In today’s political world where the leftist ideas akin to largely disastrous communism and socialism for human freedom and dignity appear to thrive on life-support it is, I think, important to remember and act upon an old story which has shaped morality (or immorality) for centuries.  And this is how that story goes: An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

It has been 31 years (and a few months) since I was a part of a thrilling movement in Croatia and in the Croatian diaspora that set itself the goal of freeing Croatia from the communist Yugoslavia oppressive hold. The positive emotions, the elation for the prospect of freedom were overwhelmingly thrilling. I remember my late father describing similar emotions he felt as a young man when he became a part of the Croatian Home Guard forces, which rose after the Royal Army of Yugoslav (Serb) Kingdom was no more in 1941 and whose role was to protect and defend the borders and territory of Croatia from the onslaught of Yugoslavia communists.

It’s 2020 now, I search for those thrilling emotions that inspired hope and belief in the real possibility of freedom and which were the foundation of masses for the victory in Croatia’s 1990’s Homeland War. I find them here and there, their spark is still there, however it is terribly dimmed as we see that somehow since year 2000, in Croatia, the wrong wolf has been fed! A resurgence of ugly communism, an utter denial of horrific communist crimes during and post WWII – a keeping on life-support of communist mindset that sees corruption, theft, law and public administration still working against the betterment of all the people just like it was done in former Yugoslavia.  

That a new plateful of food has just been served to the wrong wolf in Croatia is plainly seen in the representatives in the new Croatian Parliament assembly since July 2020 of the Independent Democratic Serb Party/SDSS. During the past week one of its representatives, Dragana Jeckov, has on several occasions attacked Croatian people and their fight for freedom. She particularly twisted the history and said that there are many streets in Croatia carrying the names of WWII Ustashas and that they must be removed! Of course, the street names she alludes to have nothing to do with the WWII Ustasha movement except of course with the fight for freedom against Serb oppression and Yugoslavia. She failed short of saying: Croatians do not deserve to have a free state! What an odious member of parliament to have to put up with.

And so I came across a video talk between Retired General Zeljko Glasnovic (1990’s Croatian Army and Croatian Defence Council General) and Hrvoje Zekanovic, Croatian Sovereignists Party Member of Croatian Parliament who ran with the Patriotic Movement (Domovinski Pokret Miroslava Skore) at July 2020 elections.  This chat is not your ordinary leisurely chat with little national significance one might find around the place; it captures the core of the problems stifling the progress to full democracy and freedom in Croatia. So, I have translated the dialogue from this “chat” for you:       

Hrvoje Zekanovic: “General, today colleague Jeckov, SDSS representative, in the parliament today delivered a very interesting speech, you did not see it but I will briefly tell it to you. She mentioned NDH (WWII Independent State of Croatia) ten times today, the Ustasha, the Ustasha crimes – in the Croatian Parliament 2020.”

General Zeljko Glasnovic: “Here we are Mr Zekanovic, back in parliament, I’m here after a longer time, a pause, and what I see there is sad, it appears to me like the sitting of the 3^rd Comintern (Communist International organisation) at the times of Stalin and the Chetnik movement, a mixture of that. But the problem is that our politicians are not interested in the history, the truth doesn’t interest them, most of them are vaccinated against the truth, all respect goes to the individual patriots though. It’s like this: the genesis of conflict in these parts of the world is completely hidden by mainstream media, and in that fog that falls over the universities, that are not Croatian universities, such as the Faculty of Philosophy. From 1912 to 1990, either under the five-pointed star or the cockade about one million people have been murdered in these areas and today the Chetnik movement has de facto been rehabilitated.

You have, for example, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commission, an American commission had in 1912 recorded what was happening in Kosovo in the Second Balkan War where tens of thousands of Kosovars, Albanians, and Christians in Kosovo were killed and where does Greater Serbian imperialism end? I will repeat, whether under five pointed star or the cockade about one million people were murdered in this region in almost one hundred years, it ends in August of 1999, NATO Operation Allied Force , how can we not see that. Only in the old Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941, to the entry of Axis Forces into Yugoslavia, the Serbian gendarmerie had murdered in peace time about one hundred thousand people in this region. Where did it murder these people? In Sandjak, in Albania, where they burned to the ground the Drin Valley, turned it into ashes and dust, murdered tens of thousands of Albanians. In Croatia they murdered hundreds of peasants, thousands of beatings across soles of feet was punishment for insulting the King and Fatherland. You have Senj victims, Stipe Javor who died in Sremska Mitrovica (Serbia’s prison), they are all victims of Greater Serbia imperialism that has remained to today the greatest threat in this region and we, Croats, are we deaf; autistic?

