PART 1: The civil wars in Yugoslavia and Milosevic's 1989 speech
A case study in the management of reality
It’s good that Mat Walsh and Konstanin Kisin, at the top of their game and with large audiences, have ridiculed the media for painting Donald Trump’s recent event at Madison Square Garden as a ‘Nazi rally.’
We didn’t have Walsh and Kisin back in the 1990s, before the blog and podcast revolutions, when the media did the same with Slobodan Milosevic’s famous 1989 speech in Kosovo, which was the precise opposite of a ‘Nazi rally.’
It pays to understand how we were lied to about Milosevic’s speech, and Yugoslavia more generally, for here lies a historical key to unlock the political and geopolitical structure of the Western world.
If you understand Western policy in Yugoslavia, you will understand Western policy in the Middle East.
Introduction
Yugoslavia was a country in southern Europe composed of many ethnicities: Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Hungarians, Slovenes, Kosovo Albanians, Montenegrins, Macedonians…. Armed conflict broke out between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the 1990s and those civil wars tore Yugoslavia apart. In the mass communications of our Western governments, established universities, mainstream media, and leftist NGOs, a consensus narrative was established about these civil wars: it was all the fault, they told us, of the Serbs.
Some true elements of Yugoslav history were recruited and weaved with many lies and fabrications in order to support this mainstream NATO, media, academic, and NGO narrative, which went something like this.
In the Middle Ages, the Orthodox Christian Serbs, supported by Orthodox Byzantium, fought medieval religious wars with the Catholic Croats to their west. The Croats were supported by the totalitarian papacy, which could not tolerate that Orthodox Christians were outside its authority, and by the Catholic Kingdom of Hungary. These wars left a tradition of considerable ill will between Croats and Serbs.
Then, from the East, came charging the Ottoman Turkish Muslims. It fell to the Serbs to try and stop the Turkish jihadis and save the Christian West, whether Orthodox or Catholic. When the Serbian Prince Lazar and the united Serbs failed to secure a decisive victory at the famous Battle of Kosovo in 1389, there followed 500 years of oppression for the Serbs under the Ottomans and their local allies: the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims.
As a result of this history, ethnoreligious hatreds became a permanent aspect of Balkan culture (from which the term ‘Balkanization’). Such hatreds flared up most violently during World War II, when fascist Croats and jihadi Muslims, Bosnian and Albanian, allied with the German Nazis against the Serbs, who had been the dominant political force in the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Yugoslavia. But, after the war, Marshall Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav communist strongman, kept those hatreds contained in a recreated Yugoslavia with the support of the Serbs, once again the dominant polity.
After Tito died in 1980, however, keeping the peace in the Serbian province of Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians became increasingly difficult. Then, in 1989, on the 600th anniversary of the medieval Battle of Kosovo between the Christian Serbs and the Muslim Ottomans, Slobodan Milosevic—an ethnic Serb and president of Yugoslavia and Serbia—recruited the symbolism of that battle, according to this story, to ignite a revanchist and genocidal anti-Muslim Serbian nationalism.
Milosevic did this, they said, in a speech delivered before (perhaps) two-million Serbs gathered at the very site of the battle, in the Field of Blackbirds, Kosovo Polje (Gazimestan). Mind you, the media incessantly called Milosevic the “new Hitler” and the Serbs the “new Nazis,” so you were supposed to conjure in your mind the famous images of German Nazi rallies with the Führer foaming at the mouth and the bloodthirsty troops hailing his racist diatribes. Milosevic’s alleged racist aggression against Kosovo Muslims, according to this narrative, had made other Yugoslav ethnicities—especially the Croats and Bosnian Muslims—nervous. When these latter communities launched self-defense secessionist movements to separate from Yugoslavia, they told us, the Serbs responded with genocidal aggression. That’s how we got the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s.
And that’s the narrative.
