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Above, a section of a Thompson concert photo. The full picture was too large for this page, but can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/2jqj8v Photo credits and links here. |
By CzechRebel
We get hate mail…
We regularly receive hate mail and hate comments from all sorts of Serb-hating and anti-Semitic bigots. We expect hate mail; it goes with the territory. Hate mail shows that people are reading our blog, that we have not merely been “preaching to the choir,” and that we have clearly taken a stand on an issue of importance.
Our haters usually try to paint victims of the Nazi Holocaust as the new Nazis. Quite frankly, it makes no sense. So it is almost refreshing to hear from a self-admitted Croatian Nazi. At least, he (or she) is an honest Nazi.
Reader Equates Love of Croatia with Being Nazi
This is an exact quote:
“If loving your country and wanting to be free makes you a nazi then we’re nazi’s!”
We have left it all in, including improper capitalization, the misuse of an apostrophe to make the word Nazi into a plural, and all.
That is classic. Hitler himself equated his National Socialist Party with love of Germany.
Giving Nationalism a Bad Name
Unfortunately, the modern politically correct position is that all nationalism is bad. We are amazed that the Christian community, which is so worried about the restrictions against displaying the Ten Commandments, doesn’t want to apply “Honor thy father and thy mother” to nationalism. The word “father” clearly refers to an ancestor, as well as to one’s biological father in the immediate family. You can’t truly honor your father, if you don’t honor his heritage.
It is right to be proud of your heritage, to support your ancestral people, and to preserve their traditions. However, in modern melting pot America that concept seems to be lost. If we even manage to recall anything of our heritage, we downplay it with phrases such as “We are Americans now.”
Croats, like every other ethnic people, should be proud of who they are. The high points of their civilization should be celebrated. The low points should be acknowledged, true. But we should not define ourselves by our low points, , as individuals or as peoples.
Unfortunately, seeing Nazism as the means to support your people and your homeland tends to cast all nationalism in a bad light. Nationalism? Yes! Nazism? No!
World War II Croatia
Our reader continues,
“There has been many mistruths spread about Croatia circa World War II(sic).”
On that much, we agree.
We all too often focus on the Ustache, the regime that ruled Nazi Croatia during World War II. But we would rather focus on Croatians who bravely fought the Nazis. We are especially thankful for those Croatians who stood up for what is right-sometimes sacrificing their own lives-to save Jews, Serbs and Allied combatants. They are the true Croatian heroes of World War II.
World War II Deaths
Everyone should be well aware that many millions of people died during World War II; there is no denying that a vast proportion of the dead were innocent civilians rather than actual combatants. The Holocaust is an undeniable fact. In addition, collateral damage is a fact of life during all wars. Often, strategic military decisions are made that will kill many innocent civilians.
So, we are bit confused by our readers next sentence, “Hundreds of thousands of unarmed Croatians were slaughtered at the hands of the Serbs/communists – when do you ever hear about that?”
If our reader means the Serbs that served in Tito’s Partisans when he says “Serbs/communists,” we would not be too surprised. Civil wars tend to be brutal and bloody. However, we have not heard of these “hundreds of thousands” either. If it happened, we would like to see some evidence. However, such accusations are easy to make. When those accusations are made against Serbs, they are routinely accepted as gospel truth, even with no evidence to back them up.
Holocaust Denial Rears Its Ugly Head
Growing up in the shadow of World War II, I can vividly remember hearing some of the nasty things that were said about my classmates who may have had some German heritage. Clearly, having German heritage bothered some people of my generation, even though they were born years after the Holocaust and may never have set foot in the old country.
The epitome of this concept was demonstrated when a young friend of mine, with a very German-sounding surname, read a book suggesting that many of the Jewish Holocaust deaths were not actual executions, but deaths during captivity from disease, starvation, and what might be called natural causes. (Obviously, regardless of the immediate cause of death, the Nazis were nonetheless responsible for their captives’ demise.) One could say that, he wasn’t denying the Holocaust. He wasn’t minimizing it. He merely felt somewhat vindicated in believing that his ancestral people had not actively executed the full six million Jews.
