Vucic and Ljotic

Vucic couldn’t have chosen a better day to rehabilitate Dimitrije Ljotic than Victory Day.

The logic is simple. Ljotic’s men, fascists though they may have been, sang Serbian patriotic songs. Thus, they were patriots. This is why their songs are worth remembering on Victory Day. Unlike the songs sung by Serbian Partisans. Those are not suitable. Why? What a silly question. Because the Partisans were commanded by a Croat and Croats are the Serbian archnemeses. This is why the songs of the liberators of Belgrade aren’t sung in Belgrade any more.

Thus, using this simple logic, Aleksandar Vucic rehabilitated Dimitrije Ljotic. This has not been officially declared yet, but the logic is relentless.

This simple logic, however, was unavailable to historian Dejan Ristic. He confidently explained that the song which was sung by Serbian fascists was written by the poet Momcilo Nastasijevic long before Ljotic’s men were born. This doctor of history didn’t stop to ask why, out of the many Serbian patriotic songs out there, Dimitrije Ljotic chose this one.

The answer could’ve easily been found with the man who dedicated his life to studying Serbian poetry. Because, you see, Nastasijevic is one of the main characters of Radomir Konstantinovic’s “The Philosophy of Parochialism”. In that book, among other things, he wrote that Nastasijevic “by preaching the eternally tribe-like character of the Serbian culture and spirit, in general”, called for “Serbian culture to abandon the West and return to the melody of the motherland”, that in his “crusade against the Westernization of the Balkans and the loss of the tribal soul” he claimed that “the West has lost not only its essence… but also its singing voice” and that “his articles, especially those published in Narodna odbrana… prophesied, with the voice of a tribal seer, the fall of the national soul into the hell of the West”.

This is basically the deepest, most essential and, most of all, very personal message which Aleksandar Vucic sent to the world on Victory Day and Europe Day.

Translated by Marijana Simic

Peščanik.net, 12.05.2021.