Concert by right-wing rocker Thompson: Where the fight against fascism ends

The guest performance casts its shadows. In mid-November, the popular Croatian right-wing extremist Marko Perković, better known by his stage name “Thompson”, is scheduled to appear in Frankfurt am Main at the Jahrhunderthalle. This holds almost 5,000 visitors, and the tickets were sold out within a very short time after the concert was announced. As soon as the date was announced, the Left, Greens, Volt and SPD also protested in Frankfurt's Römer against the singer's planned appearance, accusing him of distorting history.

Initially, the local CDU also joined the call for the concert to be canceled. On August 21st, her city councilor Christian Becker said that given the "nationalist and fascist symbolism" in Thompson's performances, the concert was a "completely wrong signal". The Jahrhunderthalle should not become a place where extremist ideologies are “trivialized or made socially acceptable,” he said, and called for “all possible legal steps against this appearance.”

Perković's stage name comes from the submachine gun of the same name, which he is said to have carried as a soldier. His best-known song “Bojna Čavoglave” begins with the cry “Za dom spremni” (“Ready for home”). This was once the official greeting of the fascist Ustasha in the Hitler-backed “Independent State of Croatia” and is the Croatian equivalent of the German “Sieg Heil”. [Link to post 3448839]

The regime of dictator Ante Pavelić, glorified by Thompson, took part in the Holocaust and systematically murdered not only Jews but also Serbs, Roma and members of the opposition. Thompson still uses the controversial greeting to this day. Recently, at a concert in Vukovar, Croatia, he shouted “Za dom,” to which thousands responded “spremni.” Ustasha symbols were openly visible in the audience, on flags, on clothing and as tattoos. These symbols are banned in Austria, but still not in Germany.

The Frankfurt CDU has now changed its opinion about the Croatian musician's planned appearance. Just three days after the clear words of her city councilor Christian Becker, she made a U-turn. The CDU city councilor Anita Akmadža said that after a conversation with the organizer she saw “no viable reason for canceling the concert”. The organizer assured her that controversial “songs from the war era of the 1990s” would not be part of the concert program. The problem with this justification: Thompson's historical revisionist content cannot be reduced to individual songs or to the period of the Croatian War between 1991 and 1995.

The glorification of the Ustasha continues through Thompson's work to this day. In his song "Geni Kameni" ("Gene from Stone"), which was released shortly after the Croatian war, he describes the year 1945, the year of the defeat of Hitler and his Croatian collaborators, as a "bad year": "The year 45 was bad. They scattered us across the world. But now a new generation is growing. The swallows have returned home," it says pompously, and it is still part of Thompson's standard repertoire today. Just seven years after the end of the Croatian War, he also sang “Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara” – an Ustasha song that glorifies the massacres of Jews, Serbs and Roma in the Jasenovac camp complex and the commander Vjekoslav “Maks” Luburić who was responsible for them. There is also a song on his latest album from 2025, “Hodočasnik”, in which he refers positively to the Ustasha.

This makes the Frankfurt CDU’s about-face all the more in need of explanation. This could be due to her close ties to the conservative Croatian diaspora. The Frankfurt Thompson performance is organized by the Martinović concert agency, which is backed by the company Rokaru Numen. For years it has been organizing the “Hrvatska Noć” (Croatian Night) in Frankfurt, a major music and cultural event for the Croatian diaspora. In 2017, several prominent CDU politicians were guests there, including Manfred Pentz, then general secretary of the Hessian CDU and now Minister for Federal and European Affairs in Hesse, as well as the then Frankfurt CDU mayor Uwe Becker, who even greeted the audience in Croatian.

Becker is now the Hessian state government's anti-Semitism commissioner. When asked by the taz, he confirmed his participation and explained that he could recognize “echoes” of “extremism” and the “glorification of fascism” in Thompson. At the same time, however, “a differentiated picture of him is drawn in the Croatian community with a view to the time of the Yugoslav War,” he emphasizes, “which makes clear classification difficult.” Becker said he expects Thompson to clearly distance himself from fascism and condemn anti-Semitic and racist crimes at his concert.

The personal connections in this matter are particularly explosive. CDU city councilor Anita Akmadža, who announced her party's about-face, is the “spokeswoman for diversity, cohesion, participation and Europe” in her parliamentary group. The 44-year-old local politician is married to Franjo Akmadža, who is also a member of the CDU and its Croatian sister party, the ruling HDZ party. As the long-time chairman of the “Croatian World Congress in Germany”, the large umbrella organization of the Croatian diaspora, he is also well connected in the Croatian community.

Do these close contacts between the Frankfurt CDU and conservative Croatian circles have anything to do with the fact that the assessment of Thompson's concert changed within a very short period of time? The Frankfurt CDU parliamentary group explains to the taz that it does not want to make any further statements on the topic.