It Could Happen Here - Bosnia and the Path to Genocide Part 1

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

Genocide expert Arnesa Kustura joins us to discuss how a relatively prosperous multi-ethnic socialist state was destroyed by ethno-nationalists and how their rampant propaganda allowed them to carry out a genocide while Europe cheered. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast hello and welcome to it could happen here a podcast about the continual state of bad things happening and how sometimes you can make them less bad or not happen and today we're going to i'm christopher wong by the way and today we're going to be talking about bosnia a place where things went about as bad as they possibly can and about how they're heading

in very scary directions now. And with us to talk about this is Arnessa Kustrit. Arnessa is a genocide survivor and a academic expert on genocides in general. Arnessa, how are you doing? You know, I'm doing okay. I think all things considered. Yeah. You know, being sort of bombarded on a daily basis

with you know uh possible threats um and talks about you know a new conflict war brewing in the belgians is the thing not an easy thing to contend to yeah definitely not. Yeah. But other than that, I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. Yeah. I'm glad you could be here with me today because the Balkans, extremely complicated place, which I guess is true of most places. But yeah. And so I guess that's where I wanted to go with my first question because reading about what's happening now,

my first instinct was go back to the Dayton Accords, but I'm actually not sure that that's even the best place to start. And so I wanted to, I guess, ask you if, so, okay. So if you're coming into looking at the Balkans for the first time and you're trying to understand what's going on now where do you think is the best place to start on it because i think you know the best god it's so hard yeah we're talking about so much history honestly but the thing is let's you know let's start with the death of tito that's always a good place I think because that's

really when things started to kind of shift in the Balkans and the former you know socialist Yugoslavia was really once Tito died and his place became you, empty as this sort of unifying factor of all the various ethnicities and nationalities within Yugoslavia. You know, once he was gone, that sort of left this vacuum that needed to be filled. And unfortunately, instead of being filled by another socialist, you know, pro-equality, pro-unityunity leader it was filled with a nationalist vacuum which is kind of where we still are unfortunately you know it started obviously with with little things I think with little sort of conversations and little subtle, I guess, you know, ethno-nationalist rhetorics. And it just kind of like grew and spiraled from there. And obviously, you know, that sort of thing led to Milosevic in Kosovo giving his infamous speech, which kind of really gave that full-fledged stamp on, okay, yes, this is a

ultra-nationalist, you know, ethno-nationalist president that we now have, who's threatening war across the other ethnicities. What do we do next? And at that point you know that's when you sort of see the other countries start to secede you know slovenia croatia they're attacked by serbia and then obviously eventually it goes down to bosnia um and yeah i mean it starts with the ethno-nationalism as it always does in the belgians i think um you know i don't think we're we're anything special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors look at france and england or yeah or america and mexico or anyone really it's just you know i think people make it sound as if we're special or we have these ancient hatreds.

But, you know, that's not really true. It all comes down to the freaking politics and the leaders. And unfortunately, you know, Milosevic was removed. But his policy, his beliefs continued to kind of stick around. You know, I think, you know, people think of people like Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic who were, you know, genocidal war criminals as a thing of the past, but really you look at, you know, the Serbian president Vucic or the Republika Srpska president, Milorad Tadic.

And they're really just a continuation of Karadžić and Milošević. So nothing has fundamentally changed since Tito died, except we got some new agreements, we got some new territories, we got some new territories, some new ethnic lines drawn up, and new pretty buildings too. We have those now as well, but we don't really have that coexistence, at least not on paper, not in politics, certainly. I want to go back for a second to, guess the moment of chito dying because it's

always been a sort of interesting thing looking at it for me because i remember i mean you know so from studying chinese history right there's a period where in the 70s where okay like everyone's looking for reform in china and you know what what you would consider like the sort of the the i guess you could call them the i don't know left and right is complicated in china but yeah you know like there are a lot of sort of what you would call like the sort of left socialist like democratic reformers who you know i mean people people like they're looking at yugoslavia as a model and they're going oh we can have like workers participation and we can have this we can have these like democratic enterprises and then that just implodes and and yeah i wonder if we could talk a little bit about more about that because my my very limited understanding of it was is like there's an economic crisis from the oil shocks and then once Tito dies,

