PHENOMENOLOGY OF ANTI-FASCISM

“Anti-fascism” is a political coinage that emerged in the political struggle before World War II. The slogan had all the qualities needed in propaganda, it was short and sounded good to European ears. No propagandist would recommend using the expression “Anti National Socialism and Fascism”, it would be awkward, although here we are dealing with two similar but quite different concepts. Although German National Socialism was the main political and military opponent of the Allies, everyone chose the term “anti-fascism” to designate the main opponent. In addition, in Europe, since the time of the French Revolution, it has become a political fashion to present the most ordinary struggle for power and dominance as a struggle for great universal human principles. The struggle for power is often rough and dirty and therefore it was necessary to dress it up appropriately. Long gone are the times when the Bosnian beys addressed the nobles of Lika with approximately the following words: “Recognize the authority of our great Sultan and eat your bread in peace.”

Another significant feature of the slogan is found in the conceptual structure. Here it is very clear who the common enemy is, but it does not tell us anything about who the allies are in this struggle, as if this were not important. In political practice this proved to be a very useful “illogicality”. Thus it was possible to encompass in one word the impossible allies: Western liberals and Bolsheviks as fierce opponents of liberalism and private property. They were all held in alliance by Anti-Fascism. It should be emphasized that this, at first glance, impossible political marriage had a real threat in opposition, and that was the powerful German military power and the original economic system, which in terms of its success was an even greater threat to communism and liberal capitalism.¹

In historical and political terminology, the Allies fighting Germany in World War II are referred to as the Anti-Hitler Coalition, according to which the war goal was to overthrow Hitler’s government. But this thesis is in direct contradiction to the official position of unconditional surrender.  This meant not only the overthrow of Hitler’s government, but also the complete destruction of German power.²
There is an interesting episode in Italian history when it was shown that it was possible to put an end to traditional organized crime (the mafia). Mussolini’s government managed to do this in a short time, and so the Italian mafiosi became anti-fascists and had to seek refuge in the United States.³

The communists were consistent opponents of parliamentarism and capitalism, but this did not prevent them from temporarily uniting with bourgeois parties when it was politically expedient. In such cases, anti-fascism served well as a mask. This mask would be discarded when it was no longer needed and when it became an obstacle to a one-party dictatorship, and yesterday’s party allies would become reactionaries, servants of capitalism or, worse, enemies of the people. During the occupation and collapse of the First Yugoslavia, the communists completely masked their struggle for power under the cloak of anti-fascism. All their government bodies and political organizations had the prefix anti-fascism. Everything was presented as a struggle between good and evil, where Bolshevik communism was the light of the world, and German National Socialism and fascism were darkness. In the case of the Second Yugoslavia, after 1945, we find a good example of this.⁴
In addition, on the political ruins of the First Yugoslavia, anti-fascists are fighting against the occupier and his accomplices for national liberation, all with general, non-partisan goals. When it comes to Italian fascism, all anti-fascists must face the undeniable facts that:
They did not come to power by force and their political repressions cannot be compared to the Bolshevik experiences in the USSR or in the Second Yugoslavia.
They did not go against private property and religion, but were content with strict control of the financial and banking sector and the macroeconomy.
That they saved Italy from the civil war that devastated the peoples of the collapsed Russian Empire, Spain and the Croatian people.
The negative balance should include the completely failed foreign policy of creating a new Mediterranean power modeled on ancient Rome. Their problem was that the ambitious Mussolini government did not have Roman legions at its disposal, but soldiers who did not want to fight for similar goals. It turned out that they did not want to fight on either the German or the Allied side and, most importantly, they did not want to fight among themselves like the Croats, for example.

