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The US Embassy in Croatia said it “rejects, in the strongest terms, neo-Nazi … views expressed during the demonstration of a few people in Zagreb on Sunday.”
Today in “things that aren’t great,” a small group of far-right protesters in Croatia carried the US flag while shouting pro-Nazi slogans and pledged support to President Donald Trump.
The few dozen black-clad demonstrators were members of the small Indigenous Croatian Party of Rights (A-HSP), a far-right political group that is too small to be represented in Croatia's parliament. But they definitely know how to grab people's attention, as Sunday's gathering in Zagreb, the country's capital, showed.
Stringer / AFP / Getty Images
Alongside the US flag, the group also carried both the Croatian flag and the flag of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (NDP), a party that German states have tried to ban for its similarity to the actual Nazi Party.
According to the Associated Press, the group also chanted slogans in support of the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, which “killed tens of thousands Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-Nazi Croats in concentration camps during World War II.”
Stringer / AFP / Getty Images
Croatian newspaper 24Sata streamed the bizarre demonstration live, which began with party leader Drazen Keleminec and a brass band leading the marchers into Ban Jelacic Square.
At one point, the A-HSP members lined up and, according to 24sata, took an “oath of allegiance” to Trump.
The US Embassy in Zagreb, as you might guess, was not at all pleased. It told the AP in a statement that it “rejects, in the strongest terms, neo-Nazi and pro-Ustasha views expressed during the demonstration of a few people in Zagreb on Sunday.”
“We condemn any attempt to link the United States to this hateful ideology,” the statement continued. “Such a suggestion is an affront to the memories of the 186,000 US soldiers who died in Europe fighting Nazi Germany and the many millions of innocent victims killed during World War II.”
Stringer / AFP / Getty Images
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