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How Politicians, the Media, and
Scholars Lied about Milosevic's 1989 Kosovo Speech A review of the evidence Historical and Investigative Research, rev. 8 Sep.
2005 First published in Emperor's Clothes (
9 February 2002 ) Introduction A couple of months ago I chanced upon the Emperor's
Clothes Website. I noticed their startling claim that we have been
systematically lied to about Yugoslavia, including Slobodan Milosevic. As
they told it, he was not guilty of racist incitement and genocide; rather he
advocated multiethnic peace. Since their views sharply contradicted my
own, I started systematically checking their references by obtaining the
relevant original documents. I have yet to find a single claim in error. This was particularly surprising regarding the
famous speech that Slobodan Milosevic delivered at Kosovo Field in 1989 at
the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. According to what I
had read, this was an ultranationalist diatribe in which Milosevic
manipulated memories of a famous defeat to stir mob hatred of Muslims,
especially Albanians. Emperor's Clothes posted what they claimed was the
official U.S. government translation of that speech, which they
attributed to the National Technical Information Service, a dependency of the
Commerce Department. The posted speech was certainly not hateful. But was this the real speech? The text contradicted
everything I had been led to expect from Slobodan Milosevic and everything I
had read about this speech. Through my university library, I obtained a copy of
the microfilm of the BBC's translation (which is a translation of the live
relay of the speech). I compared this text to the one posted at Emperor's
Clothes. Except for a few words that the BBC translator was
not able to hear, they match almost exactly. The speech is not devoid of a certain poetry and,
given what I had been led to believe about Milosevic, I was amazed to find
that it was explicitly tolerant. In other words, the entire point, structure,
message, and moral of the speech -- in all its details -- was to promote
understanding and tolerance between peoples, and to affirm the unity of all
those who live in Serbia, regardless of their national origin or religious
affiliation. But if a speech such as this had been falsely
reported as a viciously hateful speech, then what about the rest of my
information about Yugoslavia? After all, it came from the same sources which
had misrepresented this speech. . . I began to read voraciously, to see how academics,
politicians and the media had reported what happened in Yugoslavia. I have
found an enormous amount of misinformation, and it is hard to dispel the
impression that much of this is deliberate. This is quite important
for my field because students of ethnic conflict, like myself, need to know
what it is that we are supposed to explain. Our case data often comes from
historians and journalists who describe ethnic conflicts for us. Until
recently, I was assuming that those who wrote about Yugoslavia could at least
be trusted to try to report things accurately. I have changed my mind. What I now know suggests
that the problem is not merely that reporters and academics are misinformed.
I have observed that a source may report the facts accurately and then, in
another place, usually later, the same source will report them
completely inaccurately. How can one explain this as a result of ignorance?
It suggests a conscious effort to misinform. That obviously raises the question: why? Many articles on Historical and Investigative
Research explore that question. Here I am
primarily concerned with showing that Slobodan Milosevic was, in fact,
systematically and willfully misrepresented. As an example of what has been
done, I have assembled excerpts from various sources regarding Milosevic’s
famous 1989 speech at Gazimestan (the location is
often referred to as Kosovo Polje or Kosovo Field).
I compare these excerpts to Milosevic’s words so that you can see what was
done. I have scanned the microfilm of the BBC translation
so my readers can compare the US government and the BBC versions for
themselves. To see the pdfs of the BBC microfilm
visit these pages: For an easy-to-read text version of the BBC
translation: To compare this to the US government translation: Finally, you may look at further instructions I
provide in the footnote for those who may wish to track down this text on
their own.[1] As you read the compilation (certainly not complete)
of misquotations, misrepresentations, misattributions, and
mischaracterizations of Milosevic’s speech in the media and by academics, it
is important to keep something in mind. If Milosevic really was a hate-monger, the
evidence would not be hard to find. As Jared Israel wrote in his introduction
to the speech:
Incitement to hatred, after all, is a public
behavior. One cannot become an ultra-nationalist populist politician
without making ultra-nationalist speeches -- the masses cannot be incited in
secret. Thus, if Milosevic really was the man portrayed in the media,
nobody would have to slander an explicitly tolerant speech in order to make
the case. They could just use a genuinely hateful public statement, written
document, radio interview, letter -- anything. It would make zero sense for
the media to fabricate all sorts of things about a tolerant speech if
anything hateful by Milosevic really existed. In the first part of my analysis below I report the
misrepresentations of the speech. Following that, I quote reports in the
media made on or immediately after June 28, 1989, the day Milosevic spoke.
These accounts, published immediately after his speech, were accurate,
and this demonstrates that the truth was easily available if someone had
wanted to report it later on. Not only that, I go further to demonstrate that
the same media services which reported the speech accurately in 1989, then
went on to lie about the speech eight years later, when NATO needed to
demonize Slobodan Milosevic, in preparation for the bombing of Yugoslavia and
takeover of Kosovo. Most of my examples deal with media coverage of the
Milosevic speech but government officials are also on record lying about it.
