Greater Surbiton

Before the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I was one of many people from a left-wing background who felt greatly alienated from ‘the Left’ as it had come to be: anti-progressive, nihilistic, callous toward the suffering and the struggles of foreign sisters and brothers, and obsessively anti-American. Only, I did not realise how far I was from being alone. Since the eve of the Iraq War, dissident and heretical leftists such as myself have coalesced into a current of opinion often referred to - not always satirically - as the ‘Decent Left’. For me, the essence of the Decent Left is its absolute commitment to democratic and Enlightenment values and to their universality; its insistence upon internationalism and solidarity with those abroad who are struggling for these values; its absolute rejection of any tolerance of or collaboration with fascists, fundamentalists, dictators or other ultra-reactionaries; and its refusal to compromise these principles in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ or ‘left-wing unity’.

The Decent Left is a growing phenomenon, for the simple reason that progressive people all over the world are increasingly dissatisfied with the form that traditional left-wing politics is taking. We do not necessarily agree over what the answers are, but we broadly agree about the questions. In fact, ‘Decent’ left-wing discourse will remain fruitful only so long as there is plenty of debate and disagreement, and no restrictive new orthodoxy comes into being.

As a former-Yugoslav specialist, it has been an eye-opener for me to become acquainted with Sarah Franco and her blog Cafe Turco, now appearing in English. Sarah is a scholar with considerable first-hand experience of the former Yugoslavia, and has spent time recently in both Kosova and Serbia, where she was able to witness at first hand the former’s celebration of its independence and the consequent rioting in the latter. She brings an entirely original approach to commentary on the subject. One of the reasons that I welcome Cafe Turco is that it represents an informed, insider’s viewpoint on the former Yugoslavia from a genuinely independent progressive standpoint. And there aren’t that many of those around.

Another reason is that Cafe Turco is reevaluating issues relating to the Left in Sarah’s native Portugal, such as the legacy of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution. And if it has been a relief for me to discover in recent years that I am far from alone in feeling that there is a desperate need to reevaluate left-wing politics and to ask difficult questions about it, so it is an inspiration discovering those who are asking similar questions from outside the English-speaking world, particularly from a country such as Portugal, with such a proud left-wing heritage, but one that is too often neglected in our Anglocentric intellectual universe.

We may not all agree, but the more of us there are that are asking such questions and trying to provide answers, from as many perspectives and traditions as possible, the better. The revolution in left-wing intellectual thought, for which the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq provided such a catalyst, is only going to spread.

They told us that the Serbian people were not like other Europeans. They told us that the Serbian people were so outraged over international recognition of Kosova’s independence that they would turn their backs on Europe and rally behind the nationalists. They told us that Serbia and Europe were parting ways because of Kosova. They told us that the Serbian people were crazy.

They were wrong.

Some of us had more faith in the Serbian people. After the riots in Serbia that followed the Western recognition of Kosova’s independence, when Serbia appeared to be descending into darkness once again, I wrote this:

Serbia’s suspension of diplomatic relations with Western states that are recognising Kosova conveniently burns the bridges to the democratic West and creates the isolation that the nationalists crave. This is not what most Serbian people want. It is one thing to be unhappy about the loss of Kosova, but to favour turning Serbia into an isolated, impoverished Cuban- or North-Korean-stye satrapy of Russia, under a repressive regime that condones mob rule and murders dissidents, is quite another. The opinion of the majority of Serbians is probably best represented by Tadic: angry about losing Kosova, they nevertheless do not want this issue to stand in the way of Serbia’s European integration.