A propaganda war is again being waged against us by Serbs. We are paying for and the Serb HAVC (Croatian Audio-visual Centre) has paid for the Diana Budisavljevic film that is a complete falsification, we still do not have an official World War Two history, but Serb imperialists, who committed those crimes, are writing it for us. Currently in Serbia a film “Dora from Jasenovac” is being made. How is that going to look!?

To conclude, we must pull out of this lethargy because that battle is still being fought in the media space, and I would say that if we don’t write our own history somebody else will and that which is happening today is a total embarrassment of all of our cultural institutions, educational institutions.

Why are there no monuments to victims of Chetniks in Bosnia and Herzegovina? There are none because most Chetniks had gone over to the Partisans. And today people protect that criminal regime and I will finish with that today. Today you have people sitting in the Croatian Parliament who protect the largest criminal organisation in this region and that is the former communist regime.”

Hrvoje Zekanovic: “So, while we are keeping silent Mrs Jeckov speaks about Ustashas in the Croatian Parliament, and all that you said, General, and it’s very important for us to know, we do not have in the mainstream media but have Dragana Jeckov and soon we will have Dora from Jasenovac, a film being made in order to discredit Croatia.”

General Zeljko Glasnovic: “Yes. If war crimes don’t have a statute of limitations why is the chief of Zagreb OZNA (Department of People’s Protection of communist Yugoslavia), Josip Manolic, walking around in Zagreb. In Lug forest you have 50 mass graves, where hundreds of people were murdered. That means we have two standards in the justice system. Regretfully, this is a deep state, we got our flag and anthem, but this is not despairing, we must fight for the truth.”

Hrvoje Zekanovic: “And the representation…”

General Zeljko Glasnovic “ Yes and representation. Look, the Chetnik movement, I will only give one example, it has been rehabilitated in Serbia, the Chetnik movement is rehabilitated. You have from ten years ago the funeral of Nikola Bojevic, mass murderer, who in Sandjak in 1942 murdered hundreds of women, children, elderly, burned them in their houses, at his funeral a Serbian priest, Orthodox priest, that is a sect and not Orthodoxy, that is de facto Saint Sava following, a sect, he holds a speech and says that Nikola Bojevic (their war criminal) was loyal to his Fatherland and mother’s milk. We do not react at all.

What is more frightening is what is our diplomacy doing? That is frightening.”

Hrvoje Zekanovic: “I will deviate from the topic, I will ask for your opinion on a topic America Trump Biden, give me a comment, how do you look upon the situation?”

General Zeljko Glasnovic: “I would say it is a huge fight for the Western civilisation. Today as we always have in the world, that battle from living memory, we have the political battle, the cultural-media one and above all the spiritual, metaphysical battle because a huge battle is being fought for the souls of today’s world. And look what’s happening today, they always repeat the communist mantra forget the past we must worry about the future. Is it like that!? Look at today’s tensions between Greece and Turkey, look at today’s tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It means that if we do not know the genesis, if we do not possess fundamental knowledge, we cannot defend ourselves. We need facts, we need people like Mr Zekanovic and other patriots we have who have entered into the parliament and as Christ had not abandoned his way of the cross at the fourth station, we must follow his example. We all must fight because these hicks sitting in the parliament, those lunge-out/stand astraddle alphabet soup of NGOs, these neo-communists like Peovic (Katarina), Bencic Sandra) and those redesigned communists will introduce, we will see in two years in Croatia that children will until the age of 12 be deciding by themselves which gender they will be. If we lose that spiritual battle, and we will not lose it, then we have betrayed all young Croatians, 23 years old in average, who had given their lives in the Homeland War.

…For Croatia, all for Christ and against Communists.”  

And so I conclude this article by saying that the wisdom of the Cherokee story comes alive in Croatia. Now perhaps more than in 1990’s, when such grave losses were sustained from the Serb aggression against us Croatian because we wanted out of communism, by exercising the freedom of choice our blood-soaked victory brought us, we can make life-changing decision as of which wolf is going to be fed in Croatia. Do not feed the communist Yugoslavia one any more, feed the Homeland War one. Ina Vukic