Nationalism in a new format

Random expressions of nationalist statements can be seen almost anywhere and everywhere these days. The web and especially social networking sites have become the newest tools for carrying out the promotion of nationalist ideals.

The examples are numerous: Last year, a Kosovar hackers group attacked a Serbian government website. What did they do, you wonder? They placed the Albanian national flag on the website – Big deal, right? It just meant the Serbian government had to fix their servers and make them more secure. Besides, I have no doubt the Serbian counterparts to Kosovar cyber-pirates hacked some Albanian or Kosovar site in revenge.

What happened to the Estonian internetage in 2007 was far worse: The whole government website system was under attack and more. Banks, cultural institutions, community centres – it didn’t matter whose website it was, if it was Estonian, it was targetted by Russian hackers for a simple reason – The Estonian government had removed a 1947-Soviet-Union imposed statue on the main square in Tallinn, the capital, in remembrance of the fallen Soviet soldiers in Estonia. For Estonia, the hack was disastrous. The country is, after all, the most wired country in Europe, with the highest percentage of internet users per capita.

Most recently, some months ago, a friend sent me an invite to a group calling for the closing of a Facebook page created by Serbian nationalists who claimed that one of the examples of genocidal mass murder in Srebrenica, Bosnia, was a hoax. The group was indeed shut after hundreds of thousands of concerned Facebookers joined within a matter of days.

Stickers stating Kosova is the heart of Serbia are nothing new. I used to see them when I was in Montreal, and I would routinely remove them. If Kosova was the heart of Serbia, Serbia would have had a heart attack and probably triple bypass by now – You don’t treat your heart the way Serbia treated Kosova and the great majority of its citizens.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend mentioned in a conversation that there is someone in Oxford who keeps placing the stickers all over town, and he apparently removes them every time he sees one. The name of the printing house is on the stickers. So is the name of the group posting the stickers [apparently they call themselves "Delije" - Serbian for "hero", Turkish for "fool"]. His comments during the chat reminded me of not only the new age of nationalism, but the continued facilitation of nationalist propaganda distribution in the age of technology.

It was expected, with the spread of the internet, that people around the world would find commonalities between them and people they consider “others.” Instead, it appears that the opposite has happened: People around the world are re-asserting themselves, their values, their beliefs, on the new platform for nationalist propaganda. The act of placing stickers all over a town is not necessarily physically endangering anyone’s safety, but the taking of the issues outside of their original geopolitical sources naturally carries some danger. Namely, it creates a new battlefield – convincing the persons of the new region that the nationalist cause is genuine and that the foreigner to the cause should not be an outsider, but an adopted nationalist.

..more to come.

Arabeske – Behari

This song was on my iPod playlist throughout my visit in Bosnia – The lyrics are haunting, the music astounding. Arabeske is a women’s band from Zagreb – more about them here:.

Back from Bosnia and Kosova

Having spent three weeks conducting research in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosova, I am now back in Oxford.

I did a bit of a different journey into the Balkans: I flew from Gatwick into Dubrovnik, spent a day there, then took a bus to Sarajevo. I stayed at the nicest hotel next to Bascarsija.

Following the end of my interviews, which were very successful, and I met a number of very interesting, intelligent people, I took a bus to Prishtina via Novi Pazar (Serbia). It was a little nerve-wracking to wait for the Serbian customs officer, who took my Canadian passport and walked off with it, supposedly to verify that I’m not on an Interpol wanted list.

He returned 15 minutes later, and all was well. That said, the trip took 12 hours from Sarajevo to Prishtina.

Prishtina was as giving and generous as ever – its weather warmer than Oxford or Sarajevo, its people ready to celebrate the second anniversary of Kosova’s declaration of independence. Suffice it to say that it was a great place to be in mid-February.