Our reader seems to be endorsing this view as he (or she) continues,
“The amount of Jews/Serb civilians (sic) that were killed is widely exaggerated – I think the figure is over 1 million now! What a joke!(sic)”
Stalin once said that a death was a tragedy, but a multitude of deaths was merely a statistic. It is amazing how desensitized we have become to mass murder. What can we say about someone who more or less acknowledges that the Nazis murdered over a million Jews and Serbs, and yet complains that the numbers bandied about are exaggerated?
Let’s take a close-up look at the death of a family of four. None of them every committed a crime. The father worked at his job and contributed to society. The mother managed her home. The children went to school. Father, mother, brother and sister where rounded up by the Nazis solely because of their ethnicity. They are detained in a camp. They are separated and never see each other again. They do not receive proper food. They do not receive medical treatment. One by one, they each have their day with the gas chamber. Expecting a shower of some sort, they each enter a mass shower room. They die an agonizing death. After death, their bodies are taken to a mass crematorium. They have no funerals. They have no graves. No marker bears their names. Each dies alone in a way that lacks any semblance of human dignity. Mass murder is mass murder, whether you multiply each death by six million or one million.
Yet, modern Nazis say that we need to return to those days. They say that a million dead Jews and Serbs should be forgotten and that six million deaths did not happen. We didn’t take Hitler seriously until it was nearly too late. Maybe we should take these modern Nazis a little more seriously and confront them now.
Winners Write the History Books, But Sometimes the Loser Contributes
Our reader goes on to complain that the Croats, being the loser in World War II, have gotten bad publicity. Quite frankly, I cannot think when and where this bad publicity might have come out.
None of the Croatian Nazis were tried for war crimes, as they were considered “too valuable” in the Cold War effort against the Soviet Union. Few people even know about Nazi Croatia. While people today may know about the pro-Nazi Vichy puppet governmet in France, Nazi Croatia was simply not well publicized.
In the recent Balkan struggles, we only hear about those “bad” Serbs and “holy” Muslims. The Croat faction seems largely to have escaped public notice. Croatia is no longer part of Yugoslavia. But now, their new county has produced an openly pro-Nazi rock musician who tours the world with songs about killing Serbs, and the world doesn’t seem to care.
He riles his audience and gets them in the mood to perform acts of destruction. This has been limited to property damage – for the time being.
So, we are at a loss to identify exactly what “propaganda war” our reader feels that the Croatian people have lost. It sounds as though the Croatian Nazis are getting away with murder . . . again!
Also See:
- Category Link: Articles by CzechRebel on 1389 Blog
(Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click
the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.) - Category Link: Balkans for Dummies Series on 1389 Blog
- Category Link: Articles about the Balkans
- Category Link: Articles about Kosovo
- Category Link: Articles about Orthodox Christianity
- Category Link: Articles about Serbia
- Never Knew that the Church was Orthodox
- What Happened in 1389?
- Serbianna News (feed widget available; see 1389 Blog sidebar)
- Neo-Nazi concerts continue Down Under, despite complaints
- Nazi Rock Band Thompson Touring Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide, Perth
- Australian Dept of Immigration and Citizenship Answers 1389 About Perkovic
- Neo-Nazi Croatian band Thompson to tour Melbourne Dec. 29, 2007
- “Thompson” Concert: Neo-Nazi creepazoids push back
- TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 2
- TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 1
- Nazis: Coming soon to a concert venue near YOU!
- Neil Clark: A Nazi Rocker in New York
- ‘Slightly Fascist’? The New York Times Prods Croatia – Gently
- Standing For Nationalism
- Racists Branded, Nazis Ignored
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Amazing how some “nationalists” always veer towards the worst kind that ever existed.
Gramfan, the problem is that people fail to see the difference between loving one’s country, which is good, and worshipping it, which is the sin of idolatry.Check this out for pure looniness: NYT Travel Section: Get Your Islam, Communism, and Fascism On!
1389 – that is what I really wanted to say:)
Okay, I’m guilty of adding the ‘ too.
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