Category Archives: Political Violence

The Water Tower: A Symbol of Resistance

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, Modern History, Polarization, Political Violence

Our guide Marda led us on a fascinating walk through the town of Vukovar in Croatia. This town in 1991 was at the time the sight of the largest siege since the Second World War. Frankly, I expected to see more war-ravaged buildings, but most of them had been cleaned up. I don’t blame them for cleaning it up. Nobody wants to walk through devastation permanently (except me). And it has been more than 30 years since the war ended.

 

The first building we saw, from a distance, was the water tower which had become the symbol of the resistance of brave Croatians to the 3-month Serbian siege. The Croatians see it as symbol of their glorious resistance, defiance, and, they think, invincibility.  I consider such ideas hubris. After the war, it was one of the very few buildings (some say only one) left standing.  And that was truly remarkable since it had been subjected to barrage from the 1st day of the siege to the last, 87 days later.

There are images of the tower that can be purchased in gift shops for tourists. Souvenirs of the war. Go figure.

The Water Tower as a symbol of the defence of Vukovar was officially adopted on 30 October 2020, and is illuminated in the colours of the Croatian flag, with the lyrics of the Croatian anthem.

From day 1 of the siege , each and every day of the siege, the Serbians tried to demolish the tower with gunfire, and amazingly, if not miraculously as the locals think, it stood. It was hit with bullets but never collapsed. In fact, it was hit 640 times in 87 days. The people of the town took its durability as a message of their own durability and that of their town. They thought, that as long as the tower was there the Town would stand.

 

There is another amazing element to this story. Each day 2 young men, Ivica Ivanika and his friend Hrvoje Džalto took it upon themselves, to climb to the top of the tower,  at night in the dark without flashlights, to avoid getting shot. They climbed up the tower in order place  a new undamaged and sacred flag of Croatia to replace the one filled with Serbian bullet holes. The two men were scared every time they climbed up, thinking they might be shot. But every night they succeeded. It took about an hour and half to climb up and back down again, but they did it every day, religiously.

 

The stairs were not in perfect condition.  Entire rows of stairs were missing. No one had asked them to do this. They just did it. Sometimes they climbed in the middle of fierce fighting. They usually started around midnight. And every day the Serbs shot the flag down, and every night the two young men replaced the destroyed flag. Soldiers said that everyday their spirits were boosted as a result.

 

Unfortunately, Ivica Ivanika lost his life shortly before the town fell to the Serbs. After the fall of the city, Hrvoje Džalto was taken prisoner and much later exchanged, but he died before the opening of the renovated Tower. They are the heroes of the town.

 

Today, the tower has been converted into a museum with a restaurant. Traces of the war are still evident. And they are leaving those marks as a reminder. I appreciated that.

 

I think it is important to remember what happened there. It was a place where brothers turned murderous.

 

Sadly that can happen. It can happen anywhere. That is what we must remember.

Vukovar: When a Demon becomes God

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, History, Modern History, Political Violence

 

 

The Flower House

Almost all the buildings in the city of Vukovar in Croatia  were completely destroyed. A few were left riddled with bullet holes.

 

I had read about Vukovar years ago in the two books by Michael Ignatieff and Tony Judt that I have referred to in these posts.  I have often thought about that war between brother states. I wanted to see the city. I thought it was important to understand it. It could happen here in Canada or in the United States.

 

Croatia had not been independent in 1,000 years until it declared its independence from Yugoslavia in1991 and then got tangled up in war with Serbia, also a former Republic of Yugoslavia as was Croatia, really a brother state.

 

An early skirmish in the 5 wars of the former Yugoslavia in what became briefly, Serbia, was the fight for Vukovar that was part of Croatia. Serbia, at great cost, temporarily “won” the war and gained control of Croatia, but that did not last long. It is now again part of Croatia. Why all the killing then? What were all those deaths for? Who knows? Maybe God. Not I.

