Ina Vukić

Croatia: anti-fascist fascism, dangerous games

 in transition from communism to democracy

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” is a law of sorts of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists, and I am one, something like this is known as the “illusion of truth” effect or illusory truth effect, which is the tendency to believe false information is true after repeated exposure. Then we have the rather “famous” quote often attributed to Winston Churchill but in fact its roots lie elsewhere, “the fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.” 

Both of these appear to have a new boost to a lease on life in Croatia these days in actions and activities by those who call themselves antifascists but, in fact, they are communists who pretend to be antifascists in order to hide and whitewash the horrendous crimes their forefathers committed against their own people, during and after World War Two.

“Bolshevism is not a policy; it is a disease,” Winston Churchill said in the UK House of Commons on 29 May 1919, adding, “it is not a creed; it is a pestilence.” Bolshevism, the political ideology and party that led the Russian Revolution that began in 1917, and communism is the broader political and economic philosophy that Bolshevism is a form of. The Bolsheviks were a radical, Marxist faction that became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 

Modeled on this, soon after, Josip Broz Tito founded the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which was just as oppressive and murderous as the Soviet one. Facts of history tell us that. In 1948, intending on sucking money from the West Tito staged a loud political show, announcing to the world he was splitting away from Joseph Stalin, Soviet communism. And holding the West blindfolded, in reality the gates of Yugoslavia remained wide opened to one of the cruelest, state-ordered mass murderous totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century history of nations.

In 1991 Yugoslavia was blown into smithereens and with almost 94% of people votes at referendum Croatia declared independence from communist come socialist Yugoslavia, but not without horrendous Yugoslav Army aggression, led predominantly by Serbs, that turned into a most bloody war out of which Croatia emerged victorious. 

Former communists and their loyal followers were never going to take the defeat lightly; their persistent hatred of that Croatian Homeland War victory, their persistent amassing of lies against Croatian independence and those who fought for it culminated on Sunday 31 November 2025 in a series of “anti-fascists against fascists” rallies in four cities in Croatia. A similar show for the world Tito staged in 1948. The rallies had nothing to do with anti-fascism or fascism, because neither exist in earnest in Croatia, but had everything to do with attempts to crush the independent state of Croatia, glorifying the former Yugoslavia. Multitudes of flags of former Yugoslavia at the rallies!

Serb Chetnik flags, Yugoslav flags, the restoration of the Yugoslav Federation, the red five-pointed star, the attack on the Croatian language and the army is not a political stunt of “destabilization of the government”, but an attack on the state of Croatia. All that and more was prevalent at these rallies attend by around 10,000 people, as estimated by the Croatian mainstream media.

Most of the leading mainstream media of the „West“ and those countries trying to mimic a Western shift to extreme leftist political domain, where one often encounters false accusations of hate speech coming from the right to cover the hate speech coming from the left, will tell you that thousands of people under the antifascist banner protested across Croatia on Sunday 31 November 2025 against a rising far-right movement following a series of incidents that heightened ethnic and political tensions. They will not tell you that those “incidents” they claim to be of “far-right” political sort were events of either pure joy in music or due respect paid for victims of horrendous aggression against Croatia in the early 1990’s. These events include Marko Perkovic Thompson music concerts where more than half a million peaceful, music-loving revellers attended or remembrance marches for victims of 1991 Serb and Yugoslav massacres of Croats in Vukovar or Skabrnje. One media outlet entrevue.fr has said that “Extremist groups (referring to patriotic political field and their actions) also targeted political figures, progressive associations, and foreign workers, regularly using the salute ‘For the Fatherland – Ready!’, an emblematic slogan of the Ustashe regime (during World War Two)”.

Nothing can be further from the truth because the salute they refer to is the centuries old “Za dom spremni”, which translates into “For home ready”. Croats have never referred to their homeland as Fatherland, as Germany, Netherlands, Serbia and some Scadinavian countries have. If “parentage” was ever used it was “Motherland” in English, especially in the diaspora. Not Fatherland. It does not seem to matter to such media if their translation of salutes is wrong to be politically twisted, what matters to them it seems is to make it so that best likens the Croatian independence fight from communism to Nazi Germany! 

Antifascist rally in Zagreb Croatia 31 November 2025 / Photo credit Cropix

Photo credit Cropix / Dnevnik.hr

Photo credit Cropix 

Minister of Defence of Republic of Croatia, Photo Pixsell and screenshot

On Sunday 31st November 2025 about ten thousand people gathered in four cities across Croatia for protest marches organised by the “United Against Fascism” (which includes some 12 organisations of left and far left political stream, nostalgic of communist Yugoslavia) initiative to express concern about, they allege, hate speech and the rise in violence in society. The Protests took place in Zagreb, Rijeka, Pula and Zadar. They protested against hate speech and yet they sow so much hate speech that it becomes distressing and frightening.

