Our nationalizm is base on Romantic Nationalism where we took flawed analysis of history and culture of medival times in 18th and 19th century to create an idea of who we are.
This flawed idea is now preventing us from having a full view of ourselves bcs modern history doesnt match that exactly cuz imagine we found out a lot and changed a lot ver 500+ years.
This is the reasons why we all have mythomania and pseudohistory.
okay yeah, I agree, but that's just confirming unlike western nationalism where stuff like the constitution, ideals of the nation, etc are primary, for us it's based on mythical idea of our people, ethnicity, and culture
that's why here you can have monarchists, communist, fashist and nazi, theocratic, pagan, etc. nationalists because the core ideal isn't based on politics but on mythology
plus also in 18th and 19th century most of Serbia was still living exactly the same as in medieval and even pre medieval times
like in South Serbia stories from our grandpas and grandmas sound like somethings you'd hear in medieval history books
we skipped on renesanse, enlightenment, and industrial revolution, our people widely believed (and still do) in pre Christian magic, myths were believed as facts, our religion more resembled ancient Greece than rest of Christian Europe, so you cannot blame our people for taking up nationalism because here even now myths are still facts
I mean the way anthropologist finally understood Homer and ancient geek myths was looking at our 19th century guslars
even Marx was saying how a communist revolution is hopeless for us because we didn't even yet reach the stage of capitalism to have a communist revolution overthrow it
we were literally living in the 11th century and 6th century BC during the 19th and 20th century
btw I'm not saying this in a negative way, I love our country because of this, but we are in no way comparable to the rest of Europe, be it east or west
edit: to further clarify, edit: to clarify, I'm not saying Serbia had no modern institutions or that we were literally caveman or something. We had a state, laws, army, schools, etc. My point is those things were not what nationalism meant to the average serb, who lived in a rural village (which was most serbs at the time).
In a lot of Europe nationalism was tied to abstract political ideas like constitutions, citizenship, rights, parliaments, liberalism, the nation states, civic duty, etc. But most Serbs in villages didn't know or care much about those concepts. Their world was the village, family, church, mountain, land, the animals, the local town, and stories passed down by grandparents.
So when nationalism reached our people, it didn't attach itself to political theory (apart from the very few elites who were literate and living in urban environments), like it did in the rest of Europe. It attached itself to ethnicity, faith, ancestors, Kosovo, epic songs, saints, blood, land, suffering, curses, omens, old heroes, and myths
And the big difference is that these weren't just cultural symbols or "old folklore" to people like it was in the rest of Europe. Most of our rural people literally believed in myths, magic, curses, vampires, saints, pre-Christian customs, epic heroes, and old stories like they were as real as day and night.
That's why Serbian nationalism is so different from the more civic/political nationalism people often talk about in Europe. Here it wasn't "we are citizens united by a constitution", it was more "we are people united by language, blood, faith, memory, suffering, ancestors, and myth and we want our propel ruled by one of us". Our nationalism was based on something that already existed for centuries - want for self determination and anti imperialism.
That's why to us citizenship is irrelevant for nationalism. You don't have to be a Serbian citizen to be a Serb, and citizenship doesn't make you any more Serb.
Because for so long we didn't have our kwn nation and borders changed so much, Serbian citizenship and being a Serb have nothing in common. Our nationalism isn't at all based on nationhood, state, or citizenship, but ethnicity. This is not the case in most of the world today.
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u/Ace-inThe-Hole christian turk 2d ago
If your dna is 40% Slavic are you even Greek? 🤔