it's just like the wheels come off the whole system? I mean, that's a really good way of putting it. Life in Yugoslavia I don't think was ever perfect, and I definitely don't think it was a perfect system. I think me being a Bosnian who was born to very, I think, pro-Yugoslav parents, I just like many of my, you know, fellow Yugoslavs or ex-Yugoslavs have a tendency to look at Yugoslavia with like rose-colored lenses, you know. We think about the coexistence, the unity, the multi-ethnic part,

the worker-owned, you know, socialist models, the fact that our parents, you know, were able to provide for their families and take vacations and travel and, you know, get together and all these sort of wonderful things. But in the background, really in the sort of depths of the you know politics and the economic issues were kind of always there uh you know the one thing that Tito did was obviously he relied unlike I think other socialist leaders of his time is you know he basically worked with anyone you know the non-aligned movement but also with the west uh with europe you know so uh he was a very picky choosy i think yeah you know the betterment of the like, um, other leaders do.

And I think obviously we had, you know, two issues. One, he was sick, he was dying. Um, and, and, and two, there was an economic crisis happening um and three then we had like the economic reforms which really shifted the entire i mean they just they very much shifted the the system that the yugoslav people were very much used to um it became more and more prior you know privatized after his death um and and you know milosevic he was he was a banker he was a businessman he was he was who he was um and i don't think that he ever really pretended to be a socialist yeah which is why i get so upset when yeah american leftists call him a socialist or call him an anti-imperialist because those aren't even words that you know he himself would have really used to describe himself I think but

but I think you know there was just it was that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing. They have no way to really fix it. People are broke. People are starving. Suddenly the ownership, the worker-owned sort of model is being shifted to a more privatized model. And people are just not happy. What's a good way to distract from that? Yep. No nationalism. You you know it's just

we see it happen everywhere it's not a new it's not like a new you know tactic it's a tactic that everyone has utilized blame it on the other um so yugoslavia didn't really have you know immigrants that they could blame it on but they had Muslims and they had the Kosovo Albanians and the Bosnians and that was enough and suddenly the conversation really shifted

and obviously I'm simplifying all of this a lot, it's so much more complicated but you know, there are books out there And obviously I'm simplifying all of this. Yeah. A lot. It's so much more complicated. But, you know, there are books out there that obviously go into a great, you know, level of detail into the actual sort of breakup. So I can give some recommendations later. But, yeah, but I think in that sort of very simplistic kind of sense is there was an

economic crisis happening a good way to sort of distract that was the use of ethno-nationalism and it just kind of spiraled from there i think you know what milosevic and what people like milosevic always want is more power for themselves and so his whole thing wasn't really ever about keeping yugoslavia intact as yugoslavia it was keeping this vision of a greater serbia alive because the thing is you know if we had not had a person like minošev, if we just had somebody who was, you know, the second Tito, maybe more or less worse or better, who cares? I think people would have been fine. I think, you know, I don't see this like war breaking now, but instead we had Milosevic who was like way more concerned about consolidating power, exerting that control. And when he realized that

he could use ethno-nationalism to get to his goals, of course he was going to use that. Of course. Like, who wouldn't? We see it today with what Trump did. He utilized Muslims and immigrants and refugees and Black people, all his scapegoats to distract from all of the other things that are wrong with him, his leadership, and the overall country. And Milosevic did the same. He just did what any other politician did. And, you know,

that's the thing. I think, you know, in thinking about Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and all these countries that started to secede, I think if they had felt comfortable with, you know, staying in a country that is multi-ethnic, at least in the case of Bosnians. I'm not going to speak for the Slovenians or Croatians because they have their own, I think, complicated identity. But with Bosnians, our thing collectively, I think, while we're not a monolith, but collectively was always, we are united, we are multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multicultural.

