On the eve of Saint Vitus Day
Today's far-right has ideological roots in a particularly Serbian brand of white nationalism
June 28th (in the Gregorian calendar) is designated by the Serbian Orthodox Church as the memorial day to Saint Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović and the Serbian holy martyrs who fell during the Battle of Kosovo, fought against invading forces of the Ottoman Empire in 1389. Hrebeljanović died in the battle, as did Sultan Murad, the leader of the Ottoman army, who was killed by the Serbian feudal lord Miloš Obilić.
A little over six centuries later, the gunman who opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand had the names of Hrebeljanović and Obilić inscribed on his guns. There were the names of other mediaeval military leaders as well, such as Charles Martel who led an army that defeated an invasion of Gaul (modern day France) from the Umayyad Caliphate in 732. But he appeared to have a particular fascination with the history of the Balkan region. It was while travelling there that he first appeared to begin making plans for the atrocity he would later carry out. According to The Royal Commission report into the shooting
“The individual was thus in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina between 25 December 2016 to 31 January 2017. It was during this time that he wrote to the Bruce Rifle Club, which we see as the first tangible indications of his mobilisation to violence.”
Less reported on in New Zealand, the Balkan connections were widely discussed in south east Europe. Kosovo's former foreign minister Petrit Selimi wrote on Twitter that the gunman was "inspired by a particular brand of white supremacist nationalism rooted in #Serbia". Adding "Wars and genocide perpetrated by Serbian ideologues, in Kosovo and Bosnia, seem to have become a point of inspiration for far right across the globe."
Bosnia's Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak, an ethnic Serb, condemned what he called "anti-Serb hysteria" that he felt had seized the region after the Christchurch massacre. "It is dangerous and irresponsible to establish a link between the crazy actions of a disturbed and sick person and an entire people," he said in a statement reported by France24.
The country's Serb co-president Milorad Dodik also criticised the "vile campaign" against his community. Dodik shares the presidency with Croat and Bosniak counterparts, under a tripartite presidency with one representative of each of the three major ethnic constituencies. This system has been in place since the end of the Bosnian war, a conflict where over 100,000 people- mostly Bosniaks- were killed.
Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dacic insisted "Serbia had nothing to do with" the massacre, and the ultra-nationalist Serbian politician Vojislav Seselj, president and founder of the Serbian Radical Party and a man previously convicted of crimes against humanity, spoke as if he was the real victim of the story. "The demonisation of the Serbs will continue until our country has surrendered," he told local media.
There is no evidence suggesting that the Christchurch shooter had any support of any kind from individuals or organisations in the Balkans. However Petrit Selimi’s deduction appears to be correct. A particular form of Islamophobia was mainstreamed in Serbia in the late 1980s, and has gone on to be influential far beyond the region.
Historian Radina Vučetić, an Associate Professor at the University of Belgrade, has written about what she terms “the Kosovo Myth”, a historical narrative of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo developed to serve the interests of Serbian nationalism. To promote the myth, media, film, music, theatre, literature and the arts were all mobilised.
“Indeed, Serbia’s entire history is rooted in the Battle of Kosovo. In 1989, when the 600th anniversary was celebrated, the Battle occupied a central place not only in historical memory, but also in the campaign of the new Serbian political elite. On the eve of the anniversary, there was not a single sphere of culture that did not resound with the Kosovo Myth.”
The 1989 film The Battle of Kosovo (Boj na Kosovu) directed by Zdravko Šotra and produced by the Serbian public broadcasting company (RTB), was also designed as a history lesson. Šotra stated that he wanted his film to highlight the importance of the Serbs as a bulwark to protect Europe against the Ottoman Turks. The newspaper Večernje novosti, in its review of the film following the premiere (which was attended by “high government officials and Church dignitaries”) highlighted the role of Serbia in protecting Europe, stating that the Battle of Kosovo was “lost for the Serbian state, but won for Europe, saved from the first and strongest wave of the Turkish invasion by the bodies of Serbian heroes in Kosovo”.
Following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, campaigns of ethnic cleansing were carried out in pursuit of a Greater Serbia in Bosnia and Kosovo, targeting Bosniak and ethnic Albanian populations respectively. These ethnic groups were predominantly Muslim, the descendants of Slavs who had converted to Islam during the centuries of Ottoman rule in the region.
Concurrently with the growth of the Kosovo myth, an Islamophobic narrative about the threat posed by Muslim populations in the region gripped the Serbian intelligentsia. For example, while Belgrade's Muslim community requested land for a cemetery, political scientist Miroljub Jevtić responded
"From land for the dead, the next step is to conquer land for the living. They will then seek a mosque, fully legitimately, but then, around the mosque, they will seek land on which to settle Muslims. Then, it will not be long before non-Muslims will leave, initially voluntarily but later under pressure. . . . What is planned is to settle Muslims in those areas, and to then step up the birthrate in order to achieve numerical superiority gradually."
This kind of rhetoric was a precursor to what is now seen across Europe. In April of 2024, the Dutch far-right activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek used her platform at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary to suggest that the white Christians in the West are being ‘replaced’ by Muslims.
“I know one thing for sure, and that is that if nothing changes, if we don’t start to seriously fight for our continent, for our religion, for our people, our countries, then this time will go down in history as the time when Western nations no longer had to get invaded by hostile armies in order to be conquered, this time will then go down in history as the period in which the invader was actively invited in by a corrupt elite. And not only did this corrupt elite invite the enemy in, they made the native population pay for it too. Everyone who has eyes can set it. The native, white, Christian population is being replaced at an ever accelerating rate”
This is of course, the Great Replacement theory that the Christchurch shooter named his manifesto after. Vlaardingerbroek’s speech was promoted to an audience in Aotearoa by Voices for Freedom co-founder Alia Bland.
In 2008 Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. At the time Austrian MP Heinz-Christian Strache argued that Kosovar independence was an attack on Serbia’s identity and that European nations had to band together to protect the “Christian Occident” and that a failing to do so would entail that “Europe is likely to experience the same fate as Kosovo”. When the attack happened in Christchurch, Strache was Austria’s vice chancellor.
Today, Kosovo is one of three Muslim majority countries in Europe (the others being Albania and Bosnia-Hertzigovina, none are currently members of the EU). For the far-right, Serbia is seen as a bulwark protecting Europe from encroaching Islam, just as Šotra intended with his film.
The Ottoman empire was carved up by the allied powers following defeat in World War I (a conflict that the far-right have at times attempted to portray as between the West and Islam). Greece had fought a war of independence from the Ottoman empire a century earlier, but between 1919 and 1922 war between Greece and Turkey occurred again over what territory would be in which state following the empire's demise. In 1923, a population exchange of 1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Turkey with 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece took place. The Muslim populations of the empire's former Balkan provinces, who had gained independence after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, remained where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries.
It was the rise of Serbian nationalism, bolstered by the Kosovo myth, that popularised the idea that these populations did not belong in Europe. This idea was embraced by the Christchurch gunman. In his manifesto sent to politicians and media before he carried out his atrocity, he had written “To turks…if you attempt to live in European lands, anywhere west of the Bosphorus, We will kill you and drive you roaches from our lands. We are coming for Constantinople and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city.”
“Turks” stand in for Muslims of all ethnicities, and “European lands” now apparently includes the settler colonies of the former British Empire. The shooter will be spending his sixth Saint Vitus day in Mount Eden Prison. The rest of us should use this day to reflect on how the nationalist myths that inspired his act of terror are continuing to be influential in politics throughout the Western world.