Paving the Way to Denial

By Katarina Damčević

The rise of hate speech against Serbs in Croatia has been partly facilitated by influential political figures, including members of the government. This manifests primarily through attempts to whitewash the legacy of the WWII Ustaša regime and downplay the crimes it committed.

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.  

Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich (2013 [1947])

In November 2023, an exhibition planned in Zagreb and titled “Some were neighbors” (Neki su bili susjedi) was cancelled at the last moment.¹ The exhibition was set to be held during Croatia’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In addition to showcasing the history of the Holocaust, the concept of the traveling exhibition aimed to include the specificities of local contexts, such as those in Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Croatia. However, the collaboration between the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum based in Washington, D. C., and different Croatian institutions was hindered because the Croatian side, coordinated by the Ministry of Culture and Media, rejected any scenario in which the genocide committed against Serbs in the WWII Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was acknowledged. Concretely, the exhibition was cancelled after months of preparations because the Croatian side refused to include a statement according to which the NDH – a Nazi aligned and fascist state that existed from 1941 to 1945 – led a genocidal policy aimed towards Serbs, next to Roma and Jews. As the investigative journalist Hrvoje Šimičević reports, this was confirmed by multiple sources familiar with the background of the story.² The American partners refused to partake in setting up an exhibition marked by explicitly revisionist tendencies of the Croatian side. Further investigation confirmed that this international scandal was facilitated by the government of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and the Ministry of Culture and Media led by Nina Obuljen-Koržinek, as well as Matea Brstilo Rešetar, the director of the Croatian History Museum and president of the Management Council of the Jasenovac Memorial Site.³

What is the Croatian government refusing to acknowledge? Historian Rory Yeomans writes:

The terror of the Ustasa regime against the Serbian population in particular was enormous in scope and resources. It included not only waves of pogroms by Ustasa militias in the countryside, the liquidation of tens of thousands of ordinary civilians, including children, in a network of concentration camps, and the mass deportations of others through forced resettlement camps to Serbia but also ghettoization and curfews in the major cities, the confiscation of businesses and property, exclusion from all economic activity, deliberate starvation and, later, forced assimilation and transfer of Serbian children to other ethnic groups, primarily Croatian families. This was, in short, a statewide, systematic, and organized programme aimed at the destruction of a community, one which preceded the Wannsee Conference by some months and was the first non-Nazi genocide of World War Two.⁴

Ready for the Homeland

The current situation will not be surprising to anyone who is familiar with how Croatia’s government handles the legacy of the NDH. Namely, the political manipulation and whitewashing of the Ustaša legacy can be described as semiocide, “a situation in which signs and stories that are significant for someone are destroyed because of someone else’s malevolence or carelessness, thereby stealing a part of the former’s identity”.⁵ This can happen through subtle or more overt actions that exclude and discriminate against certain groups, like hate speech. Over time, the spread and tacit or explicit approval of these behaviors, especially when supported by the state, weakens the social fabric and creates room for further escalation.

One prominent example that illustrates this is the relativization of NDH´s official salute “Ready for the Homeland” (Za dom spremni). Banned in socialist Yugoslavia, the salute resurfaced during the 1990s Croatian War of Independence when it was popularized by right-wing politicians and groups and used predominantly to evoke the legacy of the NDH.⁶ In addition to being relativized by different political actors, the salute was not regulated during the war, which contributed to its appropriation by right-wing politicians and groups as the alleged symbol of the 1990s war. The salute, however, is considered as hate speech advocating radical right positions by many in Croatia and neighboring countries. And with good reason.

Hate speech against Serbs, as well as nationalist discourse and historical revisionism, has increased since Croatia joined the European Union in July 2013. One reason for this escalation is the lack of monitoring after Croatia’s EU membership, which decreased the motivation to prohibit or hide the Ustaša salute or related symbols due to the absence of consequences. According to Vjeran Pavlaković, another relevant reason is that the political elites attempted to mobilize voters “through the debates over fragmented and clashing narratives of twentieth-century traumas once the strategic goal of Euro-Atlantic integration was completed”.⁷ In these circumstances, the salute has been (mis)used to reinforce Croatia’s post-war identity, shape political agendas, mobilize voters, and promote a biased and idealized version of history.

The presence of hate speech⁸ – especially when largely unaddressed by the state – can pose a significant challenge in post-conflict societies. The Yugoslav Wars are no exception since divisive rhetoric, Ustaša-related symbols, and hate speech were a contributing factor in the years-long conflict.⁹ Nowadays examples of hate speech targeting Serbs are plenty¹⁰, while the traumatic experience under the Ustaša regime makes them particularly vulnerable to the use of symbols associated with the regime.

