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People like GK Paul and Bill scott do seem to cling to their silly superstitions and their belief in magical beings, at least in part, out of a sense of fear and desperation. Of course there always have been and always will be some people who are dangerously out of touch with reality. But in this day and age, with such an organized, and apparently successful effort to develop a body of political support made up of the weak and fearful, it's not really surprising that we seem to encounter them so much more often than in the past.

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Originally posted by Gorgo

Really interesting. The idea that Milosevic preached hatred and Serbian nationalism is ludicrous, but otherwise, very good.

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Originally posted by GeeMack

A written transcript of (what I believe to be) the same interview can be found here...[size=1][bq]quote www.truthdig.com:

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Chris Hedges: The Christian Right's War on America

Hedges: I look at the religious right, the radical religious right, those people who want to create a Christian nation, as a mass movement. I don't give them much religiosity at all. I think they have acculturated the Christian religion with the worst aspects of American imperialism and American capitalism. They prey on the despair of tens of millions of Americans in this country who have been completely disenfranchised and shunted aside with the creation of this American oligarchy. That is the engine of the movement. These people, their lives have become train wrecks, their communities have been physically obliterated with the flight of manufacturing jobs, or they live in these soulless exurbs, in places like Orange County, with no community center, no community rituals—you know, they don't even have sidewalks. And they're lonely, and they're alienated, and they're lost. And that's the fodder that demagogues use to amass totalitarian movements. And they do that by offering these people a world of magic, of belief in destiny and miracles and angels, that Jesus has a plan for them. And they essentially remove them from the reality-based world.

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Originally posted by Neurosis

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Originally posted by Gorgo

Really interesting. The idea that Milosevic preached hatred and Serbian nationalism is ludicrous, but otherwise, very good.

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Milosevic justified his actions by claiming that the constitution of Yugoslavia gave self-determination to people not nations. In other words, he claimed that Yugoslavia could claim self determination so long as it was a Serb nation, but not as a nation. This is the same racist nationalism as Hitler's Germany. What exactly are you arguing with that statement?

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Originally posted by Gorgo

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Originally posted by Neurosis

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Originally posted by Gorgo

Really interesting. The idea that Milosevic preached hatred and Serbian nationalism is ludicrous, but otherwise, very good.

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Milosevic justified his actions by claiming that the constitution of Yugoslavia gave self-determination to people not nations. In other words, he claimed that Yugoslavia could claim self determination so long as it was a Serb nation, but not as a nation. This is the same racist nationalism as Hitler's Germany. What exactly are you arguing with that statement?

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http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans43.html

"After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it."

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87

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Under the FRY constitution, the will of a republican majority could not override the equally valid will of a constitutent nationality. In other words, the Croatian vote for independence could not negate the rights of the Krajina Serbs within Croatia. The latter had overwhelmingly rejected separatism in a referendum of their own. According to FRY constitutional principles, Croatian independence should have been conditional upon a successful resolution of krajina's competing claim. The same rule applied to Bosnia. All this was completely ignored by Western leaders and their media acolytes, who assumed that while it was outrageous that Muslims and Croats should accept a minority position within Yugoslavia, it was perfectly all right for Serbs to accept a far less secure minority position within Croatia and Bosnia.

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Were the secessions legal under international law, as the Western powers assumed? In fact, the recognition of Slovene, Croatian, and Bosnian independence by the Western Powers "constituted an illegal intervention in Yugoslavia's internal affairs to which Belgrade had every right to object," argue David Tucker and David Hendrickson." ("America and Bosnia," National Interest, Fall 1993, 16-17)

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Originally posted by Gorgo

In other words, since Milosevic was trying to keep a multi-ethnic society together in peace, he was "preaching hatred and nationalism."

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Originally posted by Gorgo

Again, I see no evidence that he thought Serbs were superior. He was trying to hold Yugoslavia together. It was the U.S. and the Germans that funded these nationalist fringe groups who would otherwise have had no chance of success.

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Originally posted by Gorgo

My point was addressed in my first post. It's ridiculous to say that Milosevic preached hatred and nationalism. What is your point?

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