[Marxism] re: Milosevic's '89 speech

[John M Cox <coxj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just a short note on Milosevic's speech on the 600th anniversary of the
Kosovo battle: I agree with Michael's comments on this speech, as with
almost all of his analysis on Yugoslavia (and I appreciate his joining the
listserv and making these contributions; I had almost lost hope that we
would ever cut through the obscurantism and outright nonsense on this
question). At a time of rising anti-Muslim hysteria in Europe and North
America, our friend "Slobo" also reminded his audience that Serbia had
defended the "West" from Islamic barbarity six centuries earlier:

"Six centuries ago, Serbia heroically defended itself in the field of
Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. Serbia was at that time the bastion
that defended the European culture, religion, and European society in
general." Milosevic speech: http://www.icdsm.org/milosevic/kosovo.htm
[and for the record, Islamic culture was a bit further advanced than
European culture at the time.]


Louis P:
> Another reference to chauvinism. I think that Milosevic's
"infamous"speech
> would have put a cork in these kinds of allegations by now. For a speech
> that was reputed to be tantamount to something Hitler delivered at
> Nuremburg, it sounds much more like an appeal for equality between
> nationalities to the impartial observer.

Michael Karadjis:
My reference was clearly to the memorandum of 1986, not Milosevic's speech
of 1989. In the latter, he comes out abundantly clearly as the
spokesperson
for bourgeois serbian nationalism. Certainly, he does not engage in open
hate speech. He was far smarter than that, leaving it to his supporters
and
clones around the country's intelligentsia. It sounds like an appeal to
equality between nationalities to you, because somehow you miss the
context
of a leader making a speech in his colony, a few months after he has
massacred and sacked striking miners and suppressed the Yugoslav
constitution there, about the glories of his nation's history of
resistance
to ottomans etc and then saying that this glorious nation is under threat
again? From whom? Was he talking about the IMF? The WB? The US? The EC?
Not
the Albanian natives by any chance. Nuremburg? Let's not talk silly.




_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism