Sunday, April 14, 2013
There was indeed mass murder by Tito's regime in Yugoslavia (1945-1948)
Where did the myth that there was no state mass murder in Yugoslavia under Tito come from? I keep seeing descriptions of Yugoslavia under Tito on LEFTIST blogs like the Marxist Crooked Timber that describe it as some sort of Balkan Sweden. Because in order for this outright lie to be credible at all you have to completely ignore the years 1945 to 1948. Executions and deaths in concentration camps under Tito were responsible for the death of over 55,000 ethnic Germans alone, nearly 17% of the minority's population. That is almost as many people as the number of Americans who died fighting in Vietnam and this figure does not take into account deaths among other ethnic groups such as Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Albanians, and others. It is a whole lot more people than Pinochet killed in Chile, the Argentine Junta killed during the "Dirty War", or the South African security forces killed during apartheid. Yet none of the LEFTISTs defending Tito at Crooked Timber and other places would ever deny that the 30,000 people murdered in Argentina during the "Dirty War" constituted mass murder even though it is a much smaller number than the total number of people exterminated by Tito's forces.
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12 comments:
Hey, Otto, I don't feel like rooting through that whole blog but I do want to read the nonsense they're spouting. Can you put up a direct link to the post or posts you're talking about.
Most recently it is a re-occurring leitmotif in the very long comment thread attached to the Socialism without a Map post which is still on their front page. The comment thread is now up to 326 people. But, there is repeated claims that Yugoslavia unlike the USSR, China, and the USSR had no mass murder under Tito. Something they would never claim regarding the far fewer killings by the military dictatorships in Argentina or Chile.
Thanks, I saw the comments went on forever, generally a sign of lunacy.
It's mainly Hector St. Claire, who's obviously an idiot. Bento defends Tito from an economic point of view and at one place does say he was "relatively benign and wise," which is pretty ignorant, but that's a standard myth about Yugoslavia that's always floated around--I heard it when I was in college. Also, I think he's again talking about his economic policies being benign.
Most people in America have no knowledge of Tito, how he came to power, or what he did.
But then, what are you doing reading Marxist blogs?
Oh, and I admit I didn't read all the comments, just searched to "Tito" and "Yugoslavia." When I came to the phrase "convexity constraints" I realized I was dealing with pretentiousness on an Olympic scale and stopped reading.
Walt I read these things so I can know what the academic mainstream in the US, Europe, and Australia think. Other than you almost no academics outside of Africa are willing to return my e-mails. So I am pretty much cut off from academia in the White world.
You say that as if it were a bad thing. :)
What Potter refers to as "vicious rhetorical attacks" is what I call a conference roundtable discussion.
Walt I think you meant for that last comment to go on the post above this one.
I meant the part about being cut off from academics.
Oh, I see now that I reread it. I kind of think it is a bad thing. Remember before the collapse of the USSR and we had no access what so ever to any archival documents and censorship made collecting oral and other sources really difficult? I am sure you do. Well my ability to understand or even get kind of a view of American academia is like that now. I get the tips of the icebergs, but it is really opaque.
Oh, I see now that I reread it. I kind of think it is a bad thing. Remember before the collapse of the USSR and we had no access what so ever to any archival documents and censorship made collecting oral and other sources really difficult? I am sure you do. Well my ability to understand or even get kind of a view of American academia is like that now. I get the tips of the icebergs, but it is really opaque.
I don't know. I just focus on my own projects and don't really give a rat's ass what anyone in academia thinks of me. My contact with academia at conferences has certainly been overwhelmingly negative.
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