Those who are still with me on this journey will be happy to know we are nearing the end. Only one country left to go and I have been talking too long about Yugoslavia. I am almost done. I have taken so long because I think Yugoslavia and the countries that emerged when it broke up are so important. And all of the problems, I believe, relate to one very important issue. That is an issue that is get increasingly important in the modern world, including, of course, Canada and the United States. That is the rise in extremism.
By now it is obvious that extremism was rampant in Yugoslavia when it splintered in the early 1990s. As a result, I think Yugoslavia is a country to which more of us in the west should pay attention. Why is that? Because it can be a lesson to us all. Perhaps, we can learn enough to avoid their painful mistakes. The key lesson is, that it is incredibly dangerous to turn our country over to the extremists in our midst.
In Yugoslavia, people of various ethnicities lived together in relative peace for many decades. And peace is like health, if you take it for granted you are not appreciating it properly. It is too easy to forget how vital peace is to the good life. Canadians and Americans both take them for granted, at our peril.
In Yugoslavia after their charismatic leader, Tito, died, literally all hell broke loose. The dogs of war were running free and wild after he died. As soon as Tito died, the country became polarized all over again. People moved to the extremes. The centre was hollowed out. People began to see other people who had different political or religious viewpoints from them, as enemies, rather than opponents. And this happened quite suddenly. From neighbours to enemies in 60 seconds. People could no longer live together with their foes. Some wanted to live separate and apart. Friendship turned to hatred. And the hate curdled and turned to violence.
In Canada, I shuddered when I first saw the Truckers’ Convoy that got international coverage carrying signs on their trucks that said, “F**ck Trudeau.” I saw the same signs in Ottawa, and Steinbach. Trudeau was very popular, until he wasn’t and with amazing speed he was hated when many Canadians considered him their enemy. It seemed like there was no room in the country for calm reasoning, or a middle ground. The extremist voices were the loudest. Some Albertans wanted to separate from Canada. Some still do. If these voices win the day, what makes us think that the violence that happened in Yugoslavia won’t happen here too. Albertans think they can no longer live with people in Quebec. Many in Quebec have felt that way for decades. What went wrong? Why do so many of us turn towards the loudest voices? Why are so many of us so quiet? Why do so many of us hate the other side? Even our leaders seem to turn to the extremes. Our Member of Parliament in Steinbach offered coffee and treats for the Truckers’ Convoy when it passed nearby. He found time for them, but never found time for the Pride Parade. He clearly admired the extremists. The LGBTQ* community not so much. This was during the time of Covid-19 when we were all on edge. Many hated Covid restrictions. Many of the truckers thought that freedom meant they could do whatever they wanted. They wanted a country without rules or regulations.
We in Canada, and even more in the US, are deeply polarized. Yugoslavia can show us what can happen in such circumstances. It is not pretty.
Eric Hobsbawn, another brilliant British historian, wrote about extremists in his series of history books on Europe. He pointed out how
“in the period from 1880 to 1914 nationalism took a dramatic leap forward, and its ideological and political content was transformed. It’s very vocabulary indicates the significance of these years. For the word ‘nationalism’ itself first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century to describe groups of right-wing ideologists in France and Italy, keen to brandish the national flag against foreigners, liberals, and socialists, and in favor of aggressive expansions of their own state which was to become so characteristic of such movements. This was also the period when the song ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ (“Germany above all others) replaced rival compositions to become the actual national anthem of Germany. [Sort of like America First] Though it originally described only a right-wing version of the phenomenon, the word ‘nationalism’ proved to be more convenient than the clumsy ‘principle of nationality’ which had been part of the vocabulary of European politics since about 1830. And so it came to be used for all movements to which the ‘national cause’ was paramount in politics: that is to say for all demanding the right to self-determination, i.e. in the last analysis to form an independent state, for some nationally defined group.”
Love of country can be a beautiful thing. Who after all does not love her country? But when it turns to hating the other country, the rival, it can turn powerfully ugly. This is what all nationalists must guard against, whether they are Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump. As Hobsbawn wrote,
“The basis of ‘nationalism’ of all kinds was the same: the readiness of people to identify themselves as emotionally with ‘their’ nation and to be politically mobilized as Czechs, Germans, Italians, or whatever, a readiness which could be politically exploited. The democratization of politics, and especially elections, provided ample opportunities for mobilizing them. When states did so they called it ‘patriotism’, and the essence of the original ‘right-wing’ nationalism, which emerged in already established nation-states, was to claim a monopoly of patriotism for the extreme political right, and thereby brand everyone else as some sort of traitor. This was a new phenomenon, for during most of the nineteenth century nationalism had been rather identified with liberal and radical movements and with traditions of the French Revolution.”
And extremism and nationalism go together like rum and coke, but they don’t taste as sweet.
Throughout the Balkans, after World War II this became a big problem. Whether in Romania, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Serbia, or Croatia, this became a big problem. It is becoming a big problem in the United States today. Canada seems to be following its big brother into troubled waters. Hitler exploited it. Now Trump is exploiting it. Poilievre would like to exploit it. That’s how the world turns. But we must be careful. Look at Yugoslavia to see what could easily happen.