­self from this past. Instead, he has direct­ed his efforts towards deny­ing that his state­ments rep­re­sent rel­a­tiviza­tion of World War II, claim­ing that all of his state­ments have been tak­en out of con­text.

    The con­text, how­ev­er, is that Hasan­be­gov­ic was a con­trib­u­tor to the month­ly mag­a­zine called “Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia”, that he glo­ri­fied the Ustasa under the edi­to­r­i­al author­i­ty of Pavelic’s son-in-law, that he called the Ustasas “heroes and mar­tyrs”, and that he posed in an Ustasha cap.

    When recent­ly asked about the con­tro­ver­sies about Hasan­be­gov­ic, Prime Min­is­ter Oreskovic stat­ed that Hasan­be­gov­ic was an anti-Fas­cist and reit­er­at­ed this state­ment more recent­ly when he said that Hasan­be­gov­ic was in fact a “devot­ed anti-Fas­cist”. After the most recent rev­e­la­tions, we are eager to hear once again what the Prime Min­is­ter has to say.

    “The recent­ly appoint­ed min­is­ter spent a con­sid­er­able part of his polit­i­cal life in extrem­ist polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and has nev­er dis­tanced him­self from this past. Instead, he has direct­ed his efforts towards deny­ing that his state­ments rep­re­sent rel­a­tiviza­tion of World War II, claim­ing that all of his state­ments have been tak­en out of con­text.”
    That cer­tain­ly does­n’t bode well for Croa­t­i­a’s cul­tur­al zeit­geist. Nei­ther does this:

    Balkan Tran­si­tion­al Jus­tice

    Croatia’s ‘Banal’ Fas­cism on Dis­play at Israel Match

    The Ustasa chant heard at Wednesday’s match, which the PM attend­ed and the media ignored, is the result of the long-term ‘nor­mal­i­sa­tion’ of once out­lawed fas­cist sym­bols.

    Sven Mile­kic BIRN Zagreb
    Fea­ture 25 Mar 16

    After Wednesday’s foot­ball game between Croa­t­ia and Israel in east­ern city of Osi­jek, the Fas­cist chant “Za dom sprem­ni” (“Ready for the Home­land”) once more echoed in the stands.

    Sup­port­ers of the World War II Nazi pup­pet state, the Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia, NDH — whose Ustasa death squads took part in the Nazi Holo­caust and mur­dered tens of thou­sands of Jews, Serbs and Roma — made the chant infa­mous.<

    How­ev­er, although Prime Min­is­ter Tihomir Oreskovic was present at the game, he did not respond.

    The gov­ern­ment only respond­ed a day after in a short press release in which it con­demned the use of sym­bols and slo­gans of total­i­tar­i­an regimes, with­out clear­ly men­tion­ing the game or the actu­al event.

    The anchor of Croa­t­ia Radio-Tele­vi­sion, HRT, which broad­cast­ed the game, also ignored the chants.

    The main­stream dai­ly news­pa­per Jutarn­ji list head­lined the report with “Slavo­nia [region of Osi­jek] Again Didn’t Dis­ap­point” — only briefly report­ing the chants.

    Ogn­jen Kraus, pres­i­dent of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Zagreb, told BIRN that such behav­iour was the “result of the pol­i­tics in Croa­t­ia.”

    “What espe­cial­ly wor­ries me that this is hap­pen­ing dur­ing the game, with­out draw­ing any reac­tion from those who were there, head­ed by the organ­is­er [the Croa­t­ian Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, HNS] and Prime Min­is­ter who just sat there,” he said.

    Kraus added that if such things are not tack­led head on, it allows “Usta­so-phil­ia to kick-in”.

    He men­tioned the case in which the vice-chair of par­lia­ment and mem­ber of the gov­ern­ing major­i­ty, Ivan Tepes, par­tic­i­pat­ed in Jan­u­ary in a 5,000-strong protest when “Za dom sprem­ni” could be “loud­ly heard and no one react­ed”.

    Ahead of the last elec­tions, last Novem­ber, Tepes, head of the right-wing Croa­t­ian Par­ty of Rights “Ante Starce­vic”, said the chant should not been banned because some sol­diers used it dur­ing the inde­pen­dence war of the 1990s.

    Some 3,200 peo­ple peti­tioned Pres­i­dent Kolin­da Grabar Kitarovic last August to make it the offi­cial chant of the Croa­t­ian army.

    San­ja Tabakovic Zori­cic, head of the Shoah Acad­e­my in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, said this was “a trend last­ing for years” and that the system’s reac­tion was wrong.

