Jasmina Tešanović: Neonazism in Serbia

Essay by Jasmina Tešanović
photos by Dobrivoje Dejanovic

Is there anything more macabre, stupid and campy in
the
modern political confusion than a nationalist Serbian
Nazi?

During an antifascist rally in Novi Sad, Northern
Serbia, a
group of neonazis attacked us with stones, pieces of
woods and tear gas. Their own rally had been
prohibited in the
very last minute by the minister of police, although
the local mayor, a radical right winged woman, didn’t
much mind it.

Only when Nazis from all the
neighboring countries started flocking in across the
Serbian
borders did it became clear that Nazi rallies are not
a
great urban tourist policy.

How can Serbia become the center for modern Nazi
fans whose
idol Hitler bent every effort to exterminate Jews,
gypsies and of course Serbs? Hitler even managed to
be quite
efficient in this area.

Hannah Arendt writes how
Eichmann, during
his trial in Jerusalem, was pathetically trying to be
entirely
truthful about his facts and orders…never lying
about
killing somebody or sparing them. Except for one
bureaucratic detail — those eight thousand Serbs whom
Eichmann personally ordered killed within Serbia.
Serbs were so invisible and expendable that Eichmann
took a unique initiative in their case.

Today's neonazis are mostly young skinheads
with a newly composed homicidal
ideology : kill the gays first, then the Jews,
with the gypsies as an ever-popular main dish. But how
do Serbs re-imagine themselves as fascist killers
rather
than fascist prey?

That question goes to united Europe, with its
right winged cries for national purities and
identities
against all the third world… any nonEuropean
generally
speaking… all those new comers who jeopardize
local conservatism.

The neonazi New Order requires a new Other.
Christian fundamentalism sets new standards, new
multiethnic targets, new borders for culture-war.

These days wars have no clear national faces, no
barricaded differences between invaders and defenders.
Suicide bombers are killer and martyr in one, while
Nazi invasions
give way to ethnic terror inside states or endless
military occupations. Invisible strong undercurrent
waves of
global power on earth, of surveillance in the skies,
of struggles for the control of the bodies
and mind of citizens, sorted randomly into victims and
oppressors. War and peace become two faces of the
same power game.

A prize of one million dollars was recently
issued for the head of former general Ratko Mladic:
the responsible party for the Srebrenica genocide.
Mladic is the hero of the neo-nazis, radicals, and
Serbian nationalists. His iconic face is all over
Serbia, on T shirts, on posters, in the kiosks.

Mladic was actively sheltered by the official Serbian
army until a few years ago and even two ordinary
soldiers who stumbled across him were murdered
mysteriously. His whereabouts were public, then
semipublic, then clandestine, and now a myth. Bin
Ladin's bounty never yet brought Al Qaeda to justice.

The devotees of Ratko Mladic will not be tempted by
this reward: it is not a matter of cash but of power.

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Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

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Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

– Korea – South, not North.
– "I heard they are making a movie on her life."
– Serbia and the Flames
– Return to Srebenica

– Sagmeister in Belgrade

– Jasmina Tešanović: What About the Russians?

– Milan Martic sentenced in Hague

– Mothers of Mass Graves
– Hope for Serbia
– Stelarc in Ritopek
– Sarajevo Mon Amour

– MBOs
– Killing Journalists

– Jasmina Tešanović: Where Did Our History Go?
– Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide

– Carnival of Ruritania
– "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
– Faking Bombings
– Dispatch from Amsterdam
– Where are your Americans now?

– Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
– Slaughter in the Monastery

– Mermaid's Trail

– A Burial in Srebenica
– Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
– To Hague, to Hague