Conclusions: Confronting Relativism in Serbia and Croatia

2441Concl 16/10/02 8:06 am Page 251 Conclusions: confronting relativism in Serbia and Croatia The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Tragedy, when the general, the statesman, and the philoso- pher have become the butt of every farce and joke. (W. H. Auden) HEN AUDEN PENNED this cynical projection early in the last century, he reflected on a new state of affairs that was coming to pass, a Wcultural transformation privileging the victim over the aggressor, the loser over the winner. This extract adequately encapsulates the importance of the Yugoslav conflict as yet another era when the aestheticisation of the victim was paramount, along with the demonisation of the powerful and the proud. In Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats cast themselves as the natural heirs to much of Yugoslavia’s land mass – through the argument that their historic persecution gave them the right to expand their nation states to include all co- nationals. This concluding section highlights some of the main themes in this study, drawing together many of the theoretical and empirical strands that have been discussed in the preceding eight chapters. As I described throughout, a teleological understanding of history proved to be of central importance for both Serbian and Croatian nationalist writers during the 1990s. Myths of Covenant, Fall, and Redemption were of particular importance, as was the general theme of good against evil. Serbs and Croats were particularly suscep- tible to these types of myths because of the religious nature of their national identification. Religion seemingly imbued each side with primordial national characteristics – making the self appear more enlightened, democratic, noble, peace-loving, generous, and sacrificial. Religious faith was presented as the most basic form of national differentiation, influencing culture, traditions, language, and openness to the outside world. The clash between positive and progressive religions and backward and racist religions was seen to be at the 251 David Bruce MacDonald - 9781526137258 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/27/2021 04:38:34PM via free access 2441Concl 16/10/02 8:06 am Page 252 Conclusions: confronting relativism in Serbia and Croatia root of conflict. In trying to analyse the successes and failures of Serbian and Croatian propaganda, we need to understand clearly whether or not any actual geno- cides took place in the Balkans, either in history, or during the more contemporary period. This includes the general question of whether the manipulation of Holocaust imagery is a useful means for nations to advance their political agendas. I have argued that general Fall imagery and imagery of the Holocaust have played an extremely important role in rallying co- nationals for the defence of the nation. As an instrumental means of gaining power and holding on to it, negative imagery has been very useful. Nevertheless, Holocaust imagery never succeeded in accomplishing its primary objective – courting massive Western sympathy and support. The comparative genocide debate in Serbia and Croatia was very much akin to the tragedy of the commons – as soon as the Serbs invoked it, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, and Bosnian Moslems all joined in, and picked this stock of metaphors and symbols clean. Religious nationalism and ‘ethnic’ nations An obvious aspect of Serbian and Croatian revisionism was the theme of evil. Northrop Frye identified the importance of a continuous negative agency, bringing about Falls and driving history forward. For the early Hebrews, enemies came from a variety of cultural, linguistic, and religious back- grounds. They all worshipped ‘false gods’, but they were not unified by any mutual similarity in their belief systems. What unified them was their role as different aspects of a negative agency, acting to destroy the Hebrew nation.1 While the Egyptians, Philistines, Romans, and others were metaphorically linked, this was the extent of their connection. Serbian and Croatian history was boiled down to a series of monumental encounters between these two groups, whereas the Hebrews faced a wide variety of enemies over many centuries. Through the bogeymen of Serbophobia or Greater Serbia, contemporary politicians and military leaders were linked to their counterparts a century before. In these two case studies, true historical enemies were excised from history. In Croatia, the Hungarians, and not the Serbs, were the objects of Croatian hatred in the nineteenth century, and their ‘concentration camps’ were quietly forgotten. The sword on the famous bronze statue of Ban Jelacˇic´ was, after all, pointing at Budapest, not at Belgrade. His rebellion in 1848 was staged against the growing power of Hungary, not Greater Serbia. Furthermore, Croats were not forced into the first Yugoslavia in 1918. Rather, joining with other South Slavs was infinitely preferable to annexation by Italy, which had coveted the Istrian Peninsula for many decades. 