In June 2020, a group of Dinamo Zagreb football fans and members of the Bad Blue Boys ultras group¹¹ gathered in the capital of Zagreb. They were holding up lighted flares and a banner containing the inscription “We’ll fuck Serbian women and children”. This was accompanied with the Ustaša salute while the group chanted “Kill, kill”, as reported on by the photographer Nikola Šolić.¹² Groups of football fans often use hate speech and inciting rhetoric against Serbs while evoking the 1990s wars and showing sympathies for the WWII Ustaša movement. Sport was an important element of nation-building processes during the 1990s, when football matches and athletes were represented as symbolic warriors of Croatia. Even Croatia’s first president Franjo Tuđman (1992–1999) famously stated that “football victories shape a nation’s identity as much as wars do”, contributing to the football field becoming a place where symbols, narratives, and memories of the war are contested.¹³

As reported by Balkan Insight, the Zagreb Municipality’s State Attorney’s Office filed an indictment accusing six members of the Dinamo Zagreb fan group of inciting violence and hatred.¹⁴ While the incident sparked heated reactions from politicians and scholars, as well as the wider public, the aftermath did not result in any concrete initiatives for mitigating and countering the presence of hate speech and Ustaša insignia.

Around the same time parliamentary elections took place, which saw Croatia’s Serb minority the target of inflammatory political rhetoric and hate speech. One example was a graffiti that appeared in a suburban part of Zagreb, which depicted a lynching accompanied by the words “Serbian Family Tree”, a reference to the slogan “Srbe na vrbe” (Hang the Serbs from the willow trees) that has been used since the 1940s.¹⁵ When asked by journalists about their reactions, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Interior Minister Davor Božinović chose their words carefully and made generic statements, such as “such acts have no place in public”. However, they did not mention or acknowledge that Serbs were victims of the incidents mentioned earlier. It should also be noted that representatives of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and antifascists boycotted the official annual Jasenovac commemoration on multiple occasions in the past. Instead, they organized their own while voicing concerns over growing historical revisionism and the downplaying of crimes committed by the WWII Ustaša regime.¹⁶

The Ustaša salute has been used by different actors and in diverse contexts. It was inscribed on a memorial plaque near the former Ustaša concentration camp Jasenovac¹⁷, chanted by high school graduates in the city of Rijeka, followed by the desecration of the town’s Liberation Monument with the salute¹⁸, sold on T-shirts and stickers in the shop Patriot Hrvatska¹⁹, and shouted at concerts by the musician Marko Perković Thompson, among other cases. Perhaps the most influential nationalist in Croatian popular culture, Thompson, became famous during the 1990s with his song “Bojna Čavoglave” (Čavoglave Battalion). The song starts with the salute, after which he sings that Serb enemies will not enter his village as long as Croats are alive. In summer 2020 the High Court of Misdemeanors in Zagreb ruled that Thompson did not violate public order or breach the peace by chanting the salute in the song.²⁰

To date, neither the salute nor any insignia related to the Ustaša regime are explicitly banned in Croatia. Based on Article 325 of the Croatian Penal Code, a person can technically be charged for inciting hatred and/or offending people based on their national or ethnic belonging when using the salute. Further, public displays can result in fines for disturbing the peace.²¹ In April 2023, a proposal was made to amend the “Law on misdemeanors against public order and peace” (Zakon o prekrsajima protiv javnog reda i mira)²², calling for a significant increase in fines (up to 4000 euros) for “the performance, reproduction of songs, music and texts, or carrying or emphasizing symbols, texts, pictures, drawings”. The Ustaša salute is not explicitly referred to, however, it is implied that the amendment is aimed towards mitigating its use.²³ Minority representatives requested an amendment to the Law in order to regulate the salute in the Croatian Penal Code, but to no avail. Even if the laws or regulations were consistently enforced, which they are not, their importance decreases when state representatives downplay and normalize the use of symbols that not only evoke the NDH legacy but also target the Serb minority.²⁴

A legal ban for the sake of banning something is not very effective. While it does convey a message, it is important to have a more comprehensive approach involving politicians, educators, NGO representatives, and religious leaders to develop long-term solutions. Relying solely on a legal response is not enough when government officials give conflicting messages to the public, ignore instances of hate speech, and fail to recognize its impact on targeted individuals.