The targets of this narrative were poorly informed and well-meaning Westerners (such as myself), who, upon hearing of the supposed Serbian-led genocide, concluded that the NATO bombing of the Serbs and the breakup of Yugoslavia were moral imperatives. A NATO intervention was needed, they told us, to protect innocent Croat, Bosnian Muslim, and Kosovo Muslim civilians. We were asked to remember the WWII Holocaust against the European Jews and to support NATO’s effort to stop another crime like that from happening again in Europe. We believed what they told us because we didn’t know much at all about Yugoslavia or about the Serbs. Many Westerners couldn’t even find Yugoslavia on the map.
If we had known about the history of Yugoslavia, and particularly the history of the Serbs, we would have suspected immediately that the media was lying, and that two million Serbs couldn’t possibly gather in Kosovo with their leader for a ‘Nazi rally.’
Milosevic’s 1989 speech was the very antithesis of an ultranationalist racist speech. In it he recalled that the Serbs had only ever freed others and had never oppressed anyone, and he exhorted his fellow Serbs to remain true to this tradition, and to lead all Yugoslavs toward unity and brotherhood.
“… the Serbs have never in the whole of their history conquered and exploited others. Their national and historical being has been liberational throughout the whole of history and through two world wars, as it is today. They liberated themselves and when they could they also helped others to liberate themselves. The fact that in the region [Yugoslavia] they are in the majority is not a Serbian sin or shame; this is an advantage which they have not used against others. But I must say it here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo: the Serbs have not used the advantage of being in a majority for their own benefit either.
(…)
This world is more and more marked by national tolerance, national cooperation, and even national equality. The modern economic and technological, as well as political and cultural development, has guided various peoples toward each other, has made them interdependent and increasingly has made them equal as well [medjusobno ravnopravni]. Equal and united people can above all become a part of the civilization toward which mankind is moving. If we cannot be at the head of the column leading to such a civilization, there is certainly no need for us to be at is tail.”
You can confirm this for yourself by reading either the US government translation of the speech, which Jared Israel, editor of Emperor’s Clothes, reproduced, or else the BBC’s translation:
Mind you, neither the US government nor the BBC made their translations loudly public, even as both institutions put their lies about the speech front and center in press conferences, speeches, articles, and news shows.
There is a great deal to refute in the official NATO and media narrative about Yugoslavia. But my focus in this brief five-part series will be on this key accusation, concerning Milosevic’s 1989 speech, because this event was identified as the supposed genesis of the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. Milosevic’s speech, as we will see, is almost the whole game. Because, think about it. If Milosevic had really been the “new Hitler” and the Serbs the “new Nazis,” why lie about a tolerant speech to make that case? Why not use a truly racist speech, if it existed?
With the text of Milosevic’s speech in hand, I will show you in Part 5 what NATO officials, Big Media, Western academics, and Western NGOs said about it, comparing to what is actually in the speech. This will shock you.
But first, in Parts 1 through 4, I will give you the brief historical context needed to understand the accusations against the Serbs, and in particular the lies about Milosevic’s 1989 speech. This will be its own eye-opener—I promise.
The dhimma
In the Middle Ages, the Ottoman Turks conquered the Balkans in jihad and turned non-Muslims—Christian Serbs, Balkan Jews, and Roma (Gypsies)—into dhimmis: persons forced upon pain of death to accept the Islamic contract of the dhimma.
The dhimma imposes all sorts of legal disabilities on conquered non-Muslim subjects, especially in their interactions with Muslims. It effectively turns non-Muslims into a kind of slave. This unrelenting jihadi oppression was so unbearable that there were periodic Serbian uprisings against the Ottomans.1
Dhimmis were subject to arbitrary land confiscations and forced labor. Any minute, your person could be commandeered for the Ottoman State and you’d be made to work for no pay. Or the State could steal your property if it wished.
In addition, the Serbian dhimmis had to pay a special tax called the jizya. According to Islamic juristic tradition, the collection of jizya must involve slapping the payer on the neck, pulling on their beards, and/or forcing them to bow during the payment so that everyone can be reminded who is the slave and who the master. These legally required physical humiliations were sometimes followed to the letter by Ottoman officials, though the degree to which dhimmis were publicly degraded on payday varied in different times and places.
