The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

216 annihilating difference
tionalist has changed his label and the targets for repression, but the rhetorical strategy
remains the same: a twenty-first-century nationalist is using sixteenth-century
terms to express his twentieth-century communist worldview.
A comparison between the iconography in Serbian and Croatian folklore in relation
to the Muslims is called for. On the basis of such an analysis, can we speculate
that the iconography in Croatian folklore is not sufficiently dehumanizing and
violent toward Muslims to move Croats to commit genocide against the Muslims?
I believe that ultimately the vocabulary of such epics and traditions of hatred do
not motivate people’s actions per se. It is the activation of the images that matters;
the reconnection of those historic images and attitudes with the present and their
translation into contemporary action. People have to be made to act upon them—
but how?
THE MANIPULATION OF FEAR
In all societies at all times there exist both the potential for conflict and the potential
for peaceful coexistence. At all times what becomes dominant is dependent on
what the economically and politically powerful in a society choose to stress. Societies
in radical transition, where state structures and the institutions regulating law
and order disintegrate, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia, have a greater
potential for conflict, and they are more vulnerable to individuals and organizations
that seek to exploit the potential for conflict. The political leadership who instigated
and drove the war in Bosnia (aided by the media they controlled) consciously
exploited the potential for conflict as part of their divide-and-rule strategy.
Manipulation of fear became the most important tool for the nationalists. The media
(controlled by the various nationalist governments) would dwell on past atrocities
committed by members of other nationalities and reinterpret them in the light
of the present political development. Or they would simply fabricate incidents—
such as massacres—perpetrated by “the other group.” Such “incidents” were
broadcast repeatedly in the nationalist-party-controlled media. Incidents were provoked
in local communities by police or paramilitaries before the war broke out. It
was hoped that incidents involving one or a few persons from the “enemy group”
would lead to retribution, providing an excuse for a more massive attack on the local
“enemy” population as a whole. Intimidation and provocations could consist
of beating people up and bombing shops owned by members of the perceived enemy
group. This happened in municipalities throughout Bosnia. Barricades were
put up, people were stripped of their freedom of movement, war was raging elsewhere
in the country, and citizens asked themselves: are we next? A siege mentality
developed with fear of an imminent attack by members of the other group.
The media propaganda and individual incidents of intimidation did not bring
immediate results, and ultimately violence and war proved to be the only means by
which Bosnians could be separated and convinced of the truth of the doctrine
that they could not live together. Many people resisted for quite some time and