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Imagine that the German national team celebrated its World Cup victory four years ago by inviting a Nazi singer to share the stage with the players. A singer who in the past had sung warmly about Auschwitz, the annihilation of Jews and SS, including the song about beautiful Germany, including parts that were lost in World War II, has become the hymn of the team.
In Zagreb last Monday, the Croatian national football team celebrated its second place in the World Cup with a parade in the capital. Some 500,000 welcomed them. People lining the streets.
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Marko Perkovic – nicknamed Thompson, after the submachine gun – was invited to join the players on stage. Together, they sang the anthem of the team, which mentions the Croatian parties of Bosnia.
Thompson fought in the 1991-95 Croatian War of Independence before becoming a patriotic rock-folk Balkan singer. In the past, he sang much sharper songs, including that of Jasenovac, a Croatian death camp in Slavonia where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and opponents of the Nazi-Croat regime were murdered during the Second World War. World War. "The Neretva River sweeps the Serbs towards the blue Adriatic", title this song that praises Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Nazi-Croatian regime of Ustasius.
AP Photo / Darko Vojinovic
Thompson begins his performances with the war cry of Ustase, and Nazi salutes can be seen in the public, with Ustase shirts and other paraphernalia. Its performance has been banned in some European countries and even in Croatia attempts have been made to prevent it. In the celebrations in Zagreb, the most flamboyant songs were not heard, but the Ustasian regime certainly did, and the fact that Thompson became the center of the celebrations sparked a big debate in Croatia and the Croatian diaspora.
A number of websites have published polls such as: "Thompson on Zagreb Square – for or against", which shows that Croats are divided on the issue. In the Croatian diaspora, especially in the German-speaking part, harsh articles have been published against the singer. "It's like falling in love with a man and then discovering that he has a swastika tattoo," writes Danijela Pilic in Suddeutsche Zeitung.
The invitation to Thompson was extended by the players, especially Luka Modric, who misinterpreted the public sentiment. Perkovic himself denies being a Nazi fascist. "I am a patriot, not a fascist," he said.
Efraim Zuroff of the Weisenthal Center is not persuaded. In a statement, Zuroff said that Perkovic was a prominent supporter of the pro-Nazi regime, who sang songs calling for the killing of Serbs, and that to invite him to sing "gives his fascist views a legitimacy that would make him angry. they do not deserve ".
The controversy reveals Croatia's unresolved attitude to its dark past and the tensions created after the War of Independence. As expected, the populist regime, led by Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, the president of the camera, turned the team and the celebrations into a test of loyalty.
Here we can also see nationalist singer Marko Perković Thompson with footballer Luka Modrić, and on the other picture we can see him doing a Nazi salute.
Modrić and other players call him to be with them The scene. But in the end, the majority of the crowd booed and left pic.twitter.com/rvcXDGpTpW– Nomad Kirk (@kroslav) July 20, 2018
After the Croats united to support their team in the World Cup in Russia, and many Balkans, including the Serbs, openly rooted for it, the Croats scored a goal against his side.
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