Dr. Hoare’s Balkan excesses need… anti-nationalist critics

Markos Attila Hoare

I first came across Dr. Marko Attila Hoare (and his blog here) by reading his vehement critique (here) against Noam Chomsky.

His position on Chomsky -which I found rather extreme– was to label him a «genocide denier», as regards the Srebrenica massacre. His reasons for this seemed to me… rather dubious; they are partly the result of a rather extreme conceptual dichotomy («Procrustean» I would say) that Dr. Hoare draws on a meta-level, e.g. in his article «The Left Revisionists»:

http://nwglassblowing.com/BalkanWitness/hoare.htm (November 2003)

Admittedly, I found this article to be quite amazing, as a useful source of valuable information and sharp insights about former Yugoslavia and about the Bosnian War: -Insights that can undermine constructively many widely prevalent myths and misconceptions, especially the mistakes of  people who supported Milosevic, etc.

On the other hand, I also think that Dr. Hoare‘ s reasoning was partly based on a serious methodological error; a conceptual dichotomy or mutually exclusive Logic disjunction ( Black XOR White) which is false and -politically- extremely dangerous. (I will elaborate on this later…)

There is a profile of Dr. Hoare here, where my… initial inquisitiveness about his middle name «Attila«, as well about his anti-Greekness was resolved –with a smile:

Interviewer’s QUESTION:

• Who are your political heroes?

Dr. Hoare’s ANSWER:

• Those with whom I most identify are Tony Blair, Latinka Perovic[1] and Stjepan Mesic. Those whose historical contribution to human emancipation I most appreciate are Josip Broz Tito and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ah, well…

So, according to the (39-year-old) British professor Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, Noam Chomsky is a «genocide denier», but… Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is «the greatest contributor to HUMAN EMANCIPATION«(!) rather than a perpetrator of the Armenian[2] and Greek Genocides.

• Hm…. I guess Marko-Attila was probably raised as a Kemalist; «son of an Englishman and a Croatian woman» but… MAYBE also  partly Turkish? 🙂 UPDATE: All these remarks are -regrettably- wrong; see the comments’ section, for further details.
  

• Moreover… WHAT the hell does he find so special about… Tony Blair? (bliah….)

Hm… perhaps Dr. Hoare wants to have… powerful friends in several NATO-loving countries. At the moment, he is regarded almost as a national hero, in Bosnia, «Macedonia«(=FYROM) and Croatia (his mother’s country). Ιt was also… frightfully nice and thoughtful of him, to praise Mr. Tony Blair… 😉 (not to mention his… unprecedented, unsurpassed GIFT to Turkish NATIONALISM, about Kemal… )

Coming back now, to Dr. Hoare’s positions on Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war, according to him (his 2003 – article mentioned earlier) everyone belongs to one of two (and only two) «camps»: -The «orthodox» camp and the «revisionist» camp, defined by him as follows:

Internationally, political opinion has been divided into two camps characterized by their conflicting analyses of the crisis and views of the correct international response. On the one side were those who viewed the war as a result of Serbian aggression and expansionism and who generally advocated military intervention by the West in response. On the other side were those who viewed the conflict as a civil war between competing nationalisms (Serb, Croat, Muslim, and Albanian) in which the Serb side was if anything less to blame than the others. They tended to blame Western interference for catalysing the conflict and to reject military intervention against Serbian forces

For the sake of convenience, we may refer to the first camp as the ‘orthodox’ and the second as the ‘revisionist’…

I.e.

• The «orthodox» camp, according to Dr. Hoare, is those people who agreed 100% with every single aspect of NATO‘s policies, including the clumsy and deadly bombings of Serbia (causing immense innocent human casualties).
• The «revisionist» camp according to Dr. Hoare, is every… lefty intellectual disagreeing with NATO’s policies, automatically assumed to be nothing-but-a vehement Milosevic fan, a «genocide denier» and an islamophobic Serbophile… stalinoid bolshevik – to express Dr. Hoare’s thoughts VERY precisely in total honesty and… anti-nationalist playfulness! 🙂

One disastrous political side-effect of this (black-and-white) type of dichotomy is the demonisation of practically anyone criticising any aspect of NATO’s policies… (E.g. conveniently labeled a «genocide denier» for sinister reasons). This particular attitude (widespread in the late nineties) had very real negative repercussions:

E.g. in the internet discussions of 1999-2002, anyone criticizing e.g. the savage NATO bombings of the Chinese Embassy and the TV building in Belgrade, or the deliberate bombing of Serbian civilians on a train, was IMMEDIATELY labelled a «Milosevic sympathizer» and/or a Stalinist / fascist / commie «genocide denier», by many American net-posters…

Consequently, I am not happy about the rationality of Dr. Hoare’ s extreme lashing out against Noam Chomsky, as well as with some of his other views. However, I also do see his numerous valid points on certain other issues (e.g. the immense, genocidal war-crimes committed by Bosnian Serbs).