And it's such a big part of like our entire history and identity. choices, being, you know, under Serb control, being secondary citizens, not having that equality, not having that multi-ethnicity, of course, we're not going to take that choice. Of course, people are going to want to, you know, when you have like that, you know, that boot on your neck of saying, like, we're going to control you, we're going to take your land, and we're gonna control you we're gonna take your land and we're gonna basically rule over you nobody wants to deal with that and you know unlike a lot of the other countries in in former Yugoslavia Bosnia really was the most multi-ethnic it had one of the highest rates of you know mixed ethnic marriages and multi-religious marriages. And that kind of remains true even today. So especially in places like Sarajevo, Mostar, Baneluka, you know, the

bigger cities, it has this very proud history of, you know, coexistence and multi-ethnic coexistence so i think what happened for so many people was just a huge amount of shock um my own family so many people in my own family just did not think it could happen there they grew up with this idea of a united you know multi-ethnic yoslavia, brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors, our friends, our teachers, our lovers, you know, whatever they're, they work with us. They live next to us. Of course, they're not going to, you know, turn against us. And I think even while all the politicians were fear mongering, while, you know, Milosevic and Karadzic were sort of leading their campaigns

of especially Islamophobic propaganda in newspapers, on the radio, on TV, any speech that they gave, they talked about how the Muslims were coming, we were going to make their daughters wear hijabs, we were going to take over, we were going to make their daughters wear hijabs we were going to take over we were going to kill them you know before that's why they have to kill us because they don't kill us we're going to kill them it was this whole you know really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has now been replicated in so many other countries.

Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can we talk about that specifically for a second? Because I think there's something interesting in the way that you get people to do a genocide always seems to be... It's extremely hard to get someone to just murder their neighbor because they don't like them. You have to do this

they're about to exterminate us and that's why we have to strike first. That aspect of it I think is something that I see a lot when I do this. You have done infinitely more genocide studies. I want to hear. Yeah.

I mean, here's the thing. I, it's so funny. I gave like an interview on this specific topic. I don't know, like two years ago. And I remember turning to,

to the guy who was interviewing me. Cause he was just like, his look at his face was, I just don't understand like I don't I can't wrap my mind about how people could do that to their friends neighbors students you know uh people they were sworn to like protect and and people they lived with their entire lives how could they do that well you know I turned to him and I said yeah I mean if I told you right now go kill him you know

you probably would have but if I came to you day in and day out and I slowly started to kind of whisper in your ear and I started to tell you you know he's been really really I don't know he's been saying a lot of stuff about you he's been quite negative or I don't know. He's been saying a lot of stuff about you. He's been quite negative. Or I don't know, you know, do you think he's kind of acting weird? I feel like he might be planning something. He might be planning to take over your house. He may be planning to, I don't know, probably attack your sister. I think he's going to kill your sister. I think he might make your sister wear a job. So it's these very like slow, subtle things. And that's the thing that people don't understand. You know, violence never interrupts, like never erupts out of nowhere. You know, it's always planned.

It brews and it brews and it brews and then it explodes. You know, then there's the thing. But it comes slowly. And that's how it was in Yugoslavia. It wasn't this sudden, you know, oh, yes, we're brothers and sisters forever. Go T it was in Yugoslavia it wasn't this sudden you know oh yes we're brothers and sisters forever go Tito go Yugoslavia to you know oh I hate you because you're Muslim and I hate you because you're a Serb and I hate you because you're a Croat no that was not the case the case was that this was a very slow campaign of propaganda that started in the 80s almost immediately after Tito's death let's say but it started very slow started with the you know with the sort of I think

disenfranchisement of the Kosovo Albanians and kind of the targeting of them and again yes there was this economic component on it, but the way they wanted to kind of sidetrack that was, well, you're hungry because the Kosovo Albanians are not, and they're taking your jobs. Again, similar tactics that we see even today. Yeah, so it's not that much different. But yeah, it starts slow. And the Milosevic and the Karadzic and the Mladic kind of campaigning was, God, it was brutal.

I mean, like I always say, it was kind of brilliantly executed in that it really got to people so much that then, again, you know, they turned neighbor against neighbor. It was subtle in the beginning. It was that sort of, what are the Muslims up to? Can we trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you trust the Muslims? You know, talking about Islamization, talking about Ali Azzed Begavich's book

that he wrote when he was like, I don't know, 18 or whatever. Like, and, you know, talking about World War II, this was another thing. Like, everybody knows that there was a period in World War II where, you know, a lot of Serbs were killed by the Ustasha and by the, you know, Nazi collaborationists. And I think, obviously, that's a real fear for, you know, for a certain group of people who went through that so there

was a lot of that as well you know that's going to happen again that's going to happen again meanwhile there was no grand plan there was never even talks of you know committing violence or even you know talks of you know seceding from Yugoslavia or anything. It was all set in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know, and I think that's what people don't understand. The Bosnian leadership, while not perfect, were simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership was in many ways making them do. And that's kind of what happens in these situations.

