Croatia’s Homeland Party Brings Far-Right Extremism Into Government Coalition

Croa­t­i­a’s far-right Home­land Move­ment (DP) has brought extrem­ist and open­ly anti-Serb views into gov­ern­ment since join­ing a coali­tion with the rul­ing HDZ par­ty fol­low­ing the April 2024 elec­tions. On 10 Sep­tem­ber 2025, Balkan Insight report­ed that pub­lic man­i­fes­ta­tions of far-right sen­ti­ment have become more com­mon since the DP entered gov­ern­ment, with the par­ty con­di­tion­ing its sup­port on reduc­ing fund­ing for Serb minor­i­ty cul­tur­al and media pro­grams while its mem­bers par­tic­i­pate in protests fea­tur­ing fas­cist sym­bols. The arti­cle begins:

In late August, the Sara­je­vo-born writer Mil­jenko Jer­gov­ic, an out­spo­ken anti-fas­cist, woke to a mes­sage scrawled on the wall of his apart­ment block in the Croa­t­ian cap­i­tal, Zagreb. It read: ‘One August night, for Mil­jenko, some­thing bad will come to pass. Our coun­try. Our rules.’ Jer­gov­ic, 59, said he took the threat seri­ous­ly. He point­ed the fin­ger of blame, how­ev­er, not at the per­son who wield­ed the spray can­is­ter, but at those in charge of the state, writ­ing on Face­book: “I sus­pect the Prime Min­is­ter of the Repub­lic of Croa­t­ia, Andrej Plenkovic, and the Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or, Davor Bozi­novic. The graf­fi­ti came at the end of a sum­mer of far-right sym­bol­ism and his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism in the for­mer Yugoslav repub­lic, peak­ing on July 5 when hun­dreds of thou­sands flood­ed to a con­cert in the cap­i­tal by Marko Perkovic Thomp­son, a poster boy for hard­line Croa­t­ian nationalism.

Read more: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/09/10/tudjman-to-thompson-croatias-growing-struggle-with-extremism-and-identity/ [pay­wall]

The Home­land Move­ment (Domovin­s­ki pokret, DP) is a Croa­t­ian right-wing pop­ulist and nation­al­ist par­ty found­ed in 2020.

Key Points

• DP con­di­tioned coali­tion sup­port on cut­ting sub­si­dies for the Novosti week­ly pub­lished by the Serb Nation­al Council.
• DP Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Josip Dabro resigned after a video sur­faced show­ing him ille­gal­ly fir­ing an auto­mat­ic weapon.
• Two DP MPs par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Sep­tem­ber protest against a left­ist fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing HOS sym­bols and fas­cist salutes.
• Spec­u­la­tion exists that HDZ may aban­don the DP coali­tion in favor of an alliance with region­al parties.

The Global National Conservative Alliance in the Balkans: Orthodox Church, Ethnic Nationalism, Anti-EU Sentiment

Nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties across the Balka­ns lever­age Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty, eth­nic nation­al­ism, and anti-EU sen­ti­ment to chal­lenge lib­er­al democ­ra­cy while exploit­ing eco­nom­ic griev­ances and acces­sion frus­tra­tions. Bul­gar­i­a’s Revival par­ty surged from 4.86% to 14.4% between 2021 and 2023 by advo­cat­ing ref­er­en­dums on EU and NATO mem­ber­ship while pro­mot­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and exploit­ing polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty fol­low­ing five incon­clu­sive elec­tions since 2021.

Far-right talk­ing points, from racism to misog­y­ny and anti-LGBT rhetoric, have become increas­ing­ly com­mon­place among main­stream Balkan politi­cians, with move­ments por­tray­ing tra­di­tion­al Ortho­dox val­ues as under “attack” by the West, glob­al­ism, and LGBT activists. Ortho­dox Church insti­tu­tions func­tion as legit­imiz­ing forces beyond indi­vid­ual polit­i­cal fig­ures, with extreme-right groups invok­ing reli­gious nar­ra­tives and imagery to enter main­stream pol­i­tics and posi­tion them­selves as authen­tic artic­u­la­tors of nation­al interests.

North Mace­do­nia’s pro­longed acces­sion delays exem­pli­fy how Brus­sels’ unful­filled promis­es after two decades cre­ate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that malign actors exploit, with For­eign Min­is­ter Mucun­s­ki warn­ing about frus­tra­tion with con­stant­ly shift­ing mem­ber­ship require­ments being weaponized against Euro­pean inte­gra­tion. In Bosnia and Ser­bia, groups oper­at­ing under human­i­tar­i­an guis­es glo­ri­fy con­vict­ed war crim­i­nals while sup­port­ing seces­sion­ist move­ments in Repub­li­ka Srp­s­ka, with unem­ployed work­ing-class youth often recruit­ed by orga­ni­za­tions pre­sent­ing them­selves as “patri­ot­ic,” as eco­nom­ic hard­ship makes extrem­ism more attractive.

These move­ments pro­mote eth­nic nation­al­ism, includ­ing “Greater Ser­bia” and “Greater Alba­nia” con­cepts along­side his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, with gath­er­ings fea­tur­ing geno­cide denial and eth­no-nation­al­ist iconog­ra­phy while tar­get­ing eth­nic minori­ties, includ­ing Turks, Roma, Mus­lims, and Alba­ni­ans, through racist violence.

Exter­nal References:

• The Ser­bian Ortho­dox Church and Extreme-Right Groups: A Mar­riage of Con­ve­nience or Organ­ic Part­ner­ship? — George­town Uni­ver­si­ty Berkley Center
• Who are the extreme right orga­ni­za­tions in the Balka­ns? — Balkan Insight
• Vio­lent Right-Wing Extrem­ism in the West­ern Balka­ns — Euro­pean Commission

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.