Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
"Croat" is not a slur, just what people from Croatia are called.
I don't think making fun of Croats for their country's past is any more insensitive than any other instance of bullying someone for their nationality.
If anything is a sensitive topic its not as much their role in WW2, but rather the much more recent Yugoslav wars, and the still existing tensions between Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks.
"Croat" is not a slur, just what people from Croatia are called.
Gotcha, I figured but wanted to be sure. It really feels like a slur to me idk why 😭
I only poked at their country's past because they insinuated that Turkey was lesser in some way due to the generally higher melanin content and it was clear from their username that they had some nationalist sentiments
Better not to make their ethnicity a point of ridicule.
But do proceed with reactions like "What in God's ~~creation~~ croatian..."
i dont see why not
I hate that I'm like this (or that the world makes me respond this way?) but there are certain identity groups that make me brace for fascism and really horrible reactionary bullshit.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I immediately hate or distrust someone just because of a last name or an ethnicity but especially in recent times there are particular identifiers that mark someone as having Jewish heritage and I just brace and silently hope to myself "Please don't be Zionist, please don't be Zionist..."
In a similar way, Croatians have a reputation with me for often having strong ultranationalist and fascist sympathies. Obviously not all of them do and I'd hate to treat all Croatians as if they are guilty of beliefs that only some of them hold, especially when Croatians were also victims of fascism and some of them resisted Croatian fascism however they could, but if you're Croatian then I'm bracing for the Ustaše sympathising due to my past experiences. A large part of this is because the expat Croatian community where I live is extremely comfortable flying the Ustaše flag and even wearing Ustaše garb openly so it's hard not to be more than a little on edge about this.
I think that it's fine to give a fascist or potential fascist flak without remorse. If someone is veering heavily into racism or ethnonationalism then I wouldn't take issue with calling them on it. But there's a big difference between pissing on the Ustaše flag and draping someone in that flag simply because they are Croatian; if you spit on the memory of Pavelić in front of a Croatian to gauge their reaction that's fine but I wouldn't go and make accusations of someone being a sympathiser unless I had good reason to.
(Idk if you're across it but keep an eye out for the chequered shield used in Croatian iconography - if the first square is white, things are not right.)
I was wondering what that shield meant. Dude was definitely a fascist
This is the normal Croatian flag, nothing of concern here:
(Note that the chequers in the top left go Red-White-Red-White)
This is the Ustaše flag:
If you see that symbol in the top left or you see the shield with a chequered pattern that begins at the top left with White-Red, then you've got yourself a fascist.
It's important to know the difference because they aren't easy to distinguish between at first glance, especially if you don't know what you're looking for.
Same goes for Ukrainians and Poles.
Crow-at, or you can call them Hrvatska or Hervatskan, since that's their endonym...
Damn, so scroat doesn't really work. Highly unfortunate. Granted, altering the term for an ethnicity in order to make it offensive probably hasn't been a good thing historically.
I thought Serbs were the fascist ones?
hahaha, they're europeans, they're all naturally facists.
but really, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e