Source: Antena M, Author: Aleksandar Sekulović, the vice president of the Association of Antifascists of Serbia
With the formation of the Serbian clerical government and with the triumphant car-clerical procession in which Serbian flags were waved and “This is Serbia” was shouted, the Greater Serbian clerical nationalism won an important battle in the fight of turning Montenegro into a “Serbian state”. However, this was only the first step, the beginning and not the end of the process of Serbianization of Montenegro, while various difficulties and challenges are still on the way. The final success and the implementation of the designed strategic plan will mostly depend on three factors: the relationship between the three “winning” coalitions, the readiness of the sovereign forces to resist the clerical fascist plans, as well as on the attitude of the Western diplomacy, in the first place that of the European Union, towards the idea and the practice of Serbianization of Montenegro and the creation of the “Serbian World”.
When it comes to the relationship between the “winners”, it is most adequately compared to that of poker players, in which situation everyone looks to cheat everyone else, while being united only by the same desire to win.
The Coalition “For the Future of Montenegro”, i.e. its main actor the Democratic Front (DF), shows a clear intention to use the other two partners in the coalition to achieve DF’s strategic goals, in other words, to change the country’s foreign policy, to change state symbols, and to withdraw recognition of Kosovo. Of course, the DF is aware that they cannot achieve all their goals immediately and that they must go gradually using the parliamentary majority provided by the URA and the Democrats, which will be easily rejected or absorbed as soon as the DF, through the census, installs its staff by an “in-depth” procedure, i.e. in state bodies and public companies, while using abundant financial and logistical assistance from Serbia. Only then will it be able to form a government on its own and become as dominant a political party in Montenegro as the Serbian Progressive Party is in Serbia.
Whether unification with Serbia will take place or Montenegro will formally remain independent is a secondary question. It may even turn out to be more useful and convenient for pulling the nose of the Brussels bureaucracy if there are two states left and not one. The handicap in this plan is that, in a short time, the DF lost two of its fanatical leaders, Amfilohije and Irinej*, and that the departure of Trump and his untrained diplomats will significantly weaken right-wing tendencies in the world and in Europe. However, those facts will lead to the concentration of command powers in only one person, in Aleksandar Vučić as the leader of the “Serbian world”, so there will be no more misunderstandings in communication.
URA has the same goals. It also wants to use the DF to seize power and then to push the DF to the margins, which it has already partially done by preventing its greedy leaders from taking important ministerial posts.
However, the main ambition of URA is to take over the electorate of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), to send it and Đukanović to the historical archives, and to gather around itself the entire sovereign bloc that would turn URA into the leading party. It is very unlikely that this ambition will materialize because the spry URA leaders, such as Abazović, fiercely resented the sovereigntist bloc with their ruthlessness.
As for the cunning Democrats of Aleksa Bečić, who at the national level play the European commitment while actually practicing the Greater Serbian nationalism at the local level, their plan, based on the popular lore “where two parties quarrel, the third gains”, is to fuel conflicts between URA and DF. Thus, they would present themselves as the only force that, on the European course, protects national interests, and which, therefore, is the only one capable of uniting what should be incompatible – Europe and Greater Serbian clerical nationalism.
Whatever the outcome of this family quarrel in the new government, its victory is more and more similar to the Pyrrhic victory, and her innate, genetic contradiction is becoming more and more pronounced.
The first contradiction and aporia consist in the fact that the victorious forces, despite the animal hatred towards the defeated, signed an agreement even before the conquest of the government that they would not change the main achievements of the DPS. Such a thing has never been seen in parliamentary practice and it clearly shows that the reason for removing the DPS from power is not political but ideological, that it was not removed because it did not work well, that it was not “good government” by definition of classical political theory (which is the only legitimate reason for the change of power), but because it was “theirs” – anti-fascist, secular, and multiethnic state, in which, according to the Greater Serbian clerical fascism, the Turks, Shiptars, and Ustashas** had the main word.