 

Vukovar was once the Hapsburg episcopal seat. It was located directly on the Danube River and we were fortunate to visit it on this trip through the Balkans. As Michael Ignatieff said in his book Blood and Belonging,

 

“In 1991 it became the Croatian Stalingrad. Throughout the autumn, the Croatian national guard defended it to the last street against the heaviest artillery bombardment seen in Europe since 1945.”

 

They fought valiantly but eventually succumbed to the barrage until November 1991 the Yugoslav National Army (‘JNA’) which was dominated by Serbs, together with Serbian paramilitaries “liberated” the town. The “liberation” was much like the liberation of Fallujah in Iraq by coalition forces led by Americans where crumbled and flattened buildings stood behind the fighters as they drove around the city. Liberation, like beauty, is definitely in the eyes of the beholder. When the City of Vukovar was “liberated” by the Serbs there was, as Ignatieff said, “nothing left to liberate but a devastated ruin.”

 

 

C.S. Lewis, who was a wise man, said this about love of country: “We all know now that this love [nationalism] becomes a demon when it becomes a god.” He was referring to Nazism, but really it has much broader application. It can apply to any form of extreme nationalism, no matter where it is found. It can apply to Serbia, or Croatia, or Nazi Germany, or the United States, or Canada. No one is immune.

 

Lewis made another important point about love of country. And this attitude is becoming more and more common in places like the United States and Canada. This is the attitude that our ancestors were uniquely great. Many of us want to take photoshop to history to eliminate the flaws. Lewis realized that “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings.” No country is purely good. We must never forget that. If we do forget it, we don’t really love our country; we love a mirage. We love fake news. As well, if we forget this obvious fact, we begin to nurture a debilitating sense of superiority that can shred our own decency. We can become what we hate. Lewis also said, with such an attitude, “If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. This is what happens when a false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.” In particular, we must guard against using this false sense of superiority as an unjustified basis for cruelty or exclusion.

As Bob Dylan, another very wise once said: “You don’t count the dead with god on your side.” That is what we must guard against.

 

In one house, [shown above] which locals referred to as “the flower house,” the holes from bullets and artillery were resplendent. Apparently, the owner had tried to rebuild it but despite repeated efforts to get a building permit and constantly being rebuffed by the local council, he decided to let it be.  All he did was place a large number of flower pots around it, hanging from every window. I guess he was trying to say, ‘Take your permits and shove them.’

Nothing can grow in the Valley of Bones other than hate. And maybe a few potted flowers.

 

Warlords for Dangerous Times

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Extremism, Fear, Modern History, Pluralism, Polarization, Political Violence, Vigilantism

 

Tony Judt  described what happened in Yugoslavia when the country split up into many tiny pieces after the wars of the 1990s ruled by small men: “These were little more than organized bands of thugs and criminals.” Michael Ignatieff in his wonderful book, Blood and Belonging, said this about what happened when the warlords took over:

 

“Elegant episcopal palaces and monasteries, delicately arcaded squares left behind by the Austro-Hungarians, lie in ruins. Time has slid back five centuries. One of the richest and most civilized parts of Europe has returned to the barbarism of the late Middle Ages. Such law and order as there is, is administered by warlords.”

 

Countries such as Canada and the US, both federations like Yugoslavia, in which people had lived together for many decades, should pay attention. All this could happen here.

 

They were harrowing times. One might have asked what was Ignatieff was  doing there in such dangerous circumstances? He explored it driving through the country and everywhere he saw young men with rifles demanding obeisance or money or both. If you saw the recent film Civil War about what might happen in the US you will know what it looks like, namely,

 

“The ones I began meeting at the checkpoints on the roads leading off from the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity [that joined Zagreb and Belgrade] during Tito’s Yugoslavia and they were short, stubby men who in a former life had been small-time hoods, small-town cops [amazing how similar they can be] or both.  Spend a day with them, touring their world and you’d hardly know that most of them are serial killers.

 

Warlords not only dominate the war zones; they have worked their way to the heart of power in the authoritarian single-party states of Croatia and Serbia alike.

