Marko Perkovic—known professionally as Thompson—is far from a household name outside of Croatia. The gristly-voiced Thompson, 51, had been cause for controversy long before Croatia’s national soccer team made its Cinderella run to the 2018 World Cup final. Thompson has long been associated by many with the Croatian Nazi-era puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, colloquially referred to as the Ustashe, the name of the fascist party behind that state. One of his songs opens with the chant “Za dom spremni!”—“Ready for the home[land],” the Croatian version of the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil.” Local outlets have even reported that he performed a song celebrating the Jasenovac concentration camp, where the Ustashe killed an estimated 83,000 people, including Serbs, Jews, and Roma.
But less than 24 hours after Croatia’s loss to France in the World Cup final—a bittersweet moment, but a silver medal that was still seen as a major accomplishment worthy of celebration for the country of 4 million people—Thompson was riding along with the players on a victory parade from Zagreb’s airport and joined them on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in the center of town.
But Thompson didn’t just walk up on stage by himself. He was invited to sing a song at the insistence of team captain Luka Modric, himself a divisive figure who generates both pride and anger among Croatians. Thompson is the product of a society and a political class that has shown little desire to come to terms with the worst moments of Croatia’s past.
Thompson is the product of a society and a political class that has shown little desire to come to terms with the worst moments of Croatia’s past.
Thompson’s appearance at a celebration of the biggest moment in the country’s sporting history shouldn’t have come as a surprise. His presence at such an event revealed sentiments that have long festered in Croatian society. “The triumphalism uncovered something that existed before,” Zarko Puhovski, a professor at the University of Zagreb and a longtime political commentator, said.
“The explosion of nationalism is not surprising for nations that achieve such symbolic sporting victories,” he said, “except that in Croatia it is manifested in a specifically radical right-wing manner.” While he believes that support for Thompson doesn’t necessarily indicate sworn support for fascists, it shows that many Croatians don’t necessarily see the Ustashe past and its symbols as problematic.
Thompson himself celebrates those symbols. His concerts attract Ustashe supporters, who often wear unsubtle T-shirts with the capital letter “U.” While Thompson has denied again and again that he’s a fascist sympathizer—claiming he just “loves Croatia and its people”—he has never distanced himself from these hardcore fans.
Some of Thompson’s songs make it hard to take such claims seriously. He’s made references to Judas, whose betrayal of Jesus is sometimes used as a justification for Christian anti-Semitism, in his lyrics, lamenting that “our dreams are betrayed/by sons of Judas.” He sings about how “Antichrists and Masons/Communists of all sorts/Spread Satanic phrases/To defeat us”—words that sound rather similar to what Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic himself wrote in 1936
He sings about how “Antichrists and Masons/Communists of all sorts/Spread Satanic phrases/To defeat us”—words that sound rather similar to what Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic himself wrote in 1936
in The Croat Question, where he identified “international freemasonry,” Serbs, Communists, and Jews as enemies of Croatia.
Other songs include even more direct references to Pavelic. Thompson’s “Bitter Grass on a Bitter Wound,” the title of which is a direct reference to a speech by the Ustashe leader, urges listeners to “prepare the same shirt we used to wear/put it on the roof for me/it’ll fit my son like it fit my grandfather and me,” a direct allusion to the black shirts worn by Croatian and Italian fascists. And in “Tell Me, Brother,” Thompson predicts that “the thick fog will once again settle,” a reference to the well-known Ustashe song “A Thick Fog Has Settled [Over Zagreb].”
But, as Modric’s story shows, not all of Thompson’s fans are necessarily sympathetic to the far-right or the Ustashe. If anything, they see themselves as just ordinary Croats. In the days leading up to the World Cup final, a video surfaced of a 5-year-old Modric herding goats in the Velebit mountains along Croatia’s coast. The video produced outpourings of international attention and sympathy, showing the long and difficult path the diminutive Modric faced before finding soccer stardom. But it also showed elements of his background that most outside of his home country would have missed.
“The soccer players of the Croatian national team represent a wide segment of society that hails from small towns or rural areas in the country,” Puhovski said. Thompson channeled this sentiment at last week’s post-World Cup celebration. He sang “Geni Kameni” (“Genes of Stone”) a song celebrating religion, patriarchy, and the family values of rural Croatia.
As we witnessed firsthand at the celebration, fans of Modric aren’t necessarily fans of Thompson and his oeuvre, and they started to leave the square in large numbers when Thompson started into “Genes of Stone.” Thompson couldn’t get to the final verse. His mic was cut off by the organizers before he could finish.