On this day, with the memory on the suffering of Jews, it is our duty to send a strong message against contemporary manifestations of ideologies of hatred, that are neither strange to Montenegrin society, but also to take a proactive attitude.
Nowadays, antifascism in Montenegro is unfortunately still the concept of fight against conquered enemy, 70 years ago. In modern conditions, changes in constellations of international and internal relations, and political system; fascism unfortunately has adjusted and has continued to reside in adapted various forms, of often individual and ad hoc character, while we, as the society, got stuck in identification of the enemy. This is the image of part of Montenegrin society that fails to understand how much the world has changed since the time of partisan cinematography, and how fascism nowadays is relevant in its essential meaning – attitude towards diversity and social and political climate that encourages co-existence and/or pervasion of diversity or promotes and institutionalizes its discrimination. And how fascist social and political practice has rooted within all parts of the society, no matter if they rhetorically advocate for or against the principles that are symbolically related to fascism. And this is the greatest challenge of modern Montenegrin society – to identify elements of fascism, not only in those social structures that are traditionally connected with intolerance towards diversity, such as national community.
In its moments of crisis, Europe has proven to be vulnerable on strengthening of political sides that are prone to radical social options. However, Europe has always managed to generate adequate ideological and political movements that managed to defeat retrograde fascist tendencies and to regenerate the continent on the trace of humanistic liberal tradition. In that manner were created political systems that promote tolerance of diversity and that provide mobilization of all creative social potentials. Or we will deepen the development of civil society, where identity differences would become cultural wealth, and political and economic system would become institutional framework for the respect of diversity and not its discrimination. We are aware that in Europe exists the trend to strengthen the right-wing parties that unfortunately generate the power from a variety of dissatisfactions, which modern societies face with, and it is our duty not to allow the strengthening of covered fascistic ideas, but to spread the cloak and refer to them directly.
We use this opportunity to remind on this occasion on publication of Civic Alliance that has been published this year “How we won (anti)fascism”
https://gamn.org/images/docs/cg/GA-publikacija-o-antifasizmu.pdf.
Edin Koljenović
Program Coordinator
