BrianE wrote:
> In article <52ndv6F1oecc3U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, clore@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> center.org says...
>> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>>
>> http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bohm040207.html
>> 04/02/07
>> Freedom Fight: An interview with Milenko Sreckovic
>> by Steffen Böhm
>>
>> Milenko Sreckovic is a spokesperson for the Balkan anarchist movement
>
> Jesus, hasn't there been enough anarchy in the Balkans already?
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=12160
ZNet | Europe
Anarchy in the Balkans: Andrej Grubacic in conversation with FreedomFight
by Andrej Grubacic
February 20, 2007
If you could first introduce Freedom Fight to ZNet readers, and then
give us something of the socio-political background of contem****ary
Serbia. I have just been reading the latest UNICEF re****t, according to
which there are over 300,000 children today who are living in poverty or
are at risk of poverty. These kinds of things were unimaginable 15 years
ago. They were, dare I say it, unimaginable not only in the times of
Yugoslav state-socialism, but also in the times of Slobodan Milosevic's
cleptocratic regime. It seems that neoliberal, modern and European
Serbia demonstrates certain atavistic social traits. Serbia is now
considered to be "the last Balkan state". Balkan is still considered to
be a permanent and natural powder keg of Europe, pacified by the
international capitalist community, a region that is, as Richard
Holbrooke pointed out, "too complicated (and trivial) for outsiders to
master". How does an anarchist feel living and fighting in this "strange
and feral Balkans" (Simon Winchester)?
FreedomFight is an anarchist, alter-globalist movement created in Serbia
in 2003. Beside work on alternative web-based media project at
http://www.freedomfight.net
, Freedom Fight movement promotes necessity
of opposing neo-liberal ideology. But that's not all, we are not just
reaction to the unjust system, we also try to seek for proper
alternatives for the life after capitalism. I don't believe in the so
called "end of the history", that better world is not possible. Their
plan is, of course, to convince us in that, but "end of the history" is
going to happen only if we let them destroy the planet -- then for sure
would not be any history no more.
First step is to fight neo-liberal ideology whose imposing here is being
financed with large quantities of money. Except unmasking of promises of
better life that we'll deserve by obeying orders that comes from some
places far away from here, from IMF and World Bank, we have to promote
alternatives which would capture people's imagination and took them away
from transitional apathy and depression. We have to show people that
there is better future beyond capitalism. Of course, any alternative to
the neo-liberal models must be also an alternative to the authoritarian
systems.
Balkan is a place for geo-strategic experiments of powerful states. They
also want by using force to convince us that they are bosses and that we
have to obey orders. During NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, which
could be avoided if negotiations haven't been sabotaged with
unacceptable ultimatums, the result was escalation of the atrocities. I
can't believe that so many intellectuals abroad sup****ted bombing as
"humanitarian intervention"! What about other places where ethnic
cleansing was military aided from USA administration!? Was that also
their "humanitarian intervention"!? Now that criminal politics took the
form of an economic type of oppression.
According to official records of unemployment, in Serbia rate of
unemployment is approximately 30%. Transitional Balkan is not a very
nice place to live in. People get fired, public property is being sold
for nothing, and there is extremely big gap between rich and poor. Many
people that call themselves "experts" are trying to convince us that we
need to make some transitional sacrifices so in the future we could live
like the "whole normal world". In fact, they are just well paid
exponents of neoliberal ideology. They are imposing here politics which
I often call "IMF copy-paste politics", because IMF is dictating always
the same economic measures on no matter what transitional country.
Slovenia was not in crises as long as it managed to avoid those measures
that have disastrous effect on ordinary people's life. Due to the
neo-liberal reforms Slovenia's social security system was cut back,
public utilities were privatized and living standards for most of the
population declined significantly. Serbia is also forced to conduct
policies that were designed to fulfill the requirements for entry into
the European Union. Elections in Serbia are often presented as most
im****tant thing for Balkan stability by international community, which
is always suggesting us for who to vote. In fact, nothing depends on the
final electoral outcome. No matter what political party seizes state
power, the processes of privatization, transition and European
integration is going to continue. Most of the despaired people who are
against these processes are voting for Serbian Radical Party, which on
recent election took 29% of the vote, but, in fact, that party is just a
nationalist, pro-capitalist organization with fake populism.
What is the role of intellectuals in Serbia today? Does an independent,
critical intellectual exist? Do they take an active part in the social
movements? Or do you see only "integrated intellectuals," as late Pierre
Bourdieu used to call them?
