Good morning! It makes perfect sense that the energy generated by Novak Djokovic’s traveling nationalist circus ends up supporting a war crime in Ukraine.
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Djokovic’s nationalist circus
Djokovic’s traveling nationalist circus excelled yesterday. “Putin, we love you” chanted Novak’s fans in the stands in Australia. The whole world has felt what we in Montenegro suffer when it comes to the socio-political activism of the Djokovic family. Not that it is my concern, but the labels that are attached to Serbia and Serbs with such statements cannot bring them any good. Supporting a war crime and an authoritarian regime, which, in addition to exterminating Ukrainians, expels and kills the disobedient Russians themselves, cannot serve anyone’s honor.
If this was a serious country, which it is not (it wasn’t even until 30 August, let’s face it, but at least it was more stable)… So, if it was serious, it would have its own clearly defined policy of fighting against malicious foreign influence. As I have suggested many times, we would have a clearly defined and transparent way to sanction people like Djokovic and Jovana Jeremic, and we would ban them from entering the country and block their assets, even if they were the world’s top 10 people, as long as these people, who are foreign citizens, do not give up the effort that undermines the foundations of this state and society – by feeding divisions and supporting calls for the shutdown of the Montenegrin state. Instead, we, with the support of all political entities declare them as honorary citizens of our state and honorary citizens of our cities, or, as in the case of Jeremic, we choose them to be the face of the promotion of our tourism industry.
Novak Djokovic is a top athlete and talent. Hard worker. Perhaps the best tennis player of all time. Where did such odium for him come from? The answer is simple – nobody likes nationalists, except the nationalists themselves. From the beginning of his rise in the world of global sports, Djokovic met with mass disapproval and criticism. The way he emphasized belonging to the nation has long since become indecent in the civilized world. However, just waving the flag, although irritating, is not such a problem, until much more dangerous symbols began to appear among his fans and at his performances. Like when he promoted brandy branded with the image of Draza Mihailovic, or like the recent selfie with the Chetnik black flag.
Although he is a better tennis player than his father, Novak is a weaker nationalist than him. While Novak shyly gives hints of support to the circus around him, while he wholeheartedly supports the nationalist campaign in Montenegro, and casually hangs out with Dodik and Vucic along the way, his father is a much more serious victim of Serbian nationalist mythomania, and at the same time, the worst and most aggressive versions of the Great Serbian nationalism – the Montenegrin one. The Belgrade son of Montenegrin parents, Srdjan Djokovic, is the stereotype of a male child from a Montenegrin family in the Belgrade diaspora. A child who has been taught to love the land of his ancestors in the wrong way. To love it as Serbian Sparta, as a bulwark of the fight against Muslims and Catholics. Those and such interpretations of Montenegrin history, sponsored from Belgrade, are the biggest source of division in Montenegro.
Srdjan Djokovic is not a very smart man. A very smart person would not believe, for example, a sarcastic tweet with Steve Carell as the Australian general who resigned because of Novak’s treatment at the last Australian Open. That is why Srdjan is an easy target of illusory and dangerous ethno-nationalist mythomania, just as his son is an easy victim of the disinformation campaign about vaccines. Lack of education, on which excessive information is planted.
Tennis doesn’t give Novak enough time to systematically deal with ideology, but his father quite clearly classifies himself politically. The support of people like Nigel Farage, the billboards in support of Putin in Belgrade that he finances, and finally the last picture with the Night Wolves next to the flag with Putin’s face and “Z” aesthetics, say that this man knows what he is doing.
That’s why, despite my good will, I can’t understand Dritan Abazovic and trust him, as I told him on the show the other night. As long as he hugs and kisses guys like this, while he is told at promotions that he is the third son of Srdjan Djokovic, while Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic are his friends and allies, his criticism of two nationalisms can only seem insincere. His criticism of Montenegrin extremism can only be interpreted as the antagonism of an entire community. The community that borrows its ethnonym from the name of the country we live in, and should not be given any special treatment because of that, but it should not be discriminated against, either. The path to reconciliation and understanding cannot be the exclusion and antagonism of any group of people. Any of them.
That’s it for today and this week. See you again on Monday.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst
