We live in a dislocated time in which our bitter daily experiences are nothing more and nothing more than a swing that swings us between inevitability and eternity. Discourses of irreconcilable political options and ideological postulates from the early 1990s once again took a central place in the political and public life of Montenegro. The party leaders without apparent effort stepped into the old groove of identity politics, and returned the focus to their favorite field of unfulfilled national dreams.
Regardless of whether it is anchored in ethnic or religious foundations, or whether it relies on a mythologized notion of a post-national paradise called the EU, identity politics is the only attraction in the local circus. It should be remembered that Montenegrinization, Serbization, Serbo-Montenegroization, Bosniakization, wrestling and Europeanization are just different names for one and the same disastrous identity policy. Balkan, that is, Montenegrin manifestations of that policy can generally be classified into two broad frameworks. These are the frameworks in which, unfortunately, the generations grew up after the dismemberment of the former SFRY.
The first is what thinkers such as Timothy Snyder call the politics of inevitability. As was previously the case with other models of governance in the Balkans, here too it is a local brutalized copy of something that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was defined in North America and Western Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the discourse of the politics of inevitability became the absolute model of the West's actions in international relations. North American contributions to this discourse were the myth of the so-called free market and the idea that capitalism will produce democratic changes in and with Eastern European societies. The result of these misconceptions are stabilitocracies in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and economic gray zones in which robbery of state resources, money laundering, mafia association, disintegration of system institutions, delegitimization of state institutions, corruption and general criminalization of society prevail.
On the European side of the ocean, the EU administration projected and defended its own myths. The fairy tale about the benefits of the EU integration process was, among other things, based on the unfounded belief that the nation-state category is an integral element of Western European history, and that the lessons learned from the Second World War justified contemporary EU integration.
None of these beliefs have any basis in history and contemporary experience. Although history has been and remains the teacher of life, it seems that few students are interested in learning its lessons. It is easy to document the claim that Western European societies had no experience of nation states, and that the arc of European history in the XNUMXth century bent from empires to EU integration efforts. The most important European EU member states - Britain, Germany. France, Italy, Spain - were imperial powers, and therefore many see the EU as the incarnation of the rested imperial dreams of the West. The fact is that these countries turned to integration processes only after they lost the imperial wars. We should not forget that, even when Germany was concerned, the Second World War was also an imperial conflict.
The new members from Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans tried their best to contribute to this myth of the EU's integration and peacemaking power. Their experience of nation-states was blood-soaked, surrounded by tanks and framed by Gulag wires. That experience and belief in the myth of the EU were the reason for the post-1989 slogan of "return to Europe" and for Kundera's cry to save the "heart of Europe" from Russia's deadly embrace.
This myth was marketed in the Montenegrin framework as a narrative about the great pacifier of local Balkan hatreds, ethnic and religious intolerance, border disputes and territorial claims. It was argued that the tribal passions of the Montenegrin highlanders can be appeased only within the legally sanctioned framework of the EU, and that membership in this alliance will reduce (if not completely eliminate) the strength and attractiveness of nationalist slogans and religious iconography. Although time has shown these promises to be unfounded, the politics of inevitability had (and still has) considerable utility at the local level.
Today, in Montenegro (and in the region), it promotes a specific party and political option as the only one worthy of voter trust. At the same time, efforts are being made to convince the electorate that there are no alternatives to such and such an offer. Citizens are afraid of claims that a change in the structure of government would have catastrophic consequences for the nebulous category of "common good".
The long-term negative consequence of the politics of inevitability is the dissolution of the individual and collective sense of responsibility when it comes to our activities aimed at establishing and consolidating a stable and functional political system. In Montenegro, this is manifested by the elimination of the desire for change. The existing state is accepted as good, that is, functional, and the increase in efficiency and functionality of that state is projected into the future and becomes the foundation and rationalization of our understanding of progress. Progress is presented and explained as a fuller version of the present. The slogan "We know how" was, therefore, a sublimation of stability and functionality (protection of Montenegro from the destruction of war; achieving independence; membership in the EU and NATO...), but also a guarantee of a better future and security (immutability of borders; NATO's protective embrace) ; preservation of state independence...) only if voters remain loyal to a specific party structure.
It's no wonder that the ruling elite repeats the mantra that, compared to our neighbors in the region, we are doing well now (Euro-Atlantic integration is going as expected, infrastructure is being built via Bratonožić, wind turbines are being built around Krnovo, mini power plants are being planned in Bukovica, Montenegro is the leader in the region...), and in the future (with the ruling DPS, of course) we will be even better. This story of a better future is, in essence, a story of quantity that marginalizes or even completely excludes any conversation about the quality of that future. The population, truth be told, does not show much desire to deal with quality issues.
