> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> '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.
Nice thesis except the issue of Serb chauvinism was hardly started with the Kosovo war. It was what what fueled wars across the region (along with other forms of Croat and, yes, Muslim chauvinism).
And if rendering the enemy less than human is the goal, then the NY TIMES article is a terrible failure, since it renders a portrait of all too human characters, disillusioned, disgusted with their government, yet self-deceiving in ignoring the murders made in their name against the Kosovars.
> 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.
"Glee"?- cite an example. On the other hand, I can cite many news articles and television broadcasts highlighting the suffering caused to the Serbs by the bombing campaign, even as the campaign was justified in the name of human rights. You can attack the policy but it is a straw man to use words like "glee."
> 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...
It would have been nice to have a multicultural Kosovo, but the Serb government quite a while ago decided that allowing the Kosovos to have their culture as part of Yugoslavia would not be allowed. So the Serbs tried to take the whole land in the middle of war and created over 1 million refugees in the attempt, with local Serbs often participating in the mass murder that was part of that ethnic clensing.
Now, suddenly it is a tragedy that multiculturalism has failed in Kosovo?
Since your assumption is that everything was peechy-keen in Kosovo until NATO's bombs started falling, I guess it makes sense to blame the Kosovars for finding it hard to impossible to live with those who participated or at least watched in their murder and ethnic clensing.
But I find the moral equivalence you draw strained beyond belief.
To the extent that Palestinians seek to drive Israeli settlers out of the West Bank, one could draw an equivalence with what the Israelis have done in driving Palestinians out of Israel and the Occupied Territories over the years - and many Israelis would draw the analogy. But the difference is that any settlers have the rest of Israel to return to, just as the Serbs have the rest of Serbia to return to.
It would be more ideal to have a multiracial, multicultural Kosovar, but that possibility was largely destroyed long before any NATO bombs were dropped.
--Nathan newman