Hate Speech in the Slobodna Dalmacija Newspaper

AIM Zagreb, February 16, 2001

As part of a hate speech survey the Zagreb Civic Human Rights Committee non-government organization conducted on the example of the Split daily Slobodna Dalmacija, 10 issues of the paper (every third) were analyzed in the period from Dec. 2 to Dec. 31, 2000. According to Snjezana Djordjevic who actively participated in the survey, hate speech was detected in 75 instances in the 10 issues surveyed. Djordjevic says that these did not involve classical forms of hate speech -- racism, sexism etc. but mostly those expressing political xenophobia. The daily pays much attention to politics, but it is biased and stresses the distinction between "us" and "them." In line with such prejudice it has a list of enemies who need to be discredited in every possible way, the Human Rights Committee says. One of such hostile targets of this daily, one could even say its main target, is the current political elite: the ruling six-member coalition and Croatian President Stjepan Mesic.

The Slobodna Dalmacija's No. 1 enemy, the head of state, Mesic, was referred to in negative terms 28 times in the issues surveyed. The following description well illustrates this: "The incumbent Croatian president is not an ordinary citizen who can allow himself to publicly hate Herzegovinians. He speaks of and acts against everything related to Tudjman with enormous hate." With only two points less, Prime Minister Ivica Racan came in second on the paper's list, together with ministers from his Social Democratic Party. Racan is, for example "a prime minister skilled in political trickery;" "Members of his party proved that there will be no bloodshed this season, leaving the bloodthirsty rather disappointed." Deputy Prime Minister Slavko Linic was described as "Slavko the Undertaker, a jumpy bully," and Justice Minister Stjepan Ivanisevic was referred to as "Ivanisevic, better known as a zealous commie."

With 23 negative points the ruling coalition was ranked third on the list. Thus the six-member bloc is a group of "extremists seeking to put anyone who does not share their political schemes to the flame, sword, or court-martial them, selling the people a pup..." Fourth place on the list is reserved for the Serbs. In the period in question the Slobodna Dalmacija blasted them on eight occasions, using reports and headlines such as the following, "Petrinja Hunter Killed by Cyrrilic Script." Only in three instances did the Croatian Social Liberal Party fall victim to the paper's rage. The Slobodna Dalmacija's enemies, however, are not to be found solely at home; there are plenty of them abroad as well. The international community, or as the paper prefers to call them, "foreign swindlers," were mentioned 36 times in negative context. The U.S., the EU, NATO, and the Hague tribunal are the most frequent targets of attacks. For example, "Former Nazi, fascist, communist conquerors from Europe are judging us today... the cabal from The Hague...;" "They have probably never asked themselves why the U.N. never prosecuted Americans, who in WWII killed like dogs hundreds of thousands of 'gook' civilians (as they call them), who without showing a minimum of regard for international law leveled whole cities in Germany; what court tried U.S. president Harry Truman for ordering atomic bombs to be dropped on 'gooks' in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

The survey also showed that in 26 instances (35 percent of the contents surveyed) the paper's hate speech incited violence, intolerance, and conflict. For example, "Croats, Croatia is calling on you to restore her dignity and trust in her own forces, her pride and strength!" The paper also wants to instill fear in its readership of the international community, run by the "Freemason lobby" in a piece published under the following title, "Politics and Occultism in the Lodges: the New World Order as a Masonic Entity." The headline was also meant to spread paranoia in regard to the Hague tribunal: "In 2000, relations with The Hague were the stepping stone of Croatia's politics, but this is only the beginning." Or, "There should be no hasty reconciliation with Serbia, but neither should we hand over Croatian heroes to international Minotaur." Otherwise, "Minotaur" and "Polyphemus" are poetic figures of speech most frequently used by the Slobodna Dalmacija to as picturesquely as possible portray the horrors of the Hague court. The Human Rights Committee views this approach as extremely dangerous, given that the news media play an important role in developing crises, conflicts, and wars. They say that this type of speech is a prelude to launching wars and conflicts.

