Comment by krupan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krupan | Hacker News Reader

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I lived in and have returned to visit former Yugoslavian countries over the past 25 years and until just now had not come across these spomeniks. I'm glad I was able to learn the true stories about some of them at the same time. Overall I'm pretty disappointed in the weird vibe of the article. This statement was particularly confusing:

"Yet not only in Croatia, but in France, the USA, Britain, real, open fascism – fences, walls, racial laws, deportations, camps – is once again mainstream."

Deportation camps are once again mainstream in these countries?? Are they? And "once again" as if they ever were mainstream? Did I miss something?

That kind of makes me doubt everything else said in the article. Overall the article seemed to be very anti fascist (great!) and pro post WWII communist (not great) even seemingly celebrating Yugoslavia's defeat of the Allies?

Anyway, I would love to see more simple explanation of each spomenik like this article gives for some of them (artist, purpose of the monument, dates, etc.). Anyone know where to find that?

This all depends on what is meant by “fascism” and “mainstream.” The author seems to have viewed immigration restrictions as fascist.

It seems like it would be better to discuss immigration policy and enforcement directly (when someone wants to do that) rather than having meta-discussions about what category it belongs in.

And yes, I am aware that in Croatia there was actual Fascism complete with camps and everything around WWII times. And yes those other countries in the list also rounded up groups of people into camps at the same time period, but I would not have called what the US, Britain, and France did Fascist or mainstream back then, and I'm not aware of anything like it today.

Deportation operations and camps in the UK:

https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/rwanda-plan-explained-why-...

https://www.gov.uk/immigration-removal-centre

The way I interpreted that sentence is not that fascism was established and flourishing back in 2016 when this was written, but rather that the fascist ideals and concepts were being openly pushed without (enough) sanction by the mainstream.

The reason why I interpret it that way is simple: when fascists are actually in power, there's no such thing as "mainstream" anymore. Authoritarian rule means that there's only one correct way of thinking and behaving, and everything else is a crime or heresy or "evil", depending on the specific flavor of authoritarianism. "Mainstream", on the other hand, implies that there are other views and that they can be discussed.

Glad we’ve never had that in the USA

/sarcasm

> Authoritarian mean there’s only one correct way of thinking and behaving, and everything else is a crime or heresy or “evil”, depending on the specific flavor of Authoritarianism.

Oh wait, that sounds exactly the like the United States. If you don’t believe what 95% of the “mainstream” media is pushing you’re labeled all sorts of things. The biggest on is conspiracy theorist, when all it take is ~ 6-9 months before the conspiracy theorists are proven correct. Let’s not get into how often the terms racist, fascist, and nazi are thrown around when people of opposing views disagree. Somehow it’s almost always the one side slandering, due to lack of argument.

In Croatia there arent any camps and the country is very peaceful. However there are plenty of neo-Nazis, especially amongst football supporters and even some political groups (part of the government). There are also some people that the government is too affraid to touch, given their war veteran status and public popularity. In the article bellow is a photo of one such person, called Marko Skejo. The picture tells a thousand words

https://www.index.hr/mobile/vijesti/clanak/video-skejo-i-hos...

And there are a lot of people that write crap about Croatia around the Web just like you. There are neo-nazis even in Russia....so what we should do about that?! Get a grip.

Dude Croatia is a member of the EU. Do you really want to compare it to Russia? In Split there are Nazi murals that the government is too afraid to touch. This guy who tries his best to look like Hitler gathers dozens of idiots in Split every year to mark the commemoration of founding of the Croatian Nazi state and no one dares to do anything about it. I love Croatia, but this is a real problem

But Croatia is not a runaway wayward EU member, it has to comply with EU standards and EU laws. I mentioned Russia because Hitler wanted to annihilate "Slavic race" and Russian state and even there you have people glorifying Nazism.

Laws exist. The point is that the Croatian govermnent is very affraid to enforce them

Or even worse, laws are selectively enforced.

You've been downvoted in your root comment because people latch onto that neo-nazi definition but missing forest from the trees. The far right over here is powerful, organized and very vocal. The football matches are just a social overpressure valve so the fans are constantly fighting between themselves instead of taking to the streets to protest the political/economical issues. And the government likes it that way.

The U.S. is absolutely creating deportation camps, and there's a national zeal for evicting people here. It's, unfortunately, bipartisan.

The conditions in U.S. camps are dire, children sleeping on bloody straw, smeared with feces. Families separated. Food, water, and shelter inadequate to sustain life in the deserts where these camps are.

In Britain, the attitude is similar pro deportation, but the refugees aren't put into camps as far as I know. However, the buildings that they are in have been subject to attacks and arson.

The "once again" probably refers to both the historical mainstream opinion that Japanese migrants should be moved to concentration camps within the U.S., and of course the mainstream beliefs in Nazi Germany.

(Note, I'm not trying to draw any parallels between any of these camps. Please don't infer that I'm calling anyone nazis except the nazis. These examples can all exist and be over the threshold of "cruel" without needing to be compared to one another.)

> The U.S. is absolutely creating deportation camps, and there's a national zeal for evicting people here. It's, unfortunately, bipartisan.

I believe the point the comment was making is that no reasonable person would call the existence of walls or fences, or the deportation of illegal/undocumented immigrants fascist (even those who believe that free migration is a human right), or that "racial laws" are mainstream (except maybe in affirmative action, but it benefits PoC so the author of the article most likely wouldn't consider it a racial law).

The deported people are still human and deserve basic dignity. If we are going to deport children, throwing them into a concrete cell with bloody straw and feces is absolutely roses to inhumane levels.

> no reasonable person

How very no-true-scotsman of them.

I think you'll find that quite a few reasonable people consider mass internments and deportations to be pretty far along the spectrum towards fascism

I doubt that I'd consider them reasonable, unless your "fasiscm spectrum" goes from 0 to 100 and it's "somewhere". Then yes, _everything_ is on that spectrum, it's just that a lot of things are < 10 and some things are > 90 and if you say "well, they're on the spectrum towards fascism therefore they are fascist", I wouldn't label you reasonable.

And if you think that deportations are > 90, you have no idea what fascism is.

You've conveniently sidestepped the mass incarceration portion there (the US has stunningly high incarceration rates even ignoring immigration-related cases).

The "who" also matters when it comes to deportation. If we were just deporting folks who overstayed their visa, versus a policy of deporting refugees who took great risks to even reach the country, or folks who were raised (and sometimes even born!) in the US... I'd have more sympathy for the anti-immigration crowd.

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