So… WHO is this guy? According to Wikipedia,

Marko Attila Hoare (born c. 1970s) is a British historian of the former Yugoslavia who also writes about the current affairs of Southeastern Europe – the Balkans including Turkey and the Caucasus.

I also heard that his extremely critical stance against Greece (especially Greek nationalism) is well known and -among educated Greeks- quite notorious…

Oh yes! Dr. Hoare’s views on Greece are typically more anti-Greek than Gruevski‘s ultra-nationalism; except that they are presented and justified from an anti-nationalist («post-nationalist» – to be precise) point of view. (I am not denying -of course- that some of his criticisms against Greek nationalist excesses are valid). As an example, here is one of his most staunchly anti-Greek blog-posts, where he is interviewed by Slav-Macedonians, offering them practical advice, on how to remain firm,  fanatical, unmoved and patient but also… totally uncompromising towards Greece (in the «name dispute«) till the… end of Greek nationalism (i.e. ALMOST… forever! -hehe): The importance of national patience.

Well, as a Greek anti-nationalist who feels concerned about the rather extreme, irredentist and slavo-phobic (i.e. self-denying) «Macedonian» nationalism of FYROM (which I do call «FYROM» but for very different reasons than the Greek nationalism which Dr. Hoare assumes to be always the case)… I also feel concerned about the fact that -so far- I have been unable to find any decently anti-nationalist Greek critique of Dr. Hoare’s views, throughout the Internet. This is probably because there exist so very few genuine Greek anti-nationalists; most Greek «anti-nationalists» today, are usually self-denying supporters of other Balkan nationalisms.

Ah well… it seems that the only Greek people who stood up against Dr. Hoare‘s… Greekophobia (hehe) are those boring, useless Greek nationalists, who lash-out (against Slavo-Albanian Macedonia) in self-defeating nationalist slogans, like «Macedonia is (only) Greek«. Oh dear! 🙂 What a shame…

Hence, or otherwise, I extend this (first) attempt of an anti-nationalist critique of Dr. Hoare, by dedicating to him personally, the following exquisit video (I compiled) of FYROMacedonian Racist Ultra-nationalist… metaphysics:

To be fair, there is a rare post by Dr. Hoare, which can be… lovable in Greece:

• A defeat for ethnic cleansing in Cyprus – and for the EU’s moral idiocy

[1] Latinka Perovic, a Serb woman, was Chief Secretary of the Yugoslav Communist Party from 1968-1972. Yet she was removed from office because Tito considered her views too liberal.

[2] To be fair, the Armenian genocide was mostly done by the Ottomans, not the Kemalists; However, Kemal Ataturk continued along the same lines, implementing the Greek Pontian Genocide, as well as finishing off un-Turkish Armenians…

UPDATE: Last, but not least, I should state VERY clearly the essence of my own (alas extremely rare) GENUINE anti-nationalism:

– ALL pseudo-antinationalist… arse-licking should STOP, at once. I.e. NO more praising of Kemal Ataturk (which also worsens the oppression of Turkish anti-Kemalists, like Taner Aksam); NO more boasting about Alexander «the great» (either in Greece or in FYROM); NO more (Gruevski-) nationalist POWER GAMES and witch-hunts against his own opposition; no more EXCLUSIVITY to the name «Macedonia», either by FYROM or by Greece; no more «lessons of obedience» towards NATO and the EU that put aside justice; no more FALSIFICATION of Ancient History (officially taught) in FYROM; no  more Greek war-cries of the type «Macedonia is Greece«, etc. …and a COMPOSITE NAME for FYROM should be agreed; as well as a cessation of all nationalist irredentism by ANYONE (including the Greek ultra-right)…

• Moreover. the completely one-sided, anti-Greek attitude of Dr. Hoare,  can ONLY add more oil to the fire of  the worst antiquity- based «Macedonist» ultra- nationalism in FYROM, seriously undermining ANY progress in the «name dispute» negotiations,  invalidating (even) Dr. Hoare’s own stated goals of peace and reconciliation in the Balkans; as well as worsening the increasing persecution and slander (in FYROM) against the opposition…
  

See also:

• Dressing chauvinistic hatred up as ‘class warfare’ or ‘anti-imperialism’ does not make it a good thing (Dr. Hoare’s guest-post in another blog – where I started commenting, e.g. HERE…) – a post that -once again- contains remarkably useful and valid insights; about e.g. the appropriation of leftist ideology as a cover-up for fascist or «third-positionist» National Socialist views, as well as the deterioration of certain types of leftism moving towards third-positionist mutated fascism, while -at the same time- Dr. Hoare apparently fails to distinguish satisfactorily, between these «wolves in sheep’s clothing« and the real people of the genuine Left, who are… neither sheep nor wolves! 🙂  -Moreover, Dr. Hoare, as well as some of his critics, probably remain unaware of the exact nature and the incredible force that third-positionist ideologies have suddenly acquired, in our time...)
  

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