Ottoman regulations sometimes mandated that dhimmis wear distinctive hats, sashes, or other clothing items to ensure that non-Muslims were immediately recognizable, making it possible to enforce the various humiliations required in the Sharia or Islamic law. For example, dhimmis were expected to show deference to the ‘master’ Muslim population in public spaces, including yielding the right of way to Muslims and showing other signs of abasement, respect, or subordination.
Additionally, dhimmis were generally not allowed to build new houses of worship, such as churches or synagogues, without special permission from the authorities (rarely given). Even renovations or repairs to existing structures often required a difficult-to-obtain official approval. To emphasize their inferior status, no dhimmi houses of worship could match or exceed in height any nearby mosques. And the exterior appearance of churches and synagogues had to be modest to avoid overshadowing Muslim religious sites. Dhimmis, moroever, were obligated to worship quietly and invisibly.
Nothing, however, was more painful than the devshirme system, also known as the ‘blood tax,’ which involved the periodic and compulsory conscription of Christian boys into the elite Janissary corps. These boys, usually between the ages of 8 and 18, were taken from their Serbian families against their parents’ wishes and turned into elite infantry soldiers attached to the Ottoman sultan’s household. The boys were forcibly converted to Islam, trained rigorously, and educated to serve as specialized slaves in various roles within the Ottoman military and bureaucracy. This was traumatic for the Serbian Christian families, as they had no choice in the matter, and it involved the forced separation of children from their communities and culture.
The Battle of Kosovo
As you can imagine, the memory of 500 years of slavery under the Ottomans was traumatic for the Serbs. That’s why the medieval Battle of Kosovo of 1389 is such an important event in their national memory. The Serbs remember how, on that day, they put all their differences aside to join together as one behind the leadership of the Serbian Prince Lazar and fought bravely for freedom against the Turks. They lost that war anyways and became slaves for 500 years, but on that day, united, they fought the Turks to an unlikely draw.
This kind of remembering has some parallels to the ‘Cinco de Mayo’ (Fifth of May) tradition in Mexico, cherished because General Ignacio Zaragoza and a poorly equipped Mexican army, which included many irregular volunteers, defeated on that day a far superior French force. Mexico still lost the war and the French imposed an imperial government, but on the 5th of May, 1862, our side won an unlikely victory and that is what we Mexicans cherish.
The Serbs, similarly, cherish the Battle of Kosovo because, even if they lost the war, that day was a moment of great national unity and heroism, worthy of celebration on that account. For the Serbs, however, it is also a deeply painful remembrance because losing to the Turks after the Battle of Kosovo didn’t mean the imposition of a very brief and liberal imperial government (what the Mexicans got), but, to the contrary, half a millennium of jihadi oppression.
Some of the conquered Serbs converted to Islam, as did most of the Albanians, and they became oppressors of the resisting, unconverted Christians. It is because of this historical experience that two important Muslim minorities existed in the Balkans, in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. These Muslim minorities were in Bosnia and in the Serbian autonomous province of Kosovo.
The modern world, and World War II
As Ottoman power waned in the modern world, the Austro-Hungarian Empire waxed and gobbled some Ottoman possessions in the Balkans, so some Serbs ended up in either empire. A movement began, supported most intensely by the Serbs, to unite all the southern Slavs in an independent, southern-Slav (Yugoslav) State, in order to be free of the empires at last. That Yugoslav State was finally created after World War I.
The Balkan hatreds were still there, however. In particular, Serbian leadership in Yugoslavia bred resentment, especially among the Croats and the Muslims. Terrorists devoted to break Yugoslavia apart began to make serious trouble.
When World War II erupted, the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims allied en masse with the German Nazis. This was no aberration but in line with a generalized alliance of Muslims and Nazis across a vast geographical space.
