Denial and repression of antisemitism : : post-communist remembrance of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic / / Jovan Byford.

• Author: Byford, Jovan.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (vii, 269 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) :; illustrations (some color)

Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1881–1956) is arguably one the most controversial figures in contemporary Serbian national culture. Having been vilified by the former Yugoslav Communist authorities as a fascist and an antisemite, this Orthodox Christian thinker has over the past two decades come to be r...

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Materials used in this study
• The life of Nikolaj Velimirovic and his changing public image, 1945-2003
• Denigration and marginalization : Velimirovic's status in post-war Yugoslavia
• Apotheosis and widespread admiration : Velimirovic's status today
• Collective remembering and collective forgetting : memory of Nikolaj Velimirovic and the repression of controversy
• The discursive dynamic of social forgetting : repression as replacement
• Velimirovic in Dachau : "martyrdom" as a replacement myth
• The martyrdom myth in context : the narrative of Velimirovic's suffering and the rise Serbian nationalism
• Remembering in order to forget : the martyrdom myth and repression
• The dynamic of everyday forgetting : continuity and the "routinization" of repression
• From repression to denial : responses of the Serbian Orthodox Church to accusations of antisemitism
• Discourse, moral accountability, and the denial of prejudice
• "Serbs have never hated the Jews" : literal denial of antisemitism
• "Parrots," "idiots," and "the mummies of reason" : denial and offensive rhetoric
• Comparing Serbs and Croats and the rhetoric of "competitive martyrdom" : comparative denial of antisemitism
• National self-glorification in a historical context
• Denial of antisemitism and the distancing from "extremism"
• "We are not antisemites, but-- " : denial and the rhetoric of disclaimers
• "He was merely quoting the Bible!" : denial of Velimirovic's antisemitism
• Rising above the criticisms : refusal to engage in controversy as a form of denial
• "Tiny mosquitoes" and the mighty "eagle" : who has the right to remember Nikolaj Velimirovic?
• The letter from "a Jewish woman" : Bishop Nikolaj as the savior of Jews
• The two kinds of antisemitism : the rhetoric of interpretative denial
• Repeating the word of God : authority of the Gospels and the reification of antisemitic discourse
• "Then we are all antisemites!" : "anti-Judaism" and Orthodox Christian identity
• Questionable boundaries between anti-Judaism and antisemitism
• Deicidal justification of Jewish suffering : the Holocaust as divine retribution
• Antisemitism as prophecy : social construction of Velimirovic's sanctity
• The first stage of the campaign for canonization : the making of a religious "cult"
• Canonization in the Orthodox Church and the need for divine confirmation of sanctity
• Finding the "right" miracle : incorruptibility of remains and miraculous icons
• The bishop who came "face to face with the living God" : Velimirovic and the miracle of epiphany
• Velimirovic as a "prophet" : the construction of the "Serbian Jeremiah".