In yesterday’s Serbian parliamentary elections, despite the Western recognition of Kosova’s independence less than three months ago, the Serbian electorate failed to punish the pro-EU parties or reward the nationalists. The results of the election have not yet been fully confirmed or broken down, so any conclusions here are only tentative. But it appears that, whereas the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party received approximately the same share of the vote as in the last Serbian parliamentary elections in January 2007, i.e. something over 28.5%, there has been a swing away from the nationalist faction of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica (Democratic Party of Serbia - New Serbia), which has seen its share of the vote fall from 16.55% to something over 13.5%. Conversely, the parties that make up the coalition ‘For a European Serbia’ (Democratic Party, G17+, Serbian Renewal Movement, League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina and some smaller parties) have received 36.69% of the votes according to the provisional calculations of the Republican Electoral Commission, which is a rise of at least 2.5% compared to what these same parties received in 2007. The wild card is the success of the Socialist Party of Serbia, which received 5.64% of the vote when standing alone in 2007, but whose coalition of parties, which includes the Party of United Pensioners of Serbia, yesterday received over 9% of the vote.

I emphasise again that my conclusions here are tentative. But the results appear to show that the Radicals, although remaining the largest single party, are incapable of breaking out of their existing electoral base, even in circumstances that are apparently most favourable from the nationalist perspective. By contrast, Kostunica’s faction, which has become more overtly nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-European since Western recognition of Kosova, has done so at a cost to its electoral support, part of which has deserted it for the pro-European bloc. Kostunica put all his money on the Kosovo card, and lost.

We do not yet know what kind of coalition government will emerge from the new parliament. But there is no doubt about it: this election represents a watershed; despite the recognition of Kosova, the danger of a Serbian backslide into popular extreme nationalism has been averted. There is no Kosovo factor in Serbian electoral politics.

Zivela Srbija !

In the parliamentary elections taking place today in Serbia, the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party looks set to win the largest number of votes, as indeed it did in the last parliamentary elections in 2007. Only this time, it is more likely to have a chance actually to enter government, as it is now likely that the nationalist faction headed by the incumbent prime minister Vojislav Kostunica will be ready to defy Western pressure and form a coalition with it.

The Radicals present themselves as patriots who will take a hard line in resisting Kosova’s independence, and who will redirect Serbia away from the EU and toward Russia. However, the tradition of ‘patriotism’ from which the Radicals derive was that which expressed itself through collaboration with the Nazis and Italian Fascists during World War II, against those Serbs and other Yugoslavs who were fighting the occupation of their country.

The leader and founder of the Radicals is Vojislav Seselj, currently indicted for war-crimes by the UN tribunal in The Hague. In 1989, Seselj visited the US and was awarded the honourary title of ‘Vojvoda’ (warlord) by Momcilo Djujic, President of the ‘Movement of Chetniks of the Free World’. Djujic was an Orthodox priest and Chetnik warlord who, during World War II, had distinguished himself by having fired not so much as a bullet against the German or the Italian occupiers. He was one of a number of Serb warlords who had sprung up in 1941, when the Croatian fascist Ustashas had begun a genocide against the Serb population of Croatia and Bosnia and the Serbs had risen in resistance. The epicentre of the resistance was the Serb-majority area of western Bosnia and central Croatia (Banija, Kordun, Lika and northern Dalmatia), where Djujic among others operated.

On 1 September 1941, the Yugoslav Partisans convened a mass assembly, in the town of Drvar, of the overwhemingly Serb guerrilla detachments of western Bosnia and the adjacent Croatian region of Lika. Djujic attended the assembly - at this point in time, the rebels had not yet split into the rival camps of Partisans and Chetniks. The assembly was convened to represent the ‘Liberation struggle of the Serb nation’ from ‘Proud Bosnia and stout Lika’. It declared that ‘we Serbs are fighting for the national liberation of our nation from the occupiers and their hirelings.’

The assembly entrusted Djujic with the task of resisting an Italian advance against the rebels from his native Knin. Upon receiving this task, this great Serb patriot, Seselj’s hero, made an agreement with the Italians that granted them free passage through his fiefdom. His troops carried Italian flags to indicate their loyalty to the occupiers. With resistance sabotaged by Djujic and other traitors, the Italians occupied on 25 September the rebel base of Drvar, where the rebel assembly had declared its task of Serb national liberation less than a month before.