To give you a sense for that, the man on the cover of the Rubin & Schwanitz book above, in the black coat, is Hajj Amin al Husseini, founding father of the Arab Palestinian movement and co-leader of the German Nazi Final Solution in Europe. He can be seen inspecting Bosnian Muslim forces that he personally recruited and trained for Heinrich Himmler’s SS. Those forces specialized in murdering Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in Yugoslavia. More on that here:
The Catholic Croats also largely allied with the invading armies of Adolf Hitler in WWII. And the German Nazis installed in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, Ante Pavelic’s clerical-fascist and terrorist movement: the Ustaše (in English transliteration this is rendered as Ustashe, Ustasha, or Ustashi). The ultra-Catholic Croatian Ustashe organized a genocidal war against the Orthodox Christian Serbs.
The historical significance of this is almost never mentioned: the first death camp in Europe was not established by the German Nazis in Poland, Austria, or Germany. It was the Ustashe in the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ who came up with this idea. That death camp was called Jasenovac, and it was built to kill mostly Serbs, though any Jews and Gypsies caught in Yugoslavia were of course killed too, for the Ustashe adopted German Nazi ideology in addition to their hatred of Serbs.
The Serbs and the Jews in World War II
By contrast to these other populations, the Serbs were the gallant heroes of World War II.
When the Yugoslav government, surrounded as it was already by the Nazis and their Axis allies, tried to reach an accommodation with Hitler, Serbian soldiers in Belgrade deposed that government and declared war on Nazi Germany. According to Hitler’s own generals, in testimony given before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, this declaration of war decided Hitler to delay Operation Barbarossa to invade the Soviet Union, because he felt he couldn’t move north against the Soviets leaving his southern flank exposed to the Yugoslavs. The delay, according to Hitler’s generals, was about five weeks.
How crucial was Hitler’s delay of Operation Barbarossa? Hitler needed to get started with that early or he would be consumed by the Russian winter (and Stalin’s scorched-Earth policy). And so he was. But get this: when the Nazis—whose supply lines were stretched and useless, and whose soldiers were hungry, undersupplied, poorly clothed, and freezing—were forced back by the Russian winter, they had already gotten themselves to the suburbs of Moscow! Had the Nazis started earlier, they really could have conquered Russia. It follows, then, that we have the Serbs to thank for Hitler’s defeat—for Hitler was defeated in Russia. And that, in any case, was the assessment of Hitler’s own generals.2
Now, when Hitler invaded Yugoslavia, the Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanian Muslims joined the Nazis en masse in a war of extermination against their Serbian compatriots. Yet, despite the brutality of the German-Nazi occupation of Serbia, this was the only place in Europe where the Nazis got zero cooperation from the local population with their anti-Jewish measures: the Serbs simply would not obey them. Indeed, the German Nazis couldn’t even get their own Serbian quislings (pro-Nazi traitors installed by the Nazis to rule the conquered Serbian population) to do this.
To celebrate this moral bravery, Ruth Mitchell—who had joined the Chetniks, one of the two main Serbian forces fighting the Nazis—published a book during World War II, in 1943, entitled The Serbs Choose War. As part of her documentation, she reproduced a letter
“...written by a Jewish physician, a professor in the Department of Medicine in the University of Belgrade, to a friend in London on his escape from Yugoslavia in 1942.”
This letter, by a grateful Jew, provides a good summary of what happened. I reproduce it in full:
“In Yugoslavia there were 85,000 Jews, including Jewish émigrés from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Thanks to the Serbs, the Yugoslav Jews had succeeded in saving and rescuing many of their compatriots from Germany and German-occupied countries. Service rendered and assistance given to Jews by Yugoslav consular officials in Austria and Czechoslovakia has specially to be recognized. Of the total number of Jews in Yugoslavia about 7,500 were refugees.
After the [Nazi invasion in 1941] ... the Jews came under the rule of various regimes, including [Ante] Pavelich’s ‘Independent Croatian State.’
