ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the persisting role of Croatian post-World War II (WWII) diaspora in modern Croatia, applied to the case of diaspora in Argentina. The nationalist ideas that emerged in the 1980s/1990s in Croatia are rooted in the narrative of the Croatian diaspora in Argentina, where most of the political and military leadership of the defeated Nazi-puppet Croatian Independent State ( Nezavisna Država Hrvatska – NDH, 1941–1945) found refuge. From 1945 to 1990, they preserved their memory of the NDH as the fulfillment of yearning for Croatian independence, while pushing for the destruction of socialist Yugoslavia and the recreation of an independent Croatian state. When Croatia became independent, its political ideas found resonance at home, resulting in a spillover of the Ustaša memory into the mainstream memory of the Republic of Croatia, parallel with rejecting the common Yugoslav history and communist legacy. When Croatia joined the European Union (EU) in 2013, several radical right parties appeared, and the Ustaša revival regained impetus, finding its legitimization in the European memory framework and reinforcing the narrative of the Ustaša as victims of communism. This resulted in a new wave of historical revisionism, ultimately eroding the degree of democracy in Croatia under the aegis of the freedom of speech.
