UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

post-post-war world. 298 What is often neglected in contemporary dealing with Yugoslav socialist
past in post-Yugoslavia, is that the ―rejection of the socialist legacy caused marginalization of
antifascism as a value, despite the fact that antifascism is regarded as a foundation of a ―common
European identity.‖ 299 Moreover, as Catherine Baker argues, ―insisting on separating anti-fascism
and socialism ignored 45 years of their inseparability in Yugoslav public discourse.‖ 300
This trend notwithstanding, the broader dimensions of the situation after the collapse of the
country is often perceived as a deterioration of the standard of living, indeed a deterioration of
certain rights that were the result of the socialist rule. Furthermore, the (implicit) correlation in this
video between anti-fascism, Yugoslavism and, the post-Yugoslav situation, whereas the latter is
particularly apparent in the comments, is for the most part an expression of discontent over the
present situation of (alleged) degradation of humanness, of erosion of solidarity and genuine
interpersonal relationships, etc. In other words, reading the individual and collective (or wider
socio-political) levels together, this 4MO is also an expression of existential insecurity, typical for
any present. And all the more so for a present at the crossroads of perpetual social, political,
economic and technological change.
And even more for a present on the verge of losing the few witnesses to the making of the today
still dominant historical referential framework (no matter how hard one tries, WWII is still the
pinnacle event of the 20th century and everything that came later, at least for the western
hemisphere). And, on a very personal level, losing one‘s grandparents irreparably breaks the last
‗organic‘ link to a past that hence only remains accessible through historiographical, media,
personal narratives seems the only stable thing. In fact, in the eternal present and the industrious
production of ever new seminal events—but little remarkable or lastingly memorable ones—the
(perceived) coherence that the past used to have is necessarily withering away. Further adding to
this in post-Yugoslav countries is the contested memory of the WWII resistance movement: a
place of ideological post-socialist/Yugoslav struggles where invariantly it is problematised as
‗communist revolution.‘ This remains an ever present daily political topic even today and none the
less pervasive one online.
298 I am alluding here to the ―post-war dream,‖ as Pink Floyd once sang about, a utopian world of peace and justice
which rests upon the WWII victorious worldview, and was widely present in the political mythologies and popular
cultural spheres, both in the East and the West.
299 Tanja Petrović, ―Balkan Legacy of the 19th century and post-Yugoslav societies in the context of the EU
Accession,‖ unpublished paper.
300 Catherine Baker, ―‗Death to Fascism isn‘t in the Catechism,‘ 174.
150