When the shit hits the fan
My country has some kind of reputation for "ethnic tolerance," which pretty much means "not strating a civil war" here in the Balkans.
But now the "ethnic tolernace" has exploded (news source in English), and I don't know if this is a temporary misguided outburst of anger, or something worse.
Yes, there is tension of various degrees between the various ethnic groups here. Yes, there are ethnicity-related problems that are in fact social, economic and political. But:
It's much more complex than just ethnic tension in this case, but alas, ethnicizing the conflict is the path of least resistance, finding a convenient scapegoat instead of confronting the actual issues like organized crime and unsuccessful government (and don't forget the general tension from the economic crisis).
This protest should be agianst organized crime and the state institutions' failure to deal with it, and not against that boss's entire ethnic group. And it should be fuckin' peaceful... but it's too much to expect peace from our "nationalists" and "football fans".
It's not by chance that nationalism of the Neo-Nazi kind is the most successful populism of the now here in Bulgaria: these politicians give people who feel powerless some kind of power by finding them an easily identifiable and presumably easily defeatable enemy to blame for all their problems. It doesn't matter if that enemy is an ethnic minority, a religious minority or the gays; the underlying mechanism is the same.
But now the "ethnic tolernace" has exploded (news source in English), and I don't know if this is a temporary misguided outburst of anger, or something worse.
Yes, there is tension of various degrees between the various ethnic groups here. Yes, there are ethnicity-related problems that are in fact social, economic and political. But:
It's much more complex than just ethnic tension in this case, but alas, ethnicizing the conflict is the path of least resistance, finding a convenient scapegoat instead of confronting the actual issues like organized crime and unsuccessful government (and don't forget the general tension from the economic crisis).
This protest should be agianst organized crime and the state institutions' failure to deal with it, and not against that boss's entire ethnic group. And it should be fuckin' peaceful... but it's too much to expect peace from our "nationalists" and "football fans".
It's not by chance that nationalism of the Neo-Nazi kind is the most successful populism of the now here in Bulgaria: these politicians give people who feel powerless some kind of power by finding them an easily identifiable and presumably easily defeatable enemy to blame for all their problems. It doesn't matter if that enemy is an ethnic minority, a religious minority or the gays; the underlying mechanism is the same.