Ideology, war, and genocide – the empirical case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

This article explores the connections among the discursive nature of ideology, identity politics, forced displacement, and symbolic and actual war violence leading to genocide. The general framework of the article is the Bosnian War (1992–1995), waged against the country and its civilians. The analytical basis is a literature review of various studies from the domains of sociology of knowledge, war sociology, and social epistemology. It is based on the perspective of the genocide in Bosnia as a process that began in northwest and east Bosnia in 1992 and terminated in Srebrenica in 1995 (in the municipality Prijedor in northwest Bosnia in 1992, more than 3000 civilians were killed). Mass crimes and the policy of fear mongering were intended to create and recreate the collective belief that coexistence in Bosnia was impossible and that establishing “ethnically pure cultures” and “ethnically pure territories” should be accepted as a deterministic historical necessity. The results of our research indicate that crimes against civilians can be “normalized” only after a “new social order” has been established as a war order with the help of media propaganda. Genocide can be committed only if the perpetrators (and its advocates acting in the name of specific identity politics) believe that committing violence can be justified by a “higher cause.”

KEYWORDS:

• Ideological dimension of the war
• symbolic dimension of the war
• institutional analysis
• critical analysis of discourse
• democracy
• phenomenology

Introduction

The starting point of this article is the war against the internationally recognized and sovereign Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995), geolocated, after careful planning and organizing of the necessary military and intelligence resources, in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina.¹ The aim of article is to explore the connection among the discursive nature of ideology, identity politics, forced displacement, and symbolic and actual war violence leading to genocide during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serbian soldiers and police forces had focused the violence on the civilian population of northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. To drive Bosniaks and Croats from this region, the Serbian army and police carried out mass executions and persecutions, used systematic rape, and opened concentration camps. Civilians were the target of war operations (Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017; 2018; Case No.: IT-09-92-PT; Case No.: IT-95-5/18-PT; Case No.: IT-95-8-S; Case No.: IT-97-24-T; Case No.: IT-98-30/1-A; Case No.: IT-99-36-T). For example, in the Prijedor municipality in northwestern Bosnia (where Ljubija is also located), the number of Bosniak and Croat civilians killed during the summer of 1992 was more than 3000 (including more than 200 women and 100 children). Almost half of the pre-war population in the Prijedor municipality (more than 40,000 Bosniaks and Croats) was displaced (Basic and Delić 2018; Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017, 2018; Cekic 2009; Patria 2000; Tabeau 2009; Tokaca 2013; Wesselingh and Vaulering 2005). How can we, in the sociological sense, understand the reality of war, the social construction of the reality of war itself, during and after the war? What can we, in the third decade of the 21st century, after the accumulated experience of wars, even postulate as the greatest challenge of social sciences?

The need for studies of the relations among ideology, war violence, and genocide in the Serbian context is more critical than ever today – after the decades of Serbs denying mass crimes and the denial of the genocide carried out by the Serbian army and police in the war against the civilian population in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 through 1995 (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Collins 2004, 2008; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Kalanj 2010; Malešević 2011; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). This study is part of the research project, “War anomie” which was conducted at Linnaeus and Lund universities in Sweden, University of Tuzla, and University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Linnaeus University 2024). In this article, we analyse the background aspects of the war against the Bosnian – Herzegovinian civilian, secular, multicultural, and multi-ethnic society. The main parts of this article focus on ideology, war violence, and genocide (1992–1995) and the Greater Serbian denial of the genocide (from 1995 to 2024) and on war violence as the reason for the forced migrations that have led to the depopulation and near extinction of the Bosnian autochthonous population.

Genocide in the prijedor municipality

The war started in Prijedor and Ljubija at the end of the spring of 1992, when the Serbian soldiers and police forces took over the municipality offices without any armed resistance. Several villages in that area (e.g. Hambarine, Briševo, and Bišćani) were shelled by Serbian artillery, while media disseminated propaganda of “Muslim and Croatian war crimes against Serbians” to foment panic (Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017; 2018; Case No.: IT-09-92-PT; Case No.: IT-95-5/18-PT; Case No.: IT-95-8-S; Case No.: IT-97-24-T; Case No.: IT-98-30/1-A; Case No.: IT-99-36-T). The inhabitants of these villages were unarmed and sought refuge in the mountains and valleys around Ljubija. Serbian soldiers and police officers caught a large number of refugees. Some of them were immediately killed in the forests, and others were transported to Ljubija, where they were beaten in the main square or at the football field of Ljubija. In the end, they were executed at the football field or in other locations near Ljubija (Basic 2018; Case No.: IT-97-24-T).

