The Persistent Myth of Srebrenica

One of the most stubborn factoids of our time is the myth that the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 during the Bosnian civil war was solely about the killing of innocent Muslims by vicious racist genocidal Serbs. It is a relic of the coordinated media message put out at the time, which demonized the Serbs as cruel oppressors and ignored any atrocities of equal or greater magnitude by other parties to the conflict.

Now Sarah Palin has strolled into this minefield, perhaps inadvertently. Srdja Trifkovic has written an article at the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies taking Ms. Palin to task for her ill-considered words about the Bosnian Serbs during a discussion of the Ground Zero mosque:

Sarah Palin’s Misguided Demagoguery

by Srdja Trifkovic

Arguing against the building of an Islamic shrine near New York’s Ground Zero, former U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin linked the mosque project to “building a Serbian Orthodox church at Srebrenica killing fields where Muslims were slaughtered.” Mrs. Palin is right to oppose the Ground Zero mosque. It is unacceptable, and detrimental to her cause, to invoke false parallels in the process, based on events of which she knows but very little.

Mrs. Palin’s metaphor was misguided and deeply insulting to Orthodox Christians. It creates a totally false analogy between an act of brutal Islamist terror which killed three thousand innocent American civilians, and a war crime — resulting from the complex events of a three-sided civil war in Bosnia — in which the victims were, overwhelmingly, men who had previously taken an active part in that same civil war.

It implies, falsely, that the Muslims were the only victims of the tragic events at Srebrenica. In reality, throughout the war period 1992—1995, Serbian villages around Srebrenica were subjected to widespread, systematic attacks and destruction by the Muslim military forces concentrated within the Srebrenica enclave. The attacks were indiscriminate and they targeted Serbs as such. The victims were peaceful peasants, whose only fault was that they were Serbian Orthodox Christians.

The original “killing fields” in the region of Srebrenica do not date from 1995, but from 1941-45. The Serbs in that same area had been subjected to genocide during World War II not only by the Nazis but also by the Croatian Ustaša “Black Legion” (in the spring of 1942) and by the Muslim 13th SS “Hanjar” Division in 1944.

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Sarah Palin is blissfully unaware of all that, of course. What she thinks she knows is what has been served to her advisors over the past 15 years by The Hague tribunal, in official reports by governments and NGO’s and the media. Their contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence and is essentially a political construct.

Sarah Palin’s latest gaffe proves, yet again, that questioning the received elite class narrative on “Srebrenica” is a good and necessary endeavor. The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically nor morally correct. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes — which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about — is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization, and an insult to the memory of the victims of 9-11. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Christian viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.

Read the rest at the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.

Mr. Trifkovic is exactly correct: the only information our political leaders have available to them is the “narrative” served up in true postmodern fashion by the media in 1995. The same narrative was later dusted off and updated for service during the 1999 bombing war against Serbia over Kosovo.

This is the only way that Serbs are depicted in American and Western European media discussions of the Balkans. The myth has been active and insistent for so long that even most conservatives have absorbed it unthinkingly.

Remember: the meme of the evil racist genocidal Serbs was created to serve an agenda that benefited the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo. It was part of a boneheaded geostrategic calculus that the Clintonistas and both Bush administrations concocted: the Arabs were mad at us because of what we did in Iraq, so we would liberate the Muslims of the Balkans and make the Muslim world love us. The fact that this brilliant strategy required the unjust demonization of the Orthodox Christians of Serbia was of no consequence — Time for an omelet! Break the eggs!

It was (and is) a stupid and ineffective policy. It plays right into the hands of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why we now have an Islamic terrorist gangster state in the Balkans.

One of the most important things that we Counterjihad information warriors can do is to debunk the myth of the genocidal Serbs by pounding home the truth about the Balkans as often as we can. Israpundit and Emperor’s Clothes have done journeyman’s work in publicizing the truth about Srebrenica “genocide”. And Srebrenica is not the only piece of disinformation — another example is the “concentration camp” hoax, whose debunking gained virtually no media attention.

The success of the Muslim Brotherhood’s patient strategy can be measured in part by how many conservatives — people who should know better, and who should be on our side — have swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker.


Many thanks to Henrik Ræder Clausen at Europe News for the additional links.