YIHR: Serbian Nationalism over Last 30 Years Has Chewed Up all other Ideologies

Ivan Djuric

Over the past 30 years, Serbia nationalism had chewed up all other ideologies and  had been the only well established ideology in our society, said on Nov. 9 Ivan Djurić, the new program director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR).

“I do not think that we need a state ideology which prohibits different opinions, but I think that we owe to our predecessors and successors to cherish an anti-fascist tradition,” Djuric told BETA on the occasion of the International Day against Fascism and Antisemitism.  

According to Djuric, the civil sector, along with certain segments of the academic community “are the only ones who have been persistently and consistently nurturing the antifascist values.” 

“The state has not been doing that and that is why it is not surprising that our society has been every year growing more conservative, more closed and more aggressive. History has been completely forged, criminals have been called heroes and idols, and there is a clear continuity between the rehabilitation of Ljotic (Dimitrije Ljotic collaborated with Nazi occupational authorities) and glorification of Mladic (Ratko Mladic, the wartime commander of the Republika Srpska Army),” Djuric said. He added that in Serbia, collaborators with fascists had been equaled with those fighting against fascism, which “has opened the window to a new reality where everything is relative and everything is possible.”