Ivan Pernar

Ivan Pernar (born 14 October 1985) is a Croatian politician and activist. In June 2011, he founded the Alliance for Change party, which was later renamed to Human Shield. He was a member of Croatian Parliament from the 2016 elections to May 2020, having been elected in the 6th electoral district on the joint party list of Human Shield, Let's Change Croatia and Youth Action.

In June 2019, he announced that he left Human Shield, the party that he founded in 2011, accusing Party president Ivan Vilibor Sinčić and his wife of "turning the party into private property". At a press conference held in the Croatian Parliament, he stated that he had requested the deletion of his Human Shield membership and that he would set up a new party on 7 July 2019. This party would come to be known as the Party of Ivan Pernar. He ran for president in the 2019 Croatian presidential election, finishing in 7th place after winning 2.31% of the vote. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia, Pernar was accused of spreading and promoting misinformation. Pernar has a son, Mathis Ivan Alexis, with a German woman named Friederike.

His grandfather's uncle, also named Ivan Pernar, was a member of the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes for the Croatian Peasant Party and was one of several Croatian politicians wounded by People's Radical Party MP Puniša Račić on June 20, 1928.

On 11 August 2019, Ivan and his long-term partner Viktorija welcomed their first son named Noa. The child was born healthy, but due to the parent's beliefs it was not vaccinated.

Political career Green List Pernar joined the Green List in 2009. However, he was expelled from the party in November 2010. In February 2011, Vlasta Toth, the party's president at the time, told Večernji List that Pernar was expelled due to his political beliefs. She claimed that while Pernar was a council member of the Green Party in Stenjevec, he told an audience of around 150 people during a panel on urbanism that "intellectual gossip doesn't lead to anything" and that "he read Mein Kampf from which he learned how to influence the masses." Pernar responded to the Večernji List piece, admitting his reference to Mein Kampf.

When he was asked about his alleged impartiality to the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pernar said that the Orthodox Church "realized its mistake from the time when it advocated for nationalism, and it is not longer advocating that in Croatia." He later wrote on his Facebook page that "the Serbian Orthodox Church does not have the goal of bringing the Croatian Democratic Union to the government, and does not interfere with our politics and deals with religious questions. That cannot be said for the Catholic Church". Pernar also gave a mixed assessment about Josip Broz Tito for whom he said, "[Tito] built factories, defended workers' rights, for this I take my hat off". He argued that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be more united, and spoke against Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina having their own entity, adding that Serbs "would not get anything" from Republika Srpska gaining independence. | In November 2016, Pernar published a Facebook post exploring the reasoning behind Srebrenica genocide denial, and began with, "I noticed that some Serbs are afraid to be labeled as a genocidal people if they admit there was genocide in Srebrenica." In the same piece, he wrote that the Independent State of Croatia (using the term "Croatian government"

Foreign policy European Union In an interview with Croatian news site 4Dportal, Pernar said that his party is "against entry into the European Union because it is ruled by unelected banker cartels and bureaucrats, there is no democracy [in the EU]." In another interview, he stated that his party would only consider a coalition with other parties if they challenge or terminate Croatia's membership of the European Union.

NATO On November 23, 2016, Pernar spoke to the Croatian Parliament against the ratification of Montenegro's accession to NATO, reading a letter written by Montenegrin activist Marko Milačić.

Israel and Palestine In a guest appearance for Bosnian channel OSM Televizija'''s talk show called "Face of the Nation", Pernar said that Israel was responsible for ethnic cleansing in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. In November 2016, Pernar wore a Palestinian scarf to the Croatian Parliament.

Gulf of Piran Dispute In his interview to Novi List, Pernar advocated deployment of Croatian Navy vessels to Gulf of Piran, adding that Slovenia has no navy and that by doing so, Croatia would send the message to Slovenia - "ours is bigger".

Social issues In September 2016, Pernar participated in a discussion with LGBT portal Crol.hr'' about the LGBT community in Croatia. Pernar said that "homosexuals are not an endangered group", but stated that they are "one of a long series of groups which the clerical right turned their backs on." Pernar gave a mixed assessment of gay activism in Croatia, saying that "unfortunately, some gay activists reduce their struggle to a narrow spectrum of society".

