Society in the Claws of the Right (2): The Rise of Extremism and Clericalism

Of course, nationalism in Serbia has never ceased to be a serious problem and has always had a strong influence on social and political processes. It has been shown that the institutions that promote the nationalist ideology are very tenacious, that nationalism as such, along with accompanying extremism and clericalism - in the words of NGOs - are self-sustaining, that there are always buyers, donors and ambitious, passionate new, young representatives for them.

Someone said a long time ago that it is unbearably easy to become a nationalist here. To be precise, when we talk about nationalism, we in Serbia unequivocally talk about anti-Westernism, putinophilia, opponents of democracy, human rights and freedom. When we talk about extremism, we are talking about a more pronounced, aggressive form of nationalism. And mostly these two terms are difficult to distinguish. As Boris Buden once said, in these areas any nationalism, even patriotism, ends with the prospect of mass graves...

The politics of the Serbian Progressive Party could not have different results than the ones we are seeing: autocracy, broken institutions, stifled freedoms, Serbia is further from the EU than in 2012, public speech is completely contaminated with nationalism, aggression, hatred, warmongering and all possible conspiracy theories, Western values ​​are less popular than during the NATO bombing, the Serbian Orthodox Church is more powerful than the Constitutional Court... With Vučić's coming to power, the extreme right won and it is not clear why many failed to notice that...

Read on full text by Nedimo Sejdinović in the weekly "Vreme" from Thursday (September 22)