The Unrepented Serb: Epitome of Chauvinist Danger

My approach to the explosive situation created in the Balkans over the past 17 years mainly because of the Serbian expansionism, nationalism and racism provoked massive reaction from the part of Serb readership. Most of them were brief insults testifying to the extremely low level of education and culture that prevails in Serbia; those adopting an acceptable articulation were truly scarce. This fact in and by itself demonstrates clearly where the problem lies; the international community would not be safe, if Nazi Germany was left within its legitimate 1939 borders, with their Nazi establishment unchallenged.

It has to become clearly understood to all that the survival or the existence itself of a racist and discriminatory regime – center of emanation of discriminatory theories and unacceptable versions of History threatens the entire world. Those who assume that the world cannot be threatened by small countries like Serbia forget that WW I has been provoked precisely by Serbia.

A discriminatory regime in a sizeable country like Germany is certainly more dangerous than a racist elite ruling a small state; however, the threat emanating from a small but racist country should never be under-estimated because of the implications and the ideological diffusion.

Even if we assume that the small racist country is isolated and the danger therefore contained (which is not the case for today´s Serbia – if we only take into consideration the Russian involvement), the endurance of an antihuman, discriminatory regime risks making of its deviating concepts an attractive alternative for possible dissidents and dissatisfied leaderships and people allover the world. This situation should be averted beforehand.

Of course, it has been widely publicized that today´s Serbs are not racist and discriminatory because …… their fathers fought against Hitler´s Nazi soldiers. There is no worse aberration than this. The exploits of one´s father do not consist in any case in a certificate of beliefs and convictions. The Serbs fought against the Nazis because Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, and the Serbs had been traditionally anti-Austrian and anti-German, having sided with the Entente in WW I. Two dictatorial regimes can fight against one another, but they don´t gain in the process any ´certificate´ of democratic nature.

The idea that today´s Serbs are not racist and discriminatory because their fathers fought against Hitler´s Nazi soldiers is as baseless and ridiculous as the theory that the Soviet Union imposed slavery because Tsarist Russia had institutionalized slavery until the 2nd half of the 19th century.

Instead, what matters is the analysis and evaluation of the ideas, the theories, the ideologies, the attitudes, the political concepts and the stance of an elite, a regime, and a people at a certain precise moment. The character of the ideas adopted and propagated, and the nature of the stance and attitude matter only when they are contemporaneous with the moment in which the analysis is made. Past positions matter not, because the ideas, the attitudes and the behaviour change. If in today´s America, the religious Right controls the minds of the people, little matters that, in the late 60s and the early 70s, religion played only a minor role in the US politics.

And if we analyze the ideas, the attitudes and the stance of today´s Serbs, we can easily draw the conclusion that racism, racial and religious hatred, intolerance, historical rancor, discriminatory prejudices against other nations, and Anti-Albanian, Anti-Bosnian, Anti-Croatian, Anti-Hungarian, Anti-Kosovar, Anti-Macedonian, Anti-Italian, Anti-Turkish, Anti-Christian (Catholic), and Anti-Islamic stance do characterize most of them.

Of course, rejecting to fearlessly take a look in the mirror, the Serbs deny this conclusion. I believe it would be greatly helpful to publish and comment on one of the numerous mails I received from protesting Serbs. The fact that they expect all the world to agree with them shows how difficult it is for them to realize what tolerance and democratic approach mean. Having lived under totalitarian and discriminatory regimes, the Serbs still fail to understand today that they are the only responsible for the severe defeats registered by their nationalistic establishment and racist leaders.

I am convinced that a commentary of the discriminatory and racist ideas and concepts revealed through this mail will help Serbs wake up, and disentangle themselves from the nationalistic and racist paroxysm that characterized them for too long. I will publish the mail integrally, without of course answering to the insults included. Numbers inserted in the mail´s text refer to points of the comments that are published thereafter.

Serbian Criticism by Peter Pavlovich

Dear Sir,

"In the same way the Serbs subjugated Montenegrins, oppressed Macedonians, tyrannized Slovenes, massacred Croats, executed Bosnians, and butchered Albanian Kosovars in Milosevic´s Yugoslavia,"

Moron ! For a man who speaks 15 languages, authored a dozen books, has studied in a 11 countries you use that vast educational credential to hopefully give merit 1 to your disingenuous and false premise that Serbia is pure evil 2 and responsible for everything! 3 Even a neophyte 4 using basic common sense could see that you are writing from a very personal 5 and jaded point of view.

Yugoslavia was a "horrible" communist civil war 6 in which hundreds of thousands of deaths occurred and atrocities were committed on every side and not simply the Serbian side! 7

You are letting your ideology 8 permeate any reasonable argument that you put forth.

