The Academic Cold War

Do Americans hate Serbs? The question should really ask which Americans and which Serbs. Anyway, it is asked in order to get the wrong answer. The Serbs have treated the Americans (at least those Serbs whom the state has awarded for their participation in the propaganda war) just as ignorantly and unintelligently as they earlier did the Jews and the French. This isn't at all unusual when we consider that the main argument used by this propaganda was that the Serbs aren't quite as good as others in presenting their truth. At the same time, there was nothing in Serbian public life which would indicate that the truth and sincerity were cherished as civic values.

In the case of the Jews everything started with a great deal of blackmailing energy, so that many Jews drew back immediately, sensing a hidden antiSemitism. This is a euphemism, since as early as 1991, Mihajlo Markovic, the ideologue of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS, made a public antiJewish statement. In a relatively short period time, i.e. in the span of three years, these fears have been fully confirmed.

In the case of France, the matter concerned militarist feelings which the majority of those creating French public opinion, regardless of their political commitments, will think twice before voicing in public. A very competitive generation of young media lions such as Bernard Henry Levy, Alain Finkelcrote, Pascal Brickner and Andre Gliksman after initial interest and sympathies for Yugoslavia, (Finqelcrote after visiting the countrys main cities), realized very quickly that the colonies must be divided up, or the media would not be very interested (in France, of course). Levy, the last one to become involved, and the most capable, gave Serb writers a chance (which they proudly turned down), and then decided to devote himself to Bosnia. Finckelcrote, who promised to look at things with moral precision, opted for Croatia, and made a mess at the very beginning with the Croatian PEN's action against errant Croatian women writers, which forever ruined his reputation among European and American intellectuals. Brickner and Gliksman were late. Since there wasn't even a theoretical possibility of Serbian propaganda investing in any of them, because of a total absence of dialogue on the Serbian side, Serbia was left with anonymous humanist philosophers.

The problem in communication is best seen in former Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic's criticism of European Commission President Jacques Delors in late June. In a report by the Belgrade daily ``Borba'' (June 2526) which carries a Freudian slip in the title, Delors ``writes nonsense about Cosic and the Serbs.'' Cosic comes before the Serbs in the title (a second slip), and it is obvious from the text that Delors didn't write the article, but talked on TV. The weekly ``Minute,'' which brings a part of Cosic's instant answer is insignificant, and not politically relevant. But, that was all that Cosic's publisher could manage. Cosic believed that he must answer Delors, who is practically the European Union's no. 1 politician, and at the same time proclaimed his radical critics in Yugoslavia traitors, on the front page of the Belgrade daily ``Politika.'' All this because he considers himself Delors's political equal! As we learned from the report, the ``whole of the French press took great care not to publish'' Cosic's ``strong and sincere'' criticism of Delors (and, they surprisingly (!) managed not to). The criticism consists of several small deceptions: Delors called Cosic the Serbian President and didn't observe the rules of the games played by Serbia, which when necessary referred to the phantom ``Federal Yugoslavia,'' but never stopped talking of the ``Serbian question.'' Delors made a mistake when giving the year when the SANU (Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences) Memorandum (when the Serb question was first raised) was issued, and glossed over the fact that the academicians kept it secret, and that when the participants of the 8th session of the League of Communists of Serbia accepted it, that they then insisted several times that it should be revised, and continue to claim so today, just in case, that it still needs to be worked on.

The statement that Cosic wasn't one of the authors of the Memorandum, is so embarrassing, that it can only be regarded with pity, at least in France. With the just anger of a great man, Cosic cannot come up with a single statement condemning ethnic cleansing, neither at the time, before or after his term as President. Matters then deteriorated to a circus level: Delors couldn't pronounce Cosic's name, didn't know anything about literature... because he hadn't read anything by Cosic, not even his latest book. There is a paradox in the fact that even after this move by the greatest Serb of all, the French refuse to accept stereotypes about Serbs, and Serbian propaganda, in spite of all its mistakes has not reduced expert interest in Serbian culture.

