Lavić: The European Right's Game Around Bosnia

By Prof. Dr. Senadin Lavić

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Let's start with a current question. What does the European right show in its attitude towards Bosnia?

First, the European right-wing political discourse is defined by a set of stereotypes, prejudices, and dogmas that prevail in everyday populist vocabulary. Victor Orban (Hungary), Janez Janša (Slovenia), Zoran Milanović (Croatia), Olivér Várhelyi (Hungary), A. Vučić and A. Vulin (Serbia), M. Dodik and D. Čović (Bosnia), and many others are at the forefront with their controversial statements. Johann Sattler, Escobar, Eichhorst, and M. Palmer have very comfortably joined them, almost as their negotiators with the "Bosnian side" that needed to be forced and broken to accept the blackmail of Dodik and Čović, who are systematically trying to bring the state below the Dayton Peace Agreement.

They based their strategy on amending the election legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina according to Dragan Čović's instructions. In a synchronized action, Dodik's project of returning competencies, which is another name for the destruction of the institutions of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and an attempted coup d'état, was initiated. The state has been blocked for years at the level of the FBiH entity and the BiH government (Council of Ministers). The blockade of the Presidency was still missing!

Second, not a single move by Čović and Dodik was planned without the consent and agreement of European right-wing politicians, from the appearance of the non-paper to the sessions of the "rs" entity assembly on competencies. In this regard, Belgrade and Zagreb are the main generators of ethnic conflict and insistence on ethno-politics and ethnic representation, but also on the abolition of the judicial system in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They constantly repeat that a civic society and a democratic state, i.e., the rule of law and accountability, are not possible. The regimes in Belgrade and Zagreb (Milošević and Tuđman) were the initiators and participants of joint criminal enterprises during the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. They, Tuđman and Milošević, were behind the crimes against the state and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today, the same intentions are recognized in the policies of the Belgrade and Zagreb regimes with new figures on the scene.

Third, the European right, as a prelude to fascist exclusivity, is using the historical situation of capitalism's crisis to establish a new order in Europe and undermine democracy, which then means fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the unity of cultures, religions, knowledge, and the diversity of ethnic differences. Within the right-wing pro-fascist strategy, there is a dangerous attempt to unify European humanity through a single belief, behavior, ideology, racist attitudes, myths, exclusivity, appeals to "natural rights," through the exploitation of the African or Asian world, attacking Muslims, Jews, foreigners, and other groups in Europe.

Fourth, the European right is an ahistorical attempt to "defend Europe" from foreigners, migrants, refugees, and the unfortunate. Europe, however, is historically a space for the encounter of cultures and the interference of peoples, languages, knowledge, and beliefs. Orban, for example, would exclude Muslims from Europe and European history. This is a clear sign of great ignorance, lack of education, and right-wing darkness! It is a dangerous sign for the Others and the Different in the European context, who do not conform to the criteria of the right-wing. Europe has already excluded Others from the European space once – it was the Holocaust against European Jews!

Fifth, the European right is trying to demonstrate its policy or the correctness of its policy on Bosnia, which is reflected in the measurement of the past against the present (presentism) or the persistent imposition of prejudices and ideologemes of the present into the depths of the past. This is a clear sign of a lack of humanistic visions that celebrate human freedom. This lack is replaced by dangerous messages of religious and ethnic intolerance. The militant Serbian right, for example, expresses its ideas most clearly in the form of ethnophaulism, i.e., primitive insults to Bosniaks, Albanians, or Montenegrins and attempts to negate them as a national, cultural, and political form.

Sixth, the European right, with its pro-fascist ideas, opens a problematic question about the future of European humanity. What does the closing of Europe within the walls of monolithic thinking mean? Did German Nazism and Italian Fascism not once show what that means for Europe and humanity in general? Can the crisis of the capitalist form of production and the crisis of European unity turn into a new danger for the non-identical, marginal, authentic, and different that is not unified according to the patterns of the right-wing narrative? The European palimpsest must not become subject to right-wing ideologies that have already tried to destroy cultural wealth and heritage.

Seventh, Europe, for its own sake, should cherish Bosnia like the apple of its eye. But, right-wing Europe is reckless and blind! In it, crusaders and Islamophobes ride their medieval ideas that fit into the Croatian "bulwark of Christianity" and Serbian Saint Sava myth-making.

Eighth, in the arsenal of pathetic ethnophaulism, Dodik's use of the religious designation "Muslim" as an indictment, exposure, denunciation, contempt, belittling, insult, inferiority of faith, betrayal of "ancestral faith," and so on, achieves the intention of demonizing an entire people and belittling them as a mere "religious group"... It seems that it is a universal phenomenon that derogatory terms and expressions are coined, forged, or invented that serve to refer to another group in a way that belittles, insults, or humiliates them.

Ninth, the right-wing sabotage of the Bosnian being and identity, and the principles of common life in a pluralistic society, cannot extinguish civic loyalty to Bosnia. This sabotage, this fishing in troubled waters by criminal groups, their clients, and lobbyists, opens eyes and illuminates all the misery of right-wing politics that ends in fascistoid projects. Unfortunately, the judicial system has failed and become compromised as a place of corruption and protection of criminal power brokers.

It should also be emphasized that with every reflection and mention of ethnic affiliation and name, 'ethnophaulism' is associated. The etymology of this term comes from the combination of two Greek words, ethnos (people, human group, ethnicity) and phaulisma (belittling, insult), which means the belittling of a group of people, an ethnic or national group. Ethnophaulism is therefore a word used to belittle a group of people, in other words, an ethnic slur. In 1944, Abraham A. Roback (1890-1965) published his Dictionary of Ethnic Slurs (Ethnophaulisms) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.