The Difference Between Patriotism And Nationalism Is A Thin Line

Hatred and evil respect no boundaries or rules

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

• Clarence Darrow

True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

• Robert Reich

It was the Spring of 1994. The war in Bosnia was winding down, and I’d been in Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia working for a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on getting food, medicine, and clothing to people in need. On this particular weekend, I’d taken a few days off to explore Belgrade. I was in a coffee shop on the Knez Mihailovic in central Belgrade as the shop owner, an ultra-nationalist Serb, regaled me with tales of Serbian superiority. He was so convinced that Serbs were the “Master race” that he proudly traveled into Bosnia on the weekends to “hunt Muslims”- his words, not mine.

During my weekend in Belgrade, I heard numerous people justify Serbian intransigence and belligerence in the name of national superiority and survival. The argument they almost universally used- “Samo sloga Srbina spasava”- translates as “only unity will save the Serbs. I’ve also heard it translated colloquially as “only where there are only Serbs will Serbs be safe.”

It was my first experience with virulent nationalism, and it left me sick to my stomach. I encountered many people who considered Bosnians sub-human and “less than” solely due to their Muslim faith. They had no problem with the idea of expelling Muslims from anywhere they deemed to be Serbian territory (killing them if circumstances required it). “Ethnic cleansing” was a term made famous by the Serbian army and paramilitaries during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia…and Serbs, in general, had no problem with it.

“Samo sloga Srbina spasava”

My office was in the center of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, which until the fall of the former Yugoslavia, had been a majority-Albanian province. When the Yugoslavian federation collapsed after the death of Josep Broz Tito, the 20% Serb minority in Kosovo managed to seize control of the economy and all military equipment and bases inside Kosovo.

The minority kept the 80% Albanian majority in a state of constant terror. At one point, an Albanian human rights group based outside of Kosovo estimated that the Serbian secret police had mistreated one out of every two Albanian Kosovars. A member of the secret police lived across the street from the Albanian family with whom I happened to be staying. He told me matter-of-factly one day that when war came to Kosovo, he would personally kill the entire family…and me with them.

He wasn’t kidding.

“Samo sloga Srbina spasava”

I received death threats on my office phone a few times a week. They followed a predictable pattern- Serb accent, poor English, and a promise to kill me. It quickly became tiresome, and I finally made a game of it by telling callers to come and find me. It wasn’t the wisest approach, but even death threats become routine after a while. No one ever came to my office, though I made no secret of its location. I stood out like a sore thumb, and I was one of two Americans that I knew of in Pristina at that time. I was nothing if not easy to find.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

• Howard Zinn

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

• Richard Aldington

This experience left me with a profound distaste for nationalism. I grew disgusted by those who had no problem with atrocities committed by one of their own, even as they condemned the actions of other ethnic groups. The appalling double standards Serbs used to justify extrajudicial killings and atrocities became my day-to-day reality. For someone who grew up in a place where my idea of violence was a snowball fight, murder and mistreatment without consequence were difficult to reconcile.

I raise my experience in Kosovo and Serbia as a cautionary tale. The horrors I saw and the stories I heard during the war in the former Yugoslavia weren’t things that could only happen there. Such atrocities and their aftermath can happen anywhere humans find cause to de-humanize and “otherize” those not like themselves.

Regardless of the differences, the desire to place oneself over another is as old as humanity itself. And it could happen here in America. It wouldn’t even be much of a stretch. When one considers the number of militia and hate groups currently active in this country, some would jump at the opportunity to kill or oppress those they hate.

It may not be “Samo sloga Srbina spasava,” but the line separating America from where we currently are and actively nationalist terror is exceedingly thin. If you think I’m kidding, consider what some of the people responsible for the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol stand for.

They didn’t build a gallows on the Capitol grounds for nothing.