Croatia¶
The Croatian cases show stigma arriving from below, through mass entertainment, with the state as audience rather than author. A symbol that would be contested in a ministry becomes hard to contest once a crowd has embraced it, and a government reluctant to cross that crowd leaves objection to individuals, who bear its cost in person. Restraint then comes from whichever institution is willing to bear the crowd’s displeasure, not from the instruments the state holds.
The clerk’s briefs¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
Worth a look. Critics who object learn that the cost is personal, and some will choose silence; those for whom the salute recalls the wartime regime hear it cheered by a crowd and thanked by the state. The far right gains a public that need not be organised, only invited. Restraint left to individual councils is uneven and can be reversed by any change of local majority; a national rule, or a government willing to disown the salute, would change that.
November 2025: The city says no¶
Zagreb’s mayor, Tomislav Tomasevic, said a second Thompson concert, planned for 28 December, would not go ahead: the city had not approved the request after the City Assembly banned the “Za dom spremni” greeting on all city-managed property. The clerks note that the brake on the spectacle came from a city council, not a ministry.
July 2025: Half a million at the hippodrome¶
On 5 July 2025 the singer Marko Perkovic Thompson played the Zagreb hippodrome to a crowd the organisers put at around 504,000, the police reporting more than 450,000 tickets sold. Thompson opened one song with the cry “Za dom spremni”. The interior minister, Davor Bozinovic, thanked everyone involved. The former prime minister Jadranka Kosor, who had criticised it, said she received threatening messages on her personal phone. The clerks note that the concert passed without major incident, and that the critic was threatened afterwards.