Basic (2015a,b; Basic 2017, 2018) believes that post-war stories of the “genocide” phenomenon create and reproduce the image of the dissolution of the social order as it was before the war. The daily use of force during the war was organized and ritualized and thus became the norm in society, not the exception. The stories about the genocide reveal how the pre-war social order was discarded and the new social order during the war took its place and was maintained after the war.

The stories of the genocide phenomenon create and reproduce the image of human suffering during the war (Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017, 2018). In these stories, morally correct behaviour serves as a contrast to the stories of suffering and killing during the war. The stories of genocide create the image of the perpetrator of violence as someone dangerous and evil, an ideal enemy as a real but distant criminal, someone who is seen as a clear threat to the existing pre-war social order.

The new war order in Prijedor and Ljubija normalized the existence of concentration camps in society. For example, in the Omarska and Kerterm camps, about 6000 to 7000 Bosniaks and Croats were kept in terrible conditions in the summer of 1992 (including 37 women). Hundreds of them died from hunger and abuse. Hundreds more were transported to various locations and shot dead (Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017; 2018; Case No.: IT-09-92-PT; Case No.: IT-95-5/18-PT; Case No.: IT-95-8-S; Case No.: IT-97-24-T; Case No.: IT-98-30/1-A; Case No.: IT-99-36-T).

The participants in the interviews (Basic 2017, 2018) who were detained in the camps have told stories of how the camp detainees died in large numbers because of food scarcity, diseases, beatings, and planned executions. Firearms were rarely used; instead, the guards used batons, baseball bats, or knives. According to the interviewees, all prisoners lost between 20 to 40 kg of body mass, so much weight that they could barely stand and move around. The general atmosphere and the ritualized violence in camps made the detainees apathetic, and sometimes it seemed as if they were waiting for death to end their suffering (Basic 2015a,b).

The stories about the genocide phenomenon create and reproduce images of participants who were dehumanized and exposed to violence; often, they were said to have been slaughtered in violent situations. Detailed and vivid descriptions of violent situations by the storyteller reveal personal experience of a threat to his own or another person’s physical existence and ethnic identity; the description of a violent war situation is emphasized by the symbolism of ritualized ethnic violence. The use of violence is described as implemented not only with bureaucratic planning (use of lists) but also without planning. The perpetrators are presented as spontaneous, organized, and rational (Basic 2015a,b; Basic 2017, 2018).

War violence as an interpersonal interaction

Randall Collins (2008) analyzes the phenomenon “violence” from a microsociological perspective with a focus on the individual in a situation that evolves into violence. He argues that these situations can be studied as exceptions in ordinary interactive patterns, during an interactive situation or in an interactive chain. Collins (2004) means that social life is formed through a series of rituals in which individuals are interlinked when a mutual point of interest awakens their curiosity. Individuals can disregard experiences from previous situations when they move between different situations. In other words, earlier situations merge with new ones. Even though violent situations could be seen as exceptions from normal interactive patterns, they cannot automatically be seen as a disruption of the interaction (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41; Collins 2008).

Collins (2008) projects an image that violence is hard to follow through. In a normal violence-free social existence, individuals act much too peacefully and helpfully with others to engage in violence. Individuals gladly engage in verbal conflicts, but they are not portrayed as violently as one might presume. Collins argues that stories about violence almost always tend to be more violent than the situation they describe. He argues that all interaction – even violent interaction – is bound to a situation, context, and positional relations between the actors (Collins 2004). He also argues that the actors in the interaction produce and reproduce the inferior and superior (dominant) actor. Often, the inferior and superior are appointed in the narrative process, which contributes to the construction of the specific situation – even the violent situation (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41; Collins 2004, 2008).

The study of Lois Presser (2013) paints a diversified image of the social reality, especially in a war situation, where an act seen as righteous for one side is the worst atrocity for the other. The split logic of the diversified reality is produced and reproduced, inter alia, through stories. These stories produce and reproduce dominant actors in these violent situations, actors who acquire some kind of permission to hurt the inferior actor. In an interesting way, Presser highlights how the dominant actors define themselves as being so powerless that they could not avoid hurting the inferiors. The dominant actors not only are given permission from society to use violence but also seem to have been caught in a violence-interactive web without a way out (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41).