For example, on June 28, 1999, Robin Cook, then the Foreign Minister of the
UK, said the following about the speech:
As the excerpts from Milosevic's speech which I have
quoted below demonstrate, Robin Cook was lying. This powerfully suggests that
the Western media and the highest officials worked together in a campaign to
sell the public a falsified version of this speech, in order to justify war. Summary of the
evidence 1.
The Independent (British newspaper) 2.
The Irish Times (Irish newspaper) 3. The
heavyweights: The Economist, TIME, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and National Public Radio 4.
T.W. Carr (Assistant Publisher for Defense & Foreign Affairs
Publications, London) 5.
International Crisis Group (an NGO) 6.
The Times (of London, a newspaper) 7.
Newsday (a newspaper) 8.
Norman Cigar (an academic) 9.
The BBC (British news service, government owned) 10.
Final Remarks ________________________________________________________ 1. The Independent An important
British newspaper, The Independent, included this in what it presented as a
chronology of events: "June
1989 But no such threat appears in the text of the
speech. This allusion to an "open threat" sounds like the
Independent is using Dr. Vladimir Zerjavic as
source. They don’t sound like they could have seen the text of the speech. 2. The Irish Times Consider this by The Irish Times: "It was
at Kosovo Polje in 1389 that Serbs fought their
most historic battle, losing to a Turkish army and later enduring 500 years
of Ottoman rule. From here they fled again nearly three centuries later, led
by their Orthodox patriarch, after a failed rebellion. And here, 10 years ago this month, the Yugoslav
President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, made his name
telling a crowd of 500,000 Serbs, 'Serbia will never abandon Kosovo.'"[5] The Irish Times does not borrow the quote from Dr.
Vladimir Zerjavic, but they do borrow the boldness.
They have put quotation marks around a phrase that appears nowhere in the
text. 3. The heavyweights: the Economist,
TIME, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio Let us now look at what the biggest media
heavyweights said. We shall begin with The Economist, perhaps the most
prestigious and influential news magazine in the world: "But it
is primitive nationalism, egged on by the self-deluding myth of Serbs as
perennial victims, that has become both Mr
Milosevic’s rescuer (when communism collapsed with the Soviet Union) and his
nemesis. It was a stirringly virulent nationalist
speech he made in Kosovo, in 1989, harking back to the Serb Prince Lazar’s suicidally brave battle
against the Turks a mere six centuries ago, that
saved his leadership when the Serbian old guard looked in danger of ejection.
Now he may have become a victim of his own propaganda."[9] The passages from Milosevic’s speech quoted above
already make it clear that this was not a "stirringly virulent
nationalist speech." The Economist would have you believe that Milosevic
was literally foaming at the mouth, and wanted to use the memories of Prince
Lazar and the defeat at Kosovo Polje as a catalyst
for arousing ultra-nationalistic feelings. This is how Milosevic actually
introduced his remarks about that historical event: [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
begins here] Today, it is
difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and
what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain
and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after
all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and
glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether
the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people,
whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery.
The answers to those questions will be constantly
sought by science and the people. What has
been certain through all the centuries until our time today is that
disharmony struck Kosovo 600 years ago. If we lost the battle, then this was
not only the result of social superiority and the armed advantage of the
Ottoman Empire but also of the tragic disunity in the leadership of the
Serbian state at that time. In that distant 1389, the Ottoman Empire was not
only stronger than that of the Serbs but it was also more fortunate than the
Serbian kingdom. [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
ends here] Is this a virulent nationalist speaking? Milosevic
sounds positively professorial. He sounds like an
academic, showing a grandfatherly understanding for the human frailties that
lead people to conveniently forget things in order to make legends out of
history in a romantic and nationalistic manner. And he is talking about the famous battle at Kosovo Polje, in the very place where that battle was fought! The truth of what happened, he says, is for
scientists to establish. Is this a nationalist using a myth of the people to
rouse their passions? Does he sound ‘injured’ and ‘insecure’? TIME Magazine, perhaps the most widely-read news
magazine in the world, had a similar slant: "It was
St. Vitus' Day, a date steeped in Serbian history, myth and eerie
coincidence: on June 28, 1389, Ottoman invaders defeated the Serbs at the
battle of Kosovo; 525 years later, a young Serbian nationalist assassinated
Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, lighting the fuse for World War I. And it was on St. Vitus' Day, 1989, that Milosevic
whipped a million Serbs into a nationalist frenzy in the speech that capped
his ascent to power."[10] And the same goes for The New York Times: "In 1989
the Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, swooped down in a helicopter onto
the field where 600 years earlier the Turks had defeated the Serbs at the
Battle of Kosovo. In a fervent speech before a million
Serbs, he galvanized the nationalist passions that two years later fueled the
Balkan conflict."[11] And the Washington Post: A military
band and a dozen chanting monks from the Serbian Orthodox Church struggled
unsuccessfully this morning to lift the dour mood hanging over a small crowd
of Serbs marking the 609th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo
here at the most revered site in Serbia's nationalist mythology. (…) And here is what National Public Radio (NPR) said
about this speech, through the lips of Chuck Sudetic:
First of all, I apologize to loyal fans of NPR if
this shatters their illusions about a favorite institution, but the above is
no aberration for NPR. In fact, NPR's president is a CIA man.[12b] Beyond this, there is the larger question of this
piece: does Milosevic sound like his purpose is "whipping a million
Serbs into a nationalist frenzy" with his remembrance of the events of
1389? Is this a "fervent speech" meant to "galvanize the
nationalist passions"? Is it a "rallying cry for nationalism"?
