Slobodan Milosevic’s death should not be mourned by anyone with any sense of civilisation and justice, and certainly no friends of liberty. Milosevic was a calculated purveyor of racism – of a vile murderous kind, only Radko Mladic and Radovan Karadjic are more responsible for the slaughter of innocent Bosnian Muslims in the war in Bosnia.
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Milosevic was a socialist, having inherited his position in the post-Titoist Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as the communist party tried to find a future without their personality cult. Yugoslavia, through Titoism, hadn’t been as badly damaged as the rest of the eastern socialist states, largely because it was outside the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet bloc (Tito rejected Stalinism in 1948 and adopted a soft socialism – allowing small private businesses to remain and develop). However, after the fall of socialism in the Soviet bloc, there was enormous pressure to move to multi-party democracy. It was in 1990 that Milosevic, representing the Serbian branch of the Communist Party, advocated greater centralism – multiparty democracy, but dismantling the federation. By contrast, the presidents of Slovenia and Croatia wanted more autonomy, multi-party democracy and liberalism. Milosevic won the day – he had already supported the racist hysteria propagated by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and the Arts. The Academy promoted the view that Serbs had a golden age, which came about before the Serb defeat by the Turks in Kosovo in 1389. Milosevic had already just about obliterated the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina, as he kept Serbia in the socialist dark age. He encouraged the idea that Kosovo Albanians were dirty, thieves, rapists and not worthy of governing Serbs.
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He used racist nationalism to scare Serbs, particularly rural illiterate ones, into thinking the Croats, Albanians and Bosnian Muslims were out to get them. He provided fuel for his racist opponents in Croatia (Franjo Tudjman did his best to spread nationalist filth amongst Croats) and ran the very well equipped Yugoslav National Army as Yugoslavia fell apart. He used the army to attack Slovenia when it seceded, but couldn’t sustain it – but then led a prolonged war, arming Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia against the secessionist governments. In Croatia – it was a war between nationalist racists – both seeking to conquer territory, and rid that territory of those not of their ethnicity.
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This was the start of the coining of the term “ethnic cleansing”. It was applied most disgustingly in Bosnia, with the slaughter of men and boys in Srebrenica – as Bosnian Serb troops, armed and backed by the “Yugoslav National Army” cleared non Serb males from the town. Milosevic supported and encouraged Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadjic in his project of ethnically cleansing Bosnia – and no, all sides were NOT equal. The Bosnian government tried hard to promote a colourblind Bosnia, with the cosmopolitan Sarajevo as capital, Milosevic promoted a greater Serbia. He demanded peace through expanding the borders of Serbia (under the rubric of a new Yugoslavia), encouraging other ethnic identities in the former Yugoslavia to act the same way.
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However, he lost. Despite the disgusting appeasement of the European Union, helped by New Zealand, in maintaining the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia (meaning Bosnian Muslims and Croats found it very hard to get arms for self defence, while Serbs had the resources of the Yugoslav Army), ultimately air strikes on Belgrade, and NATO intervention in Kosovo spelt the end of Milosevic’s rule in Serbia. Serbs in Belgrade became sick of having a bankrupt economy, ostracised by western Europe – as they watched their neighbours to the north (Hungary, Czech republic etc), liberalise, grow and look towards joining the EU.
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Milosevic was a racist, but not the insanely stupid National Front type, but an intellectual power hungry bully. I doubt he ever believed the racist nonsense he promoted, but he certainly hated his rivals in Croatia (Tudjman) and Bosnia (Izetbegovic) and outlived them both. His politics are the crude politics of national identity – he used fear and the brainless psychological fiction of nationalism to motivate people to vandalist, assault, terrorise, rape and kill - because of ethnicity. Yugoslavia under Tito lived under fear driven by the communist party, Milosevic replaced it with fear based on national identity - he should be remembered as the final blood thirsty gasp of barbaric nationalism in the Balkans.