The ‘solution’ of the Jewish question in the Independent Croatia devolved upon the Croatian Ustashis [the Catholic clerical-fascist regime empowered in Croatia by the Nazis]. In Serbia, however, the Jewish problem was not dealt with by the Serbs themselves. This the Germans reserved for themselves. There are special reasons for this. When they occupied Serbia, the Germans did not find any anti-Semitic feeling in the country. They could not persuade either the local population or the local authorities to take any anti-Semitic measures.”
I interrupt to provide some context. When the German Nazis conquered Serbia, they installed a Serbian traitor by name Milan Nedić (Nedich), who became the quisling head of the German-backed, so-called ‘Government of National Salvation’ in Serbia from 1941 to 1944. Though this government of course collaborated with Nazi Germany in occupied Serbia, even this Nedic would not persecute the Serbian Jews, as the author of this letter that I am reproducing explained.
Back to the letter:
“The fact that Nedich twice demanded from the German commanding officer in Serbia and the Banat that he and his government should be given the right to settle the Jewish problem, against whom no drastic measures should and could be taken in Serbia, shows the feeling of the Serbian people toward the Jews. The following reasons were given by Nedich to the Germans for this demand. If the Germans wanted the Serbs to calm down, it would be of first importance to stop the terrible persecution of the Serbian Jews. The Serbian people could not and would not accept such treatment of ‘their compatriots of the Jewish religion.’ The Serbs consider Jews as their brothers, only of a different religion. The answer which Nedich received from the Germans regarding this demand was ‘that the Serbs have not attained a culture to the degree necessary to enable them to deal with the Jews. We ourselves shall settle the Jewish question in Serbia.’
With regard to anti-Semitism, Yugoslavia can be divided into two parts, i.e., districts where this feeling was latent, and Serbia, where, it can be said without any exaggeration, anti-Semitic feeling has never had any root.
During Yugoslavia’s twenty-three years of existence, Serbia has always professed the free democratic tradition existing in the former Kingdom of Serbia. There in the nineteenth century, and later in the twentieth, the Jews always had full civic rights and complete equality with their Serbian compatriots. This equality was not only granted in various constitutions of the Kingdom of Serbia and later of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but it was also a true expression of the relationship between the Orthodox Serbs and the Jews in their everyday contact. This friendly and amicable relationship also existed in the economic, financial, and political life in Serbia. The small group of Jews living in Serbia gave their contribution towards the cultural and political life in Serbia’s struggle for the formation of a state of South Slavs. The Jews had in Serbia members of Parliament. In Serbia’s struggle for liberation, the Jews gave their contribution. Several were awarded the Karadgeorge Star for bravery in the battlefield—equivalent to the British V.C.”
I interrupt once again to explain some needed context before proceeding with the letter, because Yugoslavia right before the Nazi invasion had extremely complex politics, and the author of the letter makes reference to that.
The center of power in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The Croats hated that. Strong majorities of Croats, wishing nothing to do with the Orthodox Christian Serbs, wanted at least autonomy within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Many wanted secession, and supported the ultra-Catholic, clerical-fascist, terrorist Ustashe (supported also by the Vatican, the Italian fascists, and the German Nazis).
Despite all that Croat rancor, strong majorities of Serbs wanted to keep Yugoslavia together, with the Croats. This unrequited Serbian love for the Croats produced a dynamic of appeasement, where Vladko Maček (Machek), leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), could extort concessions from the Yugoslav prime minister, the Serb Dragiša Cvetković (Tsvetkovich), who was especially weak because the Serbs didn’t like him.
This dynamic led to the Tsvetkovich-Machek agreement, the Sporazum, which created the Banovina of Croatia, essentially a Croatian State within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, with its own parliament (etc.), and with borders most congenial to the maximalist claims of Croatian nationalists. Ivan Šubašić (Shubashitch), a close associate of Macek, became Ban (governor) of the Banovina of Croatia. And Vladko Macek was made vice-premier of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia!
