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Myths and Bombs: War, State Popularity and the Collapse of National Mythology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Danilo Mandić
Danilo Mandić*
Affiliation:
Djorda Radojlovica 27, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. Email: dmandic@princeton.edu
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Extract

“Belgrade ‘Targets’ Find Unity ‘From Heaven,’” read the front-page headline of a somewhat staggered New York Times, only five days after NATO bombs began falling on Serbia. Instead of hiding in bomb shelters or, as US officials had hoped, rebelling against their government, Serbs were busy singing patriotic songs at public squares, throwing rocks at the Goethe Institute, wearing medieval Serbian military uniforms and carrying signs equating Bill Clinton to Ottoman emperors, Croatian fascists and Napoleon. Thus a population which had for years expressed nothing but discontent with its government suddenly became “unified from heaven—but by the bombs, not by God.” Uniting them “behind their soldiers, their Kosovo and even President Slobodan Milošević” was, Belgrade's then-Mayor explained, a seemingly incomprehensible mélange of “myth and superstition.”

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 25 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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