 

War criminals are celebrities in the Balkans. They have seats in the Serbian Parliament… Arkan [-one of these warlord] controls an eight-hundred strong paramilitary unit called the Tigers, who raped and tortured their way through eastern Slavonia in the Croatian war of 1991.  This odious thug, on the run from an Interpol warrant for an attempted murder in Sweden, is a parliamentary deputy and operates a number of immensely profitable sanctions-busting businesses…Ever the post-modern Prince of Darkness.”

 

 

The peculiar thing though was that these warlords, and their followers all claimed to be working for their “country”. That of course, meant the “country” that had broken away from Yugoslavia. These were the reduced nations to which they now claimed to owe allegiance.  As a result, they considered themselves, nationalists. Ignatieff agreed that the force that was driving them was nationalism, but was it? Is that an accurate description? As he said,

 

“The warlords are nationalists, but their convictions are uninteresting.  They are technicians of violence, rather than ideologues.  Earlier than everybody else they had understood that ethnic nationalism had delivered the ordinary people of the Balkans straight back to the pre-political state of nature, where Hobbes predicted, life is nasty, brutish, and short. In the state of nature, the man with a Zastava machine pistol and a Cherokee Chief is king.  For he can provide the two commodities everybody here craves security and vengeance.

 

Once the Yugoslav Communist state began to spin apart into its constituent national particles, the key question soon became:  Will the local Croat policeman protect me if I am a Serb?  Will I keep my job in the soap factory if my new boss is Serb or a Muslim?  The answer to these questions was no, because no state remained to enforce the old inter-ethnic bargain.  As a result, every individual rushed, pell-mell, to the next available source of protection:  the warlord.

 

For the warlord not only offers protection.  He offers a solution.  He tells his people:  If we cannot trust our neighbours, we must rid ourselves of them.  If we cannot live together in a single state, we must create clean states of our own. The logic of ethnic cleansing is not just motivated by national hatred.  Cleansing is warlord’s coldly rational solution to the war of all against all.  Rid yourself of your neighbors, the warlord says, and you no longer have to fear them. Live among your own, and you can live in peace.  With me and my boys to protect you.”

 

It was really a protection racket. Pay up or we will kill you. Pretty blunt demands.  No room for nuance. Pay or die. It was often that simple. And if you belonged to the wrong group, you had no choice. You just died.

 

Of course, this is entirely the wrong approach. In modern societies people are mobile and quickly mover around the world. In each place, people must learn to live together with other people who are different from who you are—we call this pluralism. That is who we much learn to live. Belonging without the blood. Either that or say hello to the warlords.

Conflict Entrepreneurs”

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason

 

A lot of people in America, and elsewhere, are going crazy over the shooting of Charlie Kirk. The killing of Charlie Kirk because the killer disagreed with him was completely despicable. At the same time, from what little I have learned about Kirk, in my he is not saint.  But he has generated a lot of controversy, and because he is now dead, a lot of hero worship.

 

The Utah governor, in talking about Kirk referred to “conflict entrepreneurs” that drown out the voice of the moderates, whose voices represent the majority. Most people don’t want to go to the far left or far right, as they see it. They want the temperatures to go down on debate, but they are stymied by these entrepreneurs. The social media algo rhythms amplify the voices of the extremists. There is no economic benefit to the social media corporations to look at the moderate’s views when people are so attracted to the views of the extremists. Social media rewards the views of the extremes because that is what engages the attention of people, so the social media gives people what they want, not what they need.

 

As CNN’s David Irvine said, “there is a market for crazy in America.” That is a bitter understatement  I think he is bang on right. There is no market for reasonable. There is no market for sane. At least, not in social media.

 

A lot of people are ignorant about political violence against the right.  A lot people are ignorant about political violence on the left. In both cases because their sources of news are very limited. A result there is plenty of ignorance to go around. As Alyssa Griffin, a conservative CNN commentator, said, “They are getting information from these rage entrepreneurs and are not getting the cold hard facts.” That applies to many people.

 

And that is unfortunate for all of us. We all suffer the consequences of ignorance.

