Remembering the Causes of Collective Violence and the Role of Propaganda in the Yugoslav Wars

Abstract

AbstractLegal narratives about collective violence have given an outsized explanatory role to propaganda in conflicts such as the Rwandan genocide and the Yugoslav Wars. While post-conflict ethnographies have examined what Rwandans remember about propaganda and collective violence, similar studies have not been undertaken in territories of the former Yugoslavia. The present ethnographic study fills this gap. After introducing the theoretical and empirical problems that have stemmed from recent speech crime trials in international criminal law, I examine the causes of collective violence in the Yugoslav Wars as remembered by former combatants, survivors, and the greater populations of post-conflict regions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. I show that remembered causes, including the role of propaganda, vary significantly between former combatants and the greater populations. Nevertheless, local perspectives, especially among former combatants and survivors, converge on the effects of populist movements following Yugoslavia’s economic crisis and the rise of ethnic, religious, and nationalist leaders who engaged in inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation to mobilize war efforts. This article thus corroborates key findings from other post-conflict ethnographies which show that propaganda plays a secondary but significant role in the cultural manufacturing of state-sponsored ethnicity and cultural logics of violence.