Police form human shield in Zagreb - Photo:Petar Glebov/Pixell
On Friday 13 April, in the evening, several hundred visibly rowdy followers of Citizens action United Against Fascism came to Zagreb’s Ban Jelacic Square – ready to pounce upon the right-wing Croatian Civilisation /Culture Movement (HUP) gathering.
But the HUP gathering attracted barely twenty people.
The police presence was strong and they formed a human shield, determined on preventing the antifascist horde from advancing towards the HUP group.
The representatives from European ultra-right political parties and organisations, who had come to Zagreb for the banned conference and rally organised by the Croatian Pure Party of Rights stayed away from the Square. Smart move. Judging by the antifascist group’s readiness to pounce the ultra-right nationalists from European countries were expected to show up, even as by-standers.
Jutarnji List reports that one member of the ultra-right group was arrested for raising his right arm and two members of the antifascist group were also arrested, one for refusing to provide his ID.
Scuffles, spirited pushing and shoving occurred and one photo-reporter was injured, pushed to the ground.
“This is not about the confrontation between two opposing sub-cultures, although the truth lies somewhere in the middle, this is about confrontation between civilisation and barbarism, ordinary people and fascist fiends (evil-doers),” said in the written invitation to rally distributed by the antifascist Citizens action group.
In analysis, there’s no doubt that if the ultra-right International nationalists conference and rally were not banned, there would have been serious violence in Zagreb on Friday.
Antifascists came ready to fight anyone or anything leaning toward the right; they distributed leaflets with hateful language; they call themselves “ordinary citizens” and everyone else “evil-doers”, and also wrote on their leaflets that they do not want “fascist orgies in the city”.
They found no violent or aggressive gathering there, so they went on to try and create them.
The right-wing HUP group, on the other hand, said prior to announcing its rally that all Croatian presidents were “Orthodox Communists” and all Prime Ministers “Communists, members of (the Yugoslav secret service) UDBA, freemasons and gay lovers.”
There doesn’t seem anything ordinary about those in the antifascist Citizens group as far as I can see. They resurrect a part of Croatia’s of World War II history, give it life in their leaflets and label today’s right-wingers, I would say the other ordinary citizens, as evil-doers. The antifascists were more vicious than the nationalist group who label former Communists as members of Yugoslav Secret Police UDBA or freemasons …
And the antifascists’ determination to pounce on the nationalists right-wingers will according to dalje.com portal continue on Saturday 14 April from 11 am in Zagreb’s central Square.
In my previous post on the rally issue I said that perhaps the former communists want the ugly nationalistic scenes to occur in Croatia, to feed their rhetoric of antifascist righteousness. And that is exactly what occurred. However, there is no righteousness in this antifascist movement, it just is plain ugly and cruel – as always.
It seems they like to call themselves anti-fascists and if there are no fascists around to act against, they just concoct them (out of the right-wing political orientation) and pin upon them a resurrection of dark memories of those who died a long time ago.
Truly, something needs to be done in Croatia to ban and outlaw the use of the word “antifascist”.
Violence and aggression should not be tolerated from any side of politics, and yet the antifascist group from Zagreb yesterday behaved as though they had a victory with their rally. If threatening and aggressive behaviours towards those who want to “express their political opinion” as HUP did, are victory, then one cannot hold too much hope that democracy and tolerance will thrive on those streets in their full glory any time soon. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps.(Syd)
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Imported from Facebook: I can never understand why these ‘ever-righteous’ antifa protesters-for-hire need to cover their faces and/or wear balaclavas during their protests. The only other time you see that is when hooligans are planning to incite violence or are intending to cause a riot. Yet our media is making them out to be some kind of heroes.
Totally agree, those antifascists are nothing but hooligans, paid or supported by others to cause trouble so it gets to look like the nationalist parties are the baddies. Or maybe those antifascists are making all that noise about so-called fascism, which doesn’t exist really, to get some points so that the fight against communist crimes gets intimidated. Antifascists are no heroes, those that came rallying are the friggin scum. Dictators like their teachers.
It hasn’t just arrived there – it’s been there since communists took power after WWII. I mean, has anyone seen any worst dictatorship, totalitarian rule, underhanded murderers who justify their murders saying “fascists” are bad. It wasn’t enough that the fascism received its deserved punishment and condemnation for its WWII crimes, these anti-fascists communists need to rub it in and in so to make themselves look good. Yes, anti-fscism is the modern fascism and the sooner they’re banned from uttering that word the quicker will true peace come. I love your website and blogs, by the way – learn a lot bit by bit
‘anti-fascist’ is just code for ‘yugoslav communist apologist’ in Croatia