“It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own fau;ts as a cunning gambler conceals his dice” – Buddha, Dhammapada, verse 252.
I see that Mr Schwartz’s article is acting as a poultice and drawing out the emboldened Serb-hating loons that usually only live in the deeper depths of Usenet, Neo-nazi forums and other domains of the hateful and insane.
One such creature who has revealed himself is one Artan Boletini, an Albanian commentator. I would like to take a few minutes to help Mr Boletini at least re-orientate himself back in the direction of honesty, fairness and reason even if his handicap means that he will never limp the whole way there.
Now Artan, you are falling vicrtim to the same fallacy that all the others on this page who denounce “Serbs” for the action of a tiny unrepresentative minority, except you have taken it one step further, you are now denouncing all Serbs for the actions of tiny unrepresentative minority 60 years ago! I have seen esteemed and widely respected journalists like Michael Trotten fall into the trap on this topic, so you are at least in good company.
If we pay minute attention to the record of any peoples, we will reveal shameful episodes and the ranting of madman, bigots, xenophobes, racists and extremists. You are dredging history and presenting distorted half truths in an attempt to slander the people of Serbia, exactly as Mr Schwartz has tried and failed to do here.
Now I could simply fall victim to the Tu Quoque fallacy myself and say “So what if there was a single Serbian collaborationist organisation. Every single country occupied country has collaborators and quislings.” I could go on to talk about the Albanian Skenderbey SS Division or the Bosnian 13th Waffen Hanjar (or Handschar) SS Division. I could point out that Serbia never has anything like an SS division, at worst they had an Anti-Partisan unit – Serbian Volunteer Corps – which was NOT an SS division at all. It was not even part of the German army, it was unit of the short lived Serbian collaborationist government. Its very existence is a testament to the fierceness of the Partisans and German desperation at their inability to suppress the Partisans.
The ONLY SS volunteer corps in the Balkans were Bosnian, Albanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian. The Serbs were the only people NOT to capitulate to the Nazis and volunteer to fight in the German Army itself.
You go on to mention the so called “Serbian Gestapo”. This is another attept to imply that the Serbs were raving nazi’s with their own mini version of the nazi apparatus. The truth – and you Serb haters shudder every time it is mentioned – is much more prosaic.
It is truth that members of the German Gestapo turned up in Belgrade in 1942 to set up a Serbian Gestapo. They failed miserably. The unit – formed by common criminals – was inaugurated on 1st April 1942 (April’s Fools day) and called the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment. It was disbanded within a year by the Germans. They were a joke compared to the Hrvatski (Croatian) Gestapo formed from True Believers in December 1942. Now those guys were pros, they helped round up hundreds of thousands of Jews and Serbs for the death caps at Jasenovac and elsewhere. Even the Kosovo Albanian Gendarmerie unit formed in 1941 by the Gestapo were more effective at catching and killing Serbs, Jews and Roma.
You see when we look at how people in the nazi occupied territories behaved, we ALWAYS find traitors and collaborators. But in the case of the Serbs we find LESS COLLABORATION and MORE RESISTANCE than everyone else in the Balkans.
You then go on to plagiarise Philip J. Cohen’s article “Holocaust History Misappropriated” from the November 1992 edition of Midsteam magazine. Your plagiarism repeats Cohen’s slanders, which, like so much anti-Serbian propaganda, relies of highlighting Serbian wrongs completely out of context and without any comparisons. One cannot assess Serbian anti-Semitism without considering and comparing it to the rampant anti-Semitism throughout Europe at the time Cohen, Schwartz and you all use the same propaganda trick: List Serbian wrongs, out of context and without comparisons. It is one of the and without comparisons. It is one of the oldest tricks in the fat and very old book of slander tricks. It is the crude club of Propagandist weaponry and Serbs know it well. This is a classic example of “Framing”, where this time the frame is only around Serbian malfeasance to the exclusion of all others.
Since you are Albanian, and concerned with Anti-Semitism, Kosovo and history – you may want to pay more attention to the wrongdoing your own people instead of pointing fingers at Serbs: http://www.islam-watch.org/Serbianna/Albanian_role_holocaust.htm
Mr Schwartz and Mr Boletini have between then used either deliberately deployed or through stupidity and ignorance, simply fallen victim to so many propaganda and coercive persuasion techniques that their words here might for the perfect example text for an undergraduate course on Critical Thinking. In their few works have detected everything from Suppressing Evidence (Framing), Observational Selection, Reversal Of Reality, Unsupported Claims, Inverted The Glittering Generality, Exaggeration, Slander, Non Sequiturs, Guilt Induction, Appeal to Emotion, Ad Hominem (Personal Attacks), Name Calling, Labelling, Claim That There Is A Panmalefic (Serbs are the Panmalefic)…..I really could go on.
You two a are a brace hypocrites, accusing the Serbs of being hateful and ignoble whilst lying, exaggerating and distorting in a desperate effort to support your bigotry.
Thankfully after nearly 20 years of relentless anti-Serb propaganda and slander, the truth is emerging. Maybe it is the increasing numbers of visitors to Serbia, maybe it is the power of the internet, maybe the Iraq was has made people question received wisdom and reject the media’s Manichean anti-Serb narrative. But I can assure you of one thing Mr Boletini and Mr Schwartz: There are plenty more where I came from. The ranks of Pro-Serbian westerners like me swelling fast. It is going to get harder, and eventually impossible for people like you to write filth like Mr Schwartz’s article without being righted and outed as bigots by us.
Your time is over Serb-haters, the truth is coming out, and it is against you.
