Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Source: Jutarnji list
Vice Batarelo, the leading Croatian conservative Catholic activist and leader of the Vigilare association, took advantage of the holiday season to fire some shots at liberal dissenters, staing true to his “tradition” of doing this in this time of the year for the past five years.
This time, his crosshairs landed on Erste Bank, whose TV campaign featured gay persons, which is why Batarelo indirectly called for a boycott of the said bank on his Facebook page:
“It’s great that there are multiple banks in Croatia, so I don’t need to keep my money and work with Erste Bank. Their political correctness is making me sick,” wrote Vice Vincent John Batarelo.
Political correctness that is bothering Batarelo refers to last month’s Erste Bank’s campaign, which featured gay and transgender persons, which immediately caused anxiety among conservative associations.
Otherness and diversity
Soundtrack for the said campaign is the song “Tvoja zemlja” (Your country) by Vice Vukov, and the narrator, among other things, explains that Croatia needs people who believe in themselves, but also in other and different people, it needs people who believe in science, equality, art without censorship, the freedom of speech without hate speech, responsible entrepreneurship, who believe in love, she needs people who drive and create – people who dare.
Response of the conservative associations followed shortly, and the CitizenGo platform launched an online petition titled Croatia needs people who believe in themselves, in marriage, in the family!
The association came out with the thesis that “Erste Bank’s ad undermines the foundations of Croatian society and imposes new social standards that do not take into account what Croatia really needs: a stable family, protection and assistance for women who want to have children, and a quality rather than ideological curricular reform”.
Shorter ad
Shortly after the homosexual couple disappeared from the ad, however, Erste Bank’s official explanation was that several short form ads were created depending on media slots, in which some scenes were omitted, but that the ad is mostly aired without the cuts. They rejected the conservative criticism that Erste Bank undermines the foundations of Croatian society with the thesis that the truth is completely opposite, because “we believe that the elements of the campaign in all its formats will still adequately promote the fundamental idea, which is the prosperity of society as a whole,” Erste said.
Obviously, Vice Batarelo is not convinced, who announced through social networks that he was boycotting Erste Bank, and it seems he isn’t alone in that. Just to recall, Vice has been using Christmas for attacks on those who advocate a different worldview since 2013.
Last Christmas, Batarelo and Conservatives gathered in the ProLife Initiative demanded the resignation of Višnja Ljubičić, Gender Equality Ombudswoman, but their plan failed. She was opposed to ProLife’s campaign to ban abortion titled I want to live, which included a photo of a woman in high pregnancy with a copy “While you celebrate Christmas, my mom plans to kill me”.
Prior to that, in December 2014, Batarelo organized a campaign to ban the shortened English version of the word Christmas – Xmas – from the streets and squares in the Republic of Croatia, and one year earlier, he accused the Tele2 telecommunications company because of the advert with Gregor the sheep in a church, branding the ad as a degrading insult and sacrilege. It’s unclear what he was doing for Christmas 2015?