No Western media will tell you that these so-called antifascist protests in Croatia were in effect an attempt to strengthen the nostalgia for former communist Yugoslavia and against the state of independent Croatia. Here is the very example of how difficult and dangerous transition from communism into democracy can be.

The protesters claimed that there is increased fascism in Croatia, that it actually exists – and it does not – without providing any proof. Of course, there is no fascism in Croatia of today and if there was, it would be coming from those who consider themselves to be antifascist. They will tell you that there is relativization of World War Two Ustasha crimes but will not tell you that they talk about relativization in the context of increased (and historically justified because the communist Yugoslav authorities falsified the history of WWII Croatia we have been taught) research of history and communist crimes during and after that War, which were tenfold more horrific if one merely considers the thousand mass graves of Croats massacred by Yugoslav regime, the use of the ‘ZDS’ (For Home Ready!) salute particularly bugs the so-called antifa. 

Perhaps because it does not relate to Yugoslavia as home but to Croatia.

Then the so-called antifa protesters demanded that a Balkan federation without states and nations and borders be created using the slogan “one language, one fight” written in Serb Cyrillic (not Latin, Croatian) script. When within Croatia banners and speeches at rally call for the “abolition of states and nations,” for one language where there are several distinct official languages, and for an imaginary Balkan integration of states and sinking of the existing ones, it is clear that the target of the rallies is to attack and dismantle Croatia as an independent state.

“I followed the messages, the symbols and I can only conclude one thing, it was not a protest against fascism. It was a pure protest against Croatia, I would say pro-Yugoslav, and maybe something even fiercer than pro-Yugoslav,” said Croatia’s Defence Minister Ivan Anusic, who at the time of these rallies participated in a meeting of Defence Ministers of EU member states in Brussels.

After a session of the Presidency and National Committee of the ruling HDZ/Croatian Democratic Union Party on Monday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that they had followed the protest against fascism, assessing that it was a fabricated thesis.

“The left’s relentless struggle for ideological divisions had its manifestation yesterday, where Croatian citizens had the opportunity to see what slogans those who imagine that Croatia is in a phase of historical revisionism and Ustashaism stand behind,” he said at Press Conference on Monday 1 December 2025. “They (the antifascists) would like to return to the Balkan and Yugoslav frameworks. Citizens have now seen everything, the Cyrillic alphabet, the flags of failed states… There will be no destabilisation,” he concluded.

Some of the public figures who supported the protests and/or gave speeches at them include television journalist Aleksandar Stankovic, journalist Maja Sever, actor and film director Damir Markovina, MP Rada Boric, MP Dalija Oreskovic, Pula Mayor Peđa Grbin, Istrian County Prefect Boris Miletic, actor Rade Serbedzija. All ultra left, apparatchiks of the dead Communist Party of Yugoslavia who, by all public accounts, would like to wipe away the horrid truth of Serb aggression against Croatia in the 1990’s and turn the vicious genocidal aggressor into a meek and tame pet of all the people.

High time for Croatia to remove from the Historical Foundations in its Constitution any reference to “the Territorial Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia (1943)/ZAVNOH or former Socialist republic as a movement that desired to have its own country (Croatia) for it leaves the door open for obstructing transition into full democracy. 

These political leeches and parasites of the left realm of politics never wanted an independent Croatia and fought to keep it in Yugoslavia and are still fighting for that even though Yugoslavia has been dead for 34 years. Even though these individuals at the antifascist rallies are “flogging a dead horse” (dead Yugoslavia) for political gain, trying hard to return to a Yugoslavia, be it alone or in a Balkan integration, their flogging, efforts and energy invested, disturb and divide, which could lead to unrest and violence. They will tell you, as some did during the rally, that they are not communists that Yugoslavia was not communist, that it was socialist and that they are socialists. When asked about the significance of the ruling communist party of former Yugoslavia that controlled and ruled former Yugoslavia and the meaning of that, words become stuck in their throats.

With the change to the Constitution, as mentioned above, all symbols of the totalitarian communist regime of Yugoslavia would surely find themselves on the ban list by law. The constitution would no longer keep the doors open, or provide an indirect justification, for their public displays of hate speech and attacks on those who brought independence to Croatia desirous of democracy. How great would that Constitution change be for Croatia whose almost 94% of voters voted in 1991 to get out of communist Yugoslavia, whose many thousands of civilians and soldiers lost their lives for that independence, whose thousands of women were raped by the aggressor, whose hundreds of children were slaughtered by the aggressor, whose 25% of territory was brutally ethically cleansed of Croats by Serbs in early 1990’s.