They kind of push you and push you and push you until they're able to get some sort of rise out of you or a response out of you or get you on that sort of offensive where you have to defend yourself, you have to defend your identity, you have to defend who you are, you have to defend yourself you have to defend your identity you have to defend who you are you have to justify it and also in many ways so yeah the you know this sort of propaganda campaign god there was you know obviously the funny things were like things like they're going to make you wear the hijab but it was also very insidious because they would target like these you know villages where they were like Bosnians and Serbs you know living together they're quite small

but they knew that like in the village obviously usually have a gun or you know shotgun because of the animals or working or whatever. So they would target them specifically with the radio instead of the big cities. They worked up to the big cities, but they really started in specific areas,

like in eastern Bosnia especially, because there was a lot of majority Muslim villages in that area that would also have like nearby Serb villages so yeah I mean there was that there was you know then sort of taking over all the radio stations and um kind of going full force I think like in the sort of early days of the war like we're talking April May of 1992 they you know they would get people like pretending that they were Bosnians they were actually Serbs and they would like talk about how they went to you know kill all Serbs or something like that um there was also

when they were like having people in concentration camps when they started putting them in those concentration camps initially, they would make the victims in the concentration camps, the Muslims, basically say that, oh, they're just there

as a refugee and the Serbian army is protecting them and they're making them feel really welcome and stuff like that so it was right at the beginning between especially 89 to like 92 the propaganda was so visible and it really escalated And it was like suddenly everywhere. And you would hear Karadzic and Milošević talk about, you know, the Muslims and the things that we wanted and, you know, the things that the goals that we had, which, after all, we're not, you know, nobody was saying it. There wasn't like a single person that was saying these things that they were attributing to us. But that didn't matter. What they were just doing was instilling enough fear and enough doubt in the population to eventually get them to take up arms when the time comes. And unfortunately, that's precisely what happened.

came, you know, a lot of people did take up arms, whether or not they wanted to, they had enough of that doubt and fear sowed in their minds over the course of, you know, several years that they ended up feeling like I have to protect myself. I'm not saying that's the case for every certain person. I think some, a lot of, you know, especially in higher leadership missions, a lot of them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill. And I don't think it mattered why or how, because you're always going to get those kinds of people. But I think when we're talking about how that shift happened so fast, we have to obviously discuss the the propaganda the huge amount of propaganda that went into the you know implementing it so i guess like such a tangent oh my god no it's okay no no that was that was really great yeah and i think you know what yeah i mean i guess like i i i think it's incredibly important

for everyone to understand that propaganda works like if you just say something over and over and over again like it it does you know event eventually it pays off and you know the the quote-unquote payoff here is the genocide and i guess yeah i'm not sure how far into detail you want to get into this here but but i think one thing i want to kind of focus on because i think from from reading what you've been saying about this that this wound up being a big deal with like why things are sort of still fucked now which is that like the international response to this like i mean one of the things i was just

like haunted by is there's this quote by midirand who's the uh department minister of france he's like this he wants to be the socialist he's like the guy that like they finally put in power after like all of the stuff in the 60s and he has this line about like i i'm sorry i wish i i wish i told up the exact quote but but it's basically like... I know the quote. Yeah, do you want me to say it? I know the quote. It's... What was it?

A peaceful but necessary reconstruction of a Christian Europe. Yeah. And Bosnia does not belong. So I remember that very specifically. It's really stayed with me for such a long time because he said that at a time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless.