Could "people [be] whipped up into a kind of hysteria" with
Milosevic's words? I can't see how. 4. T.W. Carr The following excerpt is from T.W. Carr, who used to
be Assistant Publisher for Defense & Foreign Affairs Publications,
London. It is relatively long but worth reading because of the juxtaposition
of Slobodan Milosevic (the Serbian leader) with Franjo
Tudjman (the Croatian leader) and Alija Izetbegovic
(leader of one of the Bosnian Muslim factions). [Quote from
T.W. Carr's article begins here] Three leaders
emerged within the collapsing Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Each
used the emotive appeal of patriotism (nationalism), history and religious
heritage in their bid for political control of one of the three nation
"nation states", Orthodox Christian Serbia, Roman Catholic
Christian Croatia and Islamic Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slobodan
Milosevic On June 28,
1989, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic marked the 600th anniversary of the
Battle of Kosovo against the "Ottoman Islamist Empire" at Gazimestan by addressing more than one million Serbs,
recounting the heroism of the Serbian nation and their Christian Orthodox
faith in resisting the spread of Islam into Europe. He reassured his
audience, that the Autonomous Province of Kosovo would remain an integral
part of Serbia and Yugoslavia, despite the then current and often violent,
problems of separatism demanded by the Muslim Albanian majority living in
Kosovo. In the Serbian
presidential election of November 12, 1989, Mr. Milosevic won 65.3 percent of
the vote, his nearest rival, Mr. Vuk Draskovic, polled only 16.4 of the votes cast. Alija
Izetbegovic[13a] At the same
time,
Alija Izetbegovic,
who had been released early from jail in 1988 (serving only six years of a 14
year sentence for pro-Islamic anti-state activities), visited Islamic
fundamentalist states in the Middle East, returning to Bosnia-Herzegovina to
found the SDA (Muslim Party of Democratic Action). His 1970 manifesto, "Islamic Declaration",
advocating the spread of radical pan-Islamism-politicised
Islam-throughout the world, by force if necessary,
was reissued in Sarajevo at this time. His Islamic Declaration is imbued with
intolerance towards Western religion, culture and economic systems. This is
also the theme projected in his book, Islam between East and West, first
published in the US in 1984, and in Serbo-Croat in
1988, shortly after he was released from prison in the former Yugoslavia. In
his writings he states that Islam cannot co-exist with other religions in the
same nation other than a short-term expediency measure. In the longer term,
as and when Muslims become strong enough in any country, then they must seize
power and form a truly Islamic state. In the
multi-party elections held in Bosnia-Herzegovina on November 18, 1990, the
population voted almost exclusively along communal lines. The Muslim
Democratic Action Party secured 86 seats, the Serbian Democratic Party 72,
and the Croatian Democratic Union (ie: union with
Croatia) Party 44 seats. As the leader of the largest political party, Mr.
Izetbegovic, became the first President of Bosnia- Herzegovina, albeit for
just one year, for under the new constitution of B-H, the presidency was to
revolve each year between the three parties, each of which represented one
ethnic community. Under
constitutional law, in January 1992, Mr. Izetbegovic should have handed over
the Presidency to Mr. Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian Democratic leader. He
failed to honor the constitution and being true to his writings, he seized
power, acting undemocratically and illegally. Therefore, at no time since
January 1992 should Mr. Izetbegovic have been acknowledged by the
international community as the legal President of B-H. Franjo
Tudjman Towards the
end of World War II, while still a young man, Franjo
Tudjman took the pragmatic option and joined the communist Partisans. He had
probably realized that Germany could not win the war and that Tito and his
Partisans would gain control of Yugoslavia, with the full support of both
Soviets and the British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Some
time after the end of World War II, Tudjman joined the
communist Yugoslav Army as a regular officer and rose to the rank of
Major-General during the early part of President Tito´s period in office. During the
late 1960´s and in 1979, ultra right fascism began
to re-surface in Croatia, showing the same World War II fascist face of
nationalism and the requirement that a nation state must be racially pure.
