Where fascist chants are welcome

(Serbia)

Ultranationalism, the scourge that split Yugoslavia in the bloody wars of the 1990s, is rising again in Croatia, said Blic. The Ustasha, the Croatian fascists who sided with Germany during World War II, should be reviled for their alliance with the Nazis and for running the Jasenovac death camp, where tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma were slaughtered in the most disgusting ways. Yet the slogan Za dom spremni (“Ready for the homeland”), which Ustasha torturers shouted over the bodies of their victims, has been rehabilitated in modern-day Croatia. Soccer fans may remember the 2014 World Cup qualifiers, when Croatian defender Joe Simunic led thousands of cheering fans in a chant of Za dom spremni after his team beat Iceland 2-0. Soccer authorities promptly suspended Simunic for the duration of the tournament. But rather than curb the growth of Croatian ultranationalism, that international rebuke only “spread the fire and deepened old wounds.” Three years later, a Croatian filmmaker put out a revisionist documentary downplaying the horrors of Jasenovac, and last month, a Croatian court ruled that ultranationalist rock star Marko Perkovic may use Za dom spremni in his songs and in chants at his concerts. This “spread of hatred and Ustasha ideology” should trouble all Croatia’s neighbors.