Ratko Mladic, or the works of an ordinary nationalism

What should shock us in the arrest of Ratko Mladic is not the fact that he escaped capture for 15 years – the last Nazis are still free to move around while others just peacefully died in their homes, nor should it be the fact that he was hidden and protected by the Serb military – there is a natural solidarity between kin (as the natural solidarity of the French with DSK proves). What should really shock us is that there are still people, 15 years after the fall of the Milosevic regime, to come and demonstrate and cheer him whatever his faults and crimes can be. Are this people sick? No, these are ordinary, honourable folks, from all social backgrounds, anchored in their nationalist feelings, to be precise in their Serbian national superiority feeling. These are just nationalists, as there are so many of in Europe.

I hear lots of objections coming my way, so I’ll rush unto my dictionary and check each word. Doing so I am reminded of the Richter magnitude scale of European tragedy: at the first level we find nationalism, this patriotic feeling gone astray which recognises no moderating principle, not to be confused of course with the mere and sincere love of your country which translates in a will to defend and promote it; at the second level, we find fascism, an exalted form of nationalism with suppresses democracy; at the third level is Nazism, a racist form of fascism. At the first level we get war; at the second one we add dictatorship and at the third the concentration camps.

Must we really put all these eggs in the same basket? Is the posture of those who demonstrate in support of Mladic in 15 cities of Serbia not different from the one of the leaders of Front National in France, Lega Nord in Italy or Vlaams Belang in Belgium? Are their ideas not different? The online documents and programs of these parties would unfortunately not disappoint a hot-headed anti-Muslim Serb nationalist:
Take Front National for instance: “Not long ago, four pillars used to support the nation: family, school, religion and the army. Since 1968 mostly, the silent revolution of anarchy and globalisation has ruined them.” (http://www.frontnational.com/?page_id=1116)
“Due to lack of money it has not only become impossible [for the French army] to recruit a sufficient number of soldiers, but it has also become impossible to recruit the right quality of soldiers. 20% of these recruits are now originally coming from the Muslim world.” (http://www.frontnational.com/?page_id=1153)
“France, the oldest country in the world after China, will embody for all people the principle of national sovereignty, thus the free choice of one’s own destiny. Far from opposing us with the rest of the world, as the professional liars would have us believe, this program cannot possibly alienate our real friends.” (http://www.frontnational.com/?page_id=1149)

In Italy, Lega Nord practises gross xenophobia without fear of alienating the rest of the world. In 2010, just before the regional elections, a group of party members, the EuroMP Mario Borghezio among them, demonstrated in front of the Moroccan consulate in Milano, shouting “This is Milano, not Marrakech” and unwinding security tape to mimic the closing down of the consulate and the end of the “invasion”. Mr Borghezio quipped that his party “wouldn’t accept any longer the filth and chaos brought about by the Moroccans.” Asked about the reason for all that hate, an activist just answered: “It is the party’s line.”

In Belgium, Vlaams Belang, new avatar of the sinister Vlaams Blok, introduces itself as “ a popular, radical, nationalist and republican party for Flanders”. Apart from the creation of a Flemish state in the framework of a European confederation, their program refers very mildly to “an active defence of the European values and identity.” The declarations of one of their leaders, Mr Filip de Man, shed a cruder light on what it exactly means: “We go back to basics, to the source: against massive immigration for the protection of our superior European culture.” (quoted in La Libre Belgique). “Who is not in agreement with our norms and values can book his flight ticket. One way,” he concludes.

But like in the Front National for a year, the cosmetic efforts of Vlaams Belang to appear acceptable to all are in full swing. The Flemish nationalists write it themselves: “We must charm the public and the media through a “Tiel Eulenspiegel” approach (the prankster Tiel Eulenspiegel being a folklore character who derides the powerful and pleases the humble) : a “parlez-vrai” style not exempt from humour nor irony. Ingenously they write in their (accessible on line) program that the Party needs:
- a cunning external communication strategy, supported by a well thought-through and coherent media strategy (media being tolls, not enemies)
- to break out of the media and political isolation
- to rejuvenate the Party
- to moderate speech and style, to modernise it and adapt it to circumstances
- to win the middle class (university, opinion leaders, the areas of culture and charities)
- to join in with everything that goes into the right direction for the party (for instance the increasingly influential critical ideas about Islam.) End of quote. (http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/files/visietekst.pdf)

Behind this effort to deceive public opinion, to charm it like Mischievous Tiel, there is absolutely no doubt that the narrowest nationalist ideology remains in place. When this ideology reaches power and takes over control of the armed forces, nationalism turns into fascism and results tragedies like Sarajevo, Srbrenica, the concentration camps and other tragedies.

Thank you, MrMladic, to have reminded us of that so forcefully. Let’s never forget.

Towards a liberation from the colonial past in France?