Presser (2013) writes that Tutsis in Rwanda, prior to and during the genocide in 1994, were called “cockroaches” and “dogs,” and that Jews in Nazi Germany were called “rats.” Disparaging those who are the target of a violent attack means that an object of lesser complexity than the perpetrator is created, which confirms the justification of the violence (cf. Katz 1988; the term righteous slaughter). Presser notes that dominant perpetrators of violence are often under the influence of stories that are produced, reproduced, and distributed throughout the society. She argues that the new social order that emerges in society during war results in the de-humanization of those subjected to violence. It is also common that the use of violence is normalized into everyday interaction, thus becoming the prevailing norm in war society (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41).

David Wästerfors (2014) criticizes Presser’s study, referring to the lack of theoretical and empirical interest for interpersonal interaction in violent situations. Wästerfors argues the existence of research on violence (e.g. Randall Collins and Jack Katz’s violence analysis) that provides tools for a more vivid and direct way of analysing violent situations, by paying attention to emotions, methods, and types of violence, and the interactive dynamics that are integrated into narrative structures (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41).

Earlier research on the phenomenon “war violence” uses Collins (2008) but usually without expanding his reasoning; in those studies, war violence is not analysed as an interactive and situation-induced phenomenon. These studies tend to remain at a general macro-level, and in their analysis, the authors miss the relations between the perpetrator and the situation, between the perpetrator and the public, and between the perpetrator and those subjected to violence. It is common that authors do not go deeper into some form of empirical material. The studies could be described as narratives on war violence without ever analysing the narratives. Wästerfors (2014) formulated similar criticism when reviewing Presser (2013). The existence of this criticism argues the need for a violence study that recognizes violence as an interactive phenomenon (Basic and Delić 2018, 39–41).

Social sciences and war

Social sciences have probably entered a dramatic orientational and axiological crisis. This crisis is revealed as an identity crisis of grand notions: humanism, fellowship, and freedom. The economic sphere of society is artificially separated from the sphere of politics and the political, while politics has become completely alienated from democracy, i.e. the needs of the common person (Kalanj 2010; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). Globalization was the result of the incorrectly proclaimed “end of the cold war” in the 1990s (Huntington 2002).

The war against Bosnia and Herzegovina was a war against the idea of a shared life. Therefore, it was a war against the freedom of humanity and a war against human dignity, in a far-reaching sense of the word (Denich 1994; Malešević 2011). The genocide in Bosnia (1992–1995) and decades of denying (Bećirević 2009, 2010) that genocide (1995–2024) became possible because the ability of humans to manifest the dark side of human nature is concealed by the fascinating development of technoscience (techno-optimism) and of new media (virtual forms of communication). The war against Bosnia has shown that the human ability for “collective solidarity” of participating in the collective killing of others (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Malešević 2011), considered less worthy, has not decreased despite the progress of technoscience, information and communication technologies, and new media. The war against Bosnia (1992–1995), which was carried out over 4 years and followed with attentiveness from day to day by world media and diplomatic circles – happened in the heart of Europe, and today – in 2024 – can be also interpreted as (1) a war against the idea of civilization and as (2) a war against the idea of culture (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Malešević 2011; Vlaisavljević 2007). Bosnia and Herzegovina was a secular, multi-ethnic, and multicultural state. In certain areas, such as the Tuzla Valley (reaching to the river Sava and today’s district of Brčko), more than 30 percent of the population belonged to so-called “mixed marriages.” The idea that a “shared life of different populaces is not possible” from the Serbian ideology and war propaganda of the 1990s served as the ideological background for the aggressive destruction of Bosnian – Herzegovinian demographic and cultural diversity – and is in its essence a profoundly anti-civilizational idea – an idea with a dangerous seed of genocide (compare Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Des Forges 1995; Nussio 2017; Sanín and Wood 2014; Segal 2016; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009).

The euphemism “ethnic cleansing” and genocide are the logical consequence of the field, military, police, and armed application of the idea that a shared life of populaces (who have, or believe they have, different ethnic origins) – in reality is not possible. At the same time, one forgets, often in different legal, victimological, and safety discourses, a basically banal fact: a fundamental sociological postulate which says that each social reality is created as a “social construction of reality” (Berger and Luckmann 1966).

That is why the war against the Bosnian – Herzegovinian mixed population – led in the name of creating so-called ethnically cleansed territories and ending with genocide and the denial of genocide – is truly a fertile ground for a longitudinal, systematic, transcontinental article within the framework of the sociologies of migration, organized crime, environment, the army and war, and related disciplines.