If the Serbia is so horrible 9, why are Serbs, by an incredible number over 500,000 the single largest group of refugees in Europe ??? 10 Why after so many years can they not go back to their homes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo? 11 Why 'Mr. Man of Reason' have 200,000 of them been forced out of Kosovo only not to be allowed or encouraged to come back. 12 If Kosovo is so wonderful, why is an inedited war criminal 13 openly at the helm? Where is your outrage or even handed mention about those things??? 14 Please answer those questions dear journalistically lazy Sir 15 and perhaps then I will take the time in the future to read your deeply flawed drivel.

Sincerely,

Peter Pavlovich

Commentary

1. I don´t ´use´ my academic credentials to give merit to my analysis; the argumentation matters only. However, I have to fill a personal profile space, and I believe it is only honorable for a contributor to clearly show his true face.

2. I did not say Serbia is evil or anything of the sort. People are not evil; their ideas can at times be. When denouncing a person, one rejects the error, the false, the evil in that person, not the person itself. Serbs may have very erroneous and evil ideas, but if re-educated, they can see that the world is very different from what they wrong ideas have so far let them imagine.

3. No, certainly Serbia is not responsible for everything! Serb nationalists, chauvinists, and racists are responsible for having failed to understand that there would be consequences for their acts. More specifically, it should be clear to them that only disaster can come to those opposing the political will of the outright majority of the population of a place, province or area. It was all wrong, everything that started from day 1 of the Milosevic rule was an aberration that sooner or later would pay its dividends. Every attempt, every effort, every act would, and in fact did, alienate the Serbs from all the other peoples. Of course, it would be wrong to imagine that the entire responsibility falls on Milosevic´s shoulders. A lot of problematic developments had taken place before he rose to power or even before he was born. The expansion of the kingdom of Serbia in 1912 – 3 was an illegal and criminal act. The same is valid for the incredible expansion of the (already exceedingly enlarged in 1913) Serbian kingdom after the end of WW I. With France and Russia (up to 1917) as supporters and immoral promoters, Serbs thought that they had the right to annex the Macedonians, the Albanians, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Romanians and the Hungarians of Voivodina, and the Muslims of Bosnia, Sanjaq, and Voivodina. It was all wrongly assumed. The primary concern of a state should be its moral stance.

Further dismemberment of Serbia ahead

Once morality is breached, the consequences will sooner or later befall on the responsible; this is inevitable. For too long the Serbs thought they had won; in fact, not a single nation, elite, regime, people acting immorally and oppressing other peoples can hope to irreversibly win; no one can manage to avoid the consequences. Instead of early understanding the Laws of Morality that specify the correct terms of relationship among people (and through extension the relationship among nations), the Serbs thought everything was over, and they were – once forever – the lucky ones. This was most unfortunate as it pushed them deeper to the epicenter of the disaster. Worse is still to come tomorrow, if the political will of the populations of Sanjaq and Voivodina is not properly respected.

4. You should say ´beginner´; ´neophyte´ reflects mostly a religious connotation.

5. All the Serbs have been expressing for so long their ´personal´ viewpoint, shamelessly disregarding the ideas and viewpoints of the Albanian Kosovars, the Muslim Sanjaqis, the catholic Croats, the Bosnians, and of so many others. And you, do you truly bother about me expressing my personal viewpoint? So terribly biased you are that you cannot understand that you have no right to demand from others what you do not apply to yourself first? Is it still so difficult for you to understand that the same law applies to all, that all have the same rights, and that no one has the right to claim a discriminatory privilege? You should first demand from your nationalistic compatriots to immediately consider the viewpoints of the others, and thus to denounce the supposed Serbian historical rights to Kosova, because of the present Albanian outright majority; only then you could logically ask me not to express my ´personal´ viewpoint.

6. "Communist civil war" in Yugoslavia? This is the most comical interpretation that has ever been heard of; there was nothing left of Communism in 1991 Yugoslavia. The entire rhetoric of Milosevic and all the other Serbs, the Bosnians, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Albanian Kosovars, the Macedonians and the Montenegrins was of purely nationalistic contents. One nation, the Serbs, supported their nationalistic leader in viewing all the others through a purely racist viewpoint and in the process they attempted to expand at the detriment of all the rest. That´s all! There is nothing Communist to it; ´Communist civil war´ would imply a polarization around concepts such as state run economy and market economy. This did not characterize the political discourses of Izetbegovic, Tudjman, Gligorov and Milosevic, to say the least. If you imply that the Serbs attempted to impose a communist regime on the rest, even worse! They had the right to impose their preferential system only on themselves, not on other nations.