Following the 2024 April parliamentary elections, the Croatian Democratic Union emerged victorious and signed a coalition agreement with the far-right party The Homeland Movement. It remains to be seen how this alliance will impact the treatment of minorities and the increasing trend of historical revisionism. The political program of The Homeland Movement is concerning, as they aim to make significant changes such as revising school textbooks and war museums that they find objectionable, cutting funding for the Serb minority newspaper Novosti, and ceasing support for any media that promotes activities deemed to be anti-Croat.²⁵

From hate speech to semiocide

To be hated, despised, and alone is the ultimate fear of all human beings. However irrational racist speech may be, it hits right at the emotional place where we feel the most pain. The aloneness comes not only from the hate message itself, but also from the government response of tolerance.²⁶

Scholar Mari Matsuda was referencing a personal experience in the quote above, where she received a flyer in the mail that denied the Holocaust but did not contain any explicitly hateful language. A stark reminder that hate speech does not have to be explicit to be harmful and/or dangerous, the hateful aspect of genocide denial comes from what it says – or does not say – about the past. When past acts of hatred and violence aimed at a target group are not acknowledged or are being denied, this opens the door to future marginalization, attacks, and isolates the victims from the rest of humanity. When this lack of acknowledgment comes from state actors, it also sends a message that the victim group is not worthy of protecting.²⁷

Most human societies respect the dead and have established rituals that commemorate them. Denial, however, not only defames the dead and isolates those connected to the victims²⁸, but severs a number of semiotic connections. Namely, semiocide robs victims and those connected to them of the meanings preserved through their stories and memories by excluding them from the dominant (national) semiotic sphere. Croatia´s government’s refusal to acknowledge atrocities committed towards Serbs in the NDH excludes the victims – and by extension their family and close ones – from the web of meanings, experiences, and narratives that provide validation, security, and a sense of identity.

When someone passes away, a world disappears with them while parts of it are maintained by those left behind. The memories, stories, and experiences of the deceased continue to hold significance through others. Their preservation also relies on other individuals, including state actors in instances of atrocities mentioned, as their actions send a message locally and globally, influencing the potential downplaying and denial of these events. As briefly shown in the previous section regarding the legacy of the NDH, the Croatian government paved the way for denial to become a possibility. Sometimes it was more insidious, sometimes less. But they paved the way.

About the author:
Katarina Damčević specializes in the semiotics of hate speech and controversial symbols in (post)conflict societies. She was a research fellow at the Dangerous Speech Project, the Humanitarian Law Center, and seeFField. She is the co-founder of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research in Southeast Europe at the University of Rijeka. Katarina currently teaches at the University of Tartu and joined the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and the KonKoop network in 2024.

