As part of the ‘Second Program’ campaign, this media action initiative undertook to inspire, encourage and invite young people to reflect on the current situation. A future professor of sociology from Brčko writes for ‘Drugi program.’
Like the fictional land of Mordor from the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it seems that in the Balkans, surrounded by the Mediterranean and strong mountains, there is only one entrance – the so-called Black Doors. These are the gates that lead directly to the haunted land of desolation where only the servants of Sauron, the evil wizard and the ‘fallen’ angel live.
And what that irrational Mordor looks like, we are witnessing, here, in the Third Age of Middle-earth, or the Balkans, in our case.
A scenario denying genocide in the 21st century and calling it a war crime is under way. At the same time, the perpetrators of the same crime are being celebrated and glorified. Or scenarios in which proven genocide is justified by the crimes and genocide of some other nations, in an effort to diminish its size. This happened a few days ago, when the President of the HDZ BiH, Dragan Čović, supported Milorad Dodik’s initiative to abolish the so-called Inzko’s Law, i.e. the Law on Punishing Denial of Genocide in Srebrenica.
Čović stated that the law ‘did not and will not pass’ and that these are just some ‘conclusions’, for which he does not have to justify himself to anyone. Zoran Milanović, the current President of the Republic of Croatia, also supported him in that, believing that this should not be done, so that he would not be called some kind of fascist or Nazi again. According to Milanović, Čović is not a fascist – but what the president of the HDZ is doing is a borderline form, and it is not far from that.
In his usual style, Milanović added that ‘not every genocide is the same’, and that ‘not every victim is the same’.
Schizophrenic Splits
It is obvious to an average medical student, but also to anyone who has been suffering the consequences of their destructive and self-destructive actions for decades, that the ‘schizophrenic splits’ of some Balkan tribal elders have reached their clinical peak.
However, how is it possible to cross the line of bad taste, disgust and morbidity so much, and still persist in it? How is it possible to cross the border of physical and factual reality so much that you are ready to construct your fictional meta-world of imagination, madness and logical contradictions, in which you will involve all your subjects and convince that fiction is factual reality?
These questions and the answers to them were addressed by the German clinical psychiatrist and existential philosopher Karl Jaspers, in his work ‘The Question of Guilt and Responsibility’. In this major work, Jaspers describes the state of the German people and political elite in Germany a year after the end of World War II. He discusses the issue of Nazi Germany’s guilt during the Holocaust, and categorizes the four stadiums of guilt that the German people must go through to purify their spirits and get rid of the burden of the past with justice, in order to recover from the cause of nothingness, and return to normal lives.
Jasper distinguishes criminal guilt as the first stadium of collective catharsis. It consists in the fact that crimes are objectively provable acts, and that the courts are a relevant instance, whose judgements in formal proceedings reliably determine the facts and apply the laws to them.
From these examples we see that we must even analyse the other three Jaspers stadiums of guilt through political, moral and metaphysical aspects, when a quarter of a century after the war in BiH we did not reach the elementary, first stadium, which requires respect and full acceptance of international legal judgements and application of law on them.
And this is where the Balkan Mordor comes into play: it is woven of polyvalent logical contradictions of simultaneous denial of crimes and glorification of war crimes. He rhetorically insists on the process of ‘humanization’ and practical reanimation of fascism, chauvinism and fundamentalism. At the same time, it turns out that these logical contradictions exist exclusively for the personal interests of various evil wizards, primarily from the ranks of the Serbian people. In the end, the ordinary Serbian people become Mordor’s greatest collateral victim, because they are convinced that the recognition of genocide, crimes and various war atrocities show their personal involvement in those crimes.
Shackles of Historical Traumas
For this reason, they have nothing left but to flee from guilt, to deny, relativize, and blindly follow their rulers.
Such a narrative, served to the common people by these evil wizards, results in a continuous legacy of trauma, hatred and fear, which will ultimately cement Mordor on both sides of the Drina forever as a haunted land of desolation and nothingness. Others who realize that they are in desolation, nothingness and chaos, will go belly up, for a better future, to another parallel world, where they will try to create a better life for them.
And those who remain must realize that their only option for prosperity in this state remains in humanity; that they are first and foremost people, and only then what they are by nationality. They have to know that the key to progress lies in their consciousness, conscience, morality, humanity, compassion and empathy for the other. They must, just like Frodo, throw the damned ring into the fire. Reject ideological manipulations, the ring of religion of deception, astonishment and fear, and the ring of religion of the ‘status quo’.
Thus, they must deprive themselves of the shackles of historical trauma, and rationally, following justice, accept part of the responsibility. Only in that way is it possible to start the process of reconciliation, and then improve other aspects of life, such as the economy, health and education.
Otherwise, this Balkan Mordor will remain a parallel universe, in which only those who serve their evil wizards will survive. Those who vote for a kilogram of coffee, sugar and 50 euros. And those who are suitable for the realization of personal interests of the local political Saurons.
