The chauvinistic chanting “Kill, slaughter, so that Shiptar (Albanian) does not exist”, which was allegedly heard in Tivat last week, is anti-civilization and belongs to the ugly past. With the Belgrade sociologist Ratko Bozovic, we tried to figure out why chauvinism and fascism survive, especially among the younger population, which was mostly not even born during the bloody wars in the former SFRY.
Bozovic warns that the less it knows, the more aggressive it becomes and that this is especially dangerous in the dirty and war-inciting policy present in the region.
“Painter and writer Biljana Vilimon said in an interview with NIN: “Who gets infected by politics, there is no cure. It is not just a current disease, but a chronic disease.” In addition to all the world's infections, we also have this particular disease of ours, from which we can never get out. Probably because we have not yet reached civil society. The ideological discourse disappeared, and then, overnight, the communists became nationalists. Communism, as a world idea, turned into a nationalist one overnight. Were our communists communists at all? Was there communism or was everything a hidden and repressed nationalist unfulfillment? Secondly, nationalists always have the feeling that they have been deprived, that someone has done them harm, so they have to take revenge and settle things. Those emotions are more the fruit of their prejudices and fictions, and not facts and knowledge”, says Božović for the City Portal.
Nescience and ignorance encourage chauvinistic aggression among young people as well?
Young people in families and schools have learned nothing or very little. Full of prejudice, the street is almost the only school for young people; there they heard and learned the wrong words and messages they repeated. The unsettled post-conflict societies in which they grew up, which were not able or ready to open painful stories from the recent and distant past, also contribute to this. In Serbia, nationalist madness is at work, extreme nationalism dominates, which is a pathological phenomenon. As a society, we did not clean Augie's barn of the dirty and war-inciting politics of the 1990s, and that is now sacred to us.
What role did the Church play?
The church deepened the problem. It not only sent people to wars and blessed them, but it entered the very fabric of everyday life. Take Montenegrins: there were no more atheists anywhere than in Montenegro. As champions of exclusivity, we Montenegrins once drove cows and goats into churches. Well, then we became great believers overnight. Since Byzantine times, religion and the church have never been in greater harmony with society. As you can see, we are making very successful progress.
I recently listened to a professor of literature, who said that 90% of people in Serbia are illiterate in the media. Add media, then literal and brutal illiteracy to that low IQ, and you will see who was ready to accept the wave of return of traditionalism in the way it was done here. Religion emerged from repressed consciousness like the devil himself.
What is the conclusion then?
We are pathological societies, that is our misfortune. We seek political authority, and we have a subservient mentality. We are obsessed with leaders. We are not following an idea, but a leader. Work must be done on pacification, calming passions, educating young people. It must be explained to them that there is only a step between verbal and substantive violence.
[…] Source: Aktuelno […]