Virus Balkanicus – Fascist Chauvinism: Serbia Uber Alles – Essay

I remember, back in 2008 when I was in Belgrade, Serbia that I saw the police special forces as the border protection between fascists and anti-fascists at the center of Belgrade during the Serbian march 2008.

The same people. Two totally different ideologies and I have seen the hatred between them. By coincidence, I was there, attending Satira Fest 2008 as the one of the participants and even in the air you could feel the chauvinism. One of the attenders and participants, Aleksandar Baljak (although a famous satire writer), said the following greeting: “I greet all of you, the Serbs, member of the Association of the writers of Serbia.” He saw me, although I am a Muslim, but member of the Association of writers of Serbia (also in BiH, Montenegro and Croatian writers association) and I decided to reply to him with aphorism when I got on the stage: ”All the people in the World are Muslims, but they do not know that yet.”

Of course, before that I said thank you, respectable colleague Baljak for the nice greetings in front of the 200 people at the Hall of the Stari Grad municipality of Belgrade – downtown.  I got an applause from the crowd of people of other national identities. Although, what is national identity? Just a cause for the separation and division. I had to answer with an aphorism. After that statement of mine, they have never invited me to the any of the future Satire fests…And the Oscar goes to…?

Nevertheless, we have to go back and through the analyses of the chauvinism in Serbia, which led to fascism (now, it is the Serbian chauvinists turn to hate me as professor and human being, after Muslim and Croat fascists already does), as we did here on ER pages for BiH (January 2020) and Croatia (February 2020) defend our initial thesis of that all the states which were created as the outcome of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (ex-Yu) started with a so-called “democratic” processes and have elected to power the national-chauvinist parties thath lead, in one way or another, the states of ex-Yu, in pretty fascistic way. So well and so good that since 1991 almost 11 (eleven) million people have fled out of the area (by the reason of the war and “excellent” development politics in each of the country since the wars 1991-1999 ended).

The former communists became strong national-chauvinists to make possible tycoonization and “legally” (made a law to make it possible) stealing the state-owned companies and making the pre-war genitors to become “slave owners” of the 21st century. How else to defend the thesis that suddenly you have billionaires whom you cannot ask about the first million earned in the nineties of the 20th century, during the war(s) or immediately after that. Of course, chauvinism is married to the other word fascism because it excludes other and different ones from any of the interaction equation. Hidden behind the closed doors of ethnic separation, first they have stolen from others and those who are different and after that from their own people, in any of ex-Yu states.

Greater Serbia with the goal “where is Serbian foot, that is Serbian land” and “to whom belong the Church the land/country belongs to him” has been a “dream” since 1844 (of course, nobody abolish Austria-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire doing the same back in the ages, but our focus is now on Serbian chauvinists who sometimes saying that they are not for it and sometimes that they are) and Načertanije by Ilija Garašanin and continue with Vuk Karadžić, Nikola Stojanović, Jovan Cvijić, Vaso Čubrilović, Stevan Moljević and up to 1986 Memorandum of Serbian Academy of Arts and Science.

Today, we have the presence of the sentenced war-criminal, doctor of science, Vojislav Šešelj who openly promote Greater Serbia and current (2020) President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić who was threatening in the Serbian Parliament back in 1995 that “If you kill one Serb, we will kill 100 of Muslims” and has never give up of Greater Serbia idea but this time use the media (Informer, etc.) he indirectly controls and doing the same thing what Šešelj does, but more from the shadow, playing on the surface peace-maker and open for discussion. Although a recent sentence he said this year (24.2.2020), once more proved that he is still for it: “Should it be like in 1995 and to be more weaken when Banja Luka has almost fallen.” Serbian leader talking about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina back in 1995 proving that Serbia (although denies since than) was actively participated in it.

Fascism in Serbia has it links since the Slobodan Milošević period (since 1988), the guy who died in the Hague Tribunal back in 2006, waiting for the sentence for the war crimes in the Former Yugoslavia. He was called the Butcher of the Balkans. 

