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Cancelling Croatia’s Open Society

Igor Bogdanov Essay: Franjo Tuđman vs. George Soros’ Open Society

Thesis: Franjo Tuđman opposed George Soros’ Open Society initiatives in Croatia because he believed they represented a disguised effort at re-Balkanization, undermining Croatian sovereignty and national priorities. Croatia, a young nation still healing from war, could not afford to house refugees on its beaches when its own war veterans were abandoned in poverty.

When Yugoslavia collapsed and the Croatian War of Independence raged in the early 1990s, President Franjo Tuđman stood as the architect of a sovereign Croatian state. In the post-war years, he faced a second kind of invasion—not by tanks or paramilitary forces, but by NGOs, foreign ideologues, and transnational foundations. Chief among these was George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, whose utopian promises of liberal democracy and borderless global citizenship rang hollow to a man who had just fought to secure a homeland.

Tuđman did not view Soros as a philanthropist. He viewed him as a Trojan horse.

The ideology of Open Society, inspired by Karl Popper’s theories, seeks to dissolve national barriers in favor of individual rights, minority empowerment, and unrestricted migration. For the war-weary Croatian Republic, however, these ideals appeared detached from local realities. Croatia was not a stable Western democracy with centuries of accumulated wealth—it was a scarred, transitional state emerging from occupation, ethnic cleansing, and economic ruin.

The first objection Tuđman had was pragmatic. Croatia could not afford a mass influx of migrants. “Boat people” who washed up along the Dalmatian coast—whether economic migrants from Africa or refugees displaced by NATO’s endless wars in the Middle East—were not simply symbolic gestures of Europe’s benevolence. They were logistical burdens on a state that could barely house its own. Many Croatian war veterans, who had risked their lives for independence, now languished in underfunded shelters, jobless and broken. To Tuđman, prioritizing migrants over veterans was not compassion—it was betrayal.

The second objection was cultural and political. Soros-backed NGOs often acted as self-appointed guardians of human rights, launching public campaigns that demonized Croatian nationalism and rehabilitated Yugoslav ideals under the guise of “multiethnic tolerance.” Tuđman saw this as a direct challenge to Croatian identity and sovereignty. He feared that the same foreign forces that had carved up Central Europe after both World Wars were returning—not with guns, but with grants.

Tuđman warned against what he called the re-Balkanization of Croatia: the attempt to reintegrate the country into a Balkan framework, as a pliable outpost of EU liberalism rather than a proud Central European nation with its own values, Catholic traditions, and historical mission. In this framework, the Open Society network represented a subtle form of imperialism—ideological rather than military.

Critics accused Tuđman of xenophobia, nationalism, and paranoia. But in hindsight, his skepticism toward Soros was not isolated. Across Eastern Europe, leaders from Viktor Orbán to Aleksandar Vučić would later echo similar sentiments. Even in the West, the Soros brand has become synonymous with a form of soft power that many view as elitist and disconnected from the will of local populations.

Tuđman’s vision of Croatia was not one of isolationism but of dignity. He did not oppose helping the poor, the weak, or the stateless. But he believed charity must begin at home—and that sovereignty is meaningless if it cannot defend the rights of its own people first.

Conclusion:
Franjo Tuđman opposed Soros’ Open Society in Croatia not out of prejudice, but out of patriotism. In the aftermath of war, when Croatia’s soul and resources were fragile, he believed the nation needed to consolidate its identity and rebuild from within—not dilute its sovereignty for the sake of Western ideals it could not afford. He saw through the glittering promises of Open Society and asked a simple question: Who feeds our veterans? Who shelters our homeless? Who defends our people from becoming strangers in their own land?

That question still echoes on the beaches of Croatia today.

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Allied Propaganda Inflation

Title: Croatia and the War of Numbers: Propaganda, Memory, and the Ghosts of World War II

By Igor Bogdanov

In the wake of World War II, victors wrote the narrative. As Winston Churchill allegedly quipped, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the contested memories of small nations like Croatia, whose role in the Second World War is often flattened into caricature—either vilified as a fascist puppet or ignored altogether. This essay explores how postwar propaganda, particularly from Allied and Yugoslav Communist sources, may have inflated death tolls—especially those of Jews and Serbs—not only for moral condemnation but also for political leverage.

The Inflation of Atrocity

It is impossible—and morally reprehensible—to deny the horror of genocide. Yet it is equally dangerous to allow history to become unchallengeable dogma. Numbers, particularly when wielded as symbols, can serve ideological aims. The six million Jews killed in the Holocaust has become not only a tragic historical fact but also a sacred number—invoked almost ritually, enshrined beyond audit. Franjo Tuđman, the Croatian historian and later president, controversially questioned these figures in his book Wastelands of Historical Reality, not to deny suffering but to interrogate propaganda’s role in cementing orthodoxy. His position was not Holocaust denial, but Holocaust demystification.

Similarly, the claim that the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi-aligned puppet state, killed over 700,000 Serbs at Jasenovac concentration camp has been challenged by several historians—Croatian, Israeli, and Western alike—who suggest that the real number may be significantly lower, possibly in the tens of thousands. This is not to absolve the Ustaše regime, which committed undeniable atrocities, but to expose how Tito’s Yugoslavia manipulated numbers to forge a narrative of Serb victimhood and justify Communist centralization.

