Intolerance and uncivility have gone beyond occasional outbursts in Croatian public discourse, becoming the leading mode of political communication - not only of individual politicians like the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović, but of entire political parties, as a targeted direction of communication. Namely, the official Facebook page of the ruling HDZ party has been publishing content marked by offensive discourse for three years now, in which a number of political actors are frequently belittled, ridiculed and called out with language more appropriate to crude anonymous online comments, is the conclusion of Gong's "Analysis of the Offensive Discourse of the Official Political Communication of the HDZ on Facebook", by Matej Mikašinović-Komšo.
Of the 4,269 posts observed in the period from 2020 to 2022, 429 posts were detected in which political actors were addressed through insulting discourse, filled with insults, belittling, name-calling and ridicule. Zoran Milanović was called “Kremlinboy”, the opposition “destructive”, Mozemo (We can) “We can’t”, Peđa Grbin “the fallen one”, and Most “tragicomic eggers”. Although the descriptions differ, they all have in common the imposition of a description that belittles and relativizes HDZ’s political opponents, with the aim of presenting them to the public as a group of incompetent, dangerous and ultimately destructive actors, whose coming to power would cause great harm to citizens.
Although since 2020, Milanović has used incendiary and insulting rhetoric to such an extent that he has become recognizable (and popular) for it in the public, we are witnessing the overflow and spread of such intolerant political discourse among other political actors as well, which leads to the deterioration of civilized political communication, degradation of political culture and democratic backsliding. Despite Gong's warnings about the dangers of such a style of communication, the HDZ itself, as the party in power and a member of the European People's Party, in its official political communication on Facebook began to turn more and more to insults, intolerance, attacks on the personality of individual political actors and disparagement, which does not contribute to the establishment of dialogue and mutual respect for opposing political options, but to polarization and intolerance.
The choice of how HDZ communicates with the public is not an issue that concerns HDZ alone, as it can have far-reaching consequences for society. Instead of encouraging constructive debate and competition in democracy - which brings positive effects for the public - HDZ, together with the President of the Republic, communicates in a manner that is below any level in a democratic society and at the same time shows no signs of easing up. Such communication from the political top normalizes insults and belittling in the public sphere, thereby narrowing the space for reasoned discussion on relevant social and political issues, and encourages intolerance and stigmatization. Calling one's political rivals "pests" and "destructive" for the sake of competing for likes, can only lead to the degradation of the entire democratic culture in the country and a danger to a democratic society - especially in times of permanent insecurity and fear due to the pandemic, inflation and the war in Ukraine.
Using the CrowdTangle tool for public monitoring of digital content, Facebook posts from the official HDZ page were collected to analyze the presence of offensive discourse when addressing other political actors.
Read the full analysis HERE!