ANTI-FASCISM AMONG CROATIANS
The Yugoslav communists successfully used the slogan “anti-fascism”, especially when it came to the parts of Croatia that the Italians annexed after World War I and during World War II. As usual in their propaganda, this was a historical simplification. It should be noted that Italian territorial claims far predate Mussolini’s government.⁵
The Yugoslav communists went so far in their anti-fascism that they included in the founding documents of the new state the complete expulsion of Italians and Germans. This does not fit in with lofty anti-fascism at all; this was a clash of nationalism between the Yugoslav peoples on the one hand and the Italians and Germans on the other.⁶
Anti-fascist phenomena are particularly alive in Istria. It is true that the partisans seized this territory from the Italians, in order to annex it to Yugoslavia and Croatia, and in doing so, expel the Italian population. The paradox is that today Istrian politicians have returned the Italian flags to public buildings as if it were some kind of Italian-Croatian condominium, but their mouths are still full of anti-fascism. In an anti-fascist Yugoslavia, such people would have a guaranteed place in prison.
During the Second Yugoslavia, every May, a polemic would flare up between the Yugoslav communists and Moscow. The leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were offended because their military contribution to the anti-fascist struggle was not mentioned. Today, we know for sure that Hitler’s Germany was militarily exhausted and ultimately defeated thanks to the Red Army and the powerful Soviet state created by the Bolsheviks. It is also a fact that the areas of the Second Yugoslavia would have been liberated from the Germans at the same time if the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had not existed. The pace of the German retreat was dictated by the Red Army’s advance towards Pest and Vienna, and there is no room for any theorizing. But if these facts are accepted, then the basic fact remains that the Yugoslav communists took advantage of the war turmoil and the collapse of the First Yugoslavia to come to power by force. Those who are still proud of the anti-fascist struggle in Croatia today do not want to ask themselves the simple question: “Why were other nations not progressive enough and followed their example: the Bulgarians, Hungarians, Italians, French…”?
The answer is very simple, the formation of larger units and a war against the then German army had no chance of success. In addition, it would have entailed great human and material sacrifices. This was also the logic that guided Serbian General Draža Mihajlović. His strategy was not to repeat the mistakes of 1941, to wait for the Western allies, and then to combatively activate against the occupiers.⁷

From a historical perspective, it is not clear why the Ustasha⁸ movement is persistently labeled as fascist, when they did not call themselves that. By that logic, the Western powers should be labeled as Bolsheviks because they were allies with the USSR in the fight against Germany in World War II.

If we look at the matter from a propaganda perspective, then this is very understandable and was useful to the communists in the struggle for power, especially when we take into account the fact that the Ustasha authorities had to accept impossible Italian conditions. Anti-fascists made good use of these concessions by the Ustasha authorities to label them as national traitors and fascist servants. Of course, no one remembered that the Ustasha authorities had rejected the provisions of the Treaties of Rome at the first opportunity, in 1943. In the political struggle for power, the Ustasha had no choice, no one wanted to support them. If they had had a choice in terms of choosing allies for the creation of an independent state and had opted for Mussolini, who did not want it at all, then it would make sense to talk about treason. When it comes to a national Croatian state, it should be emphasized that such a political idea did not exist among the communists, and there was no room for Croatian nationalists there either. If it had existed, the mass liquidations of 1945 would certainly not have taken place. Instead, anti-fascists built Yugoslav socialist patriotism among Croats, especially after the consolidation of power.
The Ustasha penal labor camp in Jasenovac is the best example of anti-fascist mythology. Post-war communist crimes cannot be directly disputed because there is material evidence for this, but they can be overshadowed and pushed aside by propaganda. For this purpose, during the communist rule in the Second Yugoslavia, a political myth was created about the Jasenovac camp as a place of mass executions. The propaganda logic was to present the magnitude of communist reprisals against Croats as righteous revenge against the greatest evil. In the absence of evidence, the communists maintained the myth with repressive measures, and after the collapse of the Second Yugoslavia, anti-fascist fanatics could no longer maintain the excessively high negative rating of the camp and had to lower the bar. Anyone trying to get a clearer picture of that camp must ask themselves the following questions:

Why would the Ustasha authorities, in the scarce and chaotic circumstances of the time, send tens of thousands of political opponents to the Jasenovac camp, only to kill them all there? From a logistical and organizational perspective, that doesn’t make sense. For example, when the Yugoslav anti-fascists decided in 1945 to liquidate the majority of the captured members of the Croatian Armed Forces, they did so in northern Slovenia and Croatia. They did not transport these prisoners to Serbia only to liquidate them in one location. The rest of the Croatian army and civilians, who no longer posed a threat to the authorities, were transported in long columns into the interior and left to the local authorities to deal with.

If the Ustasha goal was to mass-murder political opponents in the camp, why did they release them after their sentences had expired?

Many camp inmates were released, and some managed to escape. How is it that none of them has so far shown even a single mass grave, while oral testimonies speak of large-scale liquidations?

Why has the search for mass graves in the Second Yugoslavia been suspended, and in today’s Republic of Croatia no one is officially trying to do so?

If the camp was intended as a ritual mass execution site, why did it have various production facilities and a health service?