This was all happening in 1941—World War II was raging. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was entirely surrounded already by the German Third Reich and its Axis allies. And it was coming under increasing pressure to genuflect to Nazi wishes if it wished to avoid invasion. Under this pressure, the Tsvetkovich-Machek government approved the implementation of anti-Semitic measures in Yugoslavia.
I now continue the letter where we left off, because the author makes reference to this.
“About a year before Yugoslavia was attacked by Germany, by pressure from the Reich and in their attempt to suit their policy to the dictators, the Tsvetkovich-Machek Government passed the first anti-Semitic measure in Yugoslavia. The Government was not unanimous on this point. Dr. Koroshets, leader of the Slovenes, upheld the measure as Minister of Education. Serbian cabinet ministers, however, including the Minister of War, refused to apply the act. The application of it was confined to the Ministry of Education, under the Slovene, Dr. Koroshets, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, under the Croat, Dr. Andres.
In all the schools and universities, numerous restrictions [on the Jews] were applied by circular, but in Serbia, Serb teachers and professors succeeded in avoiding or sabotaging the regulations.
In this regard Serbia completely differed from Croatia under Dr. Machek and the district governor or Ban, Shubashich. In Croatia anti-Semitism was inherited from Austria-Hungary. Anti-Semitic centers had always existed. Dr. Shubashitch’s Croatia had even prepared elaborate laws and regulations just before the war broke out in Yugoslavia in 1941. A large part of the industries in Jewish hands in Croatia was to be confiscated and nationalized. Anti-Semitism was particularly stressed in Croatia by the right wing of Dr. Machek’s Croatian Peasant Party.
This report could be divided into two parts—the first beginning with the entry of German troops into Belgrade in April 1941 to the beginning of August 1941; the second from the middle of August 1941 until the closing down of the office of the ‘Jewish section’ late in 1942. The section was closed because there were no longer any Jews in occupied Serbia.During the first stage the Jews were tortured, persecuted, maltreated, taken for forced labor. Well-known Jews and Serbs were taken to German concentration camps. Women of the intelligentsia class were forced to clean latrines in the German barracks, to clean floors and sweep streets under the supervision of the S.S. troops. They were made to clean the windows of high houses from the outside, and several of them lost their lives through falling down. Jewish girls were violated and taken to ‘Militar-Medi.’ Already during the first stage the Jews were deprived of all their property and most of them were evicted from their homes.
In the second period male Jews were sent to concentration camps. But quite a number of men and young Jews succeeded in escaping to the villages, where they lived with Serbian peasant families. A number later joined the guerrillas. A considerable number of youths from the Jewish Zionist organization, which co-operated with the Serbian organizations for the preparation of resistance, actively helped the guerrilla fighters. Many collected hospital material for the guerrillas or posted anti-German posters in Belgrade streets. The name of Almozmo, a schoolboy of ten, the son of a well-known Belgrade dispensing chemist in Peter Street, should be mentioned. He threw bombs at two armored German cars and a tank in Grobljanska Street in Belgrade and blew them up. His elder brother, a medical student, is still fighting in Bosnia, in spite of the order that the mayor and members of the rural councils would be shot if such cases were discovered in their villages.
Some forty of my relatives were shot in Belgrade by the Germans. I am, however, very proud to say that today two small relatives of mine, one of five and one of seven years of age, whose parents were shot by the Gestapo, are being hidden by two Serbian mothers.
No German measures in Belgrade were able to upset the friendly relations between the Serbs and Jews. During the forced-labor period Serbs talked to their Jewish friends in the streets even in front of the German soldiers and police. During the period [when] well over 300,000 Serbs were massacred by the Croat Ustashi in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Lika and some 60,000 shot by the Germans in Serbia, during the period when Serbian students and peasants were hung in the main square in Belgrade, the Serbs of the capital had sufficient courage to protest publicly their indignation at the treatment of the Jews.
