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Balkan holocausts? : Serbian and Croatian victim-centred propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia / David Bruce MacDonald.
Van Pelt Library DR2032.5 .M33 2002
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- MacDonald, David Bruce
- Series:
- New approaches to conflict analysis
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Nationalism--Yugoslavia--Serbia--History--20th century.
- Nationalism.
- Nationalism--Croatia--History--20th century.
- Propaganda, Serbian.
- Propaganda, Croatian.
- Propaganda.
- Genocide.
- History.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina--Ethnic relations.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Ethnic relations.
- Yugoslavia--Ethnic relations.
- Yugoslavia.
- Genocide--Yugoslavia.
- Yugoslav War, 1991-1995--Propaganda.
- Yugoslav War, 1991-1995.
- Croatia.
- Serbia.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 308 pages ; 24 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2002.
- Summary:
- Since 1945, the Holocaust of European Jews has left an indelible mark on western conceptions of morality and justice. In this ground-breaking study, David MacDonald explores the rise of victim centred imagery in nationalism today, paying close attention to the Jewish Holocaust as the pre-eminent symbol of suffering in the twentieth century. In the 1990s, Yugoslavia's tragic collapse would inaugurate the first violent conflict on European soil since World War II, resulting in the first convictions for genocide in European history. However, while extremely bloody wars were fought on the ground, an equally fierce war of words took place through magazines, journals, newspapers, and books, as well as on television, the radio, and the Internet.
- Serbian and Croatian propagandists used both the fear of genocide and the imagery of the Holocaust in the service of ethnic cleansing and violent state building. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, Balkan holocausts? dissects many of the key events, historical themes, and manichean arguments used by Serbian and Croatian nationalists in their efforts to create expanded homelands in the Balkans. This book is the first of its kind to rigorously compare and contrast Serbian and Croatian propaganda, something other studies have singularly failed to do. The author focuses not only on official writings from the former Yugoslavia, but closely examines Diaspora writers and Internet 'arm chair' nationalists, both of whom buttressed the escalation and spread of nationalism in a region which had hitherto known almost four decades of peace.
- Contents:
- 1 What is the nation? Towards a teleological model of nationalism 15
- Myths of the nation: teleology and time 16
- Myths of covenant and renewal 20
- Primary myths of identification 22
- The golden age of nationalism 23
- Negative myths of identification 26
- A taxonomy of Fall and persecution myths 29
- Modernism and its approach to nationalism 31
- 2 Instrumentalising the Holocaust: from universalisation to relativism 39
- Biblical and Jewish ethics: nationalism and Zionism 40
- Universalising the Holocaust 43
- The comparative genocide debate and the Holocaust 49
- The Holocaust as unique in the annals of comparative genocide 49
- Against uniqueness: multiple genocides and holocausts in history 51
- 'Acting' like a victim: the Holocaust as performative 54
- 3 Slobodan Milosevic and the construction of Serbophobia 63
- Contextualising propaganda: the rise of Serbian nationalism 64
- 'Kosovo' and the development of Serbian consciousness 69
- Renewal of the Serbian Orthodox Church 72
- Generalising Kosovo: Serbian and Jewish connections 73
- The first targets: myths of persecution and the Kosovar Albanians 75
- Contextualising Serbian nationalism in Croatia 78
- Serbian territorial claims in the Krajina and Eastern Slavonia 80
- Moral claims: the myth of 'Serbophobia' 82
- Serbian interpretations of the first Yugoslavia 89
- 4 Croatia, 'Greater Serbianism', and the conflict between East and West 98
- The beginnings of Croatian nationalism 99
- Contextualising the war in Croatia 103
- Croatia confronts 'Greater Serbia' 106
- Croatian perceptions of the first Yugoslavia 111
- Croatian state right and the antemurale Christianitatis 114
- The civilisational divide between East and West 116
- The myth of Medjugorje 120
- The different racial origins of the Serbs 122
- 5 Masking the past: the Second World War and the Balkan Historikerstreit 132
- A short overview of the Second World War 134
- Rehabilitating the NDH: conflicting perceptions among the Croats 135
- Serbian views of the Ustasa and Cetniks 138
- Croatian views of the Cetniks 140
- Anti-Semitism in Croatia: Stepinac and the people 143
- Serbian views of collaboration and anti-Semitism 147
- The myth of Partisan participation 151
- 6 Comparing genocides: 'numbers games' and 'holocausts' at Jasenovac and Bleiburg 160
- The 'numbers game' at Jasenovac 161
- Jasenovac and the Serbian 'holocaust' 162
- Jasenovac, the Croatians, and the 'black legend' 165
- Bleiburg: the Croatian 'holocaust' 170
- Croats and the numbers game 172
- Motives and participants in Bleiburg 173
- Bleiburg as a Ustasa 'sacrifice' 174
- 7 Tito's Yugoslavia and after: Communism, post-Communism, and the war in Croatia 183
- The Communist era: 1945-90 184
- Serbian views of Tito's Yugoslavia 186
- Administrative versus natural borders 187
- The 1974 constitution and genocide 190
- Genocidal Croats: Croatian nationalism in the SFRY 191
- Croatian perceptions of the SFRY 193
- Serbian economic domination 194
- The Serbian character explained 195
- Linguistic repression in Yugoslavia 197
- The rise of Serbian and Croatian nationalism: interpretations 200
- 'Operation Storm' 204
- Contemporary fears of the Catholic Church 206
- Croatian views of the war in Croatia 207
- The long-awaited evil
- Greater Serbia 209
- Serbian Nazis and collective psychosis 210
- 8 'Greater Serbia' and 'Greater Croatia': the Moslem question in Bosnia-Hercegovina 220
- Primordial and constructed nations: the case of the Bosnian Moslems 221
- Denouncing constructed nationalism and Islam 223
- The Moslems as 'fallen' Serbs: ethnic and territorial dimensions 224
- Bosnian Moslems and their Croatian heritage 226
- Bosnia-Hercegovina as a Croatian land 228
- Analysing Serbian and Croatian arguments 229
- The Moslems as 'traitors': the Islamic conspiracy theory 232
- Serbs and the 'Moslem traitors' in Bosnia-Hercegovina 232
- Imagining the Islamic state: Serbian perspectives 234
- The Moslems as genocidal killers 237
- Croatian views of the Bosnian Moslems 238
- Assigning blame in Bosnia-Hercegovina 240
- The Bosnian Moslem perspective 242
- Conclusions: confronting relativism in Serbia and Croatia 251
- Religious nationalism and 'ethnic' nations 252
- Holocaust imagery and the comparative genocide debate 256
- Instrumentalising the Fall 259
- Was there ever genocide in Serbia or Croatia? 261
- Western reactions: does the comparative genocide debate work? 266.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-299) and index.
- ISBN:
- 071906466X
- 0719064678
- OCLC:
- 51041756
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