This was the first attempt anywhere in Europe to resurrect German National
Socialism following the fall of the Third Reich in 1944. Hitler created
Croatia when his forces over-ran Yugoslavia in 1941, installing as Fuher, Ante Pavelic, leader of
the fascist Croatian Ustashi movement. Pavelic had spent the previous 10 years in exile in Italy
as head of a Croatian terrorist group, shielded by the Vatican and the
Italian Fascist party. Mr. Tudjman
was deeply involved in the attempted revival of fascism, allowing his
national socialism ethos to come to the fore with the publication of his
treatise, The Wastelands. In it he attempted to re-write major sections of
the history of World War II, downplaying the Holocaust, and with it , the
more than one-million Jews, Serbs and Gypsies murdered by the Croatian
ultra-nationalist Ustashi, which included priests
of the Holy Roman Church, at the Croatian Ustashi
concentration camp of Jasenovac and other locations
within Yugoslavia. For his
nationalistic, anti-state activities at this time, Mr. Tudjman went to jail
for three years. After being released from jail, Mr. Tudjman went politically
low key for a few years, but re-emerged on the scene when President Tito died
in 1980, gradually building a power base among the Croatian right wing and
creating the HDZ Party. In the multy-party elections held in Croatia in May 1990, Mr.
Tudjman´s HDZ Party won control of the Sabor
(Croatian Parliament) and Mr. Tudjman became President of Croatia when it was
still part of the Yugoslav Federation.[13] [Quote from
T.W. Carr's article ends here] Contrary to Carr’s claim, Milosevic did not
speak about the status of Kosovo in the 1989 speech. It is known from other sources, of course, that he
certainly did not want Kosovo to be split from Yugoslavia, for good reasons
having to do with the security of Serbs, Roma, Slavic Muslims, Jews,
Albanians and everyone else in Kosovo, and his conviction that Kosovo was
legitimately part of the country he was after all helping lead. How many
leaders want their countries broken up? But that does not mean that in his
1989 speech he said, "that the Autonomous Province of Kosovo would
remain an integral part of Serbia and Yugoslavia, despite the then current
and often violent, problems of separatism demanded by the Muslim Albanian
majority living in Kosovo." So this is false. Moreover, Milosevic never referred to the Ottoman
Empire as "Islamist." On the contrary, Milosevic’s remarks in his
speech concerning the Ottoman Empire showed no real animosity. He even
acknowledged certain strengths: "In that distant 1389, the Ottoman
Empire
was not only stronger than that of the Serbs but
it was also more fortunate than the
Serbian kingdom." (Milosevic's 1989 Speech at Kosovo Field) More importantly, however, notice that Carr pairs
the three leaders, Milosevic, Izetbegovic, and Tudjman, and prefaces his
remarks by saying all three rose to prominence by manipulating nationalism.
But does Milosevic belong in this company? Whereas a good and effortless case
can be made for Izetbegovic and Tudjman being ultra-nationalists (see above), all we get as
evidence for Milosevic’s "ultra-nationalism" is a false allusion to
a declaration he never made in the Kosovo Polje
speech about the fact that he did not want Serbia to be partitioned, which in
itself would not even be evidence of intolerant ultra-nationalism anyway.
Moreover, the speech Carr refers us to is the antithesis of an
ultra-nationalistic speech. Milosevic at his alleged worst, then, sounds not
unlike Ghandi or Martin Luther King. Finally, I must observe that Carr is arguing that
the US and Germany are carving zones of interest in Europe and that this is
the central reason for the troubles in Yugoslavia. In other words, he
is not sympathetic to the official propaganda about the causes of the wars in
Yugoslavia. Yet even he seems blithely to assume that Milosevic is a
virulent nationalist, though he provides no evidence. On the other hand,
Izetbegovic and Tudjman, both US allies, certainly do sound like bad
guys. The propaganda against Milosevic has been so
successful that even a critic like Carr believes it, though he can only give
us one short paragraph to support his belief, and that paragraph refers to a
consummately tolerant speech. Is this the worst one can say about Milosevic? 5. International Crisis Group Here is what the International Crisis Group said
about Milosevic’s Speech: "On this
date in 1948, Tito’s Yugoslavia was expelled at Stalin’s behest from the
Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). It was
also on this day in 1989 that Slobodan Milosevic addressed up to one million
Serbs at Gazimestan in Kosovo to commemorate the sixhundredth anniversary of the Kosovo Battle. That speech contained the first open threat of violent
conflict by a Socialist Yugoslav leader: 'Six centuries later, again, we are
in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles, although such things
cannot be excluded.'"[14] This quotation does appear in the speech. Any observer of Yugoslavia at this time knew that it
was possible that armed battles could break out. Why should the observation
of such an obvious fact be interpreted as a threat? One could just as well interpret it as a worry. Any state trying to contain irredentist terrorists
may find itself in the position of having to deploy its army to protect its
citizens -- Milosevic was just stating the obvious. It is really necessary to
omit reference to any other part of the speech, and to ignore the facts of
Yugoslavia at this time, for the quote -- completely out of context -- to
appear as a threat. Even then it does not look very threatening (you have to
be told that it is supposedly a threat, for otherwise how could you
reliably infer it?). But it pays to see this quote in its minimal
context: the paragraph in which it appears: [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
begins here] Six centuries
later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are facing battles.