.
Milosevic was a socialist, having inherited his position in the post-Titoist Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as the communist party tried to find a future without their personality cult. Yugoslavia, through Titoism, hadn’t been as badly damaged as the rest of the eastern socialist states, largely because it was outside the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet bloc (Tito rejected Stalinism in 1948 and adopted a soft socialism – allowing small private businesses to remain and develop). However, after the fall of socialism in the Soviet bloc, there was enormous pressure to move to multi-party democracy. It was in 1990 that Milosevic, representing the Serbian branch of the Communist Party, advocated greater centralism – multiparty democracy, but dismantling the federation. By contrast, the presidents of Slovenia and Croatia wanted more autonomy, multi-party democracy and liberalism. Milosevic won the day – he had already supported the racist hysteria propagated by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and the Arts. The Academy promoted the view that Serbs had a golden age, which came about before the Serb defeat by the Turks in Kosovo in 1389. Milosevic had already just about obliterated the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina, as he kept Serbia in the socialist dark age. He encouraged the idea that Kosovo Albanians were dirty, thieves, rapists and not worthy of governing Serbs.
.
He used racist nationalism to scare Serbs, particularly rural illiterate ones, into thinking the Croats, Albanians and Bosnian Muslims were out to get them. He provided fuel for his racist opponents in Croatia (Franjo Tudjman did his best to spread nationalist filth amongst Croats) and ran the very well equipped Yugoslav National Army as Yugoslavia fell apart. He used the army to attack Slovenia when it seceded, but couldn’t sustain it – but then led a prolonged war, arming Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia against the secessionist governments. In Croatia – it was a war between nationalist racists – both seeking to conquer territory, and rid that territory of those not of their ethnicity.
.
This was the start of the coining of the term “ethnic cleansing”. It was applied most disgustingly in Bosnia, with the slaughter of men and boys in Srebrenica – as Bosnian Serb troops, armed and backed by the “Yugoslav National Army” cleared non Serb males from the town. Milosevic supported and encouraged Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadjic in his project of ethnically cleansing Bosnia – and no, all sides were NOT equal. The Bosnian government tried hard to promote a colourblind Bosnia, with the cosmopolitan Sarajevo as capital, Milosevic promoted a greater Serbia. He demanded peace through expanding the borders of Serbia (under the rubric of a new Yugoslavia), encouraging other ethnic identities in the former Yugoslavia to act the same way.
.
However, he lost. Despite the disgusting appeasement of the European Union, helped by New Zealand, in maintaining the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia (meaning Bosnian Muslims and Croats found it very hard to get arms for self defence, while Serbs had the resources of the Yugoslav Army), ultimately air strikes on Belgrade, and NATO intervention in Kosovo spelt the end of Milosevic’s rule in Serbia. Serbs in Belgrade became sick of having a bankrupt economy, ostracised by western Europe – as they watched their neighbours to the north (Hungary, Czech republic etc), liberalise, grow and look towards joining the EU.
.
Milosevic was a racist, but not the insanely stupid National Front type, but an intellectual power hungry bully. I doubt he ever believed the racist nonsense he promoted, but he certainly hated his rivals in Croatia (Tudjman) and Bosnia (Izetbegovic) and outlived them both. His politics are the crude politics of national identity – he used fear and the brainless psychological fiction of nationalism to motivate people to vandalist, assault, terrorise, rape and kill - because of ethnicity. Yugoslavia under Tito lived under fear driven by the communist party, Milosevic replaced it with fear based on national identity - he should be remembered as the final blood thirsty gasp of barbaric nationalism in the Balkans.
14 comments:
"he should be remembered as the final blood thirsty gasp of barbaric nationalism in the Balkans."
Perhaps not quite--Muslims have burned down over 150 Christian churches and monasteries in that country.
in what country? with state endorsement?
