Banja Luka, Split and fascism in the stands

(Peščanik.net)

It so happened that this Sunday, at the matches of two football clubs that have marked my life, Velež and Hajduk, fascism was pouring from the stands. Which, unfortunately, I heard live at Poljud in Split, and fortunately I didn't hear it from Banja Luka, not even on TV, because at the beginning of the second half I went to the Split match between Hajduk and Istra.

Of course, local nationalists, especially those in Croatia, can pretend that this country no longer has anything to do with the Yugoslav regions and countries, but it is rare for practice to instantly refute all nationalist misconceptions like this.

So, Torcida just continued with the Ustashaism and hatred towards Serbs at Poljud, which they introduced as a regular practice at the home match against Istria, exactly a year ago, when a new wave of Ustashaism spread across the country after Thompson's Zagreb concert. Such chants and offensive banners against Serbs have been present at Poljud for decades, but in the last year it has been news when the Ustasha salute is not chanted, instead of the other way around.

On the other hand, the fans of Banja Luka's Borac have not avoided glorifying war crimes and war criminals, but what changed with the match against Velež is that referee Admir Music from Sarajevo, exactly as the regulations require, first warned the spectators that he would stop the match, and then he actually stopped it, after the chants in honor of Ratko Mladić continued, and it only resumed after the northern stand of the stadium was emptied.

And it is precisely on this issue of reaction that a significant difference in context, countries, societies, clubs and their symbolism is noted.

First, in Split, the referee did not think to stop the match, just as it did not occur to the official announcer to warn the fans. This was not the case until a year ago, but now both the announcer and the referee know that Ustashaization is a practice that the HDZ, Plenković's government protects, and the same applies to the football association, which is also under the control of the HDZ. And if that is the case, the regulations are ridiculous. From that perspective, the most bizarre moment of the match was when the official announcer at the stadium, during halftime, read out what was his obligation: "Remember that in football there is no place for racism and discrimination in stadiums." If anything will end Croatian society, it will be opportunism, home defense and satisfying the form.

On the other hand, Admir Music found the strength to stop the game and empty the stands, which many will maliciously interpret as a logical move, since he is a Bosniak from Sarajevo. And he will not notice that the football/soccer association is run by people from Banja Luka and that by this act, Music has seriously jeopardized his refereeing career, if not his personal safety.

But these are aspects of the functioning of government and power relations in politics.

What is much more important, i.e. what should be more important, is the heritage and symbolism of the clubs. For those who have not read the book by the English historian and researcher Richard Mills, "Football and Politics in Yugoslavia: Sport, Nationalism and the State", I highly recommend it and it is available in a Croatian translation from 2019. And I recommend it because it is precisely in that book that it is evident that Hajduk was a partisan and specifically anti-fascist club, whose most ardent fans rejected that club's tradition back in the eighties, while the most ardent fans of Banja Luka's Borac and Mostar's Velež remained in positions of Yugoslavism, Titoism and anti-nationalism in general practically until the end of the joint league. The problem, which explains everything that happened at these two matches, is that Borac's fans rejected that tradition of theirs long ago, that it was only maintained among Velež fans and within the club itself in general, and that Hajduk's leadership is acting blindly, deafly and naively. The people who run Hajduk are quite clear about what Ustastvo is and how far it is from what Hajduk is. After all, they recently published Jurica Gizdić's book, "Ratni Hajduk", with a detailed overview of matches and the time when Hajduk played as a team of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. But those same people, on behalf of the club, do not distance themselves from ustasa in the stands.

And so, as I've already said about Croatian society, the same goes for Hajduk. If anything will finish off that club, it will be opportunism and home rule. Along with those who hide behind defiance and resistance to the powerful while rejecting the time when Hajduk was just that.