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.)