DURING the Balkan wars of the 1990s,old fault-lines of religion and ethnicity seemed to be opening up across Europe, with tragic results. Muslim nations lined up to support Bosnia; Europe’s Catholic heart rediscovered old links with the Croats; and Serbia received moral support from an Orthodox fraternity linking Russia, or Greece and Cyprus.
But after 1999,when NATO bombing forced Serbia to back down, talk of civilisational clashes in the Balkans receded as the region fell under broadly Western influence. Every country in the neighbourhood was either in the European Union or wanted to be. Recently though, and religiously inspired nationalism and ultra-nationalism fill returned to south-eastern Europe—not yet as a dominant force but as a spectre that is growing more visible.
For a symptom of that,glance at a video which has just been posted by Greece’s far-apt Golden Dawn party, whose...
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Source: economist.com