The Soul of America

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I enjoyed listening to American historian Jon Meacham, the author of The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels, on CBS Sunday Morning. Robert Costa interviewed Meachum, asked him right off the bat, “What is the state of the American Soul?”  Meachum’s answer was appropriately blunt: “We are in a dangerous place. There was no ‘once upon a time’ in America. There is not going to be a happily ever after.” No those are for fairy tales.

 

Meachum did say that these are times where history is very important. History is always important, in my opinion. Hiding the truth as Donald Trump urges is not the answer.  Ugly truths must be confronted; not swept under the carpet. Meachum acknowledged to Costa: “there are times when you and I can agree what can be replicated. This is not one of those times”.

 

The television show included an outrageous claim by Charlie Kirk when he was alive: “Donald Trump is the guardian of western civilization.”  Even though Kirk has now been lionized by the right, that is a statement from a man who did not appreciate history. He also said, “the entire Democratic project [referring I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he was referring to the Party, not the system] is how quickly can we turn America into a hell hole.”  I know people in America who would drink up such stuff. Stuff like that is very popular on the right, though it is patent nonsense.

 

Costa asked Meachum why America reacted with such violence so often. To this Meachum said,

 

“Political violence erupts in America when there is an existential question—who is an American? Who deserves to be included in ‘We the people,’ or ‘All men being created equal’? When that is in tension, when we don’t have common agreement about that, then, if you look at it historically, violence erupts.”

 

Meachum said, instead, much more wisely, “We don’t want to end up in the situation where because you do not agree with someone you pick up a gun.” If America reaches such a stage—and it certainly looks like it might—the American project is bankrupt.”

 

Meachum asked a very good question of Costa: “Are we going to be able to see each other neighbors?”

 

Or will they only be able to see each other as enemies? If the latter, that country is dead.

 

Meachum put it this way:

 

“When we lose the capacity to engage in argument and dissent and debate peaceably, we are breaking faith with the American covenant. And the American covenant is that we live in contention with each other, but we’re not at each other’s throats.”

 

I wonder though if Meachum is right. It seems to me he is being a bit of a Pollyanna.  Meachum said, “this is why history is important.  There is not much in the current moment that we want. The country is about dissent, and respecting each other; it is not about hunting each other down.”

 

More and more, I see Americans as hunting each other down. More and more I see anything else as fairy tales.

 

 

Recurring American political Violence

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

As we all know, America has been inundated with violence, including, of course, political violence. It is everywhere and it keeps coming back.  The left blames the right; the right blames the left. But they are both responsible.

 

Here are a few incidents that stand out, but there are many. Usually more than one every day.

 

An assassin with a rifle tried to kill the candidate for the American presidential election, narrowly missing his head and nicking instead his ear. Some think God changed the direction of the bullet so that the bystander behind him was shot instead.  The American left is lucky Trump was not killed.  Had Trump been killed he would have been revered as a political hero for a century.  When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in 1968, he was not liked by 83% of the population. He has been a hero ever since.

 

Some acts of political violence have been incredibly violent. For example, the man who walked into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house and assaulted him with hammer. His wife had an armed detail, but that night she was in Washington, so he had no protection.   Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump made jokes about it. Another man walked up at the home of Representative Gerry Connolly in Virginian with a baseball bat looking for him and his staff members. Someone lit the door of Bernie Sanders’ house on fire. An obviously unwell man came to the house of Supreme Justice Kavanagh looking to harm him but was talked out of it. The list goes on and on. It will go on and on. Because Americans don’t want to do anything about it.  Except pour more guns into the fray to protect their leaders.

 

Americans are largely content with this. That is the only thing that surprises me.

 

Wisdom from Comedy News

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I know I have commented a lot on right-wing extremism.  But that is not to deny that left-wing violence is real as well. Recently, America experienced some and it was ugly. It was the shooting of young right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk by distant rifleman.

 

On the day after the shooting The Daily Show hosted by Michael Kosta had some interesting things to say. Some of it was even wise. Imagine that, wisdom from Comedy News.

