Good morning! Two seemingly secondary news prompted me to think about the topic of tradition. The traditions we remember at the beginning of January. How the holidays celebrated since our childhood have become a generator of hatred and separatism. How tradition in Montenegro is equated with Serbianness and everything else is washed away from it.
By clicking on the red part of the text, join our Viber community!
Taxi drivers and Night Wolves
There is no better way to explain phenomena and processes in society to a wide audience than to tie them to some paradigmatic behaviors of certain apparently marginal actors of the public scene in society. I’m a big fan of social media. Despite the many disadvantages of this chaotic space, social networks are a place where there are no traditional curators of the public speech – hunters in the dark, various nameless editors, owners and directors of the media, who behind closed doors decide who can and who cannot be in the public space. Social networks have given space and voice to the voiceless. Some use that space for good things, some for bad. In Montenegro, many have built their careers on social networks in the last ten years. Some earned promotions, directorships, and some even became ministers. When I think about it, I’m not sure what this “even ministers” mean to me, because that position has been so devalued that soon it will be rare to find a Montenegrin who was not a minister.
But, let’s get back to the topic – one such public tribune is Nebojsa Babovic, who started out as a civil environmental activist and ended up as an extreme Islamophobe, anti-Semite and Serbian nationalist. Babovic is an immigrant from Mostar. He was a supporter of DPS, SNP, Democrats, and eventually ended up in PES. I mention him because he appeared on my Twitter wall, praising Prime Minister Spajic for correcting himself since last year, when he wished all the best for Orthodox Christmas in Latin alphabet, and now he orthodoxly used Cyrillic alphabet.
This moment helped me to sharpen the thesis that the Serbian nationalists in Montenegro first stole the Cyrillic alphabet and then Christmas celebration on 7 January. This holiday and this letter, part of our common tradition, has become a weapon of identity struggle. There is no formula by which a Montenegrin who speaks the Montenegrin language can feel good today, on a day that we mistakenly call Orthodox Christmas.
The time that is supposed to be a time of peace and harmony, family gathering, celebration and joy, has become a time of fear of whether some hero in a drunken ecstasy will shoot at the returnees to Srebrenica, throw a firecracker into the yard of some Montenegrin, etc., etc. The Cyrillic alphabet, which is our heritage, has become a weapon for destroying the “Catholic” Latin alphabet.
And our national broadcaster celebrates Christmas as a Serbian holiday. Apart from the Serbian singing society and the Serbian nationalist fiddler and the leader of the Night Wolves, I have not seen anything Montenegrin on the broadcaster of all the citizens of Montenegro. Our tradition suddenly became exclusively Serbian. There is no place for Montenegrins in Orthodoxy in Montenegro. Thank you to the Church of Serbia.
All the decor of this holiday has become aggressive and violent. From now until 19 January and swimming for the cross. Montenegro has lost itself. Every year it is more noticeable. Whatever you think about the DPS rule, at least that space gave people autonomy and the right to choose. Now the border between the Serbian Church and the Montenegrin state has been erased.
I don’t know why, but taxi drivers fighting over foreign passengers on Christmas Day fit perfectly into this scene. It remains for those who truly believe to remember Christ and his example on this 25 December as well as on 25 December that passed two weeks ago. Agnus Dei, not the Night Wolf. Welcome the polaznik (*the first person(s) who visit(s) a family during Christmas), cook kale and break off a piece of Christmas bread.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of CdM)