Science, ideology, politics, and war

Instead of experiencing the “end of grand narratives” after the 1990s (Lyotard 1979), we have experienced an endless spreading of new fallacies, new dogmas, and new violence. We are witnessing a dissemination of new media related to the dissemination (“legal” and “illegal”) of a “militaristic” form of violence against the civilian population. War violence is always associated with propaganda and media (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Malešević 2011; Nussio 2017; Sanín and Wood 2014; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). It is related to their commercial use and abuse. Abuse always happens because of superficial media (and new media) interpretations of the cause of global and regional migrations, both economic migrations and those caused by “asymmetric wars” which, first and foremost, affect tens of millions of civilians, including children.

Despite mass violence against civilians, in the third decade of the 21st century, the “grand narratives” are again flourishing, such as: 1) the idea of human rights, 2) the idea of the “free market,” and 3) the idea of “war against terrorism.” All of these narratives are very seductive. The average mind of an average person in the 21^st century is becoming more and more susceptible to dangerous ideologies, dogmas, and stereotypes about others (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Kalanj 2010; Malešević 2011; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009).

The world today is neither free nor safe nor democratic. All these ideas are related to the crisis of politics and the political in a time of global migrations (Delić 2017; Duffield 2001; Nordstrom 2007). They represent the result of the failed great promise from the 1990s to create a “global world without borders.” Therefore, today we are witness to the crisis of the idea of a “global society of knowledge and skills.” The informational economy of knowledge and skills is committing to the idea of creating a “global society of knowledge,” as if swearing on a “holy book.” This economy has the tendency to – in a far-reaching and dangerous epistemological sense – completely (without any residue) equate “knowledge” and “information” (Basic and Delić 2019; Basic, Delić, and Sofradzija 2019; Broome 2014; Couldry and Hepp 2016; Delić and Basic 2024; Guile and Livingstone 2012; Hindess 1995; Weber et al. 2011).

Social sciences are, therefore, with the help of new informational economy (and the help of technocentrism and techno-optimism) instrumentalized and commercialized. Consequently, we state that the question of their value neutrality and scientific objectivity is never fully resolved. And so, based on the experience of the war against the Bosnian – Herzegovinian civilian population – which even in 2024 is in the midst of a dramatic depopulation – one can state that all social sciences are in trouble if they uncritically imitate the main epistemological and methodological flows of social sciences that are, it appears, overly preoccupied with the quantitative methodology of science, imposed because of the global power of the new economy of science and information.

The influential tradition of critical thinking understands ideology as a system of ideas opposite to science, according to the criterion of the veracity of its cognitions (Kalanj 2010; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). While Habermas (1986) believes that knowledge is not value neutral but that both science and technology are ideologies – the economy of knowledge is also based on an ideology and not on scientific truth and objectivity. In reality, the new economy of knowledge, which has since the 1990s been imposed as the universal social ontology of the 21^st century, was also faced with complaints that it was founded on the interests of multinational corporations. This critique suggested that the new economy of knowledge was also based on narrow and privileged interests that do not allow it to be distanced from the worst forms of rigid ideology (Delić 2008, 2009, 2017).

Therefore, it will not be possible to avoid the question of the relations among science, ideology, and politics in the upcoming period of human history, which is facing its own destruction and catastrophe (Kalanj 2010; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). Bell (1962) tried to prove that great ideologies and great ideological discussions have ended in the West. However, it was soon ascertained that even the thesis of the alleged “end of ideology” is profoundly ideological. Fukuyama (1992) later proclaimed the “end of history.” He thus wished to mark the triumph of the market, the victory of the neoliberal economic globalization, but the thesis also soon was found to be ideological. Even economic science, led by the new economy of knowledge, which pretended to have the status of an exact science, was deconstructed and declared as a profoundly ideologized economy (Castells 2004). This ideologization, however, could not be seen in the main flows of economic science, which seeks to justify the extreme increase in social inequality in the world, aiming to normalize it. Attempts have been made to show that economic science is depoliticized, i.e. independent of politics, in the form of the “new economy of knowledge.”

This misconception lasts until today. The challenge is all the increasingly louder calls to return to “sovereignty” in the conditions of the global rule of world financial institutions. The calls to return to international relations based on sovereign states are becoming louder, in numerous discussions of globalization, economics, and politics for the 21^st century as well (Delić 2008, 2009, 2017).