 

First, they pointed out that presidents from both parties made good comments about what had happened. I particularly liked what president George W. Bush had to say:

 

“Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing views should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square.  Members of other political parties are not our enemies; they are our fellow citizens.”

 

But what did the current president have to say:

 

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we are seeing in our country today.”

 

Not as impressive as Bush. He was quick to blame the other side.

Kosta suggested that this was like saying, “My fellow Americans we must come together to destroy each other.” He carefully added, “I am not singling this guy out. This is how our society behaves now. A tragedy occurs instead of digesting and trying to understand everyone sets their feet and starts throwing punches immediately.”  Both sides immediately blame the other side except for the wiser ones like George W. Bush.

 

Kosta was reluctant to blame rhetoric, as bad as it is. It might be something complex that actually requires thinking.   He said, “Political is not going to go away if the people on the other side say exactly the right words from now on.” Of course, there was a lot of unhelpful rhetoric from both sides. Some on the left suggested Kirk was asking for it by his rhetoric. Some on the right said “they” were asking for it. Who do they mean by “they?”

 

Fox News host Jesse Watters,

 

“It’s happening. You got trans shooters. You got riots and L.A. They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us.  Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. Trump gets hit in the ear. Charlie gets shot dead. They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk’s cars.”

 

I am always surprised that people on right often completely forget about violence  on their own side. Same, of course, goes for people on the left. After all there has also been plenty of violence on the right and even, many like me, suggest, much more violence comes from the political right.

 

To this Kosta had a pretty good response: “I’m sure people in the media would like to talk about how they are responsible for what they’ve done and how they had better watch out, or else they’ll get what’s coming to them. But I think it would be better if we as a country understood that we have a problem with political violence. And we need to start thinking less about what they should do and more in terms of what we have to do.”

 

I wish I were better, but I know I have been as guilty as anyone in blaming others. Them in other words, rather than us. I must do better. We must do better. Turning such tragedies into a game of us against them is not very helpful. We have to get together and work together without turning them into the enemy. If we can’t do that we are done.

It would be nice though if our political leaders, like George W. bush got on side, rather than pouring fuel on the flame.

 

 

Rage Farming

Democracy, Extremism, Political Violence, politics

 

Every day, it seems, Canada is looking more like America. This is particularly true of the American right wing which seems to find endless support among Canada’s extreme right.

 

On April 17, 2025 the Canadian election Debates Commission, a non-partisan independent organization that organized and made all the rules for the English language debate in Montreal that night made the decision to cancel the customary news conference after the debate. We did not get the details but the Michel Cormier spokesperson for the Commission said the reason was because it could guarantee a “proper and safe environment” for the media [and presumably political leaders].

According to Rosemary Barton of the CBC who was present, that was because the Commission had allowed in people who were not actually part of the media and were “right wing activists” to come into the room and act as if they are media. She said, “it made for a very fraught environment… and there were a number of conflicts.”

These expressions “left wing” and “right wing” are really becoming increasingly irrelevant. The same goes for “liberal” and “conservative,” or even “progressive” and “unprogressive.”  The issues are too diverse to be covered by such rough blocks. We need much more nuance than such expressions allow for.  I am as guilty as everyone in this respect, but they do at best signify a direction of views.

CBC host and commentator David Cochran made an important comment:

“Democracy is fragile. It’s not guaranteed and it has to be fought for a protected.  Not just at the big moments like leadership debates but on all the small moments in between. The rage farming that is gone into politics is corrosive, destructive, and toxic and it is disrupting the norms and the values civic virtue in this country. And it boiled over tonight. The temperature needs to come down.”

 

This is a lesson our neighbours to the south have forgotten and Canada seems to be headed in the same direction. More and more we see this rage farming everywhere. At protest rallies, political events, and really everywhere people engage in politics, the extremists are doing their best to prevent others from engaging in civic debate and discussion which are vitally necessary to maintain democracy. Extremists on the right and the left must be stopped. Cooler heads must be given their right to speak as well as the hotheads. Everywhere.

We still have a democracy. It’s not perfect, but it is our democracy. We need to protect it. Everyone of us must do our part.