For the rest of the war, Djujic, as a Chetnik commander, loyally served the Italians and Germans while persecuting and killing Croats and anti-fascist Serbs. He was no mere opportunistic collaborator, but an ideological fascist-sympathiser and anti-Semite. A recent Serbian biographer of Djujic has this to say about him: ‘During 1944 Momcilo Djujic was in contact with Milan Nedic, the president of the government of Serbia. Of him, Djujic spoke only good words. He deemed that Nedic, along with Ljotic and Dragoljub Mihailovic, are doing the same work for the Serb nation, but each in his own way.’ (Veljko Dj. Djuric, ‘Vojvoda Djujic’, Belgrade, 1998, p. 49). Nedic was the Nazi-quisling Serbian leader who served Hitler directly and who helped implement the Holocaust. Ljotic was the Serbian fascist leader, whose Serbian Volunteer Corps formed part of the Nazi SS during 1944. Mihailovic was the Chetnik commander, therefore Djujic’s leader. Djujic described the Yugoslav Communist leaders as ‘paid Jews’ and ‘Communist Jews’, whom he pledged to ‘crush’.

In late 1944, Djujic, with his force of Chetniks, stood shoulder to shoulder with the troops of the German Wehrmacht and the Croatian Ustashas - the same Ustashas who had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs over the course of the previous three and a half years - in a defence of Knin from the attacking Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisans were victorious despite enormous losses; Djujic was routed and retreated alongside the Germans. He eventually emigrated to the US, where he would bestow his decoration upon Seselj in 1989.

Djujic’s story was far from exceptional. The Chetnik movement, of which he was a part, collaborated with the occupiers throughout the war.

Chetniks and German soldiers posing together in a village in Nazi-occupied Serbia.

Another expression of Serb patriotism on the part of the Radicals’ Chetnik forebears.

Seselj honoured the Chetniks by naming his own militia after them. Seselj’s Chetniks murdered and raped their way across East Bosnia in 1992, under the command of Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslav People’s Army.

Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, wearing a Chetnik hat.

Should the Radicals, under Seselj’s underlings Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic, take power in Serbia after today’s general election, they will not recover Kosova, which everyone knows is permanently lost to Serbia. But they are likely to expand the existing Serbian government policy of selling the country to the Russians, thereby patriotically serving Putin as Djujic once patriotically served Mussolini and Hitler.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Radicals’ likely front-man, Vojislav Kostunica.

Happy sixtieth birthday, Israel ! It should not be necessary to explain why today, formally the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s independence, is worth celebrating for those of us who are not Israelis. The survival of a nation that has been threatened with destruction is cause for celebration. The fact that nationally conscious Jews have been able to exercise their right to self-determination, and establish a homeland that has successfully provided a safe haven for members of the long-persecuted Jewish people, is cause for celebration. And the fact that an Israeli nation exists at all is cause for celebration. This is not to say that the process by which the Jewish state came into being, or its actions since its birth, are without their moral ambiguities - far from it. But these moral ambiguities are not reasons why Israeli independence should not be celebrated; merely why Israeli policy needs to change. One day, it should be possible to celebrate Israel’s anniversary in the knowledge that the moral ambiguities are all in the past.

Israel’s critics point out that the establishment of the State of Israel involved the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians - for Palestinians, the ‘nakba’. This is true, but frequently taken out of context: Israel is no different from most of the world’s other nation-states, which are founded upon the oppression and ethnic cleansing of other peoples. Beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the emergence of a modern nation-state of England, Britain and the United Kingdom and their evolution over hundreds of years involved the colonisation, dispossession and forcible assimilation of the Irish, as well as an almost unrivalled programme of imperial aggression and expansion overseas. But there is no way that our English and British nationhood can be divorced from this heritage. The modern French nation-state was founded with the Great Revolution of 1789, an event that is widely viewed as marking the birth of modern politics, yet it quickly involved the genocidal or proto-genocidal persecution of the people of the Vendee, acts of massive territorial conquest and, under Napoleon, a failed genocidal project directed against the black population of Haiti. The US is founded upon the genocide of the Native Americans, without which it would not exist. Yet one could not expect the French not to celebrate the Revolution, or Americans not to celebrate Independence Day.

