Hate Speech, Contentious Symbols and Politics of Memory: Survey Research on Croatian Citizens’ Attitudes

Abstract

The authors are presenting and interpreting the data on Croatian citizens' attitudes on regulating hate speech, contentious symbols and public commemoration. The data was collected in two nationwide surveys conducted in 2016 and 2018. The data is analyzed within a normative framework of militant democracy versus anti-democratic tendencies. In the conclusion the authors, invoking the available data, advocate a minimal model of regulating public speech by focusing on public utterances of direct and symbolic hate speech.

History and memory beyond classroom in Croatia

“…Trust in representative political institutions will be positively related to Critical antifascist postmemory due to the general support of democracy. This hypothesis stems from similar research results previously done on general population in Croatia (Blanuša, 2013(Blanuša, , 2015(Blanuša, , 2023Blanuša and Kulenovic ́, 2018). For opposite reasons, the trust in representative political institutions will be negatively related to Revisionist postmemory of Croatian victimhood and Anti-Yugoslav patriotic reconciliatory stance.…”

“…1. Previous research results (Blanuša, 2013(Blanuša, , 2015(Blanuša, , 2023Blanuša and Kulenovic ́, 2018), obtained on the general population of Croatian citizens through exploratory models, have suggested a strong interconnectedness between perceptions of the Second World War and Homeland War, articulated in two polarised ideological discourses. The first one is framed as an antifascist narrative about the Second World War (1941War ( -1945 together with critical interpretation of the Homeland War (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995), including acceptance of responsibility for the war crimes committed by Croatian military forces, and a general support for democratic order.…”

“Ready for the Homeland” in Croatian media: Commemorations, victory, and foundation

“…The ZDS -the official salute of the WWII Nazi-aligned Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska -NDH) -has been among the central symbols linked to the rise of nationalism; from its use during football matches (Brentin 2016), commemorative practices (Pavlaković, Brentin, Pauković 2018;Pavlaković, Pauković 2019), 1990s war veterans' meetings and commemorations (Damčević 2021), to wider debates concerning the regulation of hate speech and contested symbols related to WWII and the 1990s "Homeland War" (see Đurašković 2016 ;Blanuša, Kulenović 2018). The relativization of the salute by certain social actors and political parties lies in its ties with the Croatian "Homeland War", when it was used primarily by members of the Croatian Defense Forces (Hrvatske obrambene snage -HOS).…”

“…With the above in mind, it is important to state that the discourses surrounding the ZDS are not exclusively about the salute; they are also inevitably related to the qualitative evaluation of problems and implications that the salute quantifies, such as Croatia's WWII and "Homeland War" legacies. The two-sided feature of the salute -a contested symbol 7 on the one hand and nationalistically motivated hate speech on the other hand -presents an increasingly relevant research object due to its capacity to trigger a wide range of meaning-making practices tied to remembrance, nation-building, and identity construction (see, for example, Brentin 2016;Blanuša, Kulenović 2018).…”