Ready for the tone

(portalnovosti.com)

Thursday evening is reserved on the Second Channel of Croatian Television for domestic films, but when the Catholic and national holiday of Corpus Christi is being celebrated, then you won't be watching that film. The HTV editorial board assessed that Corpus Christi was the ideal time to broadcast the Ustasha salute, so on Thursday, June 4, you could watch Thompson on Channel Two.

Those who are usually bothered by the star paid 60 thousand euros for a recording of the hippodrome concert of the biggest star in Prisavlje, and for that amount we got the opportunity to hear Marko Perković greet the audience at exactly 22:31 with the ancient Croatian-Catholic greeting "For the Homeland", to which over 350 thousand people in the audience - including ministers of the Croatian Government - readily responded.

Nothing new, of course. Banned in the Zagreb Arena, as well as in the one in Pula, banned in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and the Netherlands, Thompson is more than welcome on HRT. Last summer, on the eve of the concert, the public broadcaster ran a media campaign for days for the most successful post-war profiteer in our entertainment industry.

We heard about the “magnificent event”, watched as the jubilant audience on the streets of Zagreb joined the live broadcast and happily shouted “ZDS” while the hosts smiled contentedly, and we also learned that the entire event “passed without incident”, as if the Ustasha slogan in public space was not an incident in itself. The recording of the concert is therefore just a logical continuation of the editorial policy. In much the same way that the editorial policy of HRT is a logical continuation of the state one.

Žarko Puhovski also thinks similarly, commenting on HRT's programming choice: "I congratulate them on their unintentional courage to propagate Croatian shame. Croatia needs to see its shame and face it. The majority, or a large number of people, will not perceive it as shame, but at least they will not have an aura of secrecy around them, let's see what happens. What happens is that a large number of people, in my opinion, out of ignorance and idiocy, at some point accept a slaughter cry."

Journalist Drago Pilsel, as we have already reported in Novosti, reported HRT to the Agency for Electronic Media for broadcasting the Ustasha salute, while parliamentarian Dalija Orešković concluded: "What the state, with the blessing of the Church, presented as its choice for a religious and state holiday, is a clear political message, both from the government and from the Church, which stands by such a government."

The For Croatia's Freedom initiative, organized last year as a response to the growing Ustashaization of society under the high patronage of the highest authorities, an Ustashaization that exploded at Thompson's concert, and then continued with attacks and cancellations of leftist festivals and cultural events of Serbs in Croatia, also protested.

“We call on the HRT Programming Council and the relevant Parliamentary Committee for Information, Informatization and Media to open a public debate on the criteria according to which the public service decides which cultural and social events it presents as content of special national importance,” the Initiative said. “We believe it is legitimate and necessary to ask the question according to which criteria HRT concluded that this particular concert deserves several hours of space on the public service, and in what way such a decision contributes to the fulfillment of the public function that HRT has towards all citizens of the Republic of Croatia.”

In more coherent times, all the institutions named - from HRT, through the Media Agency to the Parliamentary Information Committee - would rush to explain how it is possible for us to listen to Ustasha greetings on public radio and television, and then we would hear apologies and resignations. But in the present time, it is clear, we will not watch that film either.