You seem to have skipped a few things. First of all, anti-fascist demo was not banned, Dacic himself explained it one day after he said that both demos are banned.

Secondly, it’s not like we ‘had nothing better to do’, we had a PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED march to the memorial for the hanged anti-fascists during the Nazi occupation of Serbia.

Thirdly, there was no contact between us and Nazis (let alone any fight). They only threw one torch over the police cordon, but it didn’t hit anyone.

And, just for the record, fighting fascism does not distract you from fighting all other kinds of oppression, au contraire.

Next time (9 November 2009), do consider joining anti-fascists instead of just blabbering around.

Serbia is having much more serious problems than some dumb shave-headed fools typing something on their website. The authorities use this to distract people’s attention from real problems such as Kosovo, poverty, unemployment, corruption, etc.

Firstly, the nazi imbecils scheduled the rally on that October day, then the anti-fascists organized the anti-rally on the same day. Then Serbian Police Minister, Da?i?, forbidden both rallies. Then, when that day came, the nazis didn’t appear (pobably due to many police forces in the city center). But the anti-fascists appeared in spite of the ban and held the rally. So when they (the anti-fascists) had nothing better to do, they went to the Trg Republike and, naturally, started fighting with the Radovan Karadži?’s supporters who had been sitting there for last 3 months or so, protesting every day. Then they arrest some people, nobody knows whether they are of the anti-fascists or of the Karadži?’s supporters.

And then, they put it on news, and everybody talks about that, instead of talking about Kosovo problems, the jerks in Serbian Parliament having salaries 5 times bigger than average salary in Serbia, etc.

It’s all a show for the naive Serbian people, while they are getting robbed by the politicians. That’s the sad situation in Serbia, country controlled by the mass media.

Sorry about my Tarzan English, I gave my best.

Great blog, I enjoy reading it, I discovered it few days ago and it has some very good posts. Keep up the good work, hope you’re having nice time in Serbia!

You made a good point there. I think I would actually agree with you in that sense. It is best to keep curbs on such a dangerous and violent idealogy and try to prevent its promotion.

I think people should be free to think and believe whatever they want as long as it does not cause physical or psychological harm to others – which is certainly not the case with neo-Nazism.

Your question: “Is it OK to ban something just because the majority don’t hold the same view?” is in this case equal to: “Is it OK to ban MURDER/GENOCIDE/TORTURE just because the majority don’t hold the same view?”

The question of Nazis and fascists in Serbia isn’t about hate-speech, it’s about their actions, and actions of Nazis and fascists 60 years ago. Banning those organizations is both paying respect to our grandparents, as well as teaching younger generations to recognize fascism and fascist speech (which can often be heard in the Parliament, on TV, the Internet, etc.). If it’s not banned, it will become mainstream form of expression and as such will be harder to isolate later on…

In Serbia, we have things like beating up of homosexuals, Roma, people of different skin color or belief, etc. as a day-to-day thing. Their actions speak much louder than words…

P.S. Being indifferent to fascism and Nazism is “extreme”, being against it is “normal”.

Also, Viktor, you say that neo-Nazis base their ideas on violence. I do remember seeing many cases of neo-Nazis attacking people, especially the spate of murders/attacks in Russia on non-white citizens. All neo-Nazi violence should certainly be punished by law. To be honest, I didn’t really know a lot about neo-Nazism, and at first I was thinking it’s an idea and an idea should not be banned. After reading some more, I agree with your point about neo-Nazism being legislated against – it’s a vile ideaology.

However, I also feel that by banning something completely only serves to push it underground even more and perhaps further away from the eyes of law enforecement. If it’s in the open and they can express their views, the police can keep tabs on them and react easier if laws governing hate or violence are broken.

As I said, I don’t know a lot about the neo-Nazi and anti-fascist movements, and so I may be wrong in what I say, but I’m just throwing out these ideas and questions to encourage some discussion on the topic.

Neo-Nazis base their whole philosophy on violence – that is something that falls out of the “we agree to disagree” and falls under “punishable by law” category.