Whose patriotism is it, the left's or the right's

It is also noticeable that the anti-patriotic narrative has deeply embedded itself within the civic (left-wing) political spectrum in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A segment of Bosnian and Herzegovinian leftists, or those who declare themselves as such, are currently carriers of a type of social and political relativism whereby the struggle for the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the struggle for its disintegration are completely identical. 

For inexplicable reasons, at least inexplicable to the average person, the exclusive right to patriotism in Bosnia and Herzegovina is ceded to national parties, although every story about patriotism in the former Yugoslavia, in the context of national parties, is actually a story, as we have witnessed, a story about destructive nationalism that has far surpassed the boundaries of patriotism. And patriotism, in this way, kills others and the different. 

The history of Bosnia and Herzegovina reminds us that this state was actually first built and constructed by left-wing, not right-wing patriots, from Avdo Humo to Rodoljub Čolaković. Miro Lazović recently reminded us that the issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina's survival during the war against the state in the nineties actually depended to a large extent on the entry of social democrats into government with Izetbegović, "because the Americans supported only multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Despite the undisguised political intentions of dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina coming from neighboring countries, despite open separatism within the country, in Bosnia and Herzegovina itself, a good portion of left-wing parties are saying, here and now, especially in Sarajevo, that the call to preserve Bosnia and Herzegovina and its social values is merely empty patriotism and cheap demagoguery, reserved perhaps only for national parties. To be fair, the struggle for the interests of the state and society has been made disgusting in public by a bunch of notorious criminals who tried to hide their crimes behind patriotism, and therefore one should understand why this concept has become so hated in the eyes of the citizen who is simply frustrated by the injustice that national elites have brought to perfection.

However, does this mean that left-wing parties here and today should accept that it is inappropriate to talk about the danger facing Bosnian and Herzegovinian society and that it needs to be defended? A whole host of politicians, analysts, and intellectuals are pushing such a narrative, brutally stigmatizing anyone who dares to speak about the danger in which Bosnia and Herzegovina finds itself. They hand over patriotism to the right by themselves. Therefore, according to these views, being a patriot and uncompromisingly advocating for the survival of the state is a nationalist and right-wing model of governance.

Last year's warning from Macron that 'nationalism is the betrayal of patriotism' perhaps best answers the question of whether patriotism belongs to the left or the right.