What remains unclear is the international status of aggressive wars from the 1990s. These wars were doomed to fail in advance by certain European states through efforts to legitimize the results of “ethnic cleansing” carried out under the slogan of a “humane resettlement of people.” One such state, with the internationally and legally unclear status of an experimental and postmodern European state, is the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the central republic of the former Yugoslav federation: a fragile (and symbolically significant) statelet which, after the Dayton Framework Agreement for Peace was signed in 1995, became an example of a social-economic and safety laboratory, together with the “damaged Bosnian population,” especially Bosniaks who had temporarily survived the genocide that started in 1992 with the mass slaughters of Bosniaks and Croats in Prijedor, Ljubija, and the surrounding area (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Denich 1994; Malešević 2011).

Ideology and genocide

Identity politics have remained almost the same after the genocide (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Malešević 2011; Nussio 2017; Sanín and Wood 2014; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). The Greater Serbian project was not stopped even in 2024 but is further fed and strengthened by complementary discourses about Greater Albania, and maybe even the political and safety chaos in Macedonia and Montenegro. All of this reflects extremely negatively on the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina that survived the genocide and today is barely surviving economic misery, poverty, and high unemployment rates.

Multiple decades of the Greater Serbian denial of the genocide could lead (or are already leading) to an economic genocide of both Serbs and Bosniaks, whose mortality rates are significantly higher than their birth rates. Economy, politics, ecology, safety, and education have for too long been seen as separate fields that have nothing to do with hermeneutics, epistemology, and ideology (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bećirević 2009, 2010; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Malešević 2011).

The problem, however, is that during the preceding decades, the business world and the “new economy of knowledge and skills” have not shown even minimal interest in the holistic, longitudinal, social-epistemological, and hermeneutically designated socio-economic and safety discussions or taken on hard questions about the relationships among social sciences, epistemology, ideology, and the sustainability of multicultural societies such as the Bosnian – Herzegovinian society (Basic and Delić 2019; Basic, Delić, and Sofradzija 2019; Broome 2014; Couldry and Hepp 2016; Delić and Basic 2024; Guile and Livingstone 2012; Hindess 1995; Weber et al. 2011).

When economists such as Stiglitz (2016) finally started to ask these kinds of questions, it was already too late: too late to correct in a simple and instrumental way for the negative consequences of strategic neglect of the ideological aspects of the new economy of knowledge’s effects on society, nature, culture, and the rest of the world. It seems that the monstrous anti-civilizational projects contained in the militaristic ideas of creating “ethnically pure cultures” and “ethnically pure territories” were tolerated for too long after the dissolution of the socialist regimes of knowledge, precisely because of the euphoria that was carefully cultivated with the branded new-economic promises of a dawning age of peaceful construction of a borderless world (Delić 2008, 2009, 2017).

Such projects were violently applied in the territory of former Yugoslavia (especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina) by ideologists who advocated the violent creation of Greater Serbia, and, at a certain point, of Greater Croatia as well (Delić and Basic 2024).

Ideology and global collapse

The key cognitive and legitimization problem of the new economy of knowledge comprises a lack of any kind of objective epistemology of knowledge (Basic and Delić 2019; Basic, Delić, and Sofradzija 2019; Broome 2014; Couldry and Hepp 2016; Delić 2008, 2009, 2017; Delić and Basic 2024; Guile and Livingstone 2012; Hindess 1995; Weber et al. 2011). It has, in the name of the discourse of a global society of knowledge and skills and with the help of the discourse about creating a world without borders, tried to suppress the ideology of ethnic nationalisms of the 1990s (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Kalanj 2010; Malešević 2011; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009).

The approach to globalization, with the help of the new economy of knowledge, is experiencing the last days of its total destruction. To demonstrate this destruction requires “deconstructing” the discourse, vocabulary, and narrative structure of the new economy of knowledge. What is the problem with the new economy of knowledge? Why do we, in all the social sciences worthy of that name, have to attack and focus on the measured criticism of this economy’s vocabulary? Why do we have to focus on the negative social effects of its discourse? Why do we have to, in the critical analyses of the 21^st century’s “society in development,” devote ourselves to the criticism of anti-educational, misleading, ideological, and almost backwards effects of this economy’s failed promises?

