Motorcycle club MC Serbs from Serbia, whose members have a death‘s head symbol on their vests as used by Nazi forces and have stylized swastikas tattooed, formally registered an association in Doboj.
Three days before the celebration of the New Year 2021, Zoran Stankovic registered an association called Moto Club MC Serbs at the Basic Court in Doboj. The goals of this association, among other things, include gathering bikers and motorcycle sports enthusiasts, improving the quality of life of children and young people in Doboj and Republika Srpska (RS), and promoting charity work.
Stankovic himself has been promoting the world of motorcycling on social media for almost a decade, while wearing the most recognizable symbol of the “MC Serbs” club – the Totenkopf – a death’s head, on his biker vest. It was used by the SS “Totenkopf” Nazi division and after the Second World War it was a symbol of hatred used by neo-Nazis and extreme right-wingers.
Bikers from Serbia are a security threat
On the “MC Serbs Doboj” Facebook page, photos of members of the motorcycle club at meetings and gatherings, in which members of other branches from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Serbia often participate, have been published for the past year. All of them show the positions of the members within the club and the city they come from, but the symbol that distinguishes this club from others has been obscured. When members share photos on their private social media accounts, they do not remove the Totenkopf – a skull and crossbones symbol used by members of Blood and Honor, a neo-Nazi international group.
In one of the photos from Belgrade in August of this year, several bikers can be seen, one of whom has a pronounced tattoo of a stylized swastika – slightly different from the one used by Nazi forces during the Second World War. Other bikers wear a small stylized death’s head on their vests, the same ones used by Nazi SS divisions during some of their worst atrocities, and one wears a necklace with the Nordic spinning wheel symbol, which is used by extreme right-wingers around the world.
Although BiH adopted the Strategy for Combatting Terrorism at the end of last year, which, unlike the previous strategies, addresses right-wing extremism. The action plan for its implementation was adopted only in August of this year, which is why this club did not have any problems registering the official association in Doboj.
An expert on extremism and the author of a study on right-wingers in the Balkans, Mirza Buljubasic points out that the activities of the MC Serb Motorcycle Club are a security problem, and that their activities should not be ignored considering that they are united by extreme right-wing ideas and activities that include “destructive clerical nationalism”.
“The expansion of the Motorcycle Club “MC Serbs” can also be seen in the context of the expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans; contacts between individual members of the “MC Serbs” and the “Night Wolves” (pro-Putin biker club) from Russia existed before, prior to the official physical arrival of the “Night Wolves” in BiH. It is possible that their arrival on steel two-wheelers and parading somehow increased the interest in membership in the “MC Serbs”. But what is more likely is that there is certain strategic support between the “Night Wolves” and the “MC Serbs”, in terms of strategic activity,” Buljubasic stated, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