Is a generous, principled, freedom-loving France back, like in 1789? You could believe it if you just looked at the French support to the Lybian rebellion or to the new Tunisian regime. There is indeed a surge of generous enthusiasm. But will it last longer than the Arab spring? Will there be a summer after the spring?

More specifically where is the coherence between French support of the Lybian rebels and their handling, within France today, of the North-African Muslims?
Not only have they been kept in a status of indigenous people – half-slavery really- from 1830 to 1961 in total contradiction with the democratic principles of the French Revolution, not only have they been used in three German-French wars and one colonial war (Indochina) where they have paid in blood for a citizenship which kept being denied to them, not only have they been recruited in their most remote villages to be offered these wonderful mining, industrial or otherwise harder services jobs which made French prosperity possible between 1945 and 1975, not only have they then been parked in grey and degrading neighbourhoods, not only are they still being denied equal opportunities in education and in jobs, not only have the mainstream French maintained over the last two centuries an attitude of racist and ethnocentric superiority, the North-African Muslims living in France are now submitted to a new series of insults, they are ostracised as Muslims, wrongly accused of being responsible for joblessness and insecurity and the subject of theatrical so-called debates which impair social cohesion and serve only vested political interests.

In a not so distant future, when the Arab heads of State will have turned their backs on corruption and arbitrary, will they not question France, just as we naïvely question the Turks about Armenia or the Chinese about Tibet?

The French governments bear a heavy responsibility: those who are in charge of creating the conditions to develop jobs and security are consistently failing – a comparison with Germany would be telling, and they try to divert attention by indirectly accusing the Muslims, distorting language and undermining dialogue. Governments being elected by the people on the basis of programs designed to please the electorate, this responsibility obviously falls back upon all French citizens.

This goes to prove that, as a nation, we have remained in a colonial mindset, and maintained our racist and ethnocentric superiority attitude, so entrenched in our economic vested interests that we readily foster corrupt dictators and take away from the poor their modest livelihoods to give more superfluous to the rich.

Yet, we like to describe our country as the country of Human Rights – and we support the rebels of North Africa. We are still somewhat revolutionary. But let us acknowledge that while our speeches are littered with bombastic democratic, moral or social principles, our deeds are more often than not hallmarked by selfishness, racism and pettiness.

Would it not be timely to address the question of who we are and what we want, the real question? Are we the heirs of those who massacred thousands of people in Algeria, Chad or Niger during the colonial conquest, or in Setif and Guelma in 1945, in Madagascar in 1947, in Cameroon from 1955 to 1960 and who have turned a blind eye on the Rwandan genocide? Are we the heirs of those who, through the Colonial Law, maintained feudalism and vested interests in the regions under French administration? Are we the heirs of those who, during 130 years, made of the belonging to a religion – Islam - a cause for inferior status? Or are we the representatives of a country which has changed priorities and is now attached to Human Rights, democracy, the right of people to self-determination, international Law and sustainable development for all?

The answer should be self-evident yet it isn’t. The common point between our distant colonial past and the present time is selfishness and the desire to pile up ever more riches, be it at the cost of the holiest principles. Of course a little self-interest is necessary but if we need to chose between the colonial past and the democratic future, we have to communicate individually as well as collectively that we are not ready to grow our economy at the cost of our own democratic principles. As Rabbi Hillel the Eleder used to say 2000 years ago: “If I am not for me, who will be? But if I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, when?” In other words, if we want to be part of the construction of a more just world, we need to tackle the question now.

First step: sharing the historical facts. Acknowledge very simply that no matter what the benefits of colonisation may have been, it was unfair to maintain the North-African Muslims in an inferior status for 130 years, whereas the colonial project itself was to annex Algeria to France definitively. Teach more in detail colonial history, in the same way as other episodes such as the French Revolution or the World Wars.

Second step: to avoid any hypocrisy, end the taboo on ethnic or religious statistics. It is impossible to continue to pretend that what is in fact the main ground for discrimination in France doesn’t exist and that all citizens are de facto treated equally. Only what is being measured can improve.

Third step: define focussed actions to gradually establish equality of rights and duties, as well as of benefits and demands. For instance demand from companies, particularly from those competing for public procurement or works a certified diversity label, intensify the language and professional training in order to develop more employment opportunities and business initiatives among those from families stemming from former colonies. Simplify the organisation of State agencies and empower State officers on concrete objectives in terms of integration and equal opportunities. If the measurement of Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Product is possible, then certainly measuring the qualitative aspect of integration is also possible.

It is time to signal that the French are no longer a colonial minded people but are now clearly in favour of democracy. It is possible if citizens, each of us, decide to do so for everything within their reach and to demand it at the next elections – for everything that depends on national politics. Moreover a clear-cut turning in our foreign policy would most probably provide us with a huge fallout from our presence in Lybia.