The reason to ask the positivists these questions does not have to be clear immediately and at first sight. It can be proven that the new economy of knowledge, in its neoliberal variant, is based more on misconceptions, dogmas, and unproven assumptions than on objective and value-neutral scientific truths. Furthermore, is it not hard to ascertain that, considering the social and other effects it produces, the new economy in its vulgar variant (practiced for 29 years by the reigning ethno-politics in the Balkans) is dangerous and violent like nationalism, national socialism, fascism, and terrorism for the long-term sustainability of human society and the natural environment (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Kalanj 2010; Malešević 2011; Marinković and Ristić 2013; Nussio 2017; Ravlić 2013; Sanín and Wood 2014; Schwarzmantel 2009; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). The new economy of knowledge is seductive, dangerous, and violent already at the symbolical, discursive, and explanatory levels. Successfully transforms a lie into truth and obvious analytical superficiality into collective profundity. It is doctrinally erroneous because time is converted into money, space into market, opinions into calculations, and humans into resources or merchandise. Out of this doctrinarian and discursive reduction of the world arises real reduction, and manipulation of mind and emotions, and thus the intolerable violence against the diversity of nature and human’s world increases (Guile and Livingstone 2012).

Such false epistemology promoted by the new economy of bizarre business (as epistemology without epistemology) is simply not sustainable and not possible as a rational scientific project (Delić 2017; Duffield 2001; Nordstrom 2007). The promise of “creating a world without borders” was a promise created in the world of economic ideas. Economic ideas rule the global economy and the economy of knowledge which wished to be synonymous with the real existence of the global society of knowledge (Basic and Delić 2019; Basic, Delić, and Sofradzija 2019; Broome 2014; Couldry and Hepp 2016; Delić and Basic 2024; Guile and Livingstone 2012; Hindess 1995; Weber et al. 2011).

Today, we can see that we have been living in ignorance, global ignorance, even after the 1990s. The responsibility for that global ignorance should be taken by the global economy of knowledge about the long-term safety of life on Earth, which is perhaps, with the help of new critical sciences about safety, coming from the future. Why is the old economy, which had confidently claimed it was based on knowledge, responsible for today’s global collapse of value orientations in which humankind now finds itself? It is probably responsible because it was also thought to have once and for all split from politics and ideology. Today’s politics, conducted in the time of “post-democracy” and “post-politics,” will need new life energies that could perhaps arrive from the negative experience of erroneous economic politics and the negative experiences of erroneous identity politics.

Ideology and normalization of the abnormal

What remains in the third decade of the 21st century of the idea of a “global society of knowledge” when we live in a time of constant extraordinary situations, of “normalizing the abnormal” (Basic and Delić 2019; Basic, Delić, and Sofradzija 2019; Broome 2014; Couldry and Hepp 2016; Delić and Basic 2024; Guile and Livingstone 2012; Hindess 1995; Weber et al. 2011)? The normalization of violence has made it harder for us to notice the difference between an “extraordinary situation” and the state of peace. It appears it is not clear where war starts and where it ends. When politics becomes the continuation of war with other means, and peace becomes the continuation of war with erroneous rhetorical modes that are not peaceful, self-defence, war, enemy actions, use of weapons, police force, construction, and maintenance of peace seem similar to cooking recipes seen on television shows: “cut,” “beat,” and “stir” (Basic 2017, 2018; Basic and Delić 2018; Bellamy 2012; Brehm 2015; Delić and Basic 2024; Denich 1994; Des Forges 1995; Malešević 2011; Nussio 2017; Sanín and Wood 2014; Vudli 2015; Waldorf 2009). Soldiers with experience fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq have emphasized the continuity of moving from war to peace. The expression “post-conflict,” they have insisted, is wrong. Planning and training for the post-conflict stage should be started before the conflict, although it is hard to imagine during the preparatory stage the engagement of “additional” units, which would be kept for later missions (Delić 2008, 2009, 2017; Kennedy 2006; Thomas 2017).

Therefore, we believe that wider programme reconstructions of our knowledge systems are necessary in social sciences, precisely because of this double crisis: (1) the crisis of social sciences and the legitimacy of knowledge on which they rest, on the one hand; and (2) the crisis of understanding “society,” “democracy,” “politics,” “development,” “sustainability,” and “quality assurance” of the populations’ lives on the other hand. These programmes should be based on eliminating violence against humans and nature. It is not possible to achieve this goal without the therapeutic recollection of the ideological sources of previous catastrophes, i.e. without recollecting the ideological sources of the genocide that occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The discussions about ideology have transformed into discussions about its discursive character shown in language, speech, and discourse itself.

