On Sunday we continued with the seminar. The theme of the second day was speficially right wing extremism in Serbia. We started with a lecture about "Versteckspiel"(= Hiding game). That means, that the nazis is Serbia are hiding, not admitting that they are fascists, but saying, that they are "nationalists, and that fascism is a movement from the 20th century, not existing in 21st. there is also a movement so called "nazis in suits", who pretend to be serious and scientific, not brutal and dumb.
To learn more about this topic we watches the film "vrela krv"(=boiling blood). In this documentary they showed many right-wing attacks, for example at the gay parade 2001in Belgrade, or at the Antifa-demonstration 2007 in Novi Sad and interviewed members of left-wing and right-wing organisations. There is a big controversy about this film, because the authors leave all interviews uncommented. In some audiences the reaction might be sarcastic laughter or loud "boo-calls"( as a sign of disapproval) like in the one I was sitting in, but in some audiences there was also clapping and cheering, when they showed the attacks or when members of the Orthodox church said, that all homosexuals are communists, satanists and disabled. Another controversy is, that when the film was presented, the directors invited all the Nazi groups like "obrac" and "1389", to have a dialogue.
But the question is: can you have a dialogue with intolerant people, who do not respect you? Or even worse, don't you give them a stage to promote their ideas, when you let them speak in public and don't you put them on the same level, where you are on?
Still, this film made many things clearer to me, and I can recommend it to anybody, who is interested in that topic.
After that we got some practical advices, how to deal with racism in school, what was not so relevant to me personally, but a very good lecture for the high-school students in the room.
The last task was to plan a activity for the 9th of november, so we gathered in small groups to and collected ideas, what to do, but also,how, were to get money from, how to inform people etc.
All in all I really enjoyed the seminar and it showed to me once again, that there is rightwing-extremism and racism in Serbia, where I am living now, and also in Germany, where I come from.
Rose