They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet.
However, regardless of what kind of battles they are, they cannot be won
without resolve, bravery, and sacrifice, without the noble qualities that
were present here in the field of Kosovo in the days past. Our chief battle now concerns implementing the
economic, political, cultural, and general social prosperity, finding a
quicker and more successful approach to a civilization in which people will
live in the 21st century. For this battle, we certainly need heroism, of
course of a somewhat different kind, but that courage without which nothing
serious and great can be achieved remains unchanged and remains urgently
necessary. [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
ends here] This minimal context is already quite informative.
The "chief battle" has nothing to do with armed conflict. And it
requires “heroism, of course of a somewhat different kind.” If one further
puts this paragraph into the larger context of the speech it is obvious that
Milosevic is hardly making threats. For example, elsewhere in the speech
Milosevic says: [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
begins here] For as long as
multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been the
relations between different nations. The threat is
that the question of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed
one day -- and this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and
intolerance, a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This
threat has been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and external enemies of multi-national
communities are aware of this and therefore they organize their activity
against multinational societies mostly by fomenting national conflicts. At
this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we have never had such an
experience and as if in our recent and distant past we have never experienced
the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a society can experience and
still survive. [Quote from Milosevic's 1989 Speech
ends here] Milosevic was warning that nationalism was being
used by “internal and external enemies of multi-national communities” to
destroy Yugoslavia. He was worrying out loud that people would listen to
fear-mongers and that waves of suspicion between national communities would
get started and then become “difficult to stop.” He was chiding his fellow
Yugoslavs for failing to remember World War II and other catastrophes during
which the Balkans “experienced the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a
society can experience and still survive.” Does this sound like a man
whipping up the population to go to war against other ethnic groups? 6. The Times Here is what the London Times had to say: "Vidovdan, the feast of St Vitus, is one of the most
sacred in the Orthodox church, but it is also the day on which Mr Milosevic began his political career. Twelve years before, in a dusty and sweltering field at
Kosovo Polje, he had whipped up
Serb nationalism among a ferocious and frustrated crowd. "No one will
ever beat you!" he had shouted, commemorating the defeat of the Serbs by
the Turks at Kosovo Polje in 1389. Yesterday Mr Milosevic was a
beaten man on suicide watch in Scheveningen prison
in The Netherlands. Prison officials, who will interview the former Yugoslav
President to check that he is not worried about being threatened by other
inmates, are also believed to be paying particular attention to the threat he
made earlier this year, to shoot himself rather than submit to international
justice."[15] This one comically gets it wrong. Milosevic probably
never said, "No one will ever beat you!" He more likely said
something like "No one will be allowed to beat you like that!" In
any event, he did not say it at the commemoration of the battle at Kosovo Polje (the speech we have been discussing here). Those
words *were* uttered at Kosovo Polje but two
years earlier, in 1987. At that time, Milosevic met with Serbs and
Montenegrins, mostly peasants, who had serious grievances: they said they
were being mistreated by prejudiced Albanian authorities in Kosovo and
violently harassed by radical Albanian terrorists. They wanted to speak
directly with Milosevic but he was only meeting with a relatively small group
in the hall. Here is an account of this: "When
members of the throng outside the hall again tried to break through police
lines and into the building, they were brutally clubbed and beaten back by
the police (composed mainly of Albanian officers, but including some Serbs).