They were being dragged away to concentration camps. The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about Srebrenica in 95. we're talking about visegrad sorry about uh even strabismus in 92 you know this is all in 1992 um the things that happen in places like butch corns warning and all these like places that you that i think the vast majority of people don't really know about and hear about. Like in Visegrad, a lot of my family is from there. Within a span of three months, that entire town,

that entire town, which was once almost entirely Bosniak Muslim, was ethnically cleansed. And that was done through forced deportations, concentration camps, mass rapes and rape camps of women, and obviously a lot of murders. So we're talking about one small town that took three months. And my family, when it comes to that town,

on both my mother's and my father's side, interestingly enough, has such a long history. My parents fell in love there when they were like kids. So, you know, they, you know, my grandmother's house was there. My grandfather's house was there on like both sides. And they, you know, so it's this beautiful little town where, you know, Bosnians, then Bosniaks

and Serbs and Croats lived and Jews, Roma. And, you know, my parents talk about the beauty of it and this wonderful sort of experience that they had when they lived there. My mom is from Sarajevo and so am I as well, obviously, but Nishtikrad was like the place that she would go kind of like for the weekend just because of the family that we had there. So very special, I think, in her heart, my grandpa's heart as well. And, you know, within it's just like so hard to like fathom that within just a few months that town was completely ethnically cleansed.

And that the international community knew this and did nothing you know there is in i believe it's in the clinton tapes as well but there's this thing about how they had provided aerial footage of the massacres that were being that were being enacted in places like butchco and zvonnik where, oh my God, the paramilitary served forces did some horrifying acts of like violence and torture against the civilians. And they had, you know, showed it to the Clintons and they showed it to the French and the English and they did nothing. You know, they knew in 1992 that a genocide was

unfolding and the Dayton Peace Agreement wasn't signed until 1995. So the international community I think has just as much of a responsibility in the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does, because they sat there and they watched when they had all the power to stop it. They always had the power to stop it. They had the power to stop it before it even, before even one person got killed. And two, they, it's not even that they just watched it's that they purposely left the muslims defenseless because serbia had all the yugoslav army yeah all the weapons all the you know everything all the tools that they needed to commit genocide they already had it, all the arsenal, everything. And the Yugoslav army was like the most powerful in the region at the time. And I think the third or fourth most powerful in like the Europe, Turkey area.

So, you know, quite a powerful army. And there was Bosnia, which had no weapons no military um you know you see these pictures of like civilians fighting against you know tanks and and mortar shells and snipers and it's like these you know youths basically in like converse and jeans and like an army jacket playing soldier because that's all we had you know we had the homemade weapons we had um you know how to make your own bomb books kind of thing and trying to basically defend ourselves with anything that we could. They specifically did not lift the arms embargo,

knowing that they were leaving us defenseless. Like they just knew there was no way, there was no doubt on everything that we have read about the international community response. Everything that Clinton, Mitterrand, John Mayer, Major? Major. Not Mayor. Major have said, you know, about it during that period. Shows us that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless, you know. And this wasn't, you know, a lot of people say, I didn't know about the Bosnian genocide, but it was discussed. You know, I looked at the archived footage. It was talked about on television. It was brought up in Parliament and in Senate. There was people at the time who were like, why are we leaving the Bosnians defenseless? Why are we,

you know, not helping them? Why are we allowing them to be let into slaughter? This is genocide, blah, blah, blah. So even as early as 92, 93, there was still people who knew about this stuff. We're telling the leaders, but nothing. Yeah, I think like that part also, like it's not just that like they did nothing. Like they did worse than do nothing. Like I mean, Mitterrand's actively cheering it on.

Like, you know, the arms embargo is just, like like the arms embargo if you're applying an arms embargo on a conflict where one people one side has tanks and the other side has like molotovs like you you are actively supporting one of the sides and i think that like that just like is completely lost in how, like, almost everyone seems to talk about this now. Because there's, like, you know, because when you sort of get, like, interventions later, like, people are like, oh, look, the West was, like, planning to intervene here the whole time. And it's like, no, like, they were literally cheering. Like, Midrand was cheering. Like, it's like. It's so frustrating because, you know, we you take what we know about.