Major construction projects in Croatia

Pelješac Bridge Pernar described the construction of the Pelješac bridge as "madness", adding that the project is too expensive, while at the same time putting Croatia into conflict with Bosnia and Herzegovina. He went on to say that this bridge is only being built to provoke Bosnia and predicted that it will surely become a failed investment.

Controversies In October 2016, Pernar was a guest to TV personality Vesna Kljajić on Z1 Television. Pernar claimed he had met Freemasons while visiting the Czech Republic. He alleged that the Freemasons offered him power and media exposure, under the condition that he "does not bring into question the process of making money". Hanžeković responded by raising a lawsuit for libel against Pernar and asked the Croatian parliament to relieve Pernar of his immunity. Pernar commented on the lawsuit, saying, "Hanžeković is Satan's delegate which insults him for the last five years", and stood by his earlier allegations on Hanžeković and Freemasonry. He also said that he puts "his parliamentary mandate into the hands of Jesus Christ". After Hanžeković died on January 28, 2018., Pernar dubbed Hanžeković "a human form of garbage" on his Facebook page and announced that he will celebrate Hanžeković's death with a pizza. Following day, Facebook temporary blocked Pernar's profile.

In November 2016, Pernar was a guest for Croatian talk show Nedjeljom u 2. After fifteen minutes, he abandoned the studio and accused TV host Aleksandar Stanković of not allowing him to finish his talking points. He later uploaded a video to social media, in which he threatened to fire Stanković should his party come to power. Stanković responded by filing a lawsuit against Pernar, stating that he started to receive threats as a result of the Pernar conflict. The Credentials and Privileges Commission did not challenge Pernar's immunity, but instead expressed criticism towards Pernar's behavior. After civil lawsuit Stanković won the case in court and Pernar was ordered to pay the compensation of 50,000 kunas.

In December 2016, the Credentials and Privileges Commission decided to relieve Pernar of his parliamentary immunity for spraying a graffiti in Sesvete. In his defense, Pernar referred to a passage from the Bible known as Pericope Adulterae, after which the Speaker of the Parliament Željko Reiner remarked that Pernar compared himself to Jesus. Pernar denied that he compared himself to Jesus, calling himself "not worthy even to wash his legs." In his post, he shared a video by Gerhard Wisnewski which claimed that there were no proven victims or evidence of the attack.

On January 9, 2017, Pernar wrote a Facebook status claiming that pharmaceutical companies make poisoned vaccines which "mark people like livestock". Furthermore, he asked his followers why. "such small needles leave such big marks" and why "vaccined children develop autism". Such claims drew criticism from the local media ranging from calling Pernar a conspiracy theorist, and described his actions as "sad".

Later that month, three different schools from Zagreb reported Pernar to the police due to unauthorized entry, ignoring warnings of their employees, and taking selfies with minors without parental permission. In his text messages to one of the students, Pernar asked a student to skip class to meet him. Croatian Children's Ombudsman Ivana Milas-Klarić, called the text messages "concerning", and criticized Pernar for using the students for political and self-promotion. while he described Pernar's political party as party inspired by his work. In turn, in his interview in 2011, Pernar described Icke as a man: "who speaks many truths but also has to insert in some fiction, otherwise his messages would be too dangerous for political and financial elites." Serbian film director Boris Malagurski also supported Pernar by making a video of Pernar's anti-NATO speech in Croatian Parliament.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia, Pernar expressed opposition to the measures introduced as a measure to deal with the pandemic, suggesting among other things that the economic toll of the measures imposed by the government is too great of a price to pay for the only benefit of prolonging the lives of some old people who only had a few more years to live in any case.

In late 2022 and early 2023, a group of Croatians (one of which is a transgender man) was detained in Zambia under charges of child trafficking. The couples in question attempted to adopt children from the DR Congo and bring them to Croatia, but were detained by Zambian authorities under suspicion of false documents. The case gained significant media coverage in Croatia. The Zambian court at first dropped charges against them and ordered their release to Croatia. This changed, however, when Pernar contacted Zambian authorities to inform them that one of the people from the group is transgender, which caused them being arrested again due to Zambian laws against LGBT people. This could also be due to a decision to release being overturned by a higher court to which the defendants were transferred. Charges they face mirror the ones they were originally arrested for, human trafficking due to Congolese laws prohibiting foreign adoption.

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