The Name of the Injustice and the Iniquity: Serbia

7. Atrocities committed by all sides? How hypocritical! Who started it first? Who wished to prohibit the others from their right to secede? Who controlled the Yugoslavian state machine? Who attempted to make of Kosova – a land quasi-totally foreign to Serbs (now, of course, but we speak of today, not for what happened before 500 or 2000 years) – an integral part of Serbia? It was always the nationalistic, chauvinist, racist regime of Serbia, and the majority of the blinded – due to the Milosevic Neo-Nazi propaganda – Serbs. They were therefore mentally incapacitated and absolutely besotted in their illusion of supremacy in the Balkans. How dare you speak of atrocities committed by all sides, when the criminal Serbian state machine had obliged more than half of the Albanian Kosovar population to find shelter in the snowed woods at the time of awfully cold winter? Was it not an intentional genocide? And haven´t you understood that, even if atrocities are committed by all sides, the part to be blamed is – mainly – the one that started the atrocities first? And that part has a name, the name of the Injustice and the Iniquity: Serbia.

8. There is no ideological character in my approach; if you mean my philosophical approach, I certainly believe that all the human beings must abide by the basically common to almost all Moral Code of Behaviour; morality is inherent to humans.

9. Again, Serbia is not horrible, and Serbs are not horrible. Their ideas and practices have been; there is a vast difference. I denounce the error and the evil in a human being or a society, a people or nation. Not the person, not the society, not the people or nation itself.

Serbs: the first victims of their acts

10. You state the truth here, but the answer is very simple. The Serbs have fallen the first victims of their acts. The nationalistic paroxysm backfired, and if you don´t realize this reality, it will turn even worse for you. It´s not a joke, it´s not a threat, and it´s not a prophecy. It´s the calm appreciation of the consequences you pay for what you do. And please do not say to me that "others" have not yet paid. At the end, all will be punished. If this is your concern, don´t worry! Nature applies its rule under any circumstances whatsoever.

11. Why Serbs do not go back to their homes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo? Because they do not understand that these lands did not belong to them but to their indigenous peoples. In fact, the Serbs under monarchy, communist rule or nationalistic tyranny never accepted that in the periods 1912 – 1913 and 1918 – 1919 they had expanded far beyond their land, at the prejudice of others. They enjoyed the "privilege" of tyrannizing the other nations, and they finally fell victims of their own dreams. What is even worse is that, due to their hallucination, the Serbs regarded the other peoples through a racist viewpoint, and then they hated them because the other peoples reacted to the Serbian racism. Now that the Serbs got punished, they hate to go back to territories that rightfully belong to other peoples and countries; in fact the Serbs do not want to live there humbly and humanely. The paranoid Serbian supremacism, the aberration of the Serbian arrogance, and the illusion of the Serbian ´Elected´ people of the Christian Orthodoxy, were all landed – very deservedly – in the mud of nothingness. The answer to the question is simple: the Serbs do not want to go back because they don´t accept the reality, and they hate all those who rightfully achieved their national independence; in brief, it´s another Serbian mistake. The other peoples would accept them, if the Serbs went back presenting apologies and stating clearly that they realized how wrong they had been in under-estimating and disregarding other peoples and nations. Albanian Kosovars would accept them back, if the Serbs went to shed tears for what happened to the Albanian Kosovars in 1998 – 99. They could in fact all enjoy learning more about the Kosova´s past, and they could all admit that in Kosova Serbian presence prevailed before 500 years, and Albanian – Illyrian presence prevailed before 1000 and 2000 years!

12. They are not encouraged to come back because they have not yet repented; as they are now, full of Anti-Albanian hatred and ulcerous odium, the Serbs will not respect the rightful occupants of the newly proclaimed state. They will go back to spread the pestilence of racism. If they decided to return and live as a minority in love with the Albanian Kosovars, they would be most welcome.

13. I guess that you realize that if this "criminal" (as you say) had not reacted to the Serbian tyranny, he would have been assassinated; would this be ok for you? You should rather come to terms with the humanly accepted reality and with the spirit of justice and equity; when an injustice is done, you cannot expect the reprisals to be avoided. You´ve got to understand this.

14. My reaction to this? What reaction can a person possibly have as regards reprisals carried out against an earlier discriminatory action? The only method to bring peace is the elimination of the earlier discriminatory action; the first injustice, the first act, the first aggression consists in the basic problem. And in the case of the Balkans, the first aggression was Serbian.

15. That´s your objective approach, I understand; if I wrote one pro-Serbian article per year, I would be ´journalistically energetic´! How splendid it is to unveil your biased mentality throughout your text!

Note

Picture: the historical battle of Kosova does not matter for present day life in the newly proclaimed state.