Bolstering arsenals, steeling us for war

Key Markets report for Friday, July 11, 2025

On Saturday, 5 July a strange and spectacular event took place in Croatia. A very large number of people turned up to see the concert of Marko Perković “Thompson.” The concert shattered the world record for the largest ticketed concert in history by selling over 500,000 tickets. For a small country in western Balkans, this was a truly spectacular event: given that the whole country’s population is about 3.8 million people, it follows that more than 1 in 8 inhabitants of the country came to the concert.

I am not a Thompson fan and never listened to his music, but I was assured by otherwise very critical individuals in the music industry that as far as musical production goes, Thompson’s stuff is absolutely world class. However, it’s unlikely that music alone drew the massive crowd (even world famous bands and musicians like AC/DC sell far fewer tickets). The Thompson magnet was something else: he is an ultra-nationalist, often labelled “far-right” and his songs reflect almost tribal values, patriotism, family and faith.

Rejection of EU “values”

What drew the crowds was a reaction to the globalist values shoved down everyone’s throats from Bruxelles, including the LGBTQ++ ideology, climate fear mongering, war on farming, suppression of sovereignty and unrestrained immigration. The concert turnout was largely a rejection of EU values, a show for national sovereignty and the return to traditional values.

A scene from the concert: not the European values.

In that, the mood in Croatia is probably no different from what’s brewing below the surface in many European countries, especially those of the former Communist bloc whose populations recognize collectivist ideologies when they see them and understand where the EU proto-communist juggernaut is leading them.

However, there’s a more sinister interpretation of the motivations that made this event possible. As one of Croatia’s most popular podcasters Andrija Klarić observed, a similar confluence of events took place in the late 1980s as the Communist world was slowly falling apart.

Make war, not love

Over the last year or so, war frenzy has been gripping the leaders of the EU and Britain. In March of this year, Ursula von der Leyen announced the $800 billion "Rearm Europe Plan," affirming that Europe is ready to "massively boost its defense spending." Keir Starmer made a similar announcement, as did French president Emmanuel Macron and then German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. The new Chancellor in Germany is even more enthusiastic about war.

Then, on 25 June NATO member nations committed to boosting defence spending to 5% of their respective GDPs. Starting the next day, Europe’s mainstream media ramped up the Russia threat stories and this included the Croatian media: as soon as he’s done with Ukraine, Putin’s coming for us!

So, what does that have to do with the Thompson concert in Zagreb? Seemingly nothing, but in fact it has everything to do with it. In liberal, democratic and European Croatia, Mr. Thompson has been largely cancelled and proscribed for years. The mainstream media have demonized him for years and he’s had next to no presence on TV and radio. He played concerts, but they scrupulously kept on the margins of the mainstream. Nationalism was being actively suppressed in favor of globalist values.

As Mr. Klarić observed, there would be no way to organize and promote Thompson’s massive concert without the full support and cooperation of the state which had to approve the venue, un-cancel Thompson from the mainstream media outlets for promotion purposes and provide security for the event. The strange and sudden volte-face by the Croatian authorities - the same ones that worship at the altar of Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels - can’t easily be explained, except perhaps, as war preparations.

Almost the same script as 30 years ago

Klarić pointed out that a similar, nationalism-boosting concert was also organized in Zagreb in October of 1989 played by another nationalist band, “Prljavo Kazalište” (Dirty Theater). It also drew a very large crowd smack in the middle of Zagreb, at the main square in the city center. I remember that concert and the songs that were performed. It seemed strange that the Communist authorities were allowing that, but we thought it was down to the freedom of expression slowly drifting from the West.

That concert also took place after the Communist authorities in the former Yugoslavia moved to boost military spending by introducing a blanket 3% sales tax. What we didn’t know then, but do know now, is that Yugoslavia’s wars of succession, which erupted in 1991, had already been planned at least 7 or 8 years in advance.

The planners knew that they wanted those wars to happen, hence the massive boost to military spending (in absence of any external military threats whatsoever). But once the military arsenals were full, it was necessary to fire up nationalism and the war fighting spirits. In effect, they moved to weaponize the people’s legitimate grievances and direct them at the planners’ designated targets.

And who were the planners? In addition to the cooperative members of the outgoing Communist political, media and military establishment, they were foreign actors from the world’s chief arsonist of peace. If you guessed Great Britain, you guessed correctly. Today, Britain’s influence in the world may have diminished somewhat, but it has reinforcements in Brussels, Paris and Berlin, and they’re all working off the same script. They want war and if we, the people passively acquiesce, there will be war.

For all Europeans who don’t want to see their children buried under their nation’s flag, as over a million of Ukrainian parents do today, this would be the time to stiffen one’s spine and speak up.

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TrendCompass Key Markets report for 11 July 2025

Best regards,

Alex Krainer