Well, I'm not sure what term "intellectual" actually means… Yes, there
are people who are well educated and who possess certain knowledge, but
I don't see them often raising their voice for the benefit of the
underclass people. I think that at this moment Belgrade University is a
neo-liberal stronghold in Serbia. Most of the professors are trying to
convince us that this kind of society is inevitable. They say for
themselves that they are "realistic" and that students have to pay
tuition fees although all of them during their studies had free
education. If you mean on Sartre's distinction between intellectual and
specialist, where intellectual is the one who criticize system and who
is involved in fight for social justice, and specialist the one who is
expert for certain aspect of knowledge, than we have many specialist but
outside of world of activism I don't see no intellectuals.
Now a difficult question. You are anarchists and anti/alter-globalists.
You are against both the international community and the communitarian
logic of Serbian nationalism. What is your position on the Hague
Tribunal? According to the well meaning, good hearted European liberals,
The Hague is the last option to tame the "wild and refractory people of
Balkans. Is this Tribunal legal? Does that matter at all? Do you feel
tamed and more civilized? Should anarchist sup****t the civilizing
efforts of the international community, in order for the people to
achieve "reconciliation" and "collective catharsis", so they can stop
being "not-yet" or "never-quite" European?
The Tribunal in The Hague is an ideological institution with disputable
validity. It was created by the UN Security Council resolutions 808/93
and 827/93, but Security Council is only UN executive organ and as such
it may not establish judicial organs, nor it has right to perform any
judicial function.
Beside that, the other problem is the so called "selective justice". The
Tribunal in The Hague prosecutes only crimes committed in a particular
space, but war crimes were committed and are being committed in so many
areas of the world. This selective justice also contravenes the UN
Charter principle of sovereign equality of states.
The Tribunal regulates its own functioning and appears both as a
legislative and as a judicial body. There are many violations of civil
rights committed by this court, particularly a detention pending trial
too long and the fact that there is no right to compensation of damage
in case of unlawful detention.
This Tribunal has a mission to hide hands of powerful states covered
with blood. Milosevic should have been tried on the territory of the
former Yugoslavia. Instead, he passed away in a prison cell under
unknown conditions. Bigger war criminals -- Clinton, Blair, Bush -- are
not persecuted.
Could you tell us a bit more about the politics from below? Yugoslavia,
old state-socialist Yugoslavia, was the only nation-state with a system
of self-management that has existed. Does the memory of self managed
work, grassroots democracy at the level of production, and social
security still exist among the people? Who are the new protagonists of
the politics from below? Is it the old Left in its various -- and dull!
-- manifestations? The workers? The students? The peasants? Anarchists
and feminists?
I met few activists abroad who had very positive opinion about
self-management in Yugoslavia, but I think that such opinion that comes
so often is too much idealistic. In reality that so called
self-management system was controlled and coordinated by political
bureaucracy and I think it is wrong to even call it self-management. It
was certainly not a classless system and there certainly were
authoritarian decision making. However, even self-management with those
malfunctions was much better system than this one. Anyway,
self-management, real self-management, must come from people and it
can't be imposed on them. We can learn from mistakes of the old so
called self-management system and re-invent it and improve it.
It is a bit hard to summarize all social protests against dismantling
social security system that occurred during transitional years. They are
best described by slogan created in Slovenia during demonstrations when
more than 40.000 people participated: "For the maintenance of the
welfare state". I have to mention workers of the Serbian pharmaceutical
factory "Jugoremedija", from the town of Zrenjanin, who have been
engaged in an ongoing struggle to run their workplace themselves, who
became "symbol of resistance to neoliberal capitalism in Serbia". They
have fought the privatization of their factory for over three years.
They have occupied factory and fought with police and private army.
Recently students of Belgrade University occupied the building of
Philosophical faculty for seven days, until University agreed to sup****t
demands of students against tuition fees against the government. Those
rebellion students now and during occupation functioned in accordance
with a direct democracy decision making.
So far most of the rebellions are mainly reaction to the already imposed
"structural adjustment" program of the IMF. I think that Serbia lacks of
organized prevention of those impositions. People haven't been expected
such a disastrous consequences of the transitions and believed in
politician's lies about better future. There are anarcho-syndicalists
and few anarchist-inspired collectives that struggle against neo-liberal
measures and offer anti-authoritarian vision of future society, but
certainly there is a necessity of creation of united movement against
capitalism.
Although few members of Marxist-Leninist organizations from Serbia gave
very im****tant contribution during some social protests I think that
their political principles and visions are run over by time and that
they don't give for the time being acceptable vision of society. They
say that their main goal is a seizure of state power and that for me is
not acceptable. There are other anarchist collectives, for example,
anarcho-syndicalists from Serbia that are now maintaining Secretariat of
the IWA. Their educational syndicate gave significant contribution to
recent student demonstrations. There are few valuable people gather
around Kontrapunkt Magazine, collective Zluradi paradi, SPK, etc. There
is no printed magazine of radical leftist and that failure Freedom Fight
movement in coordination with Global Balkan network will try to overcome
by editing and printing Z magazine on our language.
