At 09:05 AM 10/08/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>But to the extent that they [Tudjman and Milosevic] were essentially
>collaborators, why any socialist would even think of defending Milosevic
>given his mirroring of neofascist practice in neighboring Croatia -
>whether just in practice or in direct planned collaboration as has
>allegedly been revealed recently.
I don't understand why anyone would defend either Milosevic _or_ the
US/NATO terror-bombing of the Serbian people. It also makes no sense to
support the bombing _and_ support the people who suffered from it when they
rebel against the Boss. (As is usual with strategic bombing, the military
is most prepared to handle it, so the civilians get its brunt.)
While I am glad that Milosevic is out of power and I hope that their role
in overthrowing him gives the working class some power until the US and its
ilk take over more completely (as in Kosova/o), we have to consider the
alternative that could really prevail. A mass movement of the people --
even working-class people -- aren't always right. They can be right about
Milosevic while wrong about other, very important issues, just as the mass
rebellion against the Shah of Iran was right about overthrowing him and
wrong about supporting the Ayatollah. Though I can't claim that his
opinion represents the majority or even a sizable minority of the Serbian
population, the one Serb I talked to via e-mail threw anti-Semitic insults
at Madeline Allbright. It's quite possible that the US/NATO bombing of
Serbia encouraged such attitudes, given the kind of ethnic politics that
replaced Titoism after its remnants were driven into the ground by the IMF,
etc. The fact that Kostunica is a Serbian nationalist is consistent with
such chauvinism, as is the "Western" power elites' emphasis on the need for
ethnically-pure cantons as a "solution" for Yugoslavia's rampant ethnic
nationalism (and the fact that aid is going to come in dribs and drabs, all
with strings attached to force the imposition of neo-liberalism). Look at
the rise of neo-Nazism in eastern Germany and elsewhere in the former East
Bloc. I don't expect Nazism to prevail (since Nazism is such an
extraordinary phenomenon, head and shoulders below "normal" fascism), but
the neo-liberal revolution from above is hardly going to prevent it or its
milder cousin.
BTW, the link between Tudjman and Milosevic doesn't surprise me at all.
Rabid ethnic nationalists can get along, as long as they can easily find a
way to split their territories (e.g., with a "no man's land" like Bosnia).
As I noted elsewhere, even fascists of different nationalities can get
along even if they officially hate each other, as with the French fascists
(Maurras _et al_) and the Nazis before World War II. Of course, both
Tudjman and Milosevic probably "played the ethnic nationalist card" for
opportunistic reasons, to promote their own careers, rather than as result
of a heart-felt emotion. That allowed them to work together even better.
(BTW, the US also worked with Tudjman, right? What does that say about it?)