Informed of what was taking place outside, Milosevic exited the building and
approached the still highly volatile crowd. According to eyewitness reports
at the time, the Serbian leader was visibly upset, physically shaken, and
trembling. When a dialogue ensued between the demonstrators and Milosevic,
they implored him to protect them from the police violence. Acting on a
journalist’s suggestion, Milosevic re-entered the hall, and proceeded to a
second floor window. From that vantage point he nervously addressed the
frenzied demonstrators, and uttered his soon-to-be legendary remarks:
"No one will be allowed to beat you! No one will be allowed to beat
you!" Milosevic also invited the demonstrators to send a delegation into
the hall to discuss their grievances."[16] Milosevic said, "No one will be allowed to beat
you!" Is this nationalistic incitement? Or is he reassuring a nervous crowd that their civil
rights will be respected? After all, he is an official with responsibilities
to citizens who were being beaten by police before his very eyes. But in the London Times article the context of the
peasant Serbs getting beaten is no longer evident. The utterance has been
transformed into, "No one will ever beat you" which has an eternal,
mythical overtone, and which therefore fits well with the new and excellent
location that the Times has found for this utterance: the speech to
commemorate the battle of Kosovo Polje. Two different events have been fused into one, and
Serbian mythology has been joined to an injured cry, providing a total
impression of a syndrome of victimization that lashes out as a reborn and
vicious nationalism. "No one will be allowed to beat you" is
supposed to mean, “We will beat them.” I want to emphasize that Cohen’s book “Serpent in
the bosom,” which I quoted above, is an attack on Milosevic. If Cohen’s
description has a bias it is to suggest that Milosevic is a virulent
nationalist. For example, although Cohen has Albanian policemen beating
peasant Serbs brutally, this is not described as ethnic animosity (the
remark that some of these policemen are Serbs seems to have been inserted in
order to dispel any such impression). But Milosevic’s attempt to reassure a
crowd whose basic human rights are being trampled right in front of his eyes that
is nationalism, as Cohen goes on to explain in what remains of the chapter. Everybody else has done the same. The 1987 events
are supposed to mark a turning point on Milosevic’s road to becoming a
supposed virulent nationalist (Cohen calls it “the epiphanal
moment”). However, notice that despite these attempts, it is
difficult not to see Milosevic’s behavior as perfectly natural, indeed
laudable. Why not reassure a crowd of your constituents, who are being
bludgeoned by policemen, that this will not be allowed to happen? What else
should he have morally done? By what stretch of the imagination is this
utterance transformed into a nationalistic call to arms? Well, it helps to
omit the context in which the utterance was made, and it also helps to insert
it into a speech commemorating the defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo Polje, as the Times has done. 7. Newsday And here is what Newsday said: [Quote from
Newsday begins here] Picture this:
Milosevic (pronounced mee-LOH-sheh-vitch) was sent to Kosovo Polje,
the small village near the sacred site of the Serbs defeat by the Turks in
1389. His orders were to speak to disgruntled Serbian and Montenegrin
activists who claimed they were being badly mistreated by the majority ethnic
Albanians who lived there. Serbs: A
Frightened Minority While
Milosevic was speaking in the town's cultural center, a huge crowd of angry
Serbs gathered outside the building, chanting in support of the party
activists inside. They were attacked by local police, most of them Albanians,
who began beating the Serbs with their clubs. [Quote from
Newsday ends here] Notice what has happened here. First, for Newsday,
apparently, it is enough that Noel Malcolm said something. The same can probably
also be said for The Times of London, which paper, as we saw above, parroted
a similar line to the one we see here: utterances to the effect that
"nobody will beat you" are supposed to allude to the defeat of the
Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389. This is a fusion of the events of 1987 and 1989 and,
since this connection does not seem to appear prior to 1999 (which is the
year Noel Malcolm’s book appeared), it is at least a reasonable guess that: a) Malcolm is the originator of this confusion and b) ever since, newspapers like The Times of London
and Newsday have been fusing remarks that Milosevic made in two different
years and in two very different contexts (neither of them even remotely
damning). This is worth a pause and a reflection. Academics typically get their facts about what
happened in a particular time and place from journalists. But here we have
newspapers getting their facts from an academic. It would be fine for the
newspaper to report the interpretation or theory of an
academic, but isn’t the world turned upside down when a newspaper gets the
basic facts of what happened from some bookish professor who wasn’t there? The second observation is that what Milosevic
actually said, "no one will be allowed to beat you!" has been
changed to "no one should dare to beat you!" With this change the
utterance dovetails nicely with Malcolm’s reference to Milosevic’s supposed
lyricism concerning the “sacred rights of the Serbs.” So not only is
this fusing of the events of 1987 and 1989 apparently an innovation of
Malcolm’s, it is one he seems to work hard at, modifying other facts as well,
to give the fusion plausibility. In any case, it should be obvious that it is quite a
stretch of interpretation to say that one is invoking a moment in history by
making assurances to peasant Serbs that no one should beat them, when those
peasant Serbs are at that very moment being “attacked by local police,
most of them Albanians.” How about the hypothesis that rather than making “an eloquent extempore speech in defense of the sacred
rights of the Serbs,” Milosevic was saying that the Albanian policemen right
below him should not be beating the peasant Serbs? 8. Norman Cigar Here is what another ‘academic’ said: ". . .in
an emotionally charged speech at Gazimestan on June
28, 1989, on the sixth hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo,
Milosevic had signaled his government’s intention to extend the nationalist
agenda beyond Serbia’s borders. When coupled with active measures being
undertaken in neighboring republics, his emphasis that the "Serbs have always liberated themselves and, when
they had a chance, also helped others to liberate themselves" seemed to commit Serbia to a forcible redrawing of
Yugoslavia’s long-established internal borders in pursuit of
"liberating" the Serbs outside of Serbia. . ."[17] The quote from Milosevic's speech is accurate, but
it is difficult to do justice to the distortions in this paragraph with the
appropriate superlatives. Cigar is, in second-order Orwellian fashion,
claiming that Milosevic’s speech is Orwellian. When Milosevic
contrasts Serbs to “others,” this means (according to Cigar) other Serbs!
