Tomislav Sunić (born February 3, 1953), sometimes known as Tom Sunic, is a
Croatian-American translator,
far-right activist and a former professor. His views are often cited as part of the
European New Right
The European New Right (ENR) is a far-right movement which originated in France as the Nouvelle Droite in the late 1960s. Its proponents are involved in a global "anti-structural revolt" against modernity and post-modernity, largely in the form of ...
. The
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white s ...
describes Sunić as a
white nationalist
White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara. ''Hate Crimes''. Greenwoo ...
.
Biography
Sunić was born in
Zagreb
Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital and largest city of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb stands near the international border between Croatia and Slov ...
,
SFR Yugoslavia (present-day Zagreb,
Republic of Croatia) in 1953 to a Croatian Catholic family.
["Reexamining Assumptions": An Interview with Tom Sunic](_blank)
alphalink.com.au; accessed August 13, 2015. He is a naturalized United States citizen.
His father, Mirko Sunić (1915–2008) was a lawyer in communist Yugoslavia, who, along with Tomislav's sister, Mirna Sunić, were "prisoners of conscience". The two were charged with creating "hostile propaganda", under Article 133 of the Yugoslav Criminal Code, and the court sentenced them to 4 and 1 years of prison respectively. Mirko Sunić was championed by
Amnesty International and 15 United States congressmen in 1985), Mirko Sunić authored, in 1996, ''Moji inkriminirani zapisi'' ("My incriminating records").
Tomislav Sunić studied French and English Language and Literature at the
University of Zagreb
The University of Zagreb ( hr, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, ; la, Universitas Studiorum Zagrabiensis) is the largest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of ...
until 1978. From 1980 to 1982 he worked in Algeria as an interpreter for the Yugoslav-Croatian construction company Ingra. He emigrated to the United States, where he received a master's degree at
California State University
The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
,
Sacramento
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
in 1985.
In June 1987, at the invitation of
Freedom House, Sunić and
Mate Meštrović, along with twelve other émigré academics and dissidents from different Yugoslav constituent republics, were invited to discuss the political crisis in Yugoslavia. Sunić, who participated in the discussion, gave a short speech on Communist repression in Yugoslavia and what he described as the activities of the Yugoslav secret police, the UDBA.
Tomislav Sunić received a doctorate in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
in 1988 from the
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...
. During his graduate studies he lobbied for Croatian prisoners in Yugoslavia and wrote for the émigré Croat London-based biweekly ''Nova Hrvatska'' and the Madrid-based Croat literary quarterly ''
Hrvatska Revija
''Hrvatska revija'' ( en, Croatian Review or HR) is a Croatian quarterly published by Matica hrvatska (MH) based in Zagreb.
History and profile
The magazine's original run lasted between 1928 and 1945 when it was published by MH and during which ...
'' (meaning "Croatian Review") (''Revista Croata''). From 1988-93, he taught at
California State University
The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
, the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
, and
Juniata College
Juniata College is a private liberal arts college in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1876 as a co-educational school, it was the first college started by members of the Church of the Brethren as a center for vocational learning for those wh ...
(Pennsylvania). From 1993-2001, he served in various diplomatic positions with the Croatian government in Zagreb, London, Copenhagen, and Brussels. He taught at the
Anglo-American College
Anglo-American University (AAU) is a private university in Prague, Czech Republic, providing courses in English. Founded in 1990, it was the first private university in the country to use English as the language of instruction.
History
Anglo ...
in Prague, and currently resides in Zagreb, where he works as a freelance writer.
Sunić's books and views can be described as being in the style of the
GRECE
The Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne ("Research and Study Group for European Civilization"), better known as GRECE, is a French ethnonationalist think tank founded in 1968 to promote the ideas of the Nouvelle ...
, a school of thought by
Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist (; ; born 11 December 1943) – also known as Fabrice Laroche, Robert de Herte, David Barney, and other pen names – is a French journalist and political philosopher, a founding member of the Nouvelle Droite ("New Right"), and ...
, who wrote a preface to Sunić's book and whose articles Sunić often translates into English. Sunić has widely written, translated and lectured in English, German, French and Croatian on many authors, novelists and political thinkers who can be called the predecessors of the European New Right (such as
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were twelve American Southerners who wrote an agrarian literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the Southern Renaissance, t ...
,
Emile Cioran
Emil Mihai Cioran (, ; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. H ...
,
Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger (; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir '' Storm of Steel''.
The son of a successful businessman and ...
and
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( , ) was a French novelist, polemicist and physician. His first novel ''Journey to the End of the Night'' (1932) won the '' Pr ...
) The "European New Right," or
Nouvelle Droite
The Nouvelle Droite (; en, "New Right"), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Vario ...
, is a name for various forms of conservative, right-wing, or dissident cultural movements and political groupings which emerged in opposition to the liberal and leftist academic milieu of the mid- to late-20th century. Critics have argued that de Benoist has developed a novel cultural fascism and have depicted the advocates of Sunić's school of thought as "literary fascists".
Kevin B. MacDonald
Kevin B. MacDonald (born January 24, 1944) is an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and retired professor of evolutionary psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). In 2008, the CSULB academic se ...
, an evolutionary psychologist who has been characterized as "The Marx of the Anti-Semites", wrote an introduction to Sunić's book ''Homo Americanus'', a book which deals extensively with the Judeo-Christian mindset and its secular modalities in the USA. MacDonald states the work "addresses the modern world of hyper-liberalism, globalist capitalism and the crisis of our inherited
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
civilization". Sunić is critical of Judeo-Christian monotheism, to which he attributes the rise of communism and liberalism.