The paper also has its enemies in non-government organizations, newspapers (called by the Slobodna Dalmacija, "the so-called independent press") and intellectuals, whom its labels "allegedly thinking intellectuals." The independent press, however, is their favorite target, most of all the magazines Feral Tribune and Nacional, and the dailies Novi List and Republika. Thus they say, "In a part of the press, hate boils and fumes as if during the Walpurgis Night..."; ....not even Hitler and Mussolini were blasted that much in Allied papers, as Tudjman is in the Feral, Nacional and other propaganda publications of the anti-Croatian coalition, now falling apart from within." Or, "The Rijeka Novi List, in describing the anniversary of Tudjman's death is using vocabulary even the Greater Serbian warlords in Belgrade would have difficulty putting together." The Slobodna Dalmacija offered much of its space to slander against the Feral Tribune, which according to the former, "...acts exclusively from its ideological position as a mouthpiece of neo-Yugoslavism and Dalmatian pro-Yugoslav fascist unitarianism." This does not end here: "The Feral Tribune is, simply speaking, totalitarian and does not even hide it." The title, "The Stench of Feral's Shit," printed in boldface, announced a story which among other things says that "the biggest shit, however, are their media crimes." A prominent opponent of "Feral's ideological stances," Joska Celan, had his son, Nikola, also send a message to the editor in chief of the Feral Tribune, Heni Erceg, "At the end, Auntie Heni," he wrote, "I realized that you and your publication are nothing more than a parasite living off Tudjman's memory... that you are good for nothing and that your schemes are stupid."

People at the Human Rights Committee believe that the Slobodna Dalmacija's negativistic approach is thoroughly ideological, and that journalists and editors of this paper amply use it. This is, in fact, unbalanced reporting, in which arguments of only one side are presented to the public, without giving the other side the chance to say anything. For example: "... The prime minister and his ministers are using lies to protect their attempts to undermine Croatia's sovereignty, fawning to their foreign mentors who helped them come to power"; "They elected Mesic president. What sort of Croats are they? Women enchanted with stubble, or primitives used to the vocabulary of the base? The Americans were right in estimating that after the unyielding and serious Tudjman, the people needed a comedian..."; "the Herzegovina Syndrome was invented by members of the How-Good-We-Had-It-Under-The-Serbs party."

In other words, the paper uses a suggestive and mobilizing rhetoric, whose purpose is to shape opinion and behavior, in this case, that of Slobodna Dalmacija readers, to serve the interests and plans of the former political elite. Snjezana Djordjevic says that frequent instances of hate speech based on events that never happened were also registered. She quotes the following examples: a headline saying, "The Hague Gears Up for Trial of the War for the Fatherland!"; or, "Carla del Ponte to Bring Indictments to Zagreb." The poetic style used by Slobodna Dalmacija journalists to express xenophobia against its political opponents is quite impressive. Their gift of negative imagination most often comes to the fore when The Hague-based court is in question. "The Hague Big Brother, or the Big Global Glass Eye," "The Glass Eye of the Big Hague Polyphemus," "The Anonymous Bureaucratic Spy," are just some of the host of examples.

The role the Slobodna Dalmacija is playing in the current situation in Croatia is best illustrated by its frequent suggesting that for the ruling six-member coalition it would be best to stop lying to the people and call early elections, not being up to the task of governing the country. Following are a few such conclusions: "Demagogy whose tactlessness and ruthlessness unavoidably leads to a simple technicality -- the printing of ballots for early elections"; "What is indeed stunning is the fact that leading officials of the country lie to the people with straight faces... the similar is being done in other ministries, in the Cabinet, in the Office of President... nobody trusts them any more... insolently and unpunished, they are ridiculing the state, its institutions, and the people who are paying them dearly. There is, however, no disgrace big enough to make the top people honorably step down, resign... not one state would tolerate such destructivity"; "If President Mesic does not wish to abide by the Constitution which is his most important duty, then the Parliament should not hesitate in taking adequate measures. There is no one, however, who would initiate that. And this is tragic. Why is a secret vote not held in the Parliament?" Sometimes even direct questions are asked: "Sirs, do you have any idea how a state should be managed?", or the following conclusions reached: "When all unkept promises of the current authorities are analyzed, it becomes even more obvious that those who had lied without any remorse are now adding up to their lies to defend themselves and making new false promises. Such a Machiavellian attitude in struggling for power was hardly ever registered in a state calling itself democratic and lawful..."

Simultaneously with the publication of such reports in the Slobodna Dalmacija, throughout Croatia associations of volunteers and war veterans, gathered in a organization suggestively called the General Staff for Defending the Dignity of the War for the Fatherland, organized, with the assistance of the Croatian Democratic Union, protests rallies under the slogan "We Are All Mirko Norac," to, as they put it, "topple the puppet government in Croatia." Given that the criticism and the editorial policies of the Slobodna Dalmacija were also cooked in the same, Croatian Democratic Union, kitchen, the words of the Zagreb anthropologist Dunja Richtman Augustin inevitably come to mind: "It is a pity that the incumbent authorities failed to properly use their first months of office, when the population was still full of enthusiasm for de-Tudjmanisation and doing away with various forms of crime inherited from the Croatian Democratic Union era."

Ivana Erceg

(AIM)