When Jewish women were transported in lorries to the concentration camps, Serb shopkeepers in the streets through which these processions passed closed their shops and their houses, thus expressing not only their protest, but also emphasizing the fact that the entire population of Serbia, yesterday and today, does not and cannot participate in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors.
The example of the Serbian people with regard to the Jews is unique in Europe, particularly in the southern part of the continent. In spite of intensive German propaganda in writing and through the wireless, the Serbs remained unaffected. When we consider what happened to the Jews in neighboring countries, in the ‘Independent State of Croatia,’ Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, the Serbian example shines out.
Today there are no more Jews left in Serbia, except some children hidden by the Serbs and those fighting along with the Serbs in the forests. I saved my own life thanks to my Serbian friends. I was saved from certain death. Serbian peasants and my other friends also saved from death my only son, who was on several occasions sought by the Gestapo in Belgrade.
It is my desire as a Jew and as a Serb that in free democratic countries where Jews are still enjoying full freedom and equality they should show gratitude to the Serbian people, pointing out their noble acts, their humane feelings, and their high civic consciousness and culture....
I cannot conclude this report without mentioning how the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch Gavrilo, and his clergy tried to save Serbian Jews and Gypsies. Up to the present day the Germans have massacred I70,000 Gypsies, men, women, and children, in Serbia and the Banat. Serbian Orthodox priests and the Serbian peasantry risked their lives not only to save ordinary Jews and their children but also to save those Gypsies and their children. Today the chief rabbi of Yugoslav Jews lives in America. He was saved from the Gestapo, being smuggled out from Serbia from monastery to monastery by the Serbian clergy. He was handed over by one Serbian church to another, by one Serbian priest to another until he was passed on to Bulgarian territory. There, with the assistance of the Orthodox Bulgarian clergy, some of whom were his personal friends, he arrived at the Turkish frontier.”3
The Serbs after World War II
Whether as Chetniks, led by Draža Mihailović (Mihailovich), or as Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito, the Serbs fought the Nazis and their allies in Yugoslavia, and they won.
It was Tito who got to form the post-war Yugoslav government, and, though he himself was a Croat, his victorious anti-Nazi Partisans were overwhelmingly Serbs. After the war, instead of taking revenge for the Nazi crimes, a policy that would have fallen hardest on his fellow Croats, Tito decided to recreate Yugoslavia with a policy of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ that amounted to widespread amnesty for genocide. There were some trials and executions, but these tended to be selective and often limited to high-profile figures. The broader policy largely avoided widespread purges and allowed many lower-level collaborators to reintegrate into society.
The Serbs supported this.
Milosevic’s 1989 speech, in its proper context
Ask yourself this question. Knowing the history of Yugoslavia, who was more likely to cause a civil war there? The Serbs? Or the unreconstructed Yugoslav fascists and jihadists whom the Serbs had magnanimously amnestied?
The answer is obvious, but you need to have learned something in school about Yugoslavia and the Serbs to know it. And we don’t learn that.
Thus, when the media turned the world upside down for us Westerners and told us that the Serbs were vicious racists who had caused the Yugoslav civil wars, we believed them. When they said the violence of the Croatian and Bosnian-Muslim separatist movements of the 1990s was a reaction to what they feared would be a Serbian war of ethnic cleansing, we believed that too! And when they said they should drop some “humanitarian bombs” (I kid you not) on the supposedly genocidal Serbs in order to save innocent Croats and Muslims, we approved.
When, to round out this narrative, they told us the entire mess had begun with Milosevic’s 1989 speech at the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, where he had supposedly joined the Serbian memories of Nazi and Ottoman oppression and genocide to declare a genocidal revenge-war against Kosovo Albanians, we accepted that. It didn’t occur to us that Milosevic’s 1989 speech was instead calling for the unity and brotherhood of all Yugoslavs!
It just didn’t occur to us that that the entire media had represented reality upside down, with the true genocidal monsters as the victims, and the victims as the monsters.