What about the Serbian Roma? Roma people are Europe's ubiquitous
underclass and it's most marginalized and oppressed citizens. An open
letter presented to the EU by the European Roma Rights Center on
International Roma Day two years ago reminded us of the fact that
"anti-Gypsyism continues to be rife, is rarely punished and is often
used as an acceptable outlet of racism in mass media as well as in every
aspect of life," stressing "the persistent reality of extreme poverty
and systemic human rights frustration or active abuse in the Roma
ghettos which requires urgent concrete action". A friend of mine, Bill
Templer, on a much more optimistic note, sees Roma communities as a
"laboratory for self management beyond borders". In his recent
inspiring article in New Politics, he hopes that "their experience in
the self-organization of a supranational identity in localized
communities can help point certain directions over the longer haul for a
denationalizing of Europe's political structures from the bottom up:
decentralized nodes of community within a transnational frame of
inventive federation."
According to Mr. Paul Polansky, an activist working for the rights of
the Roma people, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the violence in its
aftermath have destroyed the homes and lives of the Roma of Kosovo.
Albanian nationalists have thrown the Roma out of Kosovo in even greater
numbers pro****tionately than the Serbs. Of the 150-200 thousand Roma of
Kosovo, less than 20 thousand remain there when the NATO's
"peace-keeping" forces took control of Kosovo. 15 thousand Romani homes
have been destroyed. Mr. Polansky also claims that most international
aid agencies in Kosovo discriminate against all minorities, especially
Gypsies.
Those remaining Roma are living in UN-built refugee camps in the most
degrading cir***stances. Paul Polansky claims that the UN built the
camps on toxic wasteland. In his book UN-leaded Blood he stated: "At
three camps built by the UN High Commission for Refugees, some 60 Gypsy
children under the age of six have been exposed to such high levels of
lead that they are highly likely to die soon or to suffer irreversible
brain damage. This number represents every child born in the camps since
they were built five and a half years ago."
The Roma people are in little less extent also discriminated in Serbia.
They are usually beaten by police or skinheads and their entrance into
certain object is forbidden. They usually have more problems with local
authorities than with ordinary citizens. They have difficulties to find
job because of the color of their skin and they are usually allowed only
to work some hard labor jobs.
But I have to mention my hometown Raca Kragujevacka, a small town of
about 4,000, where everybody knows everybody else, where in the summer
of 1999 some 400 Roma refugees from Kosovo found shelter in the big
building of my old school located in the downtown. Most of them have
never heard of my town before. They were well accepted by local
population and there are more and more marriages made by people of
different nationality.
Here, in the United States, the myth of Serbian "OT****" still persists.
According to the liberals, but also a number of radical leftists, they
were the grassroots, directly democratic and non-violent force behind
the Serbian "Black Revolution" of 2001. Could you tell us what OT****!
really is?
Organization "Ot****", in fact, was a USA aided and trained organization.
Its purpose was to overthrow Milosevic's regime and to establish a
government which would be obedient to imperialistic demands. After fall
of Milosevic in 2000, remains of that organization became a political
party and after failure to become a part of Parliament, Ot**** merge into
Democratic Party. If you look official ideological declarations of
Ot****, you'll see that it was a nationalist, neo-liberal organization
which advocated "the restructuring of economy, creating the conditions
for a free market, the inevitable privatization and opening of the
economy to foreign investment backed by legal guarantees that would
facilitate safe investment" (Declaration of Ot****, 1999).
What about the other seductive myth, the one of the "friendly civil
society"? Are NGOs friends or foes in the process of building
anti-authoritarian, left-libertarian social movements in Serbia today?
My impression is that the so-called "friendly civil society" and the
"advocates of human rights" have been transformed into intellectual
commissars of the "modern", neoliberal political forces.
People from NGOs and those who represent so called "civil society" allow
themselves to criticize certain aspects of the system, but never system
itself. They are part of the system and as such they are for changes,
which would never endanger the system. They are most welcomed guests of
American embassy. They are well paid but they are useless. As reformist
organizations they assume system maintenance and if you start
questioning system, you'll have them on your back defending the system.
But how do you see the recent elections? It seems that they will effect
the final decision of the status for Kosovo. The Finish fireman, Marti
Ahtisaari, in the best tradition of Balkan colonial governors, after
introducing his "plan" for Kosovo's "future", declared that he is not
really interested in what local politicians in Serbia and Kosovo have to
say about his proposal. What would be an anarchist response to the
artificial dilemma of nationalism or neoliberalism, which denies a
possibility for another, horizontal and grassroots approach in this
Serbian province? Is there an anarchist proposal for Kosovo?