The other side of the political spectrum has long been anchored in the areas of the mythologized past and seeks to revive and rehabilitate so-called historical absences (marginalized narratives). Opposition parties in Montenegro engage in what historians and sociologists call the politics of eternity. This discourse relies on a cyclical understanding of time that does not recognize the line of progress: past-present-future. It is a circle that connects the present with the past and creates what Walter Benjamin called absolute time, that is, the point where the line of progress collapses. It is the point where the past completely frames the present and defines all systems of relationships in the future. Only at that point is it possible that an event from six or seven centuries ago has importance and a decisive homogenizing force for the generations born in the XXI century. It is the point where the future completely disappears, and the narrative of the ancient and heroic past is lived, which, unfortunately, some earlier generations consigned to oblivion.
Until recently, they had a monopoly on this discourse. The ruling oligarchy, however, has become a serious competitor in the market of national mythologies, traditional values, and selective valorization of the past. With equal passion (and ferocity) both the government and the opposition in Montenegro sell their ideologically profiled policies of eternity to the population. It is a mistake to claim today that the ruling oligarchy still prefers the politics of inevitability in its EU variant. What remains of that rhetoric is just a smokescreen for outsiders. In the period of the EU crisis, the domestic oligarchy quickly returned to the safe option: the identity politics of eternity.
In this discourse, politics becomes a mechanism through which the population is differentiated into "good people" who deserve a better life, and "bad" ones who destroyed everything that was worth remembering and preserving. Politics becomes an emotional circle in which all discussions about the model of exercising power and creating legal frameworks for the functioning of the state fade away.
Balkan and Central European advocates of the politics of eternity criticize the basic postulates of liberal democracy and the social order it produced. While pretending to be democratic, liberal and committed to preserving the institutions of the system, they are doing everything to destroy those institutions, democracy and liberalism. A significant part of the narrative of today's politics of eternity in our region is borrowed from the texts of the Nazi theoretician Karl Schmidt and his admirer in Russia, Ivan Ilyin.
Like Schmidt, our champions of the politics of eternity see liberalism and globalization as products of Anglo-Saxon and Jewish cultures. From Šmit, who was a pioneer in defining and using the technique of relativization, to the contemporary Montenegrin and Balkan proponents of the thesis about ethnic and national communities as unfortunate victims of globalization, a clear and straight line can be drawn. As for Ilyin, politics for our domestic practitioners is primarily the art of identifying and neutralizing the enemy. The fact is that there is no enlightened policy for them, nor do they have any such activity in mind.
This is the point where one can talk about contemporary manifestations of fascism that differ somewhat from the 1920s original. Among other things, because contemporary fascists call their political opponents "fascists", Timothy Snyder called this political and ideological expression "syzofascism". One of its better-known advocates is the Russian fascist Alexander Dugin.
For Dugin and other Russian and Balkan admirers of his tracts, facts and truth do not exist, but other facts (alternative facts, as defined by Trump's advisor, Kelly-Anne Conway) and a different version of the truth. This opens the door for a policy of absolute disapproval of everything. The ruling oligarchy and kleptocratic political elite have complete control over the politics of irresponsibility, and use popular discontent and distrust of leaders as a weapon in their own promotion. There is logic at work: we lie, but they also lie, because everyone lies... since truth does not exist. Considering that everyone lies, it is logical that a certain community will rather choose its own leader than someone else's liar. This is one of the clearest manifestations of a new form of nationalism that can explain the unwavering faith that certain segments of the electorate show towards far-right politicians.
Alternative facts, politics of eternity and inevitability are projected in the Montenegrin framework with equal fervor by all actors on the public stage. Everyone strives to establish some level of control over the dissatisfied population and tries to politicize that energy. They all use the same tools of selective mythologizing of the past and selective revisionism to sell their version of patriotism, and their interpretation of tradition and identity values to voters. Vučji Do, Grahovac, Mojkovačka Bojna Njiva, Kajmakčalan and the island of Vid are framed by Christian rhetoric and represent the symbolic capital offered by the opposition advocates of the politics of eternity in Montenegro. Tuđemili, the Committee and the Clean Side, Neretva and the restoration of independence, achieved membership in NATO and the expected admission to the EU, form the core of the offer of the oligarchy in power and the "civil opposition", which only apparently practice the politics of inevitability, but, in fact, sell their version of eternity . All offers in this bazaar of memory and identity require absolute loyalty and a high degree of religious fervor from buyers.
Meanwhile, the population is barely making ends meet, and young people are learning foreign languages and saving money for one-way plane tickets to the West.
Edmonton. Canada. August, 2018
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