The American example is more tragic because the numbers in question are bigger. The picture of Serbia, as the pillar of antifascism during WW2 was very strong among liberal intellectuals, who do not have such easy access to the media as do French intellectual stars, but are the biggest group of their kind in the world. The aim of all propaganda has always been to invest in this particular segment of society. A Princeton Classics professor showed me how this was done: sympathy for the Serbs prevailed until the shelling of Dubrovnik. After that a Serb colleague from Princeton wrote a letter to the ``New York Times'' with the thesis that it was all ``Croatian propaganda.'' As far his circle was concerned, and it isn't small and without influence, Serbia then became a dead loss, so that it proved once more that patriots are usually a disaster when it comes to Serbia's image. What is surprising is the fact that this happened with people who know and understand the environments they have found themselves in. Things didn't take a turn for the better during the war. The majority of Americans believed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia was a symbolic act which threatened the very concept of the American federation. Proving that ``it is impossible to live together'' is obscene in a country in which the Constitution enjoys the status of the Holy Writ. The Serbian nationalist position has only one parallel in America, and that is the one held by AfroAmerican Islamic fundamentalists. Bosnian Muslims, or politicians, never said anything like this publicly in America.

To make matters worse, the academic world in America, contrary to Serbian stereotypes, is very resistant to existing political stands and media presentations (which again, are not always totally senseless, but that's another story). The academic population has a patient trust in the transfer of knowledge and love, and continues to study Serbia's culture without kicking up a big fuss. All the nonsense about Kosovo will not change the literary merit of a text (a series of epic poems dedicated to the Battle of Kosovo), nor the value of good arguments against neoKosovo mythology. They will not protest over the sudden interest for Bosnian, Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian studies.

When speaking of the majority, but not necessarily the intellectual majority, the crimes committed by Serbian propaganda aren#t smaller. It doesn't take much of an effort to realize that the majority of Americans do not have any sympathy for nationalism and racism and that the joy after the victory over communism has started to wane. Americans believe deeply in federalism, and they are the last to accept segregation which brought them so much suffering.

Compared to Europe, where the thousandyear dream of a nation can still be taken seriously, calling on a collective dream will only result in laughter in America, even though the audience will listen politely to all pronational arguments and individual expressions of feeling.

On the Serbian side, stereotypes about Americans are not just the result of ignorance and solidly paid bad feelings. If one is to judge by Ljubomir Tadic's antiAmerican feature in the Belgrade daily ``Politika,'' things are much more serious. The pillars of Serbian propaganda have remained hopelessly addicted to the terminology used thirty or more years ago, but have lost that adolescent Marxist impulse to learn. By drawing a parallel between the war in Vietnam and America's stand towards Serbia, Tadic's freshest source (``Politika,'' June 26), apart from trivializing Montesquieu (``the wise Frenchman''), is Hanna Arent, or rather, her quoting of an official American statement made in 1971. Since he doesn't know what to say, Tadic brings back from total oblivion the term ``establishment,'' which means that he hasn't read any relevant sociological, philosophical and political literature in the past two decades. This term was used by that group which Tadic doesn't wish to mention much, because from being on the side lines, it has managed in a few years, to become a decisive voice of public stands, and defeat American imperialism in Vietnam. The parallel with the pacifist movement in Serbia would be an eyesore to those who view it as an inexhaustible nursery of traitors and enemies, and would undermine the scletoric vision of brotherhood in arms of the heroic Vietnamese and Serbian people. From this position it is of little importance that America's foreign policy has destroyed independent Cyprus by helping Greek extremists, and then for years persistently antagonized or patched up relations, as need be, between two NATO countriesGreece and Turkey. ``For decades the `establishment' has peacefully watched the Turkish invasion of Cyprus...,'' writes Tadic. According to all sources, the Turkish invasion lasted a short time, while the occupation of a part of Cyprus has lasted quite a long time, and no one has recognized the puppet state proclaimed by Cypriot Turks. An example of the destruction of a multiethnic state in which one nation has decided to found its own ``pure'' state does not seem to reach Tadic. The important thing is that the Turks are part of the ``establishment.'' The rest of the world is not very important: this is why it is possible that CNN and ``Le Monde,'' according to Tadic, are both part of an ``organized lie,'' and that the rest of Europe is represented by... ``Belgian and other similar papers.'' And naturally, there are tears for the good old days when there was a balance of powers, and America couldn't... ``aspire to spread its power without hitting into any borders, arrogantly and ruthlessly.'' If not hitting against borders is ``arrogant and ruthless,'' then hitting against borders can only be ``honorable and submissive''? Because in fact, it doesn't really matter. Ljubomir Tadic will become a regular academician by writing propaganda harangues, which in another situation and with another academy would be sufficient to disqualify him forever. When it is believed that the Cold War was good and that the Belgian and similar media hate us, it is perfectly logical to present the world as in an old North Korean film about twin sisters who were separated by the war. When they meet again, the South Korean sister has sunk into immorality and poverty, and approaches the border in the darkness, while the sun shines on the North Korean side, lighting up the happy and decent sister. The question: Do Americans hate us?, is not one of ignorance, because this degree of ignorance can only be the result of malicious design.