252 David Bruce MacDonald - 9781526137258 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/27/2021 04:38:34PM via free access 2441Concl 16/10/02 8:06 am Page 253 Conclusions: confronting relativism in Serbia and Croatia Serbia’s greatest historical enemy – the Ottoman Empire – seemed largely irrelevant in reinterpretations of Serbian history. While there was a great deal of anti-Moslem, anti-Islamic rhetoric, there were few attacks on Turkey itself for its past occupation of the region. Nor was there much anti-Ottoman propaganda. Other traditional enemies – such as Bulgaria, a constant threat during the first half of the twentieth century and a key mover and shaker during the Balkan Wars – were consigned to obscurity. When history was reinterpreted in the 1990s, these other countries were conveniently disre- garded. Even German and Italian invasion was seen as a facilitator of Serbian or Croatian genocide, with collaboration often seen to be worse than the crimes either of these invading countries had perpetrated in the region. Manufacturing a history of Serbian–Croatian rivalry was much more important, and so elements of a useable past were grafted together with pure fiction, to render a completely new vision of the past. An important reason for this exclusion of historical enemies had to do with a teleological view of history maintained by both Serbs and Croats. History was reinterpreted, not simply as a contest between nations, or countries, but more importantly as one between religious entities, entities that seemed more important than race, language, or tradition. At no time did it appear that nationalism was competing with religion. The nation was never elevated to be, as William Pfaff put it, ‘a simulacrum of the Deity’.2 Rather, the Croatian Catholic Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church appear to have remained exceedingly loyal to their respective regimes, which in turn promoted religion as a central aspect of national identity. While Kecˇmanovic´ was correct that there were many ‘pseudo-religious qualities’ in Serbian and Croatian ‘ethnic identification’, nationalism did not replace religion: it collab- orated with, and manipulated it.3 Catholicism and Orthodoxy, long submerged through decades of Communism, now had the chance to re-emerge. Because Serbs and Croats largely defined their sense of national identity by their religious beliefs and their membership in a religious community, it was natural that their emerg- ing nationalisms would rely on the moral and spiritual legitimacy conferred by the Church. Religion and nationalism were one in Communist Yugoslavia. It was impossible for nationalism to replace religion, because without religion these nations would, in any practical sense, cease to exist. While the self would be defined by religious criteria, imparting certain primordial characteristics to the nation, so too would the others come to be defined by their beliefs. Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis was invoked time and again, to explain why peoples of other faiths were dangerous and threatening. Both the Serbs and the Croats followed Huntington’s hierarchy of religions, also described by Milica Bakic´-Hayden as ‘nesting orientalisms’. In this hierarchy, Protestantism was seemingly the most enlightened and the most 253 David Bruce MacDonald - 9781526137258 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/27/2021 04:38:34PM via free access 2441Concl 16/10/02 8:06 am Page 254 Conclusions: confronting relativism in Serbia and Croatia ‘Western’, followed by Catholicism, then Orthodoxy, then Islam, presented as the most violent, barbaric and backward of all religions. Huntington claimed that Islam was the religion responsible for most of the world’s conflicts. These categorisations seem to have been assimilated into Serbian and Croatian propaganda. While Milosˇevic´ could happily share a weekend at Karadjordjevo with Tudjman, carving up Bosnia, there was no friendliness between Milosˇevic´ and the Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova or the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic´. While these men were seemingly in favour of peace, not war, Milosˇevic´ preferred the company of a fellow warmonger and opportunist. The Battle of Kosovo had seemingly sealed the fate of the Moslems. There could be no reconciliation between these two groups. A similar dynamic was evident in Croatia. While there were many myths about the Bosnian Moslems as ‘Brother Slavs’ and ‘the flower of the Croatian nation’, a strong anti-Islamic current informed many Croatian arguments and government policies. Tudjman’s hatred of the Moslems seemed both personal and emotional – this was well known among Western diplomats who met with him. While one might be tempted to believe that the Croato-Moslem Federation in Bosnia today testifies to the closeness of Croats and Bosnian Moslems, historically this was decidedly not the case. As we saw in Chapter 8, Tudjman betrayed the beliefs of his nationalist supporters in Hercegovina in an attempt to cast himself as a peacemaker.

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