In closed messaging groups and through small-scale concerts, the Croatian branch of Blood and Honour is networking with other neo-Nazis in Europe. Patrik denies being a member of Blood and Honour, but the symbols he displays on his clothes show he shares its neo-Nazi principles. Blood and Honour has been banned in Germany and Spain and declared a terrorist organisation in Canada, but that does not stop Patrik from proudly sporting a hoodie bearing its name at a café in the northern Croatian port city of Rijeka. (…) The organisation meets in secrecy, nurturing ties with affiliates in other countries and discussing ideology behind hidden profiles on social media and closed channels on messaging apps. They call for a “clean Croatia” and promote hatred towards migrants. But this summer, two men, visitors to Rijeka, briefly lifted the veil of secrecy when they posed for a photo on Kantrida beach, bare-chested and showing off tattoos of swastikas, the SS Totenkopf death head and, on one of the men, the face of Adolf Hitler. Anti-fascist activists identified one of the men as a guitarist affiliated with the Hungarian branch of Blood and Honour, and in doing so managed to name a member of the Croatian branch too. (…) Patrik declined to tell BIRN his surname, and said he had bought the Blood and Honour hoodie not from the organisation’s Croatian branch but online and only because he is fond of such symbols. On the front of the hoodie were the words, ‘Maks Kvaternik Patriotic Shop.’ An Internet search turned up a page under the same name on the Russian social network VKontakte. Among the page’s followers is ‘Patrik Vidmar’. Vidmar’s Facebook profile was recently deleted, but BIRN found him tagged in a photo on Facebook showing a group of men on their way to a right-wing concert in Italy. In the photo, Vidmar is sitting beneath flags of Blood and Honour and ‘Skinheads Croatia’. Concerts are a key means of networking for far-right organisations in Europe. When photos of the tattooed Hungarian men appeared in Croatian media, the portal Anti-Fascist Courier identified one of them as a guitarist of the band Feher Vihar, whose photo can be found on the website of the Hungarian Blood and Honour branch. The report linked their visit to Rijeka with this year’s ‘Despa Memorial’ concert, an annual concert held in memory of Goran ‘Despa’ Despic, a man Blood and Honour Croatia described as their “brother” and who died in a motorcycle accident in 2014. Cooperation between the Hungarian and Croatian branches of Blood and Honour is particularly strong, with Hungary under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban a frequent venue for far-right gatherings.
via balkan insight: Music Mobilisation: The Concerts Connecting Neo-Nazis in Croatia