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/067.shtml
There ya go. I'm not suggesting for one minute that the man was anything but loathsome. But your post paints Muslims as the victims when in fact Muslim forces committed dozens of atrocities.
I am not doubting there were incidents as those described, but this site is full of seething generalisation. I know about Alija Izetbegovic's youthful Islamic fundamentalism, but despite the claims of the site of "corporate western propaganda" the Bosnian government faced an impossible situation that it did not want to face. Slovenia and Croatia seceded, the first for economic reasons, the second due to Croatia's own nationalistic fascists. Bosnia was getting overrun by Serbs and Croats seeking to carve it to bits - and Bosnian Muslims WERE by and large secular - as in Kosovo and Albania. Izetbegovic held a referendum and the majority wanted secession, and Bosnian Muslims are NOT the majority (and there were Serbs and Croats mainly in the cities that voted for secession).
Bosnia was NOT going to be an Islamic state, that was Serb and Croat propaganda. You see Belgrade ran a press monopoly, something that pro-Serb website ignored, not surprising as it seems to justify nationalism as being legitimate, and gives enormous coverage to slaughter of Serbs, but nothing about what happened to other national identities.
In other words, be careful - I wouldn't trust that site anymore than one from Zagreb or from the SDA
SlaveryScott
Take your ratty nose out of Balkan affairs and stay close to home; you have couple more aborigins left and finish damn fine cleansing project started 100 years ago. Your for blind hatred against serbs is amazing; did some serb still your ice-cream when you were kid?
Fully one third of people killed in bosnia were serb civillians, and that is according muslim sources themselves. If there was no Milosevic no serbs would be left there; thanks to him my family still lives in their ancestors land.
Burn in Hell SlaveryScott ASAP; may Milosevic roast you down there forever.
Ahhhh....State education! Nice try Anon....have a lollipop! ;-)....and wipe your chin.
So much bravery being anonymous, you see unlike yourself and all of the nationalist knuckle draggers everywhere, I'm not responsible for what my ancestors did, good or bad. You're good at blaming me for something that happened when none of my ancestors were in New Zealand (not Australia), but you wouldn't know if I had Asian, British, German, Russian or Greek ancestry.
I don't hate Serbs at all, I work with one - I don't give a damn whether someone is Serb Croat Korean or Bengali - clearly you do.
You might find had there been no Milosevic that Bosnia wouldn't have seceded, that a tolerant liberal Yugoslavia could have emerged from the post-Tito age that wasn't focused on the Belgrade bureaucracy and gave little vent to the hatred that mainly emanated from Belgrade and Zagreb.
You say Milosevic kept your family on their ancestor's land - well I would defend vehemently your family's right to defend themselves from any aggressor. However you can't doubt that Serb forces evicted and executed non-Serbs from their houses too. You CANNOT justify on self defence grounds the deportation and slaughter of others. There were many atrocities in the Balkans largely driven by a stone age attitude to politics of "we're better than you, now fuck off we don't want to live near you".
YOUR problem you hate filled little coward is that you look at people according to their ancestry, I look at people according to their actions. Being a Serb, Croat or Bosnian Muslim is a psychological condition - it's a choice, just as it is a choice to be an individual.
Touché LibertyScott. =)
While on holiday in Dubrovinik, Croatia, I had the chance to go to an art exhibition - Blood & Honey IIRC? - which showed some pictures taken by photojounalists (Time Photographer of the Year winners no less) in and around Bosnia during the war. Very thought-provoking stuff as it was from an entirely objective point of view.
Also there was a short film showing the reaction to the first opening of the exhibition in Sarajevo(?). The amount of hatred and bigotry was disgusting. To be fair, there was opposition of the same which just shows they are not all mindless propaganda zombies.
Some people from the Balkans cling to their history and right to ancestral land like nothing else matters. Its just a great pity that they see no other way apart from out and out violence, spurred on from above, to resolve these issues.
