(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
This summer and autumn, Ordfront has printed book excerpts and interviews with the American-French author Diana Johnstone. Her book "Fools' Crusade" is about the West's relations with the former Yugoslavia and especially the Serbian abuses that eventually led to NATO's attacks in 1999.
Or: The "alleged" Serbian assaults, because almost everything in this story is false. Unfortunately, it is difficult to question lies, especially established lies. A lie that is repeated time and time again, is transformed into something objectively true ", as she writes in the book.
Johnstone denies genocide in the former Yugoslavia and she denies the use of concentration camps. The question is – does Ordfront do that too?
Lying land
Yes, we should believe Marciej Zaremba in Today's News. He is a cultural journalist, idea historian and author and has previously teased the authorities and the church in Sweden with his critical articles against forced sterilization and religious abuse. Now he believes that Ordfront is at the forefront of a contemporary historical revisionism of the worst kind. Wordfront not only presents Johnstone's case uncritically, they also go well and present Johnstone as it is have an updated which is right, and not for example the court in The Hague. The headline of the interview with Johnstone, which was written by the magazine's editorial secretary Björn Eklund, reads "Travel in Ljugoslavia".
It says, among other things, that the image of the extremely thin man behind the barbed wire fence, which was spread throughout the world in August 1992 and which was proof that the Serbs operated with concentration camps, was a lie. The man is called Fikret Alic and the camp is called Trnopolje. A lie, Johnstone claims. And Eklund writes the same. The photographer and the journalist are the fence. The prisoners are, in fact, refugees who hide and who have created their own camp.
Both refer to the German journalist Thomas Deichmann who in 1997 claimed the same thing. The British television company ITN, which first showed the picture, sued Deichmann for defamation – and won. It was two years after the court in The Hague ruled, in the trial against Milan Kovacevic, that the images had not been manipulated. Ordfront presents Thomas Deichmann as an "expert witness" in The Hague.
That's partly correct. Deichmann posed as defense witness for Dusko Tadic, who in 1997 was convicted of a crime against humanity.
Germany's fault
In the interview with Ordfront, Johnstone systematically belittles Serbia's guilt and believes they were no worse than other parties in the wars. She blames the blame initially on Germany, and after all other countries, which supported Slovenia's and Croatia's demands for independence.
The battle for public opinion was won because the leadership in Zagreb and Bosnia hired public relations agencies, while it did not the leadership in Belgrade, Johnstone believes. In the interview, she goes on to say:
"The biggest lie of all is that Milosevic wanted to eliminate the other peoples through ethnic cleansing. Milosevic considered it – and one can not quote him differently on that point – as a strength for Serbia to be made up of many nationalities. “
And further:
"The clearest and most extreme ethnic cleansing that has taken place took place in Kosovo – where the Albanians expelled hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and gypsies. This has happened and continues to happen under the leadership of NATO and the UN ".
About Milosevic as dictator she says:
"Milosevic came to power through elections and left power through elections. Milosevic introduced the multiparty system in Yugoslavia. The press in Serbia during his time was far freer than it is today. Milosevic was undoubtedly unscrupulous, but they are often men of power. None of the other countries were more democratic ".
Johnstone also doubts the truth about the Bosnian-Serbian assaults in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, and she also doubts the number of raped and killed Muslims.
She characterizes the Tribunal in The Hague as a political court. It is reminiscent of the Dreyfus case, but Emile Zola is missing, she believes.
Challenges the truth
According to Maciej Zaremba, Johnstone is scary. He has gone through the sources of the author and found them deficient and / or questionable. And he thinks the Swedish radical magazine Wordfront is going well for them. Swedish journalist Björn Eklund, who is the editorial secretary in the magazine, writes for his own account:
"Also in Sweden, there is reason for reflection and self-criticism regarding the Yugoslav war: The leading politicians, led by Carl Bildt, who gave in to Germany and recognized Slovenia and Croatia in 1991. The journalists who uncritically disseminated propaganda. The liberals, the social democrats, the syndicalists, the human rights activists who supported the bombing war in 1999. "
Eklund further writes that there are signs in the time that indicate that the writing of history is about to change, and refers to a report from this spring from the Board of Psychological Defense – "The Kosovo conflict, the media and pity", among other things written by the Norwegian media researcher Rune Ottosen.
According to Eklund, the report claims that the media conducted a "campaign in favor of the Kosovo Albanians" and that "the perspective of NATO propaganda marked the Swedish reporting on the Kosovo war in a profound way". This challenges the usual view of the Kosovo war, which Eklund still believes prevails. This is because "the view of what happened in Yugoslavia is often linked to one's own ideology and that every revision of history also challenges it".
According to Eklund, the Kosovo war is a touchstone for the left, in the same way as the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The communists who failed to distance themselves from crimes that took place in their name were rightly criticized. "Those who profess humanism and human rights must be the first to distance themselves from bombs that fall in their name," writes Eklund.
He concludes the interview by writing that “it is time for us to learn the lesson from the Yugoslav war. A good start is to read Diana Johnstone's book ”.
Attempted suicide
So does Ordfront vouch for dubious theories? After the interview and the excerpt from the book were printed in the magazine, the editors had to review. Both the editor-in-chief and the editor had to defend themselves, and they insisted that they present "the sharpest and most well-documented attack on the West's petrified view of Yugoslavia's fall and dissolution."
Maciej Zaremba responds to this in a comment in Today's News November 3:
"It is no longer an accident. It is either hair-raisingly idiotic or something worse ”.
He thinks Ordfront has sold itself to the brown left, like the British magazine Living Marxism, which first printed Thomas Deichmann's claims about photography and the Trnopolje camp in February 1997. When Living Marxism was sued because of Deichmann's claims, Noam Chomsky out to the magazine's defense. British writer George Monbiot, for his part, claimed that no right-wing attack could harm the British left as much as Living Marxism.
Now, Wordfront also risks being sued, according to Zaremba.
Readers protest, while the magazine stands its ground. It makes Zaremba wonder if there is an idea behind the intellectual suicide attempt, but – as he writes:
"I believe the opposite: it is the lack of an idea that is the probable explanation."