And here's the thing. I know that Islamophobia escalated after 9-11, but Islamophobia has existed for a very long time. And I think talk to the black Muslims of America. They will tell you more, you know, better than than I could ever tell you about the history of Islamophobia in the United States. So Islamophobia was always an aspect of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia, just like anti-Semitism, I mean, it is like the staple of European cultural cuisine, so to say yeah it's like like it's like yeah it's like like there's there's a there's a there's they have they have like they have like the like the the triforce of europeans of european civilization is anti-semitism uh islamophobia and hating the roma yep it's like those are just like yeah hard for the force and so i think this sort of thing about the explicitness of european leadership especially at the time in in you know effectively ensuring that we were killed off because a muslim country in europe could not exist yeah and that's the thing that they said literally said a muslim country in europe cannot exist like the fact that that was so

open and brazen like kind of takes me back but it really like tells you how much islamophobia formed i think the international community response on this and it's so interesting to me now i think i've seen it over the past, I would say, especially five years, this sort of leftist genocide denial, leftist anti-imperialist kind of defense of Milosevic. And they were the Serbs were the actual victims, blah, blah, blah, NATO, blah, blah, blah, Western intervention. And I'm just like, oh, my God, read a book, read an article from that time, read their actual quotes. There's no way that you can actually convince me that Europe, fortress Europe, and the United States of America would do anything that would benefit the Muslims. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. it's it's because it's because what's okay they have two things one it's like well the bosnians were nazis but the second one was that oh well the the bosnians were like all jihadists and it's like like it's the exact same thing you see with china and it's like oh it's because all the uyghurs are uh like salafi jihadist isis cia and it's like no yeah yeah i mean it's it's it's honestly laughable at this point. It really is. And it also just, you know, obviously I'm a leftist. You know, I'm going to cheer the left on to an extent,

but that is my red line. The genocide analysis really is my red line. And the reason it's, you know, my red line isn't just because I'm a genocide survivor, but because it's like, oh, for God's sake, the data, the statistics, the data, the statistics, the research, the forensic, the analysis, the specific quotes, videos, articles, you know, all of those things exist and are out there. And all you have to do is actually do your research

and you will find out that actually, no, you're in the wrong. And the other thing is what you just said about this sort of thing of painting, you know, the wrong. And the other thing is what you just said about this sort of thing of painting, you know, the Muslims as like the Nazis and the, you know, the extremists. You know, the thing about like the Bosnian Muslims is like, we don't hide the fact that there were people of our community that participated in Nazi Ustasha crimes. There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes, of minimizing the crimes or pretending that they were right. There is, I'm sure, a fringe group of people who defend these kinds of people, like there is a fringe, but I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian state level response as well as like an individual response is that the, you

know, the Nazi division had like 17,000 Bosnian soldiers, and there was millions of Bosnians in the country, the vast majority ended up joining the partisans and stood against the Nazis. And the thing is, you can't, when it comes to yugoslavia and world war ii and the holocaust you can't just say the bozians were nazi collaborationists because the thing is so are the serbians so are the serbs so are the croats at that time let's be honest who the hell wasn't a nazi collaboration. Now, this doesn't excuse it. Absolutely not. But what it does sort of show is that that history, that period in Yugoslav history is really complicated because, you know, you had the Ustasha and then you had the Czechniks. And then there's a period where

the Czechniks were against the Ustasha, right? Because, like, the Ustasha were killing Serbs and Roma and Jews. But then the Chetniks turned around and they're, you know, these Serb nationalists. They start killing the Jews and the Roma. And then they start working with the Ustasha to hunt down the Jews and the Roma. And then they start working with them to stand against the, you know, the Tito's Partisans. against the Tito's partisans. Meanwhile, Tito's partisans had a multi-ethnic coalition. Again, we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Roma, Jews, Croats, Albanians, all sorts of people who were very anti-Nazism, pro, you know, we're going to win.

We're going to rebuild our country. We're going to, you know, make this beautiful sort of, you know, multi-ethnic kind of state, which they did, which is amazing. But yeah, but it is a complicated sort of piece of history. So you can't really say, oh, yes, they're the Nazi collaborationists, because at some point or not everybody was and at some point or not everybody was also yeah yeah it's like like it's when when you start getting into like it becomes this like you know it becomes a way of just of getting people to i don't know how to describe it like it you know when when when it starts being

like this specific ethnic group as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes it's like no they're not like that's that's not that's not how this works like it's not like like like like there are like there yeah there's going to be people in the ethnic group who did things that were awful. There's also going to be people, especially in a situation like this, there's a lot, probably more people who fought them. Yeah.

