How RTCG became a service for investigating infidels

(normalizuj.me) 02.09.2025.

The tender age of the show's host, or rather, lack of experience, is not an excuse, but a symptom, a kind of contextual explanation for how the Public Service Broadcasting RTCG casually slipped into pro-fascist discourse, and public interrogations on issues of blood, religion, and origin became the media mainstream.

Fascism does not have to be scary and rigid, it is sometimes very discreet, sewn into the set, silenced and enabled by shrugging shoulders and confused looks from people who are simply not up to recognizing it and squashing it like a cockroach in time. The fate of the Public Service Broadcasting RTCG, if it does not have more experienced journalists, not to mention knowledgeable professionals who will cover the painful topic of the Chetnik Renaissance, could indicate that they are not interested in this topic. But why would they organize an entire show dedicated to monumental revisionism in Montenegro? It is more likely that the topic touches them very much, but they want to keep it at the level of a market discussion, so they promote passionate nationalists like historian Aleksandar Stamatović who – if that is possible – becomes even more nervous without boobs in the studio than with boobs.

So, not only did a helpless journalist allow guest Stamatović to question interviewee Šerbo Rastoder about his family's past last night on the show "Naglas", but the Public Service Broadcaster shared that very part of the show on Instagram, where it actually satisfies the majority of viewer attention and essentially forms public discourse.

In those few tens of seconds, the entirety of the show, which lasted an hour and a bit, is summarized. Compressed into its online essence at the recommendation of the RTCG editor, the show's message thus gains new momentum, and it seems that the host will not experience editorial criticism, but can hope for a raise, just for allowing the interrogation that Rastoder rightly called the tavern manner.

"Who was it of yours sitting under the elm tree in Cetinje, Mr. Rastoder? Stamatović asked. I am from the Katun district. Old Montenegro, the real Montenegro, which created Montenegro... None of your Rastoders created that Montenegro..."

For those who still doubt, it should be emphasized that this was not said in a station buffet a minute before vomiting, but on the Public Service Broadcasting in prime time. And on the topic of erecting a monument to war criminal Pavle Đurišić, responsible for the deaths of thousands of Muslims in northern Montenegro. Stamatović was given the opportunity to symbolically justify this crime, to publicly say that there are true and false Montenegros, that he comes from the true, and Rastoder, damn it, from the false, actually very suspicious Montenegro, not sufficiently true, which should be publicly pointed at because it is not sufficiently marked by the bloody trail of Đurišić's dagger.

What does Stamatović actually do?

He wants to disqualify his opponent, which is an old debate trick and as such legitimate, as long as blood origin, family affiliation, religion or race are not used as legitimation. When blood becomes a political argument, be sure that you are in some form of fascism. Instead of being prevented from spreading his monomaniacal discourse, Stamatović becomes clickbait for the Public Service Broadcasting, which promotes him as a serious interlocutor and offers his chauvinistic allusions to the public for sharing.

Instead of explaining to citizens through the media service that Montenegro, like any other country, is a kind of historical fiction that has experienced its political materiality, that as such it cannot be fixed, and especially should not be defined by the hot-tempered fantasies of local chauvinists; instead of the Public Service promoting Montenegro as an open space of new learnings and noble alloys that arise through education, exposure to light and education, we have a man talking about his great-grandfather, the standard-bearer (and a Guardsman at that), and through the Public Service and through the screen we feel the pain suppressed in the long ferment of the nineties, when crimes were justified with the same words that are now being foisted upon us as democracy, pluralism and the rule of the other side.

Neither Stamatović nor Rastoder can answer what Montenegro is. Nor could the great Isaiah Berlin. He wondered what England was in Nelson's famous slogan: "England expects every man to do his duty." Berlin explains that England is certainly not "a certain number of naked bipeds who possess reason and inhabit a certain island...", but rather a deeper, immaterial phenomenon that attempts to be defined linguistically, although this is impossible.

This means that Montenegro is also the confused gaze of a young show host who fails to determine his direction, who fears mistakes and political fouls. Montenegro is the passive attention of tens of thousands who will watch a short clip with Stamatović in the lead role. Montenegro is also this text that tries to point out the red line that the Public Service is treading.

Montenegro expects every man to do his duty. This paraphrase sounds ominous at a time when war criminals are being celebrated, and Stamatović stubbornly asks: “From whom are we rehabilitating Pavle Đurišić? From Šerbo Rastoder?!”

Maybe this issue is not Montenegro, but it certainly is its Public Service, which is a reason for immense concern and even greater protest.