Israelis may feel it is unfair of me to compare them with great imperial powers. So it is - I cite these examples to dispense with the myth of ‘good’ Western nations vis-a-vis ‘bad’ others. In the moral ambiguities of its creation, Israel more closely resembles the nation-states of Central Europe and the Balkans - appropriately, since Israel is itself a post-Ottoman state many of whose citizens originated in Central Europe. Where these nation-states are concerned, who was the ethnic-cleanser and who was the victim largely depended upon who happened to win the war. This was the case with Israel and the Palestinians: had the Arabs won in the 1940s, the extermination and explusion of the Jewish population of Palestine would have resulted. Throughout the region of Greater Europe, the question of which nation was dispossessed was open to question; the fact that dispossession would take place was not.

Today’s relatively ethnically homogenous states of Poland and the Czech Republic are founded upon the massive ethnic-cleansing of ethnic Germans after World War II, involving millions of victims. The Balkan states - Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey - are all in their present forms, to varying degrees, products of ethnic cleansing. The Orthodox Christian states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece were founded upon the slaughter and expulsion of a large part of their Ottoman Muslim inhabitants, and ideed upon the slaughter and expulsion of other Orthodox Christians. Romania had a large Jewish population and an exceptionally anti-Semitic political culture that culminated in massive Romanian participation in the Holocaust and the post-war emigration of Romanian Jews. The establishment of the Turkish nation-state involved the genocide of the Armenians, followed by the expulsion of at least one and a quarter million Greeks (or Turkish-speaking Christians) - which parallelled the Greek expulsion of a smaller number of largely Greek-speaking Muslims. Most recently, the establishment of independent Croatia involved the exodus of 150,000 Serb civilians from the ‘Krajina’ region and the slaughter of hundreds of them. I am leaving aside here the question of the respective rights and wrongs of these cases, or of how blame should be apportioned - that the formation of modern nation-states involves a process of ethnic homogenisation accompanied by real horrors should be indisputable.

There is no point pretending, therefore, that the establishment of modern nation-states - Israel included - is without its profound moral ambiguities. Yet it is the modern system of nation-states upon which our system of world politics is built - we can no more abolish nation-states than we can abolish modern politics. Indeed, nation-statehood is the prerequisite for liberal democracy: dynastic states such as the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and multinational ’socialist’ federations such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had to give way to sovereign nation-states for Europe to become a continent of democracies. Perhaps even more importantly, the people of the world love their nation-states, which they consider part of themselves. Asking the Israelis or anyone else to renounce their national identity is a violation of the most dearly felt feelings of ordinary people.

What is essential for the transition to full, post-nationalist democracy, however, is for members of every nation to face up to the moral ambiguities involved in the creation of their national state. This is not a question merely of assuaging liberal guilt. The crimes involved in the creation of a nation-state poison the functioning of its democracy and its relations with its neighbours. This poison can only be purged from its body politic by a recognition of its crimes. Turkey’s difficulty in functioning as a democracy is closely related to its unwillingness to face up to the Armenian Genocide or to the existence of a Kurdish people within its borders - hence it cannot fully permit freedom of speech, as this would result in open discussion of the Armenian Genocide and open expressions of Kurdish national politics. Greece’s imperialistic policy toward the Republic of Macedonia today is not based on any genuine national interest, but is a product of a nationalist ideology that guided a century of Greek colonisation, ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation in Greek Macedonia, of which the denial of the existence of a Macedonian nationality was a necessary part. The US’s record remains far from perfect, but in the US there is at least full freedom of speech - hence the possibility for films such as ‘Dances with Wolves’, that portray Native Americans sensitively and as victims of white oppression, to reach a mass audience. The American public still needs to face up to the genocide of the Native Americans, something that would produce a healthier American democracy and more politically aware citizenry. But we are still a long way off from the day when mass popular Turkish audiences will watch films of the ’Dances with Wolves’ variety about the Armenian Genocide, or Greek audiences about the colonisation of Greek Macedonia, or Israeli audiences about the nakba.

