'Rather unexpectedly, the racist group points accusingly to a manifestation of racism among the oppressed' Franz Fanon wrote describing the imperial strategy of casting the victims of domination as racists. Following the allied bombing of Serb civilians in Belgrade, Novi Sad and in Kosovo, Western policy needs to render the victims of this air campaign as less than human. The best way to do that is to paint them as racists. It is an old ploy.
The supposed indifference of the Serb population to the suffering of the Kosovars would have to go pretty far before it met the glee that Western leaders and intellectuals took in the slaughter and destruction visited upon the federal republic of Yugoslavia.
Now we can see the consequences of that air campaign:
A Kosovo ethnically cleansed of Gypsies, Serbs and Montenegrins; Nato forces ushering the racially impure out of the state, while brave bands of KLA fighters stab, bomb and bludgeon a handful of old ladies that refuse to join the exodus of Serb civilians. War criminals, no doubt...
Nathan has chosen the right title for his thread. Daniel Goldhagen's thesis on the collective guilt of the German people - Hitler's Willing Executioners - has been proved decisively to be a grotesque distortion of the historical record (see Norman Finkelstein, New Left Review 224, July 97). -- Jim heartfield