International community now wants to solve problems that escalated after
their "humanitarian interventions". There is analogy with Iraq -- USA
bombs country promising establishment of democracy and freedom and after
bombing attacked country ends up in chaos. UN peacekeepers did nothing
to prevent ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma in March of 2004. The
special negotiator nominated by the UN Marti Ahtisaari strives to
"monoethnic independence" which is opposed by Belgrade officials.
Probably they will be forced to except it but any forced agreement won't
do any good. In exchange for Kosovo Serbia will probably be granted with
member****p in European-Atlantic alliances.
As Chomsky suggested the partition of Kosovo must be seriously
considered and that seems to me as the most appropriate for the time
being but it should be, of course, just a tem****ary solution. Partitions
and ethnic borders although at the moment inevitable are failure of
humanity and mutual understanding.
However, multi-ethnic society can't be impose from above. It and ethnic
division could be avoided if we recognize that main problem is not
territory and to whom it belongs but unsolved essential social problems
such as poverty, housing, refugees, privatization. If society is shaped
from below by social movements based on solidarity and inclusive
democracy we`d be witnessing surmounting of ethnic divisions and
conflicts.
And what about Montenegro?
After referendum in May 2006 Montenegro became an independent country.
Montenegro's prime minister of that time, Milo Djukanovic was a former
ally of Slobodan Milosevic but in 1997 Western powers used him to
dismantle the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to remove any obstacles
to their interests in the Balkans. In return, Montenegro was bankrolled
by Western financial sup****t. Unemployment and poverty are very huge and
country is ruled by ordinary criminals and cigarettes smugglers. There
were many irregularities during anti-independence campaigns. Many people
were forced to vote for independence and Montenegrins living abroad were
allowed to vote whilst those living in Serbia were barred.
In one of my recent essays I tried to describe the phenomenon I called
the "Belgrade Consensus”, or the political argument which is composed of
three parts: neoliberalism, nationalism, and the politics of the so
called civil society (civilizing the "uncivil one"). The protagonists of
this unusual consensus of elites suggest that there could be no
alternative beyond mutually dependent nationalist and neoliberal
discourses. In this atmosphere, the people of Serbia are deprived of a
genuine alternative. They are condemned to becoming depoliticised, to
the loss of "political illusions", to a crisis of political activism,
and worse still, being receptive to those of the populist extremism of
the extreme right.
Neoliberalism and nationalism are two sides of the same coin.
Nationalism is as terrorism just a symptom of capitalist and colonial
society. They are not oppose to each other. Capitalist society itself
creates enemy it fights against. USA won't win war against terrorism
even if it manage to exterminate all Al-quaida cells. As long as exist
exploitation and imperialism there will be those extreme sorts of
resistance. USA should lead "war on terror" within its own borders, that
is, it should change its own foreign policy which is main inciter for
terrorist activities.
In Balkan nationalistic impulses were stirred up by imperialistic states
so they would weaken by internal civil wars those who might opposed
imperialistic plans. Beside that, here neoliberalism and nationalism are
both ideologically rooted in liberalism. Between those two options
differences are almost irrelevant. Both options advocate privatization,
dismantling social security system, etc.
Do you think that ideas such as participatory economics, and other
proposals for a participatory society, that we here at Z like to
advocate, make any sense for the Balkans? Is visionary, participatory
politics, which would rest on alternative political designs, and an
invitation to think collectively and seriously about the life after
capitalism and hierarchy, something that people in Serbia and the
Balkans can relate to? In 19th century Russia and Serbia,
revolutionaries used to talk about "going to the people". Do you think
that going to the people with the ideas of participatory economy and
participatory politics would encounter constructive responses?
Well, idea of parecon is strictly opposed to the neo-liberal dogma so as
long as advocates of neo-liberalism have power of manufacturing opinions
parecon won't be accepted and familiar to ordinary people. I am sure
that most activists are not acquainted with idea of parecon. Ideas that
advocate that everybody have a pro****tionate participation in the
decisions that affect people's lives must have a stronghold in part of
population for whose benefit those ideas are designed. They have to be
closely connected with social movements which would advocate them and
establish them in practise and in reality. There is an open space for
these ideas, maybe especially on Balkan. People lost faith in
representative democracy and in political parties. They want to build
their future and their lives on their own. I am sure they would
recognize parecon as a proper alternative.
* You can contact Freedom Fight at pismo@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Andrej Grubacic is an anarchist historian from the Balkans. He can be
reached at zapata@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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