From the book "The Second Serbia - 10 years later: 1992-2002", Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia 2002. Spoken in the 4th round of the 2nd cycle of talks (which took place under the title Intellectuals and War) organized by the Belgrade Circle in SKC- in Belgrade on November 14.11.1992, XNUMX.
In linguistics, as well as in philosophy, it has long been known that there is a multidimensional complex of relationships between language and reality. The rhetoric of war makes a kind of contribution to this group, strikingly bringing some of its potentials to the fore. The gruesome war we are surrounded by has provided plenty of material for possible future research of this kind. On this occasion, some general indications can be given, along with a handful of selected examples, from which it will be seen how language (a) produces, (b) cancels and (c) reverses reality. This The typology is, of course, only partial.
(a) Language produces reality. Most of the criminal war-mongering propaganda goes into this column, because it is known that the verbal artillery has thoroughly prepared the ground for iron talk. For illustration, long before the start of the war in Croatia, there was massive talk on both sides about Chetniks ie Ustasha, at a time when these simply did not exist, or were few in number and without major influence. But as the war progressed, the politicized and tendentious ghosts of the past turned into flesh-and-blood people, so Chetniks and Ustasha soon became part of the tragic reality in large numbers. And when the war spread to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the third party there had to be treated equally, so they were invented mujahideen, and that much before the first detachments of warriors who fit this label will arrive from abroad. However, if the war in this territory continues, it is easily possible that the last native Muslim will become a mujahideen. It remains to be seen whether the remaining Serbs in Croatia will form a list South Unitarian-Serbo-Chetnik-bandit groups, following common names through monstrous compounds that abound in the language of Croatian propaganda.
In a similar way, frequent irresponsible use of words genocide it preceded the renewal of genocidal actions, such as the propagandistic and necrophilic digging up of graves from the last war that resulted in new mass graves. (On the other hand, what is the authentically new "contribution" of this war has remained unnamed until recently. It is urbicid - systematic and savage killing of cities with their entire civilian population, both from the surroundings and from a safe distance. Something like this has never been recorded in the history of warfare in one's own country).
(B) Language cancels reality. We will cite only one fresh example of this phenomenon. It is an arrogant demonstration of power and sheer force, manifested during the occupation of the federal MUP building by units of the republic MUP. This scandalous action, unimaginable in any legal state, shocked the domestic and international public, and was interpreted as an announcement or the beginning of a civil war in Serbia itself. However, the republican authorities covered it up, and soon after, an official joint statement was issued by the federal and republican interior ministers. In it, they emphasize that this "property-law issue is unnecessarily politicized", and that there is "agreement on the identity of the goals of the functions", as well as "full mutual understanding" that the cooperation of the ministries "should be based on the law"(!). So, fuck you - it doesn't apply: the armed invasion that the whole world saw on television didn't happen, because the ministers agreed that it should be mediated by something else. Probably feeling the need to somehow strengthen the credibility of this short and bureaucratically worded text, the paper Politics (7.11.1992/XNUMX/XNUMX) furnished it not only with photographs of the two ministers but also with facsimiles of their signatures. Now, let someone not believe what is written there!
(C) Language distorts reality. However, the most interesting category is represented by numerous cases when the orchestrated language of reality does not betray or just misrepresent it, because that is an understatement, but actually shifts it, choosing words with not a different but the exact opposite meaning, exactly according to the pattern of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. This, of course, exists on all warring sides, and examples from the Serbian state media will be given here, as the most accessible.
It started, perhaps, with the well-known, but also quickly forgotten, bare-handed defenders of centuries-old hearths. Since it soon turned out that many of these are not exactly bare-handed, and that they are not always at their hearths, the phraseology is modified, but the core concept is defense remained, to be supplemented with an idea release. The latter was necessary in order to hide the fact that it was largely a war of conquest for territories. But that's how an unbearable tension was created, which led to real little semantic explosions. Namely, it was necessary to convincingly say inconceivable things - to make a place songs by besieging and then defeating and expelling the occupier in it, or to liberate a city defense somewhere else.