After 2001, violence has intensified and aims to be normalized and naturalized (Collins 2004, 2008). The result is that at every possible location globally, some form of symbolic or real violence can be felt as if happening at the right place. Discourses formed under “the fight against terrorism” are also in a sort of tense relationship with the incomprehension of the nature of violence and the incomprehension of the seductive nature of ideology: “The ‘fight against terrorism’ slogan can invoke so many notions precisely because the difference between the metaphoric and real war conflicts in the field has become vague” (Kennedy 2006). A logical question arises: Why were the criminals who intentionally, knowingly organized and carried out mass murders and killed over 3000 Bosniaks and Croats (civilians) in Prijedor and Ljubija – of whom, based on a qualitative analysis, we speak in detail in this work – not unequivocally named as (Serbian) terrorists? The politics of naming, identifying, and classifying human beings is not a self-explanatory notion that can be undertaken only by politicians, commercial media, statisticians, or police forces in the field. Without the help of social epistemologists and safety experts who analyse ideology discourses, the complexity of what we call violence, individual or collective, symbolic or physical, real or virtual, could not be explained.

It is thus demonstrated that ideology itself has a discursive character, even though the ideological is not exhausted only in the discourse. The discursive and militaristic fight against violence and terror has itself become violent, and the “messy life of ideology” (van Dijk 2015a, 2015b) continues. This continuation is visible not only in ideological but also real wars, which often seem unreal if they are not “happening” to us. It seems as if the reality of war has changed, even before these wars became similar to “asymmetric wars:” wars in which it is very difficult with a positivist method to clearly ascertain which sides are in a real conflict and which are in a fictive or mimicry conflict. Those are wars where ideologies often hide the true state of things. In these wars, in addition to humans whom we can name in various ways, machines (which act against humans and which we can also name in various ways) have also become actors, but some of these ways probably do not explain the changed nature of wars and conflicts in the 21^st century (Delić 2008, 2009, 2017).

Ideology, war, and culture

Ugo Vlaisavljević, 2007, 2009) aims to prove that every war in the Balkans had the consequences of a large cultural incident. After every war, new states, new ideologies, new institutions, new grammars, new histories, and new social realities appear. The question is, Who is the subject (actor) of this new reality? Vlaisavljević, it appears, does not have a simple reply. Instead of an unequivocal answer, the author notes the dangerous logic of a chain of wars in the Balkans. To scientifically prove it, he uses the findings of cultural anthropology, ethnology, philosophy of language, and semiotics, among others. Vlaisavljević thus notices an unusual thing: any change to an ideology, any new grammar, any new kind of literature, any new policy, and all social and cultural realities arrived in the Balkans with a new war even while war remained in the shadows.

Vlaisavljević, 2007, 2009) questions the very image of war and asks: Is war something more than just destruction? Does war have any positive aspects that are, of course, intolerable to the victims of war? One would have to each day newly, responsibly, and philosophically reflect on that which is intolerable and that which is intolerable the most, and do so with a logic that is very much humane and more humane than at first can be understood. And this would have to have been done, from a Bosnian – Herzegovinian perspective, “on the very spot,” from the “heart of the event,” under the deafening sound of Serbian artillery during the shelling of Sarajevo. In that context, Vlaisavljević speaks also of “epic cultures.”

The term “epic culture” is used by the author to state that these cultures are made by war, and in a very complex symbolic and discursive sense. Thus, the largest problem of science, ontology, aesthetics, and ethics becomes timely again. This is not a problem or a challenge that touches only on certain individual or special subdisciplines such as the sociology of the army and war. In fact, it is just the opposite. One could say that during the war against Bosnia or the war against Bosnians and Herzegovinians, whatever that means, the largest problem of all social sciences in Europe was invoked – the problem of the social construction of reality during and after war (see also Wästerfors 2023).

Ideology, war, and genocide

After the 20^th century, as the century of radical evil, violence, holocaust, and genocide, it is possible to question the progressive understanding of modern society. What do progress, growth, and development mean? And for whom? These questions, in a concentrated form, present to us the relatedness of modern natural science and modern technology with the reigning economic – political – militaristic pattern that does not allow any reflections that do not fit in the short-term instrumental – utilitarian calculations.

