Special Focus Call

Generally speaking, nationalism is loyalty to nation or nation-state which puts nation and national interests above everything else, and it frequently foes hand in hand with intolerance and hate towards other nationalities. On one hand, nationalism is being used as a tool of division and diversion from key issues such as gender, race, class, hence also as a tool of control over women’s and feminine bodies and their social roles, for instance, through insisting on “serving the nation” through motherhood “because of the low natality rates”. This position of serving reproduces in the so-called private sphere as serving within the nuclear family, “the basic unit of the nation”, though unpaid housework and care work. Nationalism, on the other hand, has a structural role as one of the totalitarian techniques of ruling. The institutions are being de-systematized and they do not represent any field of support anymore, because they are at the service of maintaining totalitarian dynamics. Nationalism also implies streaming towards homogenization of people and their fitting into the desired matrix, as well as towards homogenization of power and its omnipresence so the will of the power is “known” and taken as understood. The danger coming from nationalism lies in demonization and structural oppression against people not performing expected roles and not living within the desired matrix, and it also lies in its potential to pacify and destroy spaces of resistance. Whatever the primary issue in our activism might be, (almost) every one of them is also deeply formed by decades of nationalism, as well as militarism and racism. 

Militarism goes hand in hand with nationalism and represents a belief that a nation should have a strong army always ready for aggressive actions with the goal of defending national interests. It is maintained through populist production of desired image of military power, frequent military parades, bragging with import of arms and military equipment. In crisis situations (such as the wave of anti-regime protests or recent pandemic), militarism becomes even more visible through unjustified presence of army even in civilian spaces such as hospitals. In parallel, there is active historical revisionism, war criminals are glorified, war crimes are being denied, warmongering narratives are regularly produced, and all together is packed as “patriotism”. As everywhere, militarism in Serbia is tightly related with capitalism, with a clear indicator being the fact that a large portion of private businesses was built on capital resulted from war profiteering. Militarism also implies that the development of military industry is being advertised as economic social development, while the arms export (especially in the context of collaboration with military forces such as Israel) is being presented as an international status of importance, not as complicity in a genocide and other crimes. And finally, maintaining militarism implies a chain of command – hierarchy and obedience – in contrast to freedom and equality. And this chain of command, joined with nationalism, racism and patriarchy, overflows to other social spheres where someone is always the oppressor and someone is oppressed, while this relationship is naturalized, as “survival of the fittest”, as a “consequence of the biological differences”. Militarized society observes women’s and feminine bodies as a body-territory, a space for conquering, exploitation and control. During the wars, violence against women – physical, psychological, sexual and other – is being used as a weapon and tactic of war. In post-war times, in militarized societies such as ours, where violence is additionally normalized through wars, the practices of disciplining, punishing and oppressing women and all seen as Others is prolonged, both in public and so-called private sphere. The issue of violence is then deepened as a cloak of invisibility is thrown over it, due to treating this serious social issue as a private matter. 

Racism represents oppression based on race and ethnicity, and here it is most frequently used against Roma persons and migrants. It is typically seen through four levels: interpersonal racism (racism of a white person against a person of color), institutional racism (laws, practices, procedures are designed to meet the needs of white people while they disadvantage people of color), internalized racism (internalizing white racist mechanisms and beliefs) and structural racism (a web of diverse social elements which maintain racist behaviors – racism within institutions, implicit and explicit racist social narratives, media reproduction of racism, and general exclusion or disabling and/or aggravating the access to resources for people of color. In Serbia, housing is based on  seggregation (favelas, non-formal neighborhoods), access to work is aggravated due to rooted racist stereotypes, hence the economic security is non-existent, education, although nominally free, is endangered by economic deprivation, and also by racist stereotypes, and overall, there is systematic work on maintaining the poverty of people of color. Racist practices are a bottomless pit; there is also exotization (fetishization) of people of color and their cultures, hypersexualizing them, taking over their voices – an illusion of fighting for the rights of people of color led by white people who oftentimes profit of it. At another level, racism is also a part of totalitarian techniques of ruling, where people of color are estimated based on their utility or redundancy, which is, among other things, perceived through political abuse of people of color as voters. Racism is not a rarity in the civil society either, where besides profiteering by white people on alleged anti-racist work, there is also ghettoization of people of color to the field of subjects exclusively relating to race, hence the issue of racism is dropped to those who suffer it the most, while they are being enabled to access space to deal with other issues where they could and would want to contribute. 

Nationalism, militarism and racism are structurally maintained through institutions, secular and religious, with their deep connections. The church, which stood by war criminals in the nineties, has established its dominance in schools as well, for instance, a long time ago. In early 2000s, with the blessing of then active government, schools introduced religious classes, which opened up pathways to smooth dogmatization, which continued through numerous examples: influence on reworking the biology textbooks, systemic prevention of introducing sexual education and education on sexual violence against children (while the church continuously enables impunity for its officials accused of pedophilia), support to the government in introducing national textbooks and putting some textbooks fully under the government control, support to undermining the autonomy of universities. The connection between secular and church forces is not always a most explicit one, but it is always present, in the spirit of the implying nationalism and instrumentalization of religion as a part of constructed national identity. Their common denominator is using revisionism and mythology for building and maintaining nationalist, militarist and racist narratives, power over everyone marked as Other, and consistent attempts of pacifying resistance, critical thinking and freedoms. It is up to us to use all the strength to refuse it, and defend our right to breathe, think and live. 

With all of this, there is the inevitable issue of class and constant struggle for profit. Nationalist, militarist and racist behavior is rooted in profiteering by various morally corrupted people, thieves, pedophiles, tycoons, who use nationalist, racist and militarist narratives for control and maintaining power, hence smooth enrichment. Feminist struggle against nationalism, militarism and racism is also a struggle against general looting of people, deregulation, precarization, pauperization, destroying and reducing education, healthcare and other public services to the market issue, instead of social and political issues of equality in achieving basic human rights.