BALKAN

Murals and street fascism

Authentic street fascism came about as a consequence of the cultivation of nationalism and revisionism as self-evident ideologies and realities, thanks to which that ideology self-reinforces itself on the walls.

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Photo: FB
Photo: FB
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Murals are a new phenomenon on the streets of our cities, and the extent to which we are talking about something relatively new is evidenced by the example of Zagreb from the time of the Universiade in 1987. At that time, namely, the city authorities officially organized the painting of a long concrete wall along the railway line in Branimirova Street in collaboration with artists, that Zagreb would appear to competitors and guests as one of the western cities. Before that, and only since the beginning of the eighties, fans' slogans, some names and rarely humorous sentences were written on the walls. Such a state actually lasted until the last fifteen years, when the mural culture finally established itself and developed in two directions. The smaller one was the enlightening one, in which artists through street art festivals painted entire buildings and huge walls with their unique works or, in agreement with the city authorities, large murals were created in honor of deserving people or events. Mostar, for example, was greatly beautified and somewhat moved away from exclusively war themes thanks to the street art festival, while Sarajevo thus paid tribute to Davorin Popović and the National Liberation Struggle, i.e. the monumental heritage that commemorated that struggle. In Karlovac, for example, there is a large mural dedicated to Miroslav Krleža.

Independent initiative

However, the other branch of mural culture is directly related to the fan, mostly right-wing, movement. Which is less of a problem in cases where only dedications to the football club are shown on the walls, and much bigger when that culture begins to interpret history and glorify war criminals and in general people and events that do not deserve any honor. There are rare cases like in Belgrade's Dorćol, which Partizan fans painted with murals of mostly cultural figures who supported that club and their quotes. The situation is realistically such that it is almost impossible to hear any voice of rebellion against the symbolic marking of the terrain, but also against the political messages that come out of it. Sometimes the local self-government gives a positive response to the request to paint a wall, but as a rule it is an independent initiative of fan groups.

Which finally brings us to the real problem of appearances like the mural dedicated to Ratko Mladić in Foča or a whole series of murals in honor of Draža Mihailović throughout the Republic of Srpska, those dedicated to Slobodan Praljko in Herzegovina or HOS in Split, with the accompanying Ustasha salute. Things would be much simpler and easier to solve if it was about someone from the ruling nationalist parties ordering a fan team that does murals to paint something that should send a political message, because in that case the matter would be easy to solve. Here, however, we are talking about authentic street fascism that came as a consequence of the cultivation of nationalism and revisionism as self-evident ideologies and realities, thanks to which this ideology is self-renewing on the walls of the streets. That kind of street fascism with which young right-wingers prove their loyalty to the ruling values, considering themselves paradoxically revolutionaries and rebels, grows out of the widespread belief that the ruling party managed to sell, that things are bad because "those others" hinder us from moving forward. The others are sometimes the rare remaining tireless or unexpelled members of another nation, and sometimes leftists and always suspicious Yugoslavs, but the story, regardless of how stupid and ultimately amoral it is, is effectively renewed.

Repaint/ignore

And it will be renewed until the nationalists lose their monopoly on the state, education and mass media, that is, until the non-nationalist parties start openly rejecting the values ​​of the XNUMXs. Since neither is in sight, only two things remain. One is an organized action to repaint those murals, and the other is to ignore them. Both are, unfortunately, extremely difficult and traumatic for the marginalized Bosniak community in Foča, which on the other hand says everything about the true nature of the constitutive nature of everyone in the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Street mural fascism very precisely indicates how much fiction it is.

(oslobodjene.ba)

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