Within the one of the most respected newspaper in the UK, THE INDEPENDENT, even was quoted one of the Marshal Tito’s (Tito – 1892-1980 – was a ruler of ex. Yugoslavia and one of the main anti-fascists in the Second World War) dissidents Milovan Đilas who said that Serbia opened a way to fascist dictatorship at 1993. Of course, in the world of digital media (bots and trolls) it is easy to brainwash people with no Media literacy and focus on marginalized myths like Kosovo (which is already lost for Serbia, but nobody on a power has a guts to admit it, except sometimes when needed to say it, while in the next day says opposite – who else than Aleksandar Vučić, current president).

By the way, the author of this essay you are reading now was the first one to apologize to Aleksandar Vućić back in 2015 when some Bosniak-Muslim chauvinists threw stones at him in Srebrenica, during a commemoration of the Genocide. What I said then you can read here under the title, within WWW portal BLIC.RS in Serbia: “Hadzialić apologized to Vućić: Thank you for putting the Flower of Srebrenica on your lapel”. I mention this in a case that some fascist – chauvinist from Serbia thinks that this is one of the paid essays by the enemy of Serbia. Nobody is the enemy of Serbia. I am just the open enemy of the fascistic regimes that rules now all the countries of the former Yugoslavia hidden under the dresses of the democracy which is for me: the demoncracy.

I even gave a recent interview for the Serbian daily newspaper DANAS from Belgrade on 22.2.2020 titled. “Ethics is the “fake news” of our everyday life”. and feel in Serbia the same way like I feel in any other country of ex-Yu, like at home, but I really cannot stand fake democracy (real democracy is procedure and as I said long time ago: “As much power, the same amount of the responsibility”, although sociologist from the Netherlands, Arend Lijphart said that, “Democracy is the ruling of the freely elected people”), which is a hypocrisy ubber alles. 

So, from the audiences at soccer matches, through the flourishing of neo-fascists organizations in Serbia since 2009 (not to forget the Chetniks of Draža Mihajlović who were collaborationist of Hitler’s Germany and, together with Ustasha’s of Ante Pavelić from Croatia, collaborationist of the Italian fascist as well in the II World war), via trying to rehabilitate (after the rehabilitation of the Draža Mihajlović back in ) Milan Nedić in Serbia, another fascist clerk from the Second World War and up to having Radovan Karadžić (Serb from BiH) as the icon of white nationalism.  and increasing of the visibility of the orthodox far right in 2019. Serbia is encircling fascism as an ideology within the satisfying the following rule of authoritative radical nationalism and all 14 facts of the Eternal fascism written in the essay of great Umberto Eco back in 1995, Serbia also satisfies all of it:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.” In Serbia myths exists everywhere, starting from the lost battle of Kosovo (comment SH)
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” (When you have gloryfying over the edge something which becomes a kitch – comment S.H.)
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” (Serbian Nationalist train for Kosovo – comment SH)
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.” (Who ever think differently than Aleksandar Vućić in Serbia is a traitor – comment SH)
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” (TV N1 – CNN affiliate – in Serbia and the movie „The ruler“ Part I and Part II – comment SH)
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” (I wrote about it and linked to Noam Chomsky ten strategies of manipulation – comment SH)
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.” („All the world is against Serbia, but we will prevail“-comment SH)
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” (Relations with Kosovo by Serbia – comment SH)
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.” (Aleksandar Vučić always talks about the future, tomorrow, struggle for it and what about today? – comment SH)
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” (Aleksandar Vučić consider BIRN as the enemy – comment SH)
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.” (Nothing about fascism of their own in the Second World War but everything about heroism – comment SH)
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” (Catch all politics of Aleksandar Vučić – comment SH)
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” (Master of the blaster – comment SH)
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” (War criminal uber alles – comment SH)

Having in mind that fascists are all connected, I call all the anti-fascists from the former Yugoslavia area to reunite (not just on the celebration of the famous battles of the World War II – 2 or 3 times a year) because all the fascists in the former area of Yugoslavia are very well connected and support each other (aside of hating each other guts). The future is now and we are living within it, dear friends from Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo*, North Macedonia and Montenegro. The Fascists are preparing a new war. Don’t you see that?

Next: Virus Balkanicus – Fascist chauvinism: Slovenia uber alles