Predator or Prey?

The FBI Files: Season 6 - Ep 16 "Radical Resistance"

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In the 1970s, a Croatian terrorist group linked to the National Resistance party committed acts against non-supportive Croatians living in the United States. With the help of an informant, the FBI apprehended, arrested and convicted members of the group of crimes ranging from conspiracy and extortion to murder.

THE FBI FILES reveals the crime busting techniques and forensic science used by the FBI to solve the most baffling cases. Former head of the FBI's New York Office James Kallstrom hosts these true stories of crime and detection.


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Croatian National Resistance

The Croatian National Resistance (Croatian: Hrvatski narodni otpor, HNO), also referred to as Otpor, was an Ustaša organization founded in the aftermath of the Second World War in Spain. The HNO ran a terrorist organisation, Drina, which continued to be active well into the 1970s.

The organization operated between legitimate emigre functions and a thuggish underworld. Its leaders tried to distance the organization from the acts of the so-called renegade elements. It embraced a radical nationalist ideology that differed only marginally from Ustaše ideology.

The HNO had stated, in their constitution, that:

"We regard Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia as the greatest and only evil that has caused the existing calamity... We therefore consider every direct or indirect help to Yugoslavia as treason against the Croatian nation... Yugoslavia must be destroyed—be it with the help of the Russians or the Americans, of Communists, non-Communists or anti-Communists—with the help of anyone willing the destruction of Yugoslavia: destroyed by the dialectic of the word, or by dynamite—but at all costs destroyed."

The organization published its own magazine, Drina. It existed until 1991.


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Croatian nationalism

Croatia is a distinct ethnicity with it's own genuine history, language, and culture. Of that, there is no question.


The Ustaša

The Croatian Revolutionary Movement, Fascist in ideology.


The Catholic Church and the Ustaša

During World War II, the Catholic Church backed the Ustaša in an effort to form a new Croatian state which would be fully Catholic. This happening---and the many war crimes of the Ustaša, along with knowledge by the church, and participation by Croatian church officials---has overwhelmingly been buried and spun by the financial and political power of the church. 


Old Croatian-American communities

There have been Croatian-American communities in many corners of the United States going back a century and beyond. Chicago, Pittsburgh, southeast Louisiana, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles... the list is long. I have a cousin in a more-or-less rural area in Pennsylvania, and she says there's a strong old Croatian community where she lives. When my family came to this country and settled in Upper Michigan, there was a Croatian community just as old as the Lombardo-Venetian community there. More recent Croatian immigrants have settled in other places like Seattle, Phoenix, locations in Florida and numerous other locales.


Croatian American Association (or here)

During the crisis in Yugoslavia during the late 80s/early 90s, the CAA organized meetings and a structure made up of leaders from all over the U.S. in regards to how to deal with the continuing crisis (at that time). There were a series of YouTube videos about this, but they seem to have disappeared. It certainly showed a tremendous amount of pride, passion, cultural continuity, and social cohesion between older Croatian communities and more recent arrivals.


Croatian National Resistance (Hrvatski narodni otpor) in America

The HNO was much the same as the ETA in the Basque Country, the FLNC in Corsica, the IRA in Ireland, and other separatist groups which resorted to terrorism. On the other hand, many consider the Sons of Liberty to have been basically a terrorist group, which brings up the hypocrisy of the topic. One person's "freedom fighter" is another person's "terrorist." Seldom do people look at the hardships perpetrated on both sides of any conflict.

What made the HNO a bit different is that they wrongly brought terror to the United States, imposing a "revolutionary tax" on successful Croatian-American businessmen. It should be stated that both parties were among the arrivals of recent decades. It probably also perhaps should be stated that the IRA had committed bank robberies in the U.S., for example in Boston, to finance themselves... as well as purchasing arms from Irish-American gangsters.


