Lavić: European right-wing game around Bosnia

Dr. Senadin Lavić

Let's start with one current issue. What does the European right-wing show in relation to Bosnia?

First, European right-wing political discourse is determined by a set of stereotypes, prejudices and dogmas as part of 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) are in the lead with their controversial statements.

They were joined very comfortably by Johann Sattler, Escobar, Eichhorst and M. Palmer, almost as their negotiators with the 'Bosnian side' which had to be forced and broken to agree
to blackmails by Dodik and Čović, who were deliberately trying to pull the country backwards to the times before the Dayton Peace Accords.

They based their strategy on changing the electoral legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina upon Dragan Čović's instructions. In that synchronized action is also Dodik's project of regaining jurisdiction, that is, another name for destroying the institutions of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and launching a coup d'etat. At the same time, the state has been blocked for years at the level of the FBiH entities and the BiH Government (Council of Ministers). The blockade of the Presidency was the only thing missing!

Secondly, no move by Čović and Dodik was planned without the consent and agreement with the European right-wing politicians, from the appearance of non-paper to the sessions of the
entity assembly 'rs' on competencies. At the same time, Belgrade and Zagreb are the main generators of ethnic conflict action and insistence on ethnopolitics and ethnic representation,
but also on the abolition of the judicial system in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

They constantly repeat that civil society and a democratic state, i.e. the rule of law and responsibility, are not possible. The Belgrade and Zagreb regimes (Milošević and Tudjman) were the initiators and participants in joint criminal enterprises during the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.

They, Tudjman and Milosevic, were behind the crimes against the state and the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The same intentions are recognized in the current politics of the Belgrade and Zagreb regimes, with new characters on the scene.

Third, the European right-wing, as a hallway of fascist exclusivity, is taking advantage of the historical situation of the crisis of capitalism to establish a new order in Europe and undermine democracy, therefore, the basic human rights and freedoms, and the unity of cultures, religions, knowledge and ethnodiversity. Within the right-wing pro-fascist strategy, a dangerous attempt is being made to unify European humanity through one belief, behavior, ideology, racist attitudes, myths, exclusivity, promoting 'natural rights', exploitation of the African or Asian world, attacks on Muslims, Jews, foreigners and other groups of 'different' in Europe.

Fourth, the European right is an ahistorical attempt to 'defend Europe' from foreigners, migrants, exiles, the miserable. Europe, however, has historically been a meeting place for cultures, peoples, languages, knowledge and beliefs. Orban, for example, would exclude Muslims from Europe and European history. It is a clear sign of huge ignorance, lack of education and right-wing eclipse!

It is a dangerous sign for the Others and the Different in the European context, which do not match 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 in Bosnia or the correctness of its own policy, which is reflected in measuring the past against the present (presentism) or persistently imposing prejudices and ideologemes of the present into the depths of the past.

This is a clear sign of the lack of humanistic visions in which human freedom is celebrated. This shortcoming is being replaced by dangerous messages of religious and ethnic intolerance.

The militant Serbian right-wing, for example, most clearly expresses its ideas in the form of ethnophaulism, that is, the primitive insult of Bosniaks, Albanians or Montenegrins, and attempts to annul them as a national, cultural and political form. 

Sixth, the European right-wing, with its pro-fascist ideas, raises the problematic question of the future of European humanity. What does it mean to close Europe within the walls of one-mindedness?

Didn't German Nazism and Italian fascism once show what that meant for Europe and humanity in general? Could 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 mustn't become subject to right-wing ideologies that have previously tried to destroy cultural wealth and heritage.

Seventh, Europe should keep Bosnia as the apple of its eye for its own sake. But right-wing Europe is obnoxious and blind! In it, crusaders and Islamophobiacs ride on their medieval ideas that fit into the Croatian 'pre-wall of Christianity' and Serbian Saint Sava's myth- making.

Eighth, in the arsenal of miserable ethnophaulism, Dodik's use of the religious label 'Muslim' as an indictment, exposing, snitching, turning in, denouncing, insulting, belittling, offending, inferior faith, betraying 'ancestral faith' and the like, intends to demonize the whole nation and disparage it as a mere 'religious group'... It seems to be a universal phenomenon to forge or invent derogatory terms and sayings that serve to refer to another group so that it is belittled, insulted or humiliated.

Ninth, the right-wing sabotage of the Bosnian being and identity, and the principle of living together in a plural society, cannot extinguish civic loyalty to Bosnia. This sabotage, this hunt in the murky criminal groups, their clients and lobbyists, opens their eyes and sheds light on all the misery of right-wing politics that ends in fascist projects. At the same time, unfortunately, the judicial system failed and became disavowed as a place of corruption and protection of criminal powerful people.

It should also be emphasized that 'ethnophaulism' is associated with every reflection and mention of ethnicity and name. The etymology of this term derives from the combination of two Greek words ethnos (people, human group, ethnicity) and phaulisma (disparagement, insult) which means disparagement of a group of people, some ethnic or national group.

Ethnophaulism is therefore a word used to belittle a group of people, in other words, ethnic slur. In 1944, Abraham A. Roback (1890-65) publishedhis Dictionary of Ethnic Insults (Ethnophaulisms) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.