That is a very interesting code. And when Milosevic talks about liberation,
he really means that Serbs should oppress non-Serbs! But just a tiny little bit of history suggests a
different hypothesis. In World War I, the Serbs were the only Balkan
people to side with the allies. This means they simultaneously fought for
their independence against two empires (Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian), while
the Croats, Muslims, Albanians, etc. fought on the side of the empires. The
Serbs won, but instead of creating a ‘Greater Serbia’, as many a victor might
have, they spearheaded the creation of a joint kingdom, and they even shared
the name (the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, which later got an
even more inclusive name when it was renamed Yugoslavia -- land of the
Southern Slavs). Thus, they had liberated these other peoples from
the clutches of the empires, and did not create an empire themselves. Contrast this with the treatment that Germany got
from the victorious allies. Then, in World War II, the Croats, Slovenes,
Yugoslav Muslims, and the Albanians, for the most part betrayed Yugoslavia
and allied themselves with the invading Nazis. The Hungarians, Bulgarians,
and Romanians also either allied themselves outright or reached an understanding
with the Nazis. The Serbs were surrounded but fought the invaders anyway,
even though they were practically alone. Tito’s Partisans, who had
dogmatic ideology of ethnic tolerance, and who won the war in Yugoslavia,
were mostly Serbs. Once again, the result was not a ‘Greater Serbia,’ but a
magnanimous recreation of Yugoslavia (and this, despite the fact that
Serbs had suffered a Holocaust during the war very much like that of the
Jews). Could it be that when Milosevic said the Serbs had
always fought for their liberation, and that of others when possible, he was
merely saying what he meant? 9. The BBC The examples of how this speech has been maligned
could be multiplied. But we gain a valuable perspective by taking a look at
how the speech was reported the very moment it happened: "The
events in Kosovo to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the battle on 28th
June were relayed live by Belgrade radio. At the Gracanica
monastery over 100,000 people attended a liturgical service conducted by
Patriarch German, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and at Gazimestan around 1,500,000 people gathered at a central
ceremony in the presence of SFRY President Janez Drnovsek and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
The radio noted that more people were expected to arrive at Gazimestan. Addressing the crowd,
Milosevic said that whenever they were able to the Serbs had helped others to
liberate themselves, and they had never used the advantage of their being a
large nation against others or for themselves, Tanjug
reported. He added that Yugoslavia was a multi-national community which could
survive providing there was full equality for all the nations living in it."[18] It does not appear that the BBC reporter had the
impression Milosevic's speech produced a nationalist incitement. On the
contrary, the reporter has explicitly highlighted the tolerance of the
speech. The British newspaper The Independent, which had
reporters covering the speech, had a similar impression: [Quote from
The Independent begins here] "ON the
poppy-flecked Kosovo Polje, the Field of
Blackbirds, looking out over a sea of a million people, Slobodan Milosevic
yesterday assumed the mantle of a statesman and Yugoslavia's natural leader. 'There is no
more appropriate place than this field of Kosovo to say that accord and
harmony in Serbia are vital to the prosperity of the Serbs and of all other
citizens living in Serbia, regardless of their nationality or religion,' he
said. Mutual tolerance and co- operation were also sine qua non for
Yugoslavia: 'Harmony and relations on the basis of equality among
Yugoslavia's people are a precondition for its existence, for overcoming the
crisis.' The cries of 'Slobo, Slobo'
which greeted his arrival on the vast monument to the heroes of 1389 soon
gave way to a numb silence. 'I think people were a little disappointed, it
became very quiet after the beginning,' an educated-looking woman from
Belgrade said. But most others, in a straw poll, insisted the occasion did
not merit the raucous chanting characteristic of the heady protest rallies of
last year. 'People were satisfied, after all it wasn't a protest rally,' said
another pilgrim. Everyone seemed a little stunned."[19] [Quote from
The Independent ends here] The quotes from Milosevic are accurate. This account, a day after the event, suggests that
the speech was not “emotionally charged,” as Cigar claims, and neither was it
a speech designed to whip up “a million Serbs into a nationalist frenzy” --
as Time Magazine untruthfully alleges. It is clear that there was no “ferocious and
frustrated crowd,” as the Times of London would have it. It was not a
“fervent speech …[that]… galvanized the nationalist passions” as The New York
Times states, and neither was it a “stirringly virulent nationalist speech,”
as The Economist claims. Finally, for good measure, it was not a “fiery
speech…to a million angry Serbs [and] a rallying cry for nationalism,” as the
Washington Post reported. From the story above we even learn that one observer
thought people had been disappointed, although this impression is belied by
the opinion of the locals who said this was not a protest rally. Indeed, it didn’t sound like one, if one reads the speech. The framing of the events is that Milosevic was conciliatory. How should we describe the fact that The