Another paradox of the new government is that its victory, achieved on the wings of a clerical rebellion, eliminated the main reason for that rebellion: the law on religious communities and the freedom of confession. Today, it is clear to everyone, except for the alleged Belgrade “political analysts”, that this law is in accordance with the highest legal and political standards and that the reason for the rebellion against it has nothing to do with the law itself but exclusively with ideology. The clerical rebellion under the slogan “we won’t give our sanctities” was not a rebellion against some injustice and it had nothing to do with the said law. It was a classic political rebellion for the sake of gaining power.
Now that power has been won and Montenegro has become, or is on its way to become, a part of the Serbian world, it no longer matters whether the formal legal title of church property will be the state’s, as is the case in other states, because, in any case, those goods remain in “our” hands. Because of that, the new government would prefer to leave that law as it is. However, because of the noise it raised against the “unjust” law, it is forced to make at least some changes.
The third aporia in which the new government found itself concerns the relationship between religion and the Corona epidemic. Under the slogan conceived by Belgrade’s clero-fascist “political analysts” – that the DPS government was committing “identity genocide” against Serbs in Montenegro – the theses of the darkest religious fanaticism were smuggled, which led to a rapid increase in the infected and dead in Montenegro and Serbia. The thesis of these insane religious mystics, including Prime Minister Krivokapić himself, that the Coronavirus can do nothing to those who are “infected with God’s love”, that communion of thousands of people with one spoon and kissing the deceased (who died of Corona) are not dangerous, as well as mass and spiteful disregard of protective measures, as exhibited by the new Minister of Health, Mrs. Borovinić, brought to collapse both the health of the population and the entire health system.
The fact that the church in Montenegro now calls for respecting the health measures prescribed by the former government and that it procures thousands of plastic teaspoons for communion, only shows what a hypocritical mentality is at play.
As for the further behavior of the European Union towards Serbian clerical nationalism and its project of creating the Serbian world, there are opinions that the EU has realized the essence of what happened in Montenegro and that the correction of its position is underway. It is to be hoped that this is the case. However, the EU cannot make significant corrections unless it makes a thorough analysis of what really happened and how its representatives behaved while carried away by the atmosphere of primitive “Trumpism”.
Namely, a careful analysis would show great similarities between the conquest of Montenegro and the Anschluss of Austria performed by Nazi Germany. Of course, in relation to the Anschluss, the operation in Montenegro looks miniature and operetta-like. However, what is important is not the dimension of the phenomenon but its spiritual identity.
In both of these operations, the starting and fundamental point was the claim that they were one and the same people and that they should therefore be united into one state. Already in the first of the 25 points of the program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party from 1924, it is clearly written: “We demand the unification of all Germans on the basis of the right of the people to self-determination into one Greater Germany.”
Or, as the controversial Nikšić businessman Daka Davidović, a great benefactor of the Serbian Orthodox Church and war criminal Radovan Karadžić, would say: “We want to renew Dušan’s empire***”. Speaking about the unification with Austria, Hitler set a firm dogma in Mein Kampf that “the same blood belongs to the common state”, which irresistibly reminds of the slogan “Montenegro and Serbia is one family,” written on one of the central overpasses in Belgrade.
In accordance with these doctrinal positions, the invasion of Austria was carried out on March 12, 1938. On the very next day the German government passed a law which first article states that “Austria is the country of the German Reich”. This is identical with the claim of the current Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selaković who claims that Montenegro is a “Serbian country”. It is also identical with the main thesis of the Serbian Orthodox Church that the Montenegrin people do not exist and that they are Serbs who, as the Minister in charge of Serbization of Montenegro and a “Chetnik**** woman” Vesna Bratić, says, have undergone an “ethnic engineering” that turned them into “Montenegrini”.