Material Constraints and Military Realities

Croatia, during the war, was materially impoverished. According to internal reports, the NDH had limited resources: outdated weaponry, scarce ammunition, and uniforms scavenged or donated from Axis partners like Italy or Finland. The Black Legion, under Jure Francetić and Rafael Boban, was brutal but numerically small. The idea that a ragtag militia with a few hundred thousand bullets could eliminate millions is logistically absurd. The paradox becomes starker when contrasted with industrial extermination programs like those of Nazi Germany, or mass famines induced by Communist policies in Ukraine and China.

So why do the numbers matter so much?

The Ritual of One-Third

The number “one-third” recurs in apocalyptic literature. Revelation 9 speaks of a third of mankind dying—imagery that has long influenced esoteric traditions, including those allegedly embraced by certain elite secret societies. The claim that one-third of Jews perished in the Holocaust aligns eerily with this Biblical metric. Similarly, one-third of Cambodians perished under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, with far less memorialization in Western media. Are we witnessing the hand of occult numerology shaping historical emphasis? Or simply a coincidence embedded in the tragic rhythms of genocide?

What remains troubling is the asymmetry of memory. Communist atrocities—by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot—have a body count that dwarfs fascist crimes. Yet in Western cultural memory, Hitler is the epitome of evil, while Stalin is almost a footnote. This imbalance reveals not just historical forgetfulness, but a deeper ideological bias: one that sees right-wing atrocities as unforgivable, but left-wing ones as unfortunate missteps in pursuit of utopia.

Croatia Between Empires

For Croatia, caught between collapsing empires and rising ideologies, the war was not merely ideological—it was existential. The NDH made a Faustian bargain with Hitler to escape Serbian domination and gain independence, but at the cost of moral corruption and brutal alliances. The tragedy is not only in what was done—but in how memory now distorts, exaggerates, or omits to serve current political needs.

To truly honor the victims—Jewish, Serb, Roma, Croat—we must confront all propaganda, including our own. Only then can history become not a weapon, but a mirror.

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Faith or Fascism?

Essay by Igor Bogdanov
Title: Marko Perković Thompson: A Man of Faith, Not a Fascist

In the cultural crosswinds of post-war Europe, few figures stir such controversy and devotion as Marko Perković, known by his stage name Thompson. To some, he is a folk hero; to others, a dangerous nationalist. Yet both of these perceptions often miss the heart of the man himself. My thesis is simple: Marko Perković Thompson is not a fascist; he is a man of faith. The attempt to reduce his life and work to an ideological caricature ignores the deeper spiritual and historical currents flowing through his music.

Let us begin with the facts. Marko Perković took up the guitar not as an agent of propaganda, but as a young man moved by war, by the call to defend his homeland, and later, by a need to express the trauma and hope of his people. He earned the nickname “Thompson” from the weapon he carried as a soldier during Croatia’s war of independence—not from some affinity with fascist imagery, but from battlefield reality. His music was born not in boardrooms or policy think tanks, but in the blood and dust of the Balkans.

Many critics point to his song “Bojna Čavoglave” as evidence of extremism. But to isolate one lyric and ignore the context is intellectual dishonesty. That song was a wartime anthem, a cry of defiance during a time when Croatian villages were being shelled and burned. The intro’s invocation—“Za dom spremni”—is controversial today, but in that moment, it was not about glorifying a past regime. It was about readiness to defend one’s home and family, a slogan reappropriated in a modern context of resistance, not regression.

What these critics fail to engage with is the overwhelming presence of faith in Thompson’s music. His lyrics are filled with references to God, the Virgin Mary, the saints, and Christian martyrdom. In a Europe increasingly secularized, Thompson stands apart as a torchbearer for traditional Catholic values. His concerts are not rallies of hate, but pilgrimages of identity, where songs like “Lijepa li si” celebrate not racial purity, but the beauty of Croatia’s land and spirit. His Christmas albums and Marian hymns are steeped in theological reverence, not political ideology.

To call Thompson a fascist is to misunderstand the difference between nationalism and faith-based patriotism. The former can be toxic, yes—but the latter is a legitimate human response to centuries of occupation, erasure, and trauma. Croatia has known empires that tried to erase her language, her religion, and her culture. In that context, a man who sings of resurrection, of homeland, of cross and sword—not as tools of conquest, but of survival—is misunderstood when viewed through the narrow lens of Western liberalism.

One might ask: Why does Thompson draw crowds of young people? If his message were one of hate, would he inspire generations of Croatian youth to weep during songs like “Geni kameni,” which speaks of ancestral strength, or “E, moj narode,” which laments political betrayal and pleads for unity and justice?

Thompson’s critics live in a world where symbolism has lost its soul. They see a cross and think oppression. They hear an anthem and think militarism. But symbols in the Balkans are layered, multivalent, and sacred. The crucifix is not just an ornament for Thompson—it is the sign of his covenant with the Croatian people and with God.

In conclusion, Marko Perković Thompson is not the fascist bogeyman the press makes him out to be. He is a man whose music flows from faith, forged in fire, tempered by prayer. He may be imperfect, but he is sincere. His music is not about supremacy—it is about survival. And in a continent where faith is mocked and heritage discarded, Thompson is a voice crying out in the wilderness: “Remember who you are. Remember who we are.”

– Igor Bogdanov