    “Now, when we have a soci­ety in which no one hes­i­tates to pro­mote pro-Fas­cist stand­points, I real­ly don’t see any­thing weird that some chant “Za dom sprem­ni,” she said.

    She said that it would have sur­prised her had the politi­cians present in Osi­jek left the game, “as in civ­i­lized soci­eties”. The fact that they did not only proves that the scan­dal “doesn’t dis­turb them”.

    Only some 8,500 out of 39,000 Jews sur­vived the Holo­caust com­mit­ted by Ustasa and Nazi Ger­many on the ter­ri­to­ry of the NDH, which includ­ed most of present-day Croa­t­ia and Bosnia.

    Croatia’s new gov­ern­ment, of the con­tro­ver­sial Cul­ture Min­is­ter, Zlatko Hasan­be­gov­ic, mean­while took a deci­sion to spon­sor an event com­mem­o­rat­ing retreat­ing Ustasa killed in 1945 at Bleiburg in Aus­tria.

    “Za dom sprem­ni” has been heard at games played the Croa­t­ian nation­al foot­ball team before.

    The last time was at the game with Nor­way in March 2015. FIFA lat­er penalised the HNS with a 55,000 euros fine and ordered one game to be played with­out fans.

    At the game with­out fans, played in the coastal city of Split in June, a Nazi swasti­ka was vis­i­ble on the pitch, after which the Croa­t­ian team was deduct­ed one point, while the HNS had to pay 100,000 euro and play anoth­er two match­es with­out fans.

    Croa­t­ian foot­ball fans have provoca­tive­ly used swastikas before, form­ing one with their bod­ies at a game in Livorno in Italy, for exam­ple.

    At a match against Ser­bia in March 2013, Croa­t­ian fans chant­ed “Kill the Serb,” for which the HNS received a fine of 42,000 euros.

    Dario Brentin, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Graz in Aus­tria, research­ing sport, nation­al­ism and mem­o­ry pol­i­tics in Croa­t­ia, told BIRN that the inci­dent at the match with Israel offered “proof of the process of banal­i­sa­tion of total­i­tar­i­an sym­bols, expressed by chant­i­ng ‘Za dom sprem­ni’.

    “I’m not con­vinced all peo­ple that chant it at games are all sym­pa­thiz­ers with the Ustasa who believe in Ustasa ideas,” he said.

    “It’s a com­plex social process that leads to a sit­u­a­tion in which it’s com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant what it [chant] means or doesn’t,” he added. It is “com­mon­ly seen as sign patri­ot­ic act”, he not­ed.

    Accord­ing to Brentin, the pub­lic dis­course in Croa­t­ia has cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion in which it is seen as “com­plete­ly nor­mal part of rout­ing in sports”.

    He not­ed the case of the Croa­t­ian foot­ball play­er Josip Joe Simu­nic in Novem­ber 2013.

    Imme­di­ate­ly after a foot­ball match with Ice­land, Simu­nic led some 20,000 fans in chant­i­ng “Za dom sprem­ni”.

    He was not con­demned by his man­ag­er or by the HNS for that, but only by a part of media, while the pub­lic divid­ed into two groups – those who con­demned and those who sup­port­ed him.

    The coun­ty attor­ney office lat­er fined him some 3,300 euros, which the mag­is­trates court lat­er low­ered to 660 euros, for “caus­ing pub­lic dis­or­der” but not for hate speech.

    After a process before dis­ci­pli­nary bod­ies, FIFA gave Simu­nic a ten-game sus­pen­sion, pre­vent­ing him from attend­ing his last World Cup in Brazil in 2014.

    Brentin sug­gest­ed that even if the cur­rent HNS lead­er­ship urged fans not to sup­port the team in this way, “no one would lis­ten, nor would it change any­thing”, since such atti­tudes can “only be changed through edu­ca­tion”.

    “Espe­cial­ly in pop­u­lar cul­ture, Marko Perkovic Thomp­son [nation­al­is­tic singer who uses the chant in his songs] and sup­port­ing the nation­al foot­ball team are two social ele­ments that per­pet­u­ate ‘Za dom sprem­ni’ as a patri­ot­ic chant,” he said.

    Brentin con­clud­ed that both the Croa­t­ian media and the polit­i­cal elites clear­ly avoid con­demn­ing such inci­dents because they come from a “sim­i­lar ide­o­log­i­cal fam­i­ly”.

    ...

    “Brentin con­clud­ed that both the Croa­t­ian media and the polit­i­cal elites clear­ly avoid con­demn­ing such inci­dents because they come from a “sim­i­lar ide­o­log­i­cal fam­i­ly”.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 25, 2016, 2:56 pm

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