Some things that the racist violence being promoted in the United States has in common with the violent ethnonationalism that destroyed the former Yugoslavia: they both happened in societies where most people thought the place they lived was too peaceful and progressive for the horror to be possible, and they both produced strong contemporaneous resistance, both from ordinary people refusing the hatred and from intellectuals articulating the alternative.
One of the leaders of the Belgrade Circle of Independent Intellectuals (popularly, the “Belgrade Circle”), formed in 1992 to reply to hatred, violence, and totalitarianism, was the novelist and literary critic Radomir Konstantinović, who warned about how easily totalitarianism and violence can begin to appear normal, and to make themselves invisible. The message seems timely again now, so I thought I would share some parts of it.
The trsanslations from Konstantinović are my impromptu ones, and they are kind of free. You can find the original text that is being used here: https://portalforum.rs/sta-su-govorili-radomir-konstantinovic-ziveti-s-cudovistem/ .
