Karadzic, at long last
Karadzic has, finally, been arrested after some thirteen years in hiding. It’s on almost all the front pages and it seems to mark a point of change - the Serbs who willingly hid this mass murderer for so long seem to have lost the necessary support to keep up the evasions, which may mean the lunatic nationalist movement that Karadzic whipped up to a murderous fury is, perhaps, abating.
Karadzic interests me because he was a pseudo-Monarch of the most clearly defined sort. Almost devoid of real belief himself he used nationalism to gain power. Nationalism is a bizarre idea since it pre-supposes that one has a ‘homeland’ or that one’s race (whatever that is) has some sort of sacred right to a specific space from which it can exclude all others who are not of that ethnicity. Logically, then, one should lock oneself and those who are like-minded in a cage and exclude everyone. As we know only too well from the religious cults around us here in the US, that sort of enclosed society leads rapidly to genetic problems. So, in fact, nationalism when strictly followed, leads to unsavory birth defects and the implosion of the race that was supposed to be kept pure. How does that make sense?
Similarly, the idea of a homeland is against the dictates of nature. Human beings have been migrating since before they were even recognizable as human beings, and we are still doing it. To claim that part of Serbia, or the Middle East, or the USA is someone’s holy homeland may be a statement that reflects on politics, but it doesn’t correspond to reality.
Similarly ‘race’ is almost impossible to ascertain, since most of us have all sorts of mixed backgrounds, and anyhow, we all started in Africa perhaps 4 million years ago, so race is a somewhat bogus construct at the best of times.
Nationalism therefore may be appealing to some, but it is based on a total failure to recognize some basic facts in nature. No one has any indisputable right to any place; and racial isolation is self-destructive.
It takes a charismatic leader to peddle such untruths successfully, and those who most wish to accept such simplistic answers are surely Orphans at their most frightened. These are the people who want to believe something, anything, as long as it’s not too complicated. They clearly don’t want to examine the terms they use, or think about the logical implications of what they say. Such primitive thinking can only be successfully promoted through massive effort.
It’s time we all used our efforts for more productive ends, isn’t it? So why do so many people keep doing the opposite? Fear will do that to us, any of us.
Which is why I’m so pleased that enough people showed enough courage to get Karadzic arrested. It was time to turn the tide; Courage, not fear.