Anon, your hatred has no place anywhere. Either discuss something rationally or don't discuss it at all.
To the libertyscott: The unbiased application of reason and human decency have always served as the strongest foundation by which evil forces have consistently been defeated. You deserve the utmost respect for dwelling so courageously on that ground.
So, please don't be discouraged by a thug who probably never had balls to face his own self, let alone the truth about the “thugiest” state-criminal such as Milosevic. I am no journalist, no politician, or conspiracy believer, I AM SOMEONE WHOSE CHILDHOOD WAS STOLEN, WHOSE LIFE WAS SHATTERED, WHOSE FRIENDS WERE KILLED, WHOSE ENTIRE GENERATION DEPRIVED OF A NORMAL LIFE while the petty Hitlers in Belgrade plotted the slaughter of thousands of innocent people. It is a sad human saga that the world is littered by the likes of that thug (who died like a rat) and who so forcefully try to prevent others from speaking the truth.
HUMAN GARBAGE..
To libertyscott: I am the same one who praised you on a previous posting for being so brave and honest. This time, I just wanted to clarify something. When I said "don't be discouraged by that thug", I meant from that anonymous who posted before and told us that thank to his Big Thug, he still lives in his "ancestors' land". Sorry about confusion.
Scott, you are so full of blind fury and hate against people you do not know in place you have never been. I hate muslims with reason - majority of them think of themselves as superior and justified by god to do whatever they want to non-muslims. My christian ancestors in Bosnia delt with hundreds of years of forced conversions, stealing christian children to be raised as yanisari, church burning, impalings on stake (read nobel prize winer Ivo Andric Bridge on river Drina) and other forms of genocide by muslims. And we did not want to exterminate them, only to carve out our own state formed by bosnian counties where we were majority. As far as muslims beeing peacefull and democratic, their police celebrates as holiday the day of forming secret paramilitaly units in Bosnia in 1989 - fully 3 years prior to referendum on bosnian independance. Referendum itself was illegal since existing bosnian constitution at that time prohibited any major decisions to be made without all 3 ethnic groups agreement. And muslim own demographic institute (easily found on the web) shows that out of 289,000 people killed in the was only about half were mulsims, and their civilian to military casualty ratio was 2:1. One third of the victims in the war were serbs, with civilian to soldier ration 5:1. In fact if you compare numbers of civilians killed in war, it was around 90,000 muslims versus 72,000 serbs - for poor defensless victims of genocide they did pretty well. Muslims had much higher military casualties due to inferior armament and organization in the beggining, but soldiers killed in the battle are not victims of genocide (according to muslims they are martirs) plus they started the war fully aware that they are weaker. Nobody in the west ever quotes these numbers, even though they are provided by muslim sources, it is always said that as a consequence of serb "genocide" several hundred thousand people were killed.
We bosnian serns wanted the same deal protestants in norther ireland got - to stay with mother nation when others want to secede. Since you live in Britain you can relate to that.
Keep your rabid foamy blogger mouth off balkans, you lowlife scum, and do not insult the memory of bosnian serb heroes including my brother who defended their own people, and west indirectly. Hope some muslim brother blows you up in suicide bombing in London to thank you for your support of muslim cause.
"I hate muslims with reason - majority of them think of themselves as superior and justified by god to do whatever they want to non-muslims."
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Replace muslims and non-muslims with christians and non-christians in that sentence. Welcome to the other side of the fence pal.
If you've read this blog at all, you'd realise that the author doesn't give two hoots vis-a-vis religion, especially when its used as an excuse for violence.
Also I happened upon a very apt anagram of old Slobo:
Noosed Slavic limbo.
Thank you thoughtful anonymous and Seamonkey madness, I've replied to the hate filled madman in detail. He is a perfect example of what is WRONG with so many in the Balkans. It is one thing to defend yourself from attack, another to be a sympathiser for genocide and to hate people for their religion or call for people to be murdered due to their opinions.
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