Commentary: European fanaticism redux

There is never enough space in a column like this to discuss everything in depth, but my previous reflections on European fanaticism did not mention the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s at all. That was an error – the actions and the motivations of people at that time are also part of the history of European fanaticism.

What led some Serbs to become Fascist, nationalist fanatics willing to commit violence that was just as horrible and repugnant as the violence being committed by Islamist fanatics was an ideology, specifically, the recurrence of a chauvinism aiming to create a Greater Serbia. The feeling that "my nation controls a large territory and rules over others" was supposed to justify violence against others, including children and women.  

In response, those who were attacked (Bosnia and Kosovo) committed similar violence – and this is not surprising, as it is known that violence usually produces more violence. I have spoken with many refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo, both during and after the wars.

I remember one 14-year-old Albanian refugee from Kosovo and his look of emptiness. I asked him which moment had signalled the change in his coexistence with his Serbian neighbors.

"I don’t know how it began," he told me, "but I felt it in my friend, who was my same age, we had been like inseparable twins since we were little. One day he came to me and said:  ‘We’re going to drive you all out of here all the same.’ I didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was talking about."

In the opinion of all the Yugoslavs with whom I have spoken, including Serbs, the beginning of the gradual fanaticization there took place in the political arena. It started unobtrusively, verbally, with xenophobic sentences being uttered by intellectuals, journalists and politicians, with the search for the "enemy within", with labelling others as that enemy, with the intentional commemoration of historical enmities (the Battle of Kosovo Polje, etc.) emphasizing the need for nationalism and its traditions.

In many of the online responses to my previous commentary I was also criticized for forgetting to mention hatred toward Russia and of Russians. I did not forget to mention it because it is not an issue:  What is an issue is the contemptuousness of the Russian upper class, its authoritarian abuse of power, traditional Russian imperialism, and the KGB mentality of Putin and other powerful Russians.

To kill, rape and torture

Let’s recall the philosopher Henri Bergson once more, his notion that the tools of our reason become a burden when the environment to which they were once essential no longer exists. When their environment (the societal atmosphere) changes, people change their minds, their way of thinking, and their approach to the values they have always held by gradually accepting simple "truths".  

From the adoption of an ideology and the need to promote it at the expense of others, it is only a small step toward erasing the line between right and wrong, or toward mistaking the one for the other. To kill, rape or torture others then becomes necessary, or at least becomes acceptable.

The Nazis considered the annihilation of gays and lesbians, Jews and Roma to be good for the whole world, for example. Today the European and Islamist fanatics think the same way.  

The beginning of fanaticism in the Czech Republic

As I wrote in my previous commentary, we are well familiar with the beginning of this kind of fanaticization because we are experiencing it right now, not just in the Czech Republic, but throughout all of Europe. Hatred of immigrants and Romani people is growing – even today we are witnessing the search for the "enemy within", the search for a scapegoat on whom to blame all of our problems and woes, even today racist and xenophobic sentences are being uttered by bloggers, journalists, online discussers and politicians – displays of intolerance are so common that almost no one stops to think about them.  

Such ideas have become a common, "legitimate" component of the public discourse. Czech MP Tomio Okamura, who was once a rather trustworthy businessman, is a lurid example of this, to draw at least one specific analogy.  

Let’s look more closely at Okamura’s statements. At this moment, he is the person who is playing in the premiere league of disseminating hatred here, and he is enjoying some relative success.  

The warped Okamura

Okamura strangely misrepresents issues, he uses half-truths and takes things out of context – he is doing his best to erase the boundaries between racism and xenophobia on the one hand and acceptable political discourse on the other, in order to score as many political points as possible. For example, in an interview for the Czech daily Hospodářské noviny, he complained that he had been labeled a racist during his EP campaign, during which his "Dawn of Direct Democracy" (Úsvit) party made use of a racist poster from Switzerland:  "I did not understand what that had to do with racism. In my introductory press release I explained that the black sheep [in the poster] represents a freeloader – it’s like the black sheep in a group, like the ‘Black Sheep’ program on Czech Television. Despite that, someone twisted its meaning as racism."      

All Okamura has forgotten to say here is that the black sheep is being kicked beyond the borders of the state (off of the flag) by a white one. There were two versions, one that read:  "Support for families, NOT inadaptables" and one that read "Work for our people, NOT migrants".  

The message of the poster is clear:  Migrants and Romani people have no future in our country – we’ll kick them out. Various versions of this poster have been used by several Fascist, neo-Nazi or populst political parties throughout Europe.  

It was first used several years ago by the xenophobic Swiss People’s Party, then by the German neo-Nazi NPD and the Lega Nord (Northern League) in Italy. In 2008 the Czech National Party used it, followed by the Workers’ Party.  

The former concentration camp at Lety by Písek

Previously Okamura said the following about the former concentration camp at Lety by Písek:  "When it comes to Lety, it would be good to clarify what we want to build there. According to the information available, this myth that it was a Romani concentration camp is a lie. There was a labor camp there for people who avoided proper work, including Czechs and Germans in the Protectorate. They were not interned on the basis of ethnicity, but on the basis of the gypsy way of life, which means that no working Roma were there. For most of the time before the camp closed the guards were not armed and the camp commander took his servant, who was evidently also his lover, to the cinema. No one was killed at the camp – people died there as a result of old age and the diseases they brought with them as a result of their previous travelling lifestyle."

The reality is different, of course:  Many Romani people lost their lives in the concentration camps of Lety by Písek and Hodonín by Kunštát. Those who did not perish in the camp of hunger, illness or as a result of torture were murdered in other Nazi concentration camps, such as Auschwitz.

On 1 August 1942 the camp at Lety was transformed into a Gypsy Camp and entire Romani families were transported there. Its capacity was increased to hold up to 600 prisoners, but that number was soon exceeded; more than 1 100 children, men and women were interned there during August 1942.

The camp was not equipped with the necessary hygienic facilities (or any facilities) for such a large number of people. The prisoners often had to bathe in a nearby fishpond.

Until August 1942, the camp prisoners had been only men. After that, children and women also wasted away there in completely unsatisfactory conditions.

According to the survivors’ testimonies, the prisoners were often abused – for example, being hung by the wrists from a stake, etc. I am describing this in detail here so the reader can understand how Okamura has chosen the words he uses to describe this issue to make it seem as if his statements are not racist at all, thereby rendering them acceptable to the widest possible circle of people.  

The societal atmosphere is deteriorating

The societal atmosphere in the Czech Republic is deteriorating thanks to all of the Okamuras in politics. The number of people who are demonstrating in public together with the right-wing extremists is rising.

Ordinary citizens are beginning to adopt the thought processes and violent behavior of the fanatics. This all indicates that the fanaticization of a larger number of people (not just in the Czech Republic, but in Europe as a whole) is just a matter of time.

Are we any better than those who succumbed to fanaticism before us? Might we be any more resistant to it?