Sunić has been critical of post-World War II legislative changes in Europe, regarding non-white immigration and restrictions on freedom of speech. He has attended and spoken at some conferences organized and attended by historical revisionists. In August 2003, he gave a lecture in German at a conference sponsored by Germany's neo-Nazi party, the
National Democratic Party, alongside the far-right ex-lawyer
Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 200 ...
.
He lectured on
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt (; 11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. A conservative theorist, he is noted as ...
, a German legal scholar, who was influential in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. Sunić's articles have been published in American, French, German and Croatian journals, including the now defunct ''
Journal of Historical Review''.
Speaking appearances
Sunić has accepted invitations to speak before radical conservatives, white nationalist academics and individuals and groups accused of holding or promoting racist and anti-Semitic views. He spoke at the 2002 and 2003 'Eurofest' events, sponsored by the Sacramento chapter of
National Alliance, where he gave a speech, "'Turkish Onslaught to Europe to Communist Disaster', which was critical of non-European immigration.
In his books, articles and speeches Sunić critically examines modern higher education and different antiracist and antifascist institutions which he describes as a platform for "semantic distortions of political concepts, in order to "demonize or discredit non-conformist, nationalist and traditionalist schools of thought."
Sunić spoke to the
French Senate
The Senate (french: Sénat, ) is the upper house of the French Parliament, with the lower house being the National Assembly, the two houses constituting the legislature of France. The French Senate is made up of 348 senators (''sénateurs'' a ...
on 15 January 2007, at a conference entitled "Nationalismes et religions dans les Balkans occidentaux" (Nationalisms and Religions in the Western Balkans), sponsored by the Fondation Robert Schuman. The topic of his talk was "Facteur nationaliste et facteur religieux dans les tensions actuelles" ("The Nationalist and Religious Factor in the Present Tensions"). Other speakers included
Michel Barnier (former French Minister of Foreign Affairs) and General
David Leakey
Lieutenant General Arundell David Leakey, (born 18 May 1952) is a former British Army officer. He was Director General of the European Union Military Staff in the Council of the European Union, Brussels. In 2010 he was appointed Gentleman Usher ...
(former Commander of EUFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina).
Sunic held a speech in Sweden at the
neo-nazi festival "Nordiska Festivalen" in 2008. He has also spoken at a British far-right meeting for "Generation Identity". Sunic also held a speech at another extreme right wing conference in 2011 called "Identitär Idé" ("Identitarian Idea").
A June 2011 conference tour was with MacDonald, in Sweden, where they both talked about the topic "Individualism and Nationalism in the Modern Multicultural Society". He spoke at the "Forgotten Genocide" International Conference, held in
St. Louis Community College (
St.Louis, Missouri), on "The Fate of the Danube Germans in Yugoslavia in the Wake of WWII". In July 2011, he was a guest speaker in
Knin
Knin (, sr, link=no, Книн, it, link=no, Tenin) is a city in the Šibenik-Knin County of Croatia, located in the Dalmatian hinterland near the source of the river Krka, an important traffic junction on the rail and road routes between Zagr ...
, Croatia, at the summer school of the Flemish separatist, rightist political party,
Vlaams Belang
, ideology =
, predecessor = Vlaams Blok
, position =
, europarl = Identity and Democracy
, european = Identity and Democracy Party
, youth_wing = Vlaams Belang Jongeren
, colours = ...
, where he lectured on the parallels between multicultural Belgium and multicultural Yugoslavia.
Sunić is a frequent guest of ethnic or expatriate German and Croatian community or social groups in North America, Australia and Europe, where he talks about what he alleges were mass killings of ethnic German and Croat civilians in the former Yugoslavia and in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII.
More recently, Sunić spoke at two
National Policy Institute
The National Policy Institute (NPI) is a white supremacist think tank and lobbying group which is based in Alexandria, Virginia. It lobbies for white supremacists and the alt-right. Its president is Richard B. Spencer.
It has been largely ina ...
gatherings in 2011 and 2013.
Radio programme
From 2 June 2009 until 2012, Sunić hosted a radio show with the Voice of Reason Broadcast Network. Topics he addressed included race, culture, nationalism, and politics. The show, which began as ''The New Nationalist Perspective'', was later renamed ''The Sunic Journal''. It ended in 2012.
Political affiliation
Sunić sits on the board of directors of the
American Freedom Party
The American Freedom Party (formerly the American Third Position Party or A3P) is a political party in the United States that promotes white nationalism. In November 2009, it filed papers to be on a ballot in California, and was launched in Ja ...
.
References
Books
*
POSMRTNI IZVJEŠTAJ' (2021)
*
Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age' (2018)
*
Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity, preface Kevin MacDonald' (2017)
*
Titans are in Town: A Novella and Accompanying Essays' (2017)
* ''La Nueva Derecha Europea" (1ª edición, Tarragona)]'' (2014)
* "Nieuw Rechts. Voor een andere politieke cultuur" (Belgium: Uitgeverij iD) ]'' (2014)
*
Chroniques des Temps Postmodernes' (2014)
*
Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right' (2011)
*
La Croatie: un pays par défaut?'' (June 2010)
*
Homo americanus:: Child of the Postmodern Age' (June 2007)
*
Fragmenti metapolitike ( Zagreb: K. Kresimir) ' (1998)
*
Titoism and Dissidence; Studies in the History and Dissolution of Communist Yugoslavia' (1995)
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sunic, Tomislav
20th-century American writers
21st-century American writers
1953 births
Living people
Alt-right writers
American male writers
California State University, Fullerton faculty
American translators
American Freedom Party
Croatian writers
Yugoslav emigrants to the United States
Croatian diplomats
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb alumni
New Right (Europe)
Writers from Zagreb
People with acquired American citizenship
Yugoslav anti-communists
American white nationalists