Croatia's Nice Nazis
A couple of years ago, I found myself in a small town in Croatia, with time on my hands. I pottered about for a while, trying to find something to do, and my eye was caught by the grafitti on some of the buildings.

Croatia still has quite a significant nationalist-cum-fascist undertow to its politics. This was reflected in the grafitti I saw. In black marker pen on a number of walls, someone had drawn a range of swastikas, and written slogans generally expressing an active dislike for Bosniaks, Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, Muslims, and - by the looks of it - anyone who wasn't a Croat.

How do I know that this was the tenor of the slogans? I don't speak Croatian. Fortunately, they were all in English. It's nice to know that nationalistic thugs in that part of the world are at least cosmopolitan enough to make the race-hate multilingual.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 13:49, 11 replies)

Hahaha! Xenophobes who write in a foreign language!
Clearly too stupid to notice the irony.

I once met an albino white supremacist. Now THAT'S dedication.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 14:05, closed)

Travelled Croatia with a mate. Spilt - Dubrovnik- Mijet
being non-white, I thought I was going to get all kinds of shit. Arrived in Split and checked out the local night life, great beer friendly enough people, we even got talking to a group of girls, nothing doing, just think they wanted to improve their English. However they invited us to a nightclub. Loads of hot girls there but even more massive, massive blokes looking very tough, I could tell they were tough by the way they were picking up, well bouncing, cars out of the way in the car park outside, so they could park their cars (true). I have to say not one of these people gave me any kind of attitude at all. I was surprised myself because I have been in the same situation over here and felt intimidated being the only person of colour in a cheesy club.

It wasn't until I got home and watched a documentary on the fans of hajduk split football club that I realized that we were in a night club that was right next to the infamous ground and at least part of the club going people most have been hardcore supporters. Why I didn't at least get some offensive names thrown at me or the odd shoulder barge I have no idea???! If there are any Croat B3ta'ns on could you explain why nobody was racist to me? It was a pleasant surprise but I expected a little bit. Oh and enzyme, i do remember seeing a lot of badly drawn swastiks, espeically in Split.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 14:53, closed)

Interesting.
I wonder if the explanation might be something like this: that, since Eastern Europe doesn't have the same historical ties with non-white parts of the world (a crude phrase, I admit - but you know what I mean), there isn't the same level of non-white immigration, and so less hostility based on skin colour. If there's no feeling that you (or people who look a bit like you in the right lighting) are (ahem) comin' over 'ere, stealin' our jobs/ women/ whatever... well, you personally are less likely to generate hostility.

Instead, the xenophobia is directed at Jews/ Slavs/ the wrong kind of Slav - all of which is less physically (and sometimes even linguistically) obvious.

Also, Split is big, it's a port, it's comparatively well-off, and it's on the tourist route - so it's possible that the culture's a bit less insular than in some places (like where I was - where I doubt there'd been a non-white person seen since the Ottomans left).


In summary: I don't know. I'm making this up as I go along.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:04, closed)

Hmmm interesting
I like your fuzzy logic here Enzyme, it's the only plausible reason too and does make sense, especially with the past they have. Only crap we took was in Mijet, tiny little island with loads of nice people but a few weird yokels, thought me and my mate were bumming each other because we shared a room (different beds), HAHA!! Where were you by the way?
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:10, closed)

Flitting between Rijeka and Opatija.
The grafitti were all over the place, and the same applied to Pula when I went there.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:40, closed)

Wow o.k
You weren't kidding when you said you were in the middle of nowhere!!!
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 16:40, closed)

I'm not a Croat
but I do speak the language and know the people and region. I think the above comment about Split being a touristy place that gets people from all over the world travelling through is a good point. They rely heavily on tourism and most of the locals won't take kindly to one of their own starting trouble with foreigners, as it will ulitimately hurt many of them in the pocket. At the end of the day, yes there certainly is a bit of a problem with racism/xenophobia among some sections of the population, but it's still only a minority of morons. The vast majority of people wouldn't be so overtly racist and nasty as to want to start a fight with you.
( Biffins Bridge, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:19, closed)

Makes a lot of sense cheers GMS

(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 16:37, closed)

reminds me of some graffiti I saw in Belgrade
sometime around 1996, at a time when there were very few foreigners there. (And this was before it kicked off between NATO and Serbia over Kosovo)
Someone had scrawled - in English - on a city centre wall: "Yankees go home!". Now it was odd enough that someone felt the need to instruct the "Yankees" to go home, as there were very, very few of them in Belgrade in those days.
But stranger still, the message, although technically in English, had been written in the Cyrillic alphabet, meaning that only people who could read that alphabet could transliterate and understand it. And if you can already read the Cyrllic alphabet and are in Belgrade, chances are you understand Serbian in any case, so why did they bother to write the message in English anyway?
I'm guessing about 3 Yankees in total saw and understood the message. And they probably didn't go home.
The pointlessness of it always used to puzzle me, but made me chuckle too. Maybe that was the whole point. Strange Balkan sense of humour.
( Biffins Bridge, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:27, closed)

I'm trying to imagine how that'd look in Cyrillic
ßàíêû ãî õ¸ìü is the best I can do...

EDIT: And even then, b3ta can't cope with the symbols...
:(
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:43, closed)

yeah I just typed it out
but b3ta is not cool with Cyrillic, it seems

I've just been searching google images to see if there's a photo of it anywhere, but it's unlikely since this was the dark days before digital cameras and internets had taken off.
( Biffins Bridge, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:55, closed)