Jasmina Tešanović: "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"

"Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
Jasmina Tesanovic

photo by Stephanie Damoff

These elections, the most important since the
toppling of Milosevic seven years ago, have proved
that time can stand still. One third of the population
still votes for the fascist Radical
Party, whose leader Seselj is in jail in The Hague.
Between dramatic
hunger strikes, Seselj raves politically against the
vast
conspiracies of "the West." I know a translator
who was forced to
translate those speeches of his; driven mad, he
resigned.

Here in Belgrade, half an hour after the official
results were confirmed, my gay friend and a Woman
in Black
activist were attacked and beaten in the streets by
joyful skinheads.

Yesterday, young voters in their early twenties
were crying in front of the school where they were
supposed to vote. I
interviewed them. They told me they were desperate
because they cannot vote for what they want in their
lives, but only against what they fear.

Their
youthful aspirations are overwhelmed by fascists,
radicals, wars, global isolation… They have had
enough of that
treatment in their young lives, for practically all
their days. "Never
make decisions out of fear," I told them boldly. I
wonder how they
voted.
The gypsy party was first time in history on the
electoral list. But death threats, and graffiti "Go
Back to India" immediately appeared in their
neighbourhoods.

A small and promising new party (LDP) passed the
electoral
threshold to enter Parliament. The leader of this
party, a
younger man who personally arrested Milosevic seven
years ago, had
a tough election campaign. In the last day before
the vote, somebody
planted a device under his car, apparently a bomb.
The police
blocked the streets for several panicky hours, then
denied that anything hadhappened. I myself was a
couple of blocks away, I saw the incident take place,
but denial is a big art in Serbia. Who are you
going to believe: the official version, or your
lying eyes?

A couple of us electoral losers spent the evening
waiting for new Serbia to arise. On blog B92, we
chatted with our
virtual friends from all over the world, many of
whom who left
Serbia in order to survive. As the new day was
dawning, our hopes werefading. Those who left Serbia
have no reason to return. If we
ourselves leave, then we forfeit the country to the
raucous, violent minority who just won the most
votes, but can't take power. They want us toleave.
Then they'd make life here impossible even for
themselves.

I wonder: if every last Serbian left Serbia as a
hopeless, dysfunctional mess, would "Serbia" still
exist?
Would the last Serbs to leave the country turn out
the lights? Maybe
the last pair standing would become cannibals, in
our ultimate
political solution: kill and eat.

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Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

– Faking Bombings
– Dispatch from Amsterdam
– Where are your Americans now?

– Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
– Slaughter in the Monastery

– Mermaid's Trail

– A Burial in Srebenica
– Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
– To Hague, to Hague