Here are just a few typical newspaper headlines that bear witness to a truly intractable linguistic and conceptual tangle. "JNA liberates Cavtat and Dubrovnik". (That, let's not forget, is the army that defended itself constantly and only occasionally retaliated fiercely.) "The defenders of Mirkovci liberate Vukovar". (This is already harder to imagine.) "Vukovar was not conquered but defended". (Thus defended, he began to rebuild from the ashes, and soon evidence was provided that life is returning to the completely destroyed city. One of them, which hinted at the possibilities of a small economy, would be darkly humorous if it were not horrific: the media reported the opening of the first private of the crematorium in Vukovar!) "The defenders celebrate the victory in Bilje" - with the supertitle "The last stronghold of the ZNG and the MUP in Baranja fell yesterday" and the subtitle "Guardsmen and Mupovics provoked the Territorials of Baranja and then lost the battle and were forced to retreat in the direction of Osijek" (politics, 4.9.1991). Do you need a comment on this rape of language and elementary logic? Peaceful defenders come from the side, but, lo and behold, they are provoked, and by the very act of defense they force the attacking forces to flee in the very place. Alal faith!
Along with the war, this pattern was also transferred to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The SRNA agency reports that "Serbian defenders have occupied all dominant points around Goražde". And we learn about Jajce from the so-called war correspondents that "Muslim and Croat forces are trying to threaten the positions of the Serbian army", but also that "the Serbian army has already arrived in the suburbs", and that "the liberators of Krajina are crushing the strongest fortifications of Ustasha and jihad fanatics in occupied Jajce".
Let's also note that not only settlements and larger areas are liberated, but also individual rooms in "enemy territory". The case of the forcible takeover of the correspondence of RTV Sarajevo and "Oslobođenja", in the very center of Belgrade, for the needs of the correspondence of the media from the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (which at that time had not yet been baptized with the linguistically impossible name Republika Srpska) speaks of this. IN The public, a list of Bosnian Serbs, and under the title "What belongs to us", the happy event was publicized as follows: "... we are free to tell the Serbian people, regardless of whether in one or more countries, that this piece of Serbian territory is also liberated". No less, no more! (Transferred Borba, 2.6.1992. where you should also see the whole of this text).
And what should be done first with released territories? You guessed it, we need them cleanse. The way this term was introduced and used, especially in a disgusting phrase ethnic cleansing, would deserve a separate trial. Let's just say that the mentioned phrase, in our language as well as in translation into other languages, barely succeeds in concealing the crime it signifies. I guess because the chemical is not strong enough to remove blood stains.
Finally, with defense ide and protection, today as before - hence, it will be, that the defenders and protectors then and now are the same people, or at least the same breed of people. Here, the best example is the Montenegrin leader of the Bosnian Serbs, whose heroes in patriotic ecstasy, and from the cannons and mortars of the former JNA, have been killing innocent and helpless residents of the cities they hold in a steel embrace for weeks or months with impunity, exposing the survivors to easy death from hunger, disease or winter . Among those unfortunates, already dead or still alive, there are, as is known, thousands of Serbs, along with members of many other nationalities. And this so-called leader has recently been showering the country and the world with crocodile tears, presenting himself as worried patron those same people! He accuses another side that she made of the Serbs in the cities detainees and ethnic hostages, which, he says, is trampling on the Geneva Convention. And in Geneva itself, without blinking an eye, he declares that the Serbian side does not keep Sarajevo under siege. "We are simply protecting Serbian suburbs from Muslim attacks," Reuters quoted him as saying. Can anyone seriously think, no matter what role models they have, that the whole world can still be deceived by declaring black to be white, and vice versa?
The primitive and hypocritical demagoguery we have illustrated fits into a general picture that is perhaps best summed up by the persistent effort to make it evident, comprehensive and irrevocable degradation it pathetically portrays all kinds of people through war and other horrors as a return dignity to the Serbian people. Today, this thesis can only be experienced as pure cynicism, so it is good that it is heard less often now, but for too long, and with disastrous consequences, it obscured what was really happening.
In conclusion, and in the shortest possible time, such is the war, such is the language: dirty, freaky, destructive - and not necessary. The only hope left is that the masters of war will be beaten on the head at some point, along with all the other evil they have given birth to, and the monstrous language they have triumphantly tortured.
Bonus video:
