Šapić is right: a monument to Draža in the middle of Terazije is a great idea. Right where the fascists hanged people during the occupation. And since Draža is getting a monument, Mladić better get ready. Instead of having children scribbling his face on buildings, we will have a beautiful monument and round the clock police or military guard around it (perhaps we could use the new recruits who will start mandatory military service next year) to prevent anyone from throwing eggs at it. Just like they did with Tudjman’s monument in Split back in the day. Especially now that eggs are basically free, as one minister said.
Let’s leave our neighbors to their worries, let’s also ignore the local minister and his eggs, and return to Šapić. Nothing would illustrate the nature of the current government better than a monument to Draža. And nothing would highlight the continuity between that government and the behavior of Chetniks under Draža’s command during World War II quite like a monument to Mladić. This would finally showcase the supreme value of bloodshed in Serbia under the new Radicals. That’s why Šapić is right. Let’s stop playing games and pretending, and instead – let’s hit the residents of Serbia with the truth. You wondered what kind of country, exactly, you were living in – now you know.
Milivoj Bešlin, Srđan Milošević, Milan Radanović and others are terribly mistaken. They talked about Chetnik crimes thinking that those proposing the monuments didn’t know about them, and that once they hear the truth, they will retreat, reconsider, and ultimately give up on this idea. Bešlin, Milošević, Radanović… they don’t understand that it is precisely because of the crimes that a monument to Draža is being sought; that’s why Mladić keeps popping up on walls throughout Belgrade. Where do they even get the idea that these people don’t know the truth? They are seeking all that precisely because they know that truth and because, for utterly twisted reasons, they like that criminal truth.
But Šapić is also half a man. Instead of saying that he is not ashamed of Draža, his Chetniks, and their crimes and adding that, if it were possible, he would join them in their deeds because he is proud of them, he mumbles and prevaricates. He is proud of anti-fascism, says we need to put an end to Serbian divisions, and that it’s no small thing that Serbs had two entire anti-fascist movements, that Draža was a great hero in World War I, and that he was decorated by the United States and France for his involvement in World War II. And that’s where he ruins it all. That kind of doubletalk is nauseating – it’s as if Šapić is speaking both in Cyrillic and Latin script at the same time.
To clarify what I mean by this – Šapić thinks and acts in Cyrillic, and justifies himself in Latin. Because it’s not true that Serbia had two anti-fascist movements: it only had one; the other quickly showed itself to be collaborationist. If he were really proud of domestic anti-fascism, Šapić would behave accordingly and respect the facts about Serbian anti-fascism and about Serbian collaborators alike. But he does not respect those facts because he doesn’t understand or care about anti-fascism. Nor does he consider the collaborators to be worthy of contempt, as they deserve.
His justification reaches its peak in invoking the decorations Draža received from the United States and France. Since when is it important in Serbian Cyrillic what the United States and France think and do, and whom they decorate? Because if it were important, then he would also respect the stance of the United States and France about the wars of the nineties, and about Draža’s direct military descendant, Mladić, whom these countries consider nothing more than a convicted war criminal, just as Draža himself was for Serbia (and Yugoslavia). In Latin, however, for Šapić, France and America become moral examplars when it’s time to glorify Draža.
And if he really looked at France as an example of morality (which sounds absurd, but let’s humor it for a moment), then he would know that heroism from World War I is no guarantee for principled behavior in World War II. A notorious example is the French hero from World War I, Marshal Pétain, who became the embodiment of collaboration and moral decline in World War II. Like Draža in Yugoslavia, Pétain was tried after the war in France and sentenced to death, but De Gaulle saved him from death and condemned him to life imprisonment instead.
To ensure the reader doesn’t get the wrong impression, so that Yugoslavia doesn’t come off as vengeful and France as merciful, take a look at Srđan Milošević’s book “History on Trial,” where the author compares the attitudes toward collaborators in these two countries and shows that France was significantly more vengeful and less committed to justice and law in dealing with its collaborators than post-war Yugoslavia was with its own.
Šapić presented the proposal for a monument to Draža precisely at the beginning of the new school year which also brought us the new National Primer. It’s completely unclear why that textbook was needed, or who it’s for, as everything it contains was already in the curricula for classes from the group of so-called national subjects. Anyway, right after saying that there’s no money for teachers, the Minister of Education also said that these same teachers should use the new/old textbook to strengthen national identity, so that with a strong sense of national identity, children will love members of other nations more.
The minister is lying, just as Šapić is lying when he says that the monument to Draža should end the so-called Serbian divisions. Of all historical figures, did Šapić really think of Draža to harness in the promotion of reconciliation and tolerance? As if he didn’t know Draža’s and, in general, the Chetniks’ (murderous) attitude towards members of their own nation who disagreed with them. He knows about this, just as the Minister of Education does and has been an important cog in the machine of hatred towards others that her party has put into operation for the past three decades. And so, because of them, let there be a monument to Draža on Terazije. If Šapić and the ministers lie – the monument does not.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 05.10.2024.
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