BACK TO THE FUTURE: Milosevic Prepares for Life After Kosovo (ICG Balkans Report N°70)
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Milosevic Prepares for Life After Kosovo (ICG Balkans Report N°70)

Author(s): Author Not Specified
Subject(s): Media studies, Politics and Identity, Peace and Conflict Studies, Wars in Jugoslavia
Published by: ICG International Crisis Group
Keywords: NATO intervention;
Summary/Abstract: Milosevic managed to survive the recent NATO onslaught in part by parlaying resentment against NATO into a wave of public support for his dictatorship. Adept at manipulating popular culture, the regime used such fortuitous events as the timing of the NATO action, coming only weeks before the anniversary of the Nazi bombing of Belgrade in the Second World War, to link the Western alliance with fascism in the public mind. Television programming gave prominence to heroic tales of WW2 partisan fighters, suggesting to the public how they might interpret NATO action. Any Western popular culture, from film to music to television, that degraded Western values or painted the West in a negative light also received wide play, and was clearly aimed at showing the decadence of the Alliance. Now with the war over, Milosevic continues to use the media to his advantage. While the rest of the world learns about the appalling atrocities committed in Kosovo against ethnic Albanians and recoils at images of torture dungeons and mass graves, the Serbian media continue to play up stories claiming that the Serbs were the real victims, brutalised as they were by both NATO aggression and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorism.

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