engleski

Why Conspiracy Theories? Why the Balkans?

Balkan is a geopolitical region which has produced in the last few centuries more history than it can bear and consume. It was usually perceived as Europe’s inner Other, the bloodiest part of “Restern” Europe, or an intermediate area, permeated by political instability, struggles, wars, changes of borders and “spheres of influence” between imperial powers and emerging nation-states, with the climax in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav wars in 1990-ies. Rocky road of problematic political consolidation and accession to the EU of several Balkan countries in the last two decades was also permeated by internal turmoils, conflicts and international frictions. Moreover, significant number of Balkan countries are still troubled by their violent pasts from the II World War, the postwar socialist period, and/or recent wars. Furthermore, with the emergence of the crisis in the EU, whose outburst was the most prominent in Greece, followed by the large waves of migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Balkanian sense of incompleteness, fragmentation threats and tendency to civilizational “regressions” in the form of xenophobia, rabid nationalism, authoritarian populism, and welfare chauvinism became the haunting apparitions for the whole Europe. All these processes were permeated strongly by conspiracy theories of various kind, which reflected in condensed way fears and hopes, ideological underpinnings, antagonisms, and larger structural cleavages in the last few centuries. In that sense, conspiratorial interpretations were not (only) peculiarity of radical and extremist groups and forces from the margins of political life. On the contrary, as our previous researches show, conspiracy theories were highly relevant for the mainstream political discourses and actors. In that sense, it is possible to consider them as symptoms and indicators of wider societal troubles and turbulences, expressed in specific emotional and condensed form. For all these reasons, it is highly relevant and insightful to discuss at the conference and furthermore to write an edited volume that will deal with the last few centuries of Balkan history through the prism of conspiracy theories.

conspiracy theory ; Balkans ; Europe's Inner Other

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