So far as Israel is concerned, its record of democracy and human rights concerning its own citizens compares very favourably with most other Middle Eastern countries, but very badly with just about any West European country, because its stage of national development more closely resembles Turkey or Greece than France or the Netherlands. The two deformations resulting from the nature of Israel’s birth are, firstly, a failure to embrace the concept of a multi-ethnic citizenry and accord equal rights to all its citizens regardless of ethnicity, resulting in suffering and injustice for Israeli Arabs; and, secondly, a continued policy of colonisation in the West Bank, resulting in massive suffering for the occupied Palestinians. These deformations are, of course, linked to the behaviour of the Arab states and the refusal of most of them to recognise Israel, as well as to the Palestinians’ own behaviour - but this is not ultimately a question of apportioning blame. Like every nation-state, Israel needs to develop a post-nationalist national ideology if it is to complete its national and democratic development. This means becoming a genuinely Israeli nation-state, i.e. a state of the Israeli nation; a state of the citizens of Israel - rather than simply a Jewish state in which non-Jews are second-class citizens. Jews would still form a comfortable majority in Israel, thereby guaranteeing Jewish national self-determination. But a Jewish ethnic majority can comfortably exist with a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity - as all concepts of citizenship should be, from the US and France to Israel and the Arab states. And as the American and French models show, a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity rests upon identification with the state’s legal borders - hence no colonisation projects directed against neighbouring peoples.

As a Croat, I am very pleased that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is forcing Croats to face up to the crimes carried out in the course of their War of Independence. All Croatian children should celebrate this War of Independence, but they should also learn about its moral ambiguities - the crimes against Serb civilians and the parallel attempt, which thankfully was defeated, to expand into Bosnia. They should learn about Croatian resistance to the Nazis in the form of the Partisan movement, of which they should rightfully feel proud, but also about the Croatian Ustasha genocide of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - and, of course, about Partisan atrocities. Above all, they should be taught that theirs is a multiethnic nation that encompasses Serbs, Bosniaks and others, who do not cease thereby to be Serbs or Bosniaks. One should be able to be an ethnic Serb and at the same time belong to the Croatian nation as fully as an ethnic Croat, without abandoning one’s Serb identity, just as one should be able to be an ethnic Arab or Palestinian and belong to the Israeli nation as fully as an ethnic Jew, without abandoning one’s ethnic Arab or Palestinian identiy.

When this happens, a national anniversary becomes something that everyone, regardless of ethnic background, can celebrate without reservation.

With Serbian parliamentary elections due on 11 May, this chilling little film about the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party, starring its baby-faced general secretary Aleksandar Vucic and some of his comrades, is brought to you by Hattori of Parapsihopatologija, a Serbian artist who understands what his country is facing. It lasts three minutes, but you need to watch it to the end, particularly if you’re one of those left-wing ’anti-war’ types who are inclined to view the Serbian Radical Party’s sympathisers as members of their ‘extended family’. The Serbian Radical election caption at the end reads ‘On your side - Vucic’.

With thanks to Andras Riedlmayer and Jonathan Davis.

On a happier note, Greater Surbiton yesterday reached the figure of 50,000 page-views. I’d like to say a big thank you to all my readers, and in particular to those from among the brave citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, who have shown the world how to stand up to a bully with courage and dignity.

Smrt fasizmu - sloboda narodu !

