Feral Year

Feral Tribune’s humor is so ideological, so nervous, base, primitive, vulgar, cheap and hateful that it has stopped being funny a long time ago

by Josip JOVIC

Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, March 20, 2002

The final verdict, confirmed by several courts, against Feral Tribune, according to which this magazine has to pay Marica Mestrovic and Zeljko Olujic, including legal expenses and interest, 200,000 kunas, has provoked a veritable flood of different comments and reactions. Naturally, Feral is not the first magazine to be fined for slandering and insulting honor and dignity of certain persons, but reactions were never so numerous and vehement. This is not a Croatian precedent. Almost daily we can read about drastic fines for various media all over the world, even for benign slander and defamation of public personalities.

Aggression on Judges

Feral deserves credit for dramatizing the importance of the case. The magazine condemned the verdict as pressure on the freedom of media, as its staff has for years promoted the magazine as an example of unique courage, tolerance, defiance, pride and independence. They claim that the verdict endangered the survival of the magazine. This additional noise is actually supposed to hide the true reasons for the agony of the magazine, a staggering fall in circulation and mounting debts. Otherwise, could 200,000 kunas [$24,000] destroy a magazine?

On the other hand, with public whimpering, devoid of any pride, Feral’s staff is trying to beg for handouts from its sponsors who had forgotten them in the meantime, because they have completed their job and are not needed any more. They find it especially difficult to stomach the fact that they were, oh woe, punished in the post-Tudman era after, supposedly, a totalitarian system has been overthrown and a new one, democratic, established in its place, for which they should also be credited, but, oh woe!, Racan’s administration does not appreciate that.

Numerous newspaper columnists and various non-governmental organizations, such as the Open Society, New Generation, PEN, Association of Journalists, have already distinguished themselves in defense of Feral and with their unprecedented attacks on judges. The International Federation of Journalists even mentioned “malicious legal formulations”, and the president of the state, Stjepan Mesic, a favorite of Feral’s editors, has also joined the campaign. Mesic has questioned the validity of the verdict and thereby, in accordance with his advocacy of the rule of law, exerted direct pressure on the independence of the judiciary. The utter lack of objectivity, bias of all the institutions and individuals who frequently portray themselves as moral arbiters and unquestionable authorities is an especially worrying aspect of the affair. Newspapers and journalists have been fined, censored and silenced before, but we never heard any protests, or there were very few of them. On the contrary, certain non-governmental organizations, professional associations and newspapers that now, in the case of Feral, (falsely) portray themselves as protectors of the absolute journalistic license, supported in the past the removal of unsuitable journalists and editors who disagreed with them, for example from Slobodna Dalmacija and the Croatian TV. Because those other newspapers and journalists do not share their ideology and are not, unlike Feral, “ours” but “theirs”.

No other organization has demonstrated as much bias during its brief existence as the Croatian Helsinki Committee Media Council. The Croatian Journalists’ Association is already an old and spent story. Its Honor Council, for example, has recently sharply criticized Jasen Boko, a theater critic for Slobodna Dalmacija for allegedly trying to politically discredit a play full of politics. The Honor Council set strict limits for the theater critic. They’ve never warned Feral about anything. Feral has never tried to discredit anyone.

Vehement Defense

This ideological support for Feral is even more worrisome, given the magazine’s ideological orientation that prompts such vehement defense and solidarity. During the last ten years Feral Tribune has demonstrated its deep enmity with respect to the existence of an independent Croatia, attempting to discredit the modern independent Croatia by using the NDH [Independent State of Croatia, pro-Nazi Croat state in WWII] mold. Feral systematically attacks and mocks the Croatian history, the Croatian church, the Croatian army, and all that is Croatian. Even today, on the magazine’s front page, the capital letter U in inserted in the word kuna [Croatian currency, named after the currency used in the NDH].

Cooperating with the spying underworld in Croatia and abroad, pulling out of the shady underworld alleged witnesses of crimes who incriminate themselves, Feral has used propaganda to portray the Homeland War as a criminal and aggressive war, with assistance of those who are prepared to sign a blank check to finance such endeavors. Of course, they did all of that not only because they were paid to do so, but also because they believe in their mission.

Feral is a good example of the lasting effect of ideologies in this region, their fierce struggle for survival even after their real base for existence has been removed. In other words, Feral’s ideology is a direct heir of Orjuna [pro-Yugoslav Croat organization, active before WWII]. The more their ideology was becoming obsolete, the more aggressive their Croat-phobia is became. Psychologists would say that the complex-like syndrome of Oedipal complexes has its place in their prominent aggressiveness and arrogance.

Their victims are always selected individuals, selected based on a strict ideological key, almost always individuals who are not inimical or indifferent with respect to national[ist] issues. Not only does Feral promote Orjuna ideology but it also employs Orjuna methodology in the columns of the chief creators of the magazine and in their purportedly satirical articles. Just like their ideological forefathers used to beat up members of the Croat Peasant Party, Feral beats up with words, sentences, and pictures. They forge articles the way they use photo-montage for their front page. That super-market tabloid resembles a Communist wall-paper. Woe be those who appear in them. Hell followed a caricature.

Selected Victims

Feral’s humor is so ideological, so anxious, base, primitive, vulgar, cheap, and hateful that it has stopped being funny a long time ago. In issue after issue they label their victims as criminals, fascists, idiots; they stick human heads to animal bodies, calling all of that journalistic freedom and even value judgments; finally, they want to be rewarded for all that, demanding from their victims to masochistically withstand abuse. After all, as president of the Association of Judges Vladimir Gredelj warned, courts do exist to defend honor, dignity, and privacy of citizens. If courts did not do that, then individuals would be forced to take justice into their own hands. But Feral thinks that only they have the right to freedom, dignity and honor.

Year after year Feral gives to carefully selected individuals “awards” that include the word shit in their name: shit of the week, shit of the month, shit of the year. They may not find that offensive, because, one guesses, that’s the way they were brought up. But everything has become highly absurd. The shit they throw at others has struck them in the face. Consequently, the worst possible insult could be, for example, the award that would be named Feral year.

Translated on March 31, 2003