Parallels between "the Balkans" and "the Italian peninsula"

Although there were inherently more cultural elements which tied the various "nations" of the Italian peninsula together in 1860, there is not all that much difference between it and the Balkans. The peninsula also had different cultures and languages. For example, Lumbardia (pronounced "Loom-bar-DEEE-ah") was essentially a nation, with it's own distinct language. The Lumbard language is NOT a "dialect of Italian"... although it's linguistically related to Roman/Latin. Much of it is made up of words of proto-European and Gaulish origin. In a perfect world, Lumbardia would be a nation in its own right, and possessing a larger area than the current defined region.

The greater Veneto, Tuscany, Calabria, Sicilia, etc., all have their own distinct culture and native tongue... just as the competing nations of the Balkans have. However, they have long been united by a common religion. We can't blame this apathy entirely on circumstance. The Croatians have demonstrated the will and fortitude as a people--even across oceans!--to fight for their ancestral homeland. By being apathetic, even in terms of what might be good for the whole peninsula, we now get a steady diet of this....

Even locally in parts of the Bay Area where there was once quite a prominence of Italian-American culture even just twenty or thirty years ago, a recent "techie" arrival would never know that we were ever here. One would never have the faintest idea of the 100-year link between Genoa and San Francisco. Just yesterday in the late afternoon I was at a successful local business owned by a proud family in Colma with old roots in Liguria. After purchasing something, one of them said a simple phrase to me in Italian as we parted company.

While driving home I thought to myself that I was sorry that I didn't respond to his phrase in a more explicit manner.. in Italian. Here there is a big (gay) "PRIDE" mural right down the street from that establishment, and I can't even say two words in Italian? It's like subconsciously accepting our rapid demise. In the old days, we didn't feel the need to "cut out a slice of society for ourselves," as this was just our home, period. It just belonged to all who lived here.

In nature, in any given circumstance, a creature is either predator or prey. Sadly with super-Capitalism, mass migration, and the new surge in identity, radical, and behavioral politics... human society is now much the same. In the film 'Wall Street', financial predator Gordon Gekko said flatly "You are either INSIDE or you are OUTSIDE." I offer this to our people, south Italians, Croatians, Slavs, and other similar people.... right now we are OUTSIDE. What the Croatian National Resistance did wasn't the right thing to do... however, doing nothing is worse. Even discussing what one "might do" is still better than doing absolutely nothing.

The people who absolutely dominate this country---and are behind that mural... and a thousand other things that disable us with their veiled supremacism---meet every July in Marin County not far from here, and they hate us! We're archaic people who need to be replaced or go away. It's that simple. If you took all responsible, wittingly or unwittingly, for local studio apartment to be as high as $5,000 a month.... and imposed that horrible and unreasonable THING upon the hometowns that they originally came from.... their hometowns would become ghost towns overnight.... and we stand for this??

It's all part of the same thing----whether it's a supernational entity totally disempowering a people like what was happening in Croatia, or gentrifying a people out've existence in favor of others, or taxing a people out've existence, or denigrating their culture in favor of their own, or surveiling them without having to show cause----as the prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator and general of Athens--Pericles--once said: "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."



The right wing/left wing folly

It's not difficult to see the problems of a nationalist movement taking on the veneer of "Fascism" or "Communism".... which are both moronic expressions to reflect just how "angry they are." Sure, there are plenty of reasons to be very angry, but they harm their cause by making it all about a general politic... instead of about flesh and blood.... about the soul of a people. Sinn Féin didn't help it's cause by attaching itself to Communists and terrorists. Lega Nord doesn't now help it's cause by even accepting the "far right" label... literally accepting the title that the enemy has given you. Native Americans who fought for their land were not "right-wing extremists." There are Russian nationalists, both Fascist and Communist, who hate each other and have even killed each other... even though they seem to support the same cause.

Remember.... Croatia did eventually win its independence.... and did not end up with a Fascist, Communist, or Globalist government, but a government which has maintained security for its people.

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