1. See the detailed report published by Hrvoje Šimičević titled Zatajeni susjedi on the online Portal Novosti. [↩]
2. In addition to Zatajeni susjedi, see Tabuiziranje genocida, and Kako negirati genocid. [↩]
3. The recent intrusion of Jasenovac into regional nationalist politics has included the resignation of the director of the Jasenovac Memorial Park, Ivo Pejaković, as well as the resolution in the Montenegrin parliament according to which Jasenovac, Mauthausen, and Dachau were declared genocidal. The resolution was denounced by the Croatian government as a divisive attempt at political interference. See Ravnatelj JUSP-a Jasenovac podnio ostavku, Holocaust vote throws wrench in Montenegro’s EU bid, and Croatia must stop downplaying the genocidal crimes of the Ustasa. [↩]
4. Croatia Must Stop Downplaying the Genocidal Crimes of the Ustasa. See also Visions of Annihilation. The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945. [↩]
5. See Ivar Puura’s Nature in our memory, in: Sign Systems Studies 41(1), 2013 [2002], 150-153. For a more recent treatment of the concept, see also Mehmet Emir Uslu´s Semiocide: An introduction to semiotics of destruction of the meaningful, in Sign Systems Studies, 48(2/4), 2020, 224-245. [↩]
6. See Velimir Veselinović Hrvatska stranka prava od 1990. do 2011. Na izvoru desnoga radikalizma i populizma: https://historiografija.hr/?p=14804. [↩]
7. See Contested sites and fragmented narratives: Jasenovac and disruptions in Croatia´s commemorative culture, in: Framing the Nation and Collective Identities: Political Rituals and Cultural Memory of the Twentieth-Century Traumas in Croatia, edited by Vjeran Pavlaković and Davor Pauković, published by Routledge in 2019. [↩]
8. The hate speech syntagm remains challenging to define. Multiple factors contribute to this, such as the peculiarities of the local context, customs, norms, and historical legacies. While hate speech is part of both the American and European vocabularies, the fundamental difference between them lies in the fact that it is not incriminated in the United States (as opposed to European practices) but largely falls under the interpretation of the defense of freedom of speech through the prism of the First Amendment. It is therefore usually more sensible to focus on some of the main functions of hate speech that remain consistent such as the incitement, promotion, or justification of discrimination and/or violence against a person or a group based on their specific (usually ascriptive) characteristics (e.g., race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age). [↩]
9. See, for instance, Mark Thompson’s Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina (1994), Kemal Kurspahić’s Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media in War and Peace (2003), and Pål Kolstø’s Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts. Representations of Self and Other (2009). It should be noted that hate speech as a contributing factor to violence escalation does not necessarily imply causation; this is difficult to identify “since the effect of speech on large groups of people is hard to measure, poorly understood, and [speech] is only one of a constellation of forces that affect why people act as they do” (Benesch 2011: 257). For a more detailed treatment see The Ghost of Causation in International Speech Crime Cases, in: Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes (2012). [↩]
10. Some of the available reports are accessible via the link: https://snv.hr/vrsta_publikacije/bilteni/. [↩]
11. The term ultras refers to a portion of a football club’s fanbase that usually consists of extreme and passionate supporters and often includes a violent element. See What is a football ultra? Serie A hardcore fan culture explained. I reported on this specific Croatian case here: https://dangerousspeech.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Case-study_croatia_complete-1.pdf. [↩]
12. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/12/zagreb-fans-obscene-anti-serb-banner-sparks-outrage/ [↩]
13. See Dario Brentin’s articles ‘A lofty battle for the nation’: The social roles of sport in Tudjman’s Croatia, Sport in Society 16(8), 2013, and Ready for the Homeland? Ritual, remembrance, and political extremism in Croatian football, Nationalities Papers. The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 44(6), 2016. [↩]
14. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/07/28/croatia-charges-six-over-anti-serb-banner-in-zagreb/ [↩]
15. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/18/croatian-election-campaign-haunted-by-anti-serb-rhetoric/ [↩]
16. The annual commemoration in Jasenovac honors the victims of the concentration camp and the final breakout attempt of prisoners on 22 April 1945. For more reports on boycotts of the official Jasenovac commemoration by minority representatives, see https://balkaninsight.com/2018/04/21/again-multiple-commemorations-at-jasenovac-concentration-camp-site-04-19-2018/ [↩]
17. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/08/31/croatia-fascist-slogan-threatens-to-topple-govt-08-30-2017/ For a more detailed account see Hrvoje Cvijanović, On Memory Politics and Memory Wars: A Critical Analysis of the Croatian Dialogue Document, in: Croatian Political Science Review, 55(4): 109-146, 2018, and my article Cultural texts, enemies, and taboos: autocommunicative meaning-making surrounding the “Ready for the Homeland” Ustaša salute in Croatia, in: Social Semiotics, 33(3): 470-496, 2023 (published online 09 February 2021). [↩]
18. https://www.novilist.hr/rijeka-regija/rijeka/najgora-proslava-u-hrvatskoj-sa-svih-strana-stizu-osude-divljanja-rijeckih-maturanata/?meta_refresh=true [↩]
19. https://balkaninsight.com/2018/09/13/balkan-nationalists-use-t-shirts-as-political-fashion-statement-09-12-2018/ [↩]
20. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/03/croatian-court-rules-thompson-song-did-not-break-law/ [↩]
21. Austria, however, did ban two Croatian Ustaša symbols in 2019. One of them is the letter “U” with a grenade, and the checkerboard coat of arms with the white field first under a stylized letter U, which was part of the NDH´s flag. This decision was the result of the consistent use of Ustaša symbols at the annual Croatian right-wing gathering in Bleiburg in Austria, which commemorates the deaths of Nazi-allied Croatian troops and civilians. See Pavlaković, Brentin, and Pauković 2018, The Controversial Commemoration: Transnational Approaches to Remembering Bleiburg, in: Croatian Political Science Review, 55(2): 7-32, and Austria Bans Two Croatian Ustasa Symbols. [↩]
22. https://www.zakon.hr/z/279/Zakon-o-prekr%C5%A1ajima-protiv-javnog-reda-i-mira. [↩]
23. https://seeffield.app.uni-regensburg.de/ready-for-the-homeland-and-the-battle-of-meanings/ [↩]
24. https://dangerousspeech.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Case-study_croatia_complete-1.pdf. [↩]
25. https://www.telegram.hr/politika-kriminal/proucili-smo-program-dp-a-tesk o-je-prepricljiv-traze-zaustavljanje-antihrvatskih-medija-i-da-se-u-skolama-uci-prava-istina-od-1941/ [↩]
26. See Mari J. Matsuda´s chapter titled Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim´s Story, in: Words That Wound. Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, 2018 [1993]. [↩]
27. See Robert A. Kahn´s chapter titled Holocaust Denial and Hate speech, in: Genocide Denials and the Law, published in 2011. [↩]
28. See Kahn, pg. 85. [↩]

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