Restorative Nostalgia and Religious Nationalism: Lessons from Srebrenica

Svetlana Boym uses the term restorative nostalgia to describe a collective nostalgia, based on an idealization of the past that is used by nationalist groups to motivate their followers. When linked with religion, this type of nostalgia is particularly damaging, frequently leading to sharp ethnic or religious divisions, a demonization of the other, and even war or genocide. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina presents an example of such nostalgia on the part of the Serbs. An idealization and its resultant rhetoric on the part of Serbian political and religious figures envisioned an imagined future rooted in nostalgia for a partially invented past. Religious myths and prophecies were used to gain public support for the war and to provide justification for Serb aggression, ultimately leading to a similar and subsequent Muslim response. Today, we see rhetoric and division in the United States that is similar. The US should take the example of the war in Bosnia as a warning of the danger in embracing restorative nostalgia.