That's such an interesting statement because I'm going to compare to the Bosnian response after the genocide, which has consistently been, no, we don't believe that every single Serb is bad. And we are only talking about those that took place, took part in these crimes, and those that concealed them. And that has always been the collective and state level of all Bosnians. Now, you have to think about, I have a friend who's 99, 99 members of her family were killed in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

That's an absorbent number of people. These were women, children, and men, and elderly. There was no discrimination when it comes to her. I've sat with her as she's read all the names of her killed family members. That woman, with all the pain that she survived, with being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide, in the midst of these horrifying crimes, has never once publicly or privately to me said,

yes, old Serbs are the same. Yes, all of them are war criminals. Yes, all of them hate us. Absolutely not. And the thing is, I think about myself as well. Like, you know, my earliest childhood memory is me being shot at by a sniper, knowing my father was in a concentration camp, knowing that my grandmother was just killed by a sniper, knowing my father was in a concentration camp, knowing that my grandmother was just killed by a bomb, knowing that, you know, my biological dad was dying in a hospital from an attack. And my mother could also be killed because she was pregnant with my brother at the time. And so these are my earliest childhood memories. They're not very happy memories. And I know why those things happened. You know, I know why I was being shot at by a sniper. And it was because I was Bosnian. It was because I was Muslim. And because I was seen as the enemy, even though I was, you know, a little kid at six, seven years old, and absolutely not a threat to anyone. And nobody should have been shooting at me. They did anyway.

Nobody should have been shooting at me. They did anyway. Even though that happened, I never had that feeling of, all Serbs are awful. All Serbs are, you know, I'm going to paint them all with a brush. But a lot of them, unfortunately, especially on the, you know, the ultra-nationalists that continue to not just deny the genocide, but also glorify it and celebrate it, they do paint everyone with the

same brush you know and and the worst thing the funniest thing is that they paint themselves with the same brush you know they they think that they get to speak for every single serb person um and that's the tragic path like i'm not i'm not i get accused of like constantly talking shit about serbs and i'm like i absolutely am not i'm talking about the nationalists and i will call out all the nationalists whether they're bosnian serbian croatian american whatever but we're talking about you know what you're doing to me and your response to my criticism of nationalism is actually the thing that's ruining your reputation yeah it's it's the it's the ethno-nationalist gambit it's it's you have you have to conflate all of the individual people the ethnic group and the state they all they'll have

to be this like you know there's supposed to be this like organic totality and it's not true it's just not but that's you know that's that's that's the sort of it's it's the modus operandi behind their entire ideology and it's what they deploy, you know, it's what they deploy when they eat genocides, it's what they deploy when they have to sort of like, you know, sort of promote it openly or less openly afterwards. It's how they justify it, I think. And we all know about the 10 stages of genocide, but my colleague, who's brilliant, actually has often talked about that denialism is not really the final stage of genocide. It is, in fact, triumphalism.

And that's what we're actually seeing in Bosnia. You know, we're not... I get genocide denialism from American leftists and, like, British leftists who are on a certain spectrum and of a certain... I don't get genocide denialism from ethno-nationalist Serbs. What I get from them actually is very openly celebrating and threatening another genocide. They're not in my mentions saying, oh, there was no genocide.

Yeah. They're in my mentions saying, which is basically a slogan that says knife, wire, and it's like basically a threat that another will occur. They're in my mentions, in my emails, and in my DMs sending me threats about how they can't wait till I'm put in a rape camp again, how they can't wait till they kill my family, till Sarajevo gets bombed again, how, you know, they're going to finish the job. How Ratko Mladic is a hero because he killed all those, you know, people in Srebrenica

and Sarajevo and Visegrad. Karadzic is a hero because he did the same. Milosevic is a hero because he believes in a greater Serbia. These people don't hide it. Yeah. And that's the thing so it's it's very like just today you know first thing in the morning i open my twitter and the first thing that i see is a bosnian activist arrested for protesting the ratkomladic mural which the serbian police were guarding. They were guarding a mural,

like a mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who everybody knows committed genocide, a mural glorifying him. They were, the police were guarding, you know, the mural and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there to, you know, protest against the mural and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there to protest against the mural. And so I think that really tells you so much about the issue in the Balkans. This has been It Could Happen Here.

Join us tomorrow for part two of this interview in which we discuss the dangers of what's currently happening in Bosnia. In the meantime, find us on Twitter at HappenHerePod. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram for the rest of our shows at Cool Zone Media. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.