On the basis of flourishing nationalism, a Nazi party was founded in Austria, which, according to orders from Berlin, attempted a coup d’etat in July 1934 and killed Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss. According to the same scenario, the Democratic Front in Montenegro was founded, which then in 2016 tried to carry out a coup d’etat and liquidate Đukanović and other DPS leaders.
The likeness of these two annexations (Anschluss) can be seen in the abundant logistical and financial support from Germany and Serbia. As the leader of the Austrian Nazis Seyss-Inquart and the leader of the Sudeten Nazis Konrad Henlein were frequent and privileged guests in Berlin, so are the leaders of the DF, the Chetnik duke Andrija Mandić and the combat Milan Knežević are gladly seen in Belgrade. Even a plane of the Serbian government is constantly at their disposal for this purpose.
Finally, the sameness of these two phenomena can be seen in the attitude of Western diplomacy towards them. Let us leave aside Trump and his people, such as Pompeo, Grenell, and the ambassadors to the Western Balkans, who have caused enormous damage to international relations, as well as the “Trumpists” in Europe, from Johnson, Salvini, and Le Pen to Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, who wholeheartedly supported Serbia in the conquest of Montenegro: we are talking about the majority of the liberal and democratic Europe which, like Chamberlain and Daladier then, have been silently watching the most shameful propaganda conducted from Serbia against Montenegro and the most insidious hybrid war that led to the victory of one “disgusting, monstrous right wing”, to use the words of film director Goran Marković, and the formation of a theocratic government based on medieval religious mysticism.
Instead of vigorously opposing the aggression of Greater Serbia’s clerical nationalism, the European Union – like Chamberlain back in the past, the man who was celebrated as the one who saved the peace on his return from Munich – while in the midst of liturgical savagery and attacks on Montenegro’s foundations, called on, through its spokeswoman Ana Pisonero, “both sides” to strive for compromise, criticized the Montenegrin government for not taking a grip over the media, and said it was “looking forward” to cooperating with the new government.
In a word, the EU does not understand that Montenegro is not witnessing a standard change of government, such as when Labor and conservatives, or Christian Democrats and Social Democrats change places, but an authentic clerical-fascist counter-revolution that began with the wars to overthrow Yugoslavia and the creation of a Greater Serbia during the 1990s that legally led to the Srebrenica genocide; its next stages were the assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić in 2003, the enactment of several laws on the rehabilitation of the Quisling Chetnik movement (2004-2011), and the mass legal rehabilitation of its members by Serbian courts, as well as the hiding and glorification of war criminals as the “Serbian knights”. Now it has entered the final phase by aggression against Montenegro.
Thus, there are more than enough elements for a serious analysis of the past events and of the behavior of the EU and its representatives in the Western Balkans. It is not about the EU taking anyone’s side in conflicts between countries, but about clearly saying that the Goebbels-style campaign (“Đukanović is preparing the massacre of Serbs in Montenegro”) is absolutely incompatible with the candidacy for EU membership. Had this been done, events would have flowed in a completely different direction.
History is the teacher of life, but it is a question of the ability to understand its messages and lessons correctly.
* Amfilohije and Irinej – Leaders of Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro and Serbia who were religious leaders of Serbian cleric-fascism. The were admirers of Chetnik movement (see below) and supporters of war criminals from 1990ies. They both died in 2020 from COVID19.
** Turks, Shiptars and Ustashas – derogatory words used by Serbian fascists for Muslim, Albanian and Croatian people
*** Dušan’s empire – also called “Great Serbia” is a vision of Serbian clerical fascists to conquer largest part of Balkan Peninsula as it happen in 14th century by Serbian King Dusan. More info you can find on this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Empire. “Great Serbia” project was the reason for many massacre’s
**** Chetnik – Serbian military cleric-fascist movement in WW2 which was responsible for many war crimes. Nowadays Serbian cleric-fascists see themselves as heirs of Chetnic movement from WW2. The most famous “Chetniks” (seen by all Serbian nationalists) are Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, Bosniak Serbs responsible for war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990ies. More info you can find on this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetniks.