Why was there a mail service and parcel delivery to prisoners?

Why would the camp administration shoot security guards who appropriated part of this aid?

How is it that the delegation of the Red Cross from Switzerland did not notice anything that would point to a mass killing ground?

The camp archive is currently in Belgrade. How come none of the historians refer to this material to substantiate claims about a mass execution ground.

The creators of the Jasenovac myth in Croatia made a big mistake when they decided to substantiate the claims about the mass execution site by publishing a list of victims online. For this purpose, it was necessary to provide, in addition to the names and surnames, other basic data for the identification of the victims. The creators were indeed creative in their work, but they forgot that computer scientists can, in such cases, detect fabrications without much effort. This was managed, among others, by two young researchers: Nikola Banić and Mladen Kojić. Their analyses clearly indicate that this is a big political lie. The best proof that this is a fraud is the fact that the state-owned Public Institution Spomen – Jasenovac area makes no attempt to dispute the aforementioned “revisionist claims”. Furthermore, the entire scandal has been pushed aside by the media. Why is it forbidden in the state and most private media in the Republic of Croatia to question the validity of the Jasenovac myth?

Finally, why don’t the current authorities condition relations with Belgrade on the return of this material to Zagreb?

Today it is clear that Serbs no longer have that much influence over the aforementioned blockades, there is a large part of the population of this country who is comfortable with such political mythomania. Such people feel comfortable when they watch how “major party opponents” meet annually to bravely defend positions at the 83,000 level (number of alleged victims in the camp). As long as they hold this level, everything can be presented as a fight between good and evil. In that case, the political conscience of anti-fascists remains calm despite the ugly images from Slovenia and Croatia. Everything points to the fact that these domestic fighters also have strong support outside the borders of the Republic of Croatia. This claim cannot be proven exactly, but confirmation can be found indirectly in the ban on commemorating communist victims in Bleiburg.⁹

In addition, it is unofficially forbidden to bury the remains of “fascists” in a common grave. This is no coincidence, because in that case the grave would have to be marked, and then what inscription to put on such a monument would be an even bigger problem. These are all uncomfortable questions for anti-fascists. In order not to disrupt their political peace, Croatian Radio Television comes to the rescue, updating throughout the year the suffering of other peoples, the endangerment of plant and animal species, and climate change.
There is no end to anti-fascist historical constructions in Croatia. Thus, every year in Zagreb, May 8th is celebrated as the day of the liberation of the city. On that day, units of the Yugoslav Army entered the city, and units of the Croatian Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia left it. This change was accompanied by unprecedented reprisals. Everything was justified as the victory of good over evil because a state was created that solved national and social problems. This illusion lasted until the leading people who created it began to biologically disappear, something similar to the USSR. No matter how much the anti-fascists were outraged, it turned out that the Ustasha’s opposition to every Yugoslavia and communism was historically correct.

In the 1990s, history mostly repeated itself, the Croatian army fought against Yugoslav People’s Army for an independent state. The fighters who created the Croatian state could not even dream that the beginning of the communist struggle for power in World War II, on June 22nd, 1941, to be accepted as a national holiday under the name of the Day of Anti-Fascist Struggle. The historical facts are very clear, the political goals of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were to create a Second Yugoslavia modeled after the USSR. What will never be clear is how this is aligned with the Homeland War in which the Second Yugoslavia was broken up and the communist dictatorship was rejected¹⁰
If we add to this that in Croatia the day when independence was declared, 25. VI. 1991, is not a national holiday, then it is clear that anti-fascism can be squeezed into anything if necessary. One thing that will certainly not be able to be squeezed into the head of the average Croat is how it is possible to celebrate the beginning of a devastating civil war. The usual explanation is that we thus aligned ourselves with the winners in World War II. It should be said that the Bulgarians and Hungarians also aligned themselves with the winners, but without the horrors of a civil war.
The determined opponents of every Croatian state are now presenting themselves as its founders. The only thing that the Republic of Croatia inherited from the so-called anti-fascist struggle are the borders of the federal unit of the SRH¹¹
The above claims about the anti-fascist struggle are today advocated by certain professional historians and politicians, and this only shows how far their academic level and national consciousness have sunk. Such contradictions and illogicalities cannot be explained by ignorance or misinterpretation of facts; here we are dealing with much deeper subconscious causes. Krleža also stated that the Croatian ethnic relief was destroyed during the Turkish wars and that since then this people can neither live nor die.¹²
The Turkish way of warfare resulted in the displacement of the native population and the arrival of other ethnic and racial drifts. Only in this way can political contradictions that at first glance seem insoluble be explained.
After the political defeat of the leadership of the Communist Party of Croatia in 1971, a student felt deeply hurt when the esteemed Marxist theoretician, Predrag Vranicki, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, concluded his lecture with the words: “Now that this nationalist euphoria is over, we can calmly continue building socialism.”¹³

