The key to a better Balkans is stimulating, not simulated dialogue

Written for Kosovo Online by Srdjan Garcevic, founder of The Nutshell Times

One of the more sobering formative political experiences for me was attending debates of the Israeli-Palestinian society during my time at the University of Warwick in the late '00s.

Besides my interest in debating and politics, I was drawn to them because they brought together some of the most stylish and good-looking people on campus (on both sides). Within minutes, however, these well-turned-out people, with carefully crafted arguments and stories of familial loss, would start raising their voices and scoffing at each other until things got very heated. Knowing people on both sides personally, I felt sad that they and their families had to suffer such huge and traumatic losses, but not being personally involved in the conflict, I was sorry that there did not seem to be a conclusion, and the whole thing devolved into a shouting match.

However, I found these debates useful because they took a very different approach to the one that we from the former Yugoslavia took to addressing our own past and ongoing conflicts.

The people who were not directly linked to many academic, media and non-governmental organizations mostly decided to steer clear of painful topics and focus on commonalities. However, those whose livelihoods depended on „peacebuilding", „reconciliation ", and „overcoming the past" tended also to avoid the debates I saw between the Israelis and Palestinians but created artificial events and networks where everybody was in complete agreement.

That could group-think be built on very banal declarations and policies with no real bite but which sound edgy enough (e.g. commonality of the Serbo-Croatian language and its dialects, state of SFRY memorials) for donors to pay for decent accommodation and occasionally speaking fees. However, that consensus can also be built on premises which are far from settled and which require relatively strong policing against dissenters on the part of the organizers. Many of them accept a very one-sided narrative of the current situation and history of the region and allow excesses of one side while being very censorious of fact-based objections from the other side. For example, you can have artists from one side who engage in overt nationalist propaganda, talking to people whose main contribution to the dialogue is opposing nationalism of their side.

Trying to chart an independent way through the local media landscape, I had multiple brushes with both types. Indeed, I thought the independent way was the way to go because, prior to going to Warwick, I wanted to join a prominent NGO that purportedly fought for civic rights and liberal policies as an activist. During their introductory training, any challenge to the nominally very left-liberal trainer's opinions (e.g. that it is unrealistic for bus drivers to speak all minority languages in Serbia and that class has a more significant impact on privilege in Serbia than other identity markers) was very promptly shouted down. Later on, attempts to engage in honest debate around certain outlandish credos (e.g. that one nation in the Balkans never harmed others) during these events and organizations were not treated as attempts to find a common understanding but rather as potentially career-ending moves.

My friends had worse experiences: many lost cushy engagements for refusing to play along. Those who did, i.e. the majority of employees in these organizations, tended to accept to live in fear from their bosses and donors and, despite knowing things don't really add up, resorted to the most freethinking and brave approach in line with the mission statements of their organizations: very private support to dissidents and public silence (or condemnation).

Come to think of it, while the Israeli-Palestinian debates from my University days certainly did not help diffuse the situation, at least everybody involved—and especially the onlookers—realized the tragic nature of the conflict and became interested in what was going on. Then, at least, after the debates, we would all go to a provincial club in West Midlands and bond over less controversial issues.

The simulated debates in the Balkans not only polarize but are also unedifying. Recently, a prominent activist from Novi Sad, who made light of the exterminations of Serbs, along with many other offensive statements, undermined his ostensible attempts for reconciliation but was celebrated for it by the foreign diplomats, further adding to the sentiment in Serbia that anything goes, when it is pointed against the Serbs.

This cottage industry of simulated dialogue also produces a lot of distorted material on the subjects and tries to censor anything that does not conform to its views (remember the outrage over Peter Handke's Nobel prize). This simulated world serves to remove any truly stimulating discussion and, by doing that, dehumanizes anybody who does not agree with its extreme priors, thereby siloing us all in echo chambers. It all has real consequences, as Priština regime is regularly refusing to meet with Belgrade counterparts to normalize relations.