We live during one of those periods of history when new realities are being born in front of our very eyes. However, because of the effects of various ideologies, we cannot perceive them objectively. Different forms of violence that we face have disturbing consequences for the lives of many people. The visibility and invisibility of various forms of violence, from symbolic to real, have negative consequences for the total self-understanding of a person in the modern world. The end of the Second World War was just a military victory, and the defeated were only the fascist states and their armies (Costa-Pinto and Kallis 2014; Močnik 1998/1999; Ravlić 2013; Vudli 2015). But fascism as a historical practice, political method, ideological network, and a thought pattern was not defeated. Fascism has survived and is now coming back, even where it was defeated. Ideologies are not only enabling violence but also inciting it, reproducing it, and blurring it. Numerous traditional approaches to ideology are not enough to analyse the negative consequences of neo-fascism and genocide within the context of the global crisis of value orientations. Many of these approaches are more of a philosophical than systematic, analytical, and theoretical nature.

One of the motivations for this work was to argue the conviction that decades of denying genocide by the perpetrators of the Greater Serbian project could lead to a new genocide against the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Greater Serbian ideology is even today – in 2024, 29 years after the genocide in Srebrenica – the “protected zone of the United Nations,” and 32 years after the genocide in Prijedor and Ljubija, aided by anti-Bosnian identity politics, applied in the field with the help of the ideology that shared life is not possible.

Recent theories of knowledge and ideology analyses do not mean that ideologies are only mental constructs but insist that they are also related to discursive practices and the behaviour of individuals and groups. They are both psychological – social and discursive – symbolical and cannot be just false. Ideologies also have other structure characteristics such as the polarization of groups – “us against them.” Thus, various multidisciplinary approaches are introduced into the ideology analysis (before even approaching the analysis of neo-fascism and genocide) that cannot be separated from social epistemology, sociology of knowledge, war sociology, and newer studies of the relationship between knowledge and power. Epistemological analyses of ideology, no matter their status of veracity, show that the criterion for the analysis of certain ideologies does not have to be only their veracity (or falsity) but also can be their cognitive or social role in the pacified management of cognition, symbols, and interactions.

It is possible to analytically differentiate ideologies as general, abstract, and socially recognizable (mental) notions shared by a group, on the one hand, and as concrete, personal, interactional, and contextualized use of ideology in specific social situations by certain individuals in the society on the other hand. The ideology analysis is, however, further complicated during the analysis of neo-fascism and genocide.

The lesson of our study – in the circumstances of a worrying explosion of global migrations – can be understood if we take into consideration the global and anti-civilizational significance of the ideological, symbolical, and real war violence, present in the insufficiently deliberated project of creating “ethnically pure territories,” particularly within the context of understanding the wider consequences of the forced displacement of a population (the so-called “humane resettlement of people”), an integral and volatile part of the Greater Serbian ideology. The pluralistic, i.e. qualitative, methodological approach to the studies of war violence has to date been neglected, even though it is needed. Finally, within the context of critically considering the social significance and the challenge of global migrations at the outer and inner borders of the European Union, one must point out the interconnection between the symbolic universe of an ideology and (always possible) a repetition of a genocide which has already occurred (and is still occurring via the multiple decades of denial by the committers of the Greater Serbian project) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: A Questioned Democracy.

Notes on contributors

Goran Basic

Goran Basic is associate professor of sociology and senior lecturer at the Department of Pedagogy and Learning, Linnaeus University, Sweden. His research concerns social and pedagogical processes and collaborations among different actors in school, university, youth care, social care, police, and coast guard. He has also written articles on post-war society and carried out an evaluation of several projects in juvenile care. Special analytical focus in Basic’s research is on the functions of the context and its impact on the non-professional actor in the relationship (child, youth, pupil, student, service user, parent, traveller, suspect, civilian, refugee, prisoner).

Zlatan Delić

Zlatan Delić is an Associate Professor currently working at the University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has published two books, several articles in the field of humanities and social sciences and he has participated in international research projects. The subject of scientific interest: sociology of knowledge, methodologies, critical discourse analysis, critical studies of science, technology and ideology, globalization, glocalization, multicultural and social epistemology, sociology of Bosnian society, sociology of sustainable communities, bioethics, social and deep ecology, new criminology, criminological theories, victimology, postcolonial studies and local and regional development.

Notes

1. This text has been in some parts published earlier in Swedish in the article “Definitioner av våld i överlevandes berättelser efter kriget i Bosnien” (Basic 2015c) and in English in the article “Definitions of Violence: Narratives of Survivors from the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (Basic 2018).