True, the student in question had a slightly elevated national temperature at the time; everything Croatian seemed positive and just to him. Carried away by this hurt national feeling, he followed the professor straight to his office to ask for an explanation. The professor was not at all surprised when this “euphoric” student appeared at his door. He calmly replied that he was also a Croat, but that nationalist slogans could not be written on the League of Communists of Yugoslavia flag. Translated into ordinary language, this means that his Yugoslav/international class interests come before Croatian ones. After this explanation, the student in question lost the will to continue the discussion. His heightened national temperature slowly began to confront the reality that Croats as a people are made up of very different genetic material. And it is no coincidence that many Serbian politicians and historians looked down on the human conglomerate that in the 19th century slowly began to be called the Croatian people. It sounds paradoxical, but it is very useful to analyze the argumentation and thinking on the topic of the Croatian people by our political opponents from the ranks of the Serbian people. Political opponents use all means, but this does not mean that everything they say and write is untrue, on the contrary. Nikola Stojanović, for example, points to the fact of political wandering between Illyrianism, Yugoslavism and Croatian nationalism. He notes with irony that around the “Croatian Piedmont” of Zagreb, the inhabitants do not feel like Croats and do not actually know to which collective they belong. Similar examples could be found in other parts of today’s Croatia.¹⁴
Mathematically precise conclusions cannot be made here, but how else can one explain the fact that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Second Yugoslavia are still in the political trend. This political Yugoslav magic cannot be shaken even by the fact that many prominent communist leaders from Croatia became disillusioned with their former ideals, took up political work and made their contribution to the creation of the Republic of Croatia. Nothing better shows how much anti-Croatian sentiment has accumulated in Zagreb than ignorance towards its founder dr.Franjo Tuđman.¹⁵
In this case, it didn’t help that he was a product of the anti-fascist struggle, his mortal sin was that he lost faith in Yugoslav communism and thus became a political apostate. The Law on the Preservation of Yugoslavism in Croatia cannot be questioned, even if the third Yugoslavia were to collapse.
In this case, it did not help that he was a product of the anti-fascist struggle, his mortal sin was that he lost faith in Yugoslav communism and thus became a political apostate. The Law on the Preservation of Yugoslavia in Croatia cannot be questioned, even if the third Yugoslavia were to collapse.
Italian fascism and German National Socialism were defeated long ago. Since no one calls themselves by those names anymore today, it seemed that anti-fascism had lost an opponent and was no longer relevant. By no means, new political phenomena have become a replacement; this is any political movement that puts national interests above foreign ones, this is everyone who opposes the unhindered replacement of the population, the free entry and exit of capital from the state and everyone who claims that sexual intercourse between the same sexes is unnatural behavior. This group also includes everyone who tries to question some episodes from the anti-fascist struggle in World War II. Even 80 years after the victory, anti-fascists are afraid to face unpleasant historical facts. When someone throws off the black and white glasses and tries to look at the past in the full spectrum of natural colors, then anathema immediately follows: “Ah, that’s historical revisionism”. Translated into ordinary language, this means: “Don’t spoil our image of the glorious past, that’s a grave political sin.”

The latest manifestation of the anti-fascist phenomenon is found in the current Russian-Ukrainian war. When it comes to war propaganda, there is no point in moralizing, but it is difficult to remain indifferent when the Russian side today accuses Ukrainians of being Nazis. The point is that some Ukrainians politically collaborated with the occupier during the German occupation in World War II. From the Russian side, this argument makes sense because they were part of the same state. The view from the Ukrainian side is completely different. Considering the horrors they endured in peacetime during collectivization and political terror in the USSR, it is entirely expected that a part of the people would choose between the two masters for the less violent one.
In any case, in the absence of real fascists and national socialists, anti-fascists need not fear that they will run out of opponents. It is enough to label the one they disagree with as a fascist or an extreme right-winger, and the eternal struggle continues.