Ah… but we have seen, recently, how hard that media works to represent the Israeli Jews as the bad guys and the jihadi terrorists who torture them to death and wish them all dead as the good guys. So perhaps this is a propitious time for revisiting Yugoslavia, where I claim the very same kind of Orwellian inversion was achieved.
Up next, in Part 2, I’ll establish that it was fascist Croats and jihadi Muslims in Yugoslavia who started the whole mess that became the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. I will also discuss why it became US and German policy to support these fascists and jihadists. And I’ll show you that those who accused Milosevic had nothing on him, and that’s why the meaning makers lied about his 1989 speech.
PART 2: The civil wars in Yugoslavia and Milosevic's 1989 speech
SERBIAN CULTURE AND IDENTITY HAS BEEN HEROICALLY HUMANITARIAN. THE OFFICIAL STORY IS UPSIDE DOWN.
In Part 2 we examine the lies told about the Serbs when they were described as the "new Nazis."
During the nearly 500 years of Ottoman rule over Serbian territories, there were several notable uprisings and instances of resistance against Ottoman control, though these were not continuous. Major Serbian uprisings occurred during periods of Ottoman instability or foreign conflicts, when the Serbs saw opportunities to challenge Ottoman authority. Some of the key uprisings included:
Early Rebellions: Smaller local revolts occurred periodically from the 15th century onward, usually as responses to oppressive local Ottoman policies or harsh taxation. These were often localized and quickly suppressed.
The First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813): This was a major and sustained rebellion that marked the beginning of the Serbian Revolution. Under the leadership of Karađorđe Petrović, Serbian insurgents sought autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. Though initially successful, the rebellion was eventually suppressed by Ottoman forces.
The Second Serbian Uprising (1815): Led by Miloš Obrenović, this uprising followed the failure of the first. This rebellion, however, achieved more lasting results, leading to the establishment of the semi-autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman Empire. This autonomy paved the way for Serbia's eventual independence.
19th-Century Revolts: In the later 19th century, as the Ottoman Empire weakened, Serbian nationalists and guerrilla fighters carried out smaller uprisings and organized cross-border raids from the newly autonomous Serbian principality to encourage resistance in Ottoman-held Serbian territories.
While uprisings were not constant, there was a persistent undercurrent of resistance and dissatisfaction. The Serbian uprisings were part of a broader trend of nationalist movements across the Balkans, fueled by the desire for independence and the decline of Ottoman authority in the region.
In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer wrote:
“Defenders of Hitler’s military genius have contended that the Balkan campaign did not set back the timetable for Barbarossa appreciably and that in any case the postponement was largely due to the late thaw that year which left the roads in Eastern Europe in deep mud until mid-June. But the testimony of the key German generals is otherwise. Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, whose name will always be associated with Stalingrad, and who at this time was the chief planner of the Russian campaign on the army General Staff, testified on the stand at Nuremberg that Hitler’s decision to destroy Yugoslavia postponed the beginning of Barbarossa by ‘about five weeks.’ The Naval War Diary gives the same length of time. Field Marshall von Runstedt, who led Army Group South in Russia, told Allied interrogators after the war that because of the Balkan campaign ‘we began at least four weeks late. That,’ he added, ‘was a very costly delay.’ ”
SOURCE: Shirer, William (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster. (pp.829-830).
The Serbs Chose War, by Ruth Mitchell, Garden City Publishers, New York, 1943, (pp.260-264)
A fascinating history. I look forward to the next installment. I went to school in Steubenville OH in the 40' and 50's with many Serbs whose parents had fled Yugoslavia. Medichs, Boichs; dozens of Serbs. They worked in the steel mills, many starting their own businesses. Intelligent, warm. talent people. I am shocked at my own Catholic Church having been involved with the Nazis.
I remembered when NATO began its bombing campaign against Serbia I remarked to my colleagues in my Political Science Department that these were acts of aggression by what was supposed to be only a mutual defense alliance. But with the current conflict in Ukraine it appears that NATO is anything but a mutual defense pact.