Independent, which paper had reporters on the ground, and which had
accurately reported this speech when it was given, later said that this was
Milosevic setting his agenda “as he openly threatens force to hold the
six-republic federation together” (see above)? Scandalous? Or perhaps we should show sympathy for the harried
journalists at The Independent, who apparently cannot find the time to read
their own paper! And what about the other, 1987, speech? This is how
it was reported by the New York Times, immediately after it happened: [Quote from
the New York Times begins begins here] The police
clashed briefly today with a crowd of about 10,000 in the ethnically tense
province of Kosovo, Yugoslav news organizations said. [Quote from
the New York Times begins ends here] It is clear from how that speech was reported
at the time that Milosevic had simply meant to reassure the assembled Serb
peasants that the police certainly did not have the right to beat them like
that. It was not a nationalistic call to arms nor was it supposed to have
overtones to the battle of Kosovo Polje. Why should
it? What was happening in front of his eyes was not metaphorical. Policemen
were beating peasants. 10. Final Remarks This is how a myth is constructed: we hear the same
story everywhere. The repetition of the story convinces us that the story has
been confirmed. But, of course, repetition is hardly confirmation. If it
were, every urban legend would be true. It is important to pause and reflect on what this
means. If the media can lie so blatantly about what Milosevic said in 1989,
and if they do it consistently and across the board, something is wrong. The question is: how wrong? The US government obviously has an interest in
demonizing the people it bombed. Although its own translation of the speech
is a rebuke to how the speech has been portrayed, we should not expect the US
government to criticize the misinformation. This is unjustifiable, and
corrupt, but not unexpected. Explaining the behavior of the BBC, on the other
hand, is not so easy. The BBC is not the US government. Its role is
supposedly to give us the truth, as best it can. Moreover, the BBC is
supposed to be in competition with other media outlets. Since the BBC translated
the speech, they were in a position to lay bare that what was being
written about the speech was misinformation. They have not done it, and this
is a very serious sin of journalistic omission. If only this was their biggest sin! On April 1, 2001, the BBC wrote the following: [Quote from
BBC begins here] In 1989, on
the 600-year anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje,
he [Milosevic] gathered a million Serbs at the site of the battle to tell them
to prepare for a new struggle. He then began
to arm and support Serb separatists in Croatia and Bosnia. Other nationalists
were coming to power throughout the republics of the old federation. Yugoslavia's
long nightmare of civil war was beginning.[21] [Quote from
BBC ends here] The BBC here makes it seem as though Milosevic was
indeed talking about preparing the Serbs for aggression against other people. But the BBC translated the live relay of the speech! They know Milosevic did no such thing in 1989 at
Kosovo Polje. The BBC piece continues: [Back To The
BBC] Darker motives Mr
Milosevic was never really a nationalist, never a true believer. He
skillfully exploited the myth of Kosovo Polje -
where the Serbs refused to surrender even though that brought defeat and
subjugation -- but he was always a pragmatist. [Quote from
BBC ends here] Again: the BBC translated the speech! They know that
he spoke in skeptical and professorial tones about the famous battle at
Kosovo Polje, rather than manipulating it for
ultra-nationalist ends. This is not an isolated instance. Here is the BBC
again, in a different piece: [Quote from
BBC begins here] Serbs to
remember Historic battle Religious
ceremonies are being held today in Kosovo to commemorate the anniversary of a
fourteenth century battle in which the Ottoman Turks crushed the Serbian
army. A BBC
correspondent in Kosovo says most Serbs will mark the anniversary of the
Battle of Kosovo Polje hesitantly, if at all. He says some
believe the security situation is still too fragile for any large gathering;
others feel too threatened to risk travelling on the roads. Ten years ago,
more than one-million Serbs turned out to celebrate the battle's six-hundreth anniversary, when President Slobodan Milosevic
vowed Serbia would never again lose control of Kosovo.[22] [Quote from
BBC ends here] But. . .but. . .the BBC knows that what it is
reporting here is not true. They translated the speech! Milosevic did
not vow any such thing in 1989 at the Kosovo Polje
commemoration. He may have vowed it elsewhere (and the vow in and of itself
is perfectly consistent with his desire to keep Yugoslavia whole, and does
not indict him of anything). But he certainly made no such vow in the 1989
speech. Why is the BBC reporting things that it knows are false? Since this level of dishonesty is possible, I am
forced to wonder what else is possible. What can we believe about what has
been written about Milosevic in particular, and Yugoslavia more generally?
After all, the demonization of Milosevic, and the Serbs more generally,
perfectly fits with the propaganda aims of the NATO powers that went to war
against Yugoslavia, including the US and Britain. Here we have seen that the
media establishment in these two countries has produced stories about
Milosevic’s speech that are consistent with such a deliberate propaganda
campaign.
Footnotes and Further
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