Homer Simpson, star of the American animated TV comedy show ‘The Simpsons’, has been placed under police protection in his native Springfield after receiving death threats from an extremist Greek-nationalist organisation. The threats follow a formal demand from Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis last week that Mr Simpson change his first name, pointing out that ‘Homer’ was the name of Ancient Greece’s greatest poet, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey. ‘Identity theft is an internationally recognised crime’, Ms Bakoyannis stated at a press conference in Athens on Friday; ‘millions of children, all over the world, are growing up believing that Homer was American. But the real Homer was Greek.’ She added: ‘And he was not yellow and did not have only eight fingers.’ She stressed, however, that Greece was willing to negotiate a compromise to the name dispute that would satisfy both parties, and suggested that ‘New Homer’ might be an appropriate and mutually acceptable name for the Simpsons star. Ms Bakoyannis’s move builds upon a Greek initiative to ban gay women worldwide from calling themselves ‘lesbians’, which is the name of the inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, and upon a successful Greek action to force Dustin the Turkey, Ireland’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, to drop a reference to ‘Macedonia’ from the lyrics of his Eurovision entry.

Matt Groening, creator of ‘The Simpsons’, said he was distressed to learn of the Greek objection to the name of one of his most beloved characters, pointing out that he had named him after his own father, who was also called Homer. He also said that every effort had been made to ensure that his character was faithful to the spirit of the Greek original, and that, for example, the original Homer portrayed Odysseus as having said ‘D’oh !’ when half of his crew was eaten by the cyclops.

Diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the latest Greek-initiated name dispute are continuing.

(Greater Surbiton News Service)

Those who have been reading this blog since it was launched in November of last year may recall that my first two posts were devoted to explaining why I believed that the radical left, as a whole, was bankrupt and reactionary. In particular, I singled out the readiness of the majority of the radical left to support or march alongside fascists, ethnic-cleansers and other ultra-reactionary elements. It is just possible that readers may also recall the bluster and indignation with which my argument was greeted by a certain Daniel Davies aka ‘Dsquared’ aka ‘Bruschettaboy’, the chief mover behind a blog called Aaronovich Watch (AW), which exists to cyber-stalk David Aaronovich and Nick Cohen, and to a lesser extent other members of the Eustonite or ‘Decent’ left, and point out petty inconsistencies in their writings. Indeed, Davies and his merry men at AW devote a large part of their time to expressing righteous indignation at the fact that Eustonites frequently portray members of the left as fascist fellow-travellers.

At the time, I was ready to attribute this bluster and indignation to the affront that an honourable if naive leftist of the traditional variety might have felt at a perceived attack on his political tradition. I was at pains to point out that the fact that the radical left as a whole was characterised by a readiness to support fascists and ethnic-cleansers does not mean that all its members were guilty in this regard; as I put it, ‘it is the good apples - the small number of honourable socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists, pacifists and others - who are in the minority in a barrel whose contents are mostly rotten. However well meaning the good apples may be, they are part of a movement that is corrupt overall.’

Well, it seems I was a sucker. Davies has now ‘come out’ and described an unabashed sympathiser of the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party - the all-round buffoon Splintered Sunrise - as ‘what I like to think of as AW’s extended family’.

How, you may ask, is it possible for someone to describe a neo-Nazi sympathiser as a member of his ‘extended family’, while giving vent to an unending stream of self-righteous indignation - sustained over a period of literally years - at the fact that Eustonites often accuse members of his political tradition of being fascist fellow-travellers ?

The only answer I can come up with is that it requires a total absence of integrity.

I’m still prepared to believe that there exists a handful of honourable socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists, pacifists and other radical left-wingers of the traditional kind. I’m even ready to believe that some of them can consciously reject Eustonite politics from the standpoint of principled disagreement.

But the more closely one looks, the fewer the number of honourable left-wing opponents that we Eustonites have there turns out to be.

This is a guest post by Martin Niemoeller

First they came for the Macedonians,

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Macedonian.

Then they came for Oliver Stone,

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Hollywood film director.

Now they’ve come for the lesbians…