"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [20]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

[Some concluding thoughts]

The book Fools' Crusade consists of an introduction, a short conclusion (which I will begin to briefly consider in the next post), and five rather long chapters. Two of these five chapters amount to little more than sustained and relentless (although not focused or persuasive) attacks on a nationality. Chapter Four searched far and wide across the history of ethnic Germans in order to bolster claims that Yugoslavia was destroyed partly as a result of resurgent Prussian/Hapsburg hegemony. And now Chapter Five, which dispenses with the relative calm and moderation of the preceeding anti-German screed in order to indulge if naked bigotry. She is not the slightest bit subtle about this--Albanians, we are assured, are a hateful, uncivilized people who are unable to restrain their bloodlust against Serbs when incited by outsiders. Like wild animals, they simply cannot resort to reason or empathy.

What to say? There is no rational response to much of what Johnstone says in this chapter. It is not enough to point out how flawed, dishonest, and selective her use of facts is. It is not enough to point out how biased she is when choosing who to belive and who to doubt. Throughout the entire book, Johnstone has operated from the premise that ethnic groups are homogenous, static, and clearly defined. Furthermore, she accepts as a given that they have collective identities and qualities which transcend temporal and spatial divides. By the end of the book, this troubling subtext has become explicit and even central to her argument. The first three chapters of Fools' Crusade centered on a simplisitc critique of Western hegemony and American foreign policy along with a distorted history of events in the former Yugoslavia, all mixed with a healthy dose of conspiracy mongering.

But here, we've had little more than crude, quasi-fascist race-baiting. It was not fun reading this chapter. What is truly depressing is to realize that she felt obliged to write it. The tiresome dreariness of her worldview almost makes me feel sorry for the woman.

----------

Coming up next--the exciting Conclusion to Fools' Crusade.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [7]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

THE EAR OF THE EMPIRE: THE ALBANIAN LOBBY IN THE UNITED STATES

In which we learn that: Albanians had a powerful lobby with an inside track to the Clinton Administration through the "Ethnic Outreach" program, while Serbs did not. Johnstone assures us that:

"Americans of Serbian descent, even if they opposed Tito and revered the memory of executed wartime Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic, never dreamed of reshaping the Balkans with help from the U.S. superpower."

It's an amazing talent of Johnstone, this ability to know the dreams of Serb-Americans as a collective group. With such amazing powers of deduction, how did she fail to note that this program was set up in 1996, when the US was somewhat preoccupied with Serbia and ethnic Serbs in the West Balkans?

It's a tired tactic, yet she never gives it up--segregate events from their context in time and place so that facts which were contingent on circumstance and surrounding events can be recontextualized as glaring contradictions or sinister realities. Johnstone's pretensions to sophistication are once again exposed, as she reacts to stories of--GASP--ethnic lobbying as if she's discovered the Freemason's pulling the strings of the Federal government in league with the Trilateral Commission. The real world is a complicated place, and those in power often respond to conflicting pressures from a variety of pressure groups. The decisions made by those in power are often driven by a mixture of cynical calculation, response to public pressure, kowtowing to organized interest groups, and sometimes even genuine idealism. That idealism is rarely untainted or pure should be obvious to anyone with even a cursory grasp of how government works. But such a nuanced, balanced understanding ill-serves those who wish to paint every action of the imperialist West in the darkest possible hues.

So when Johnstone points out that the US had plans for a natural gas pipeline across the Balkans through Kosovo, one may rest assured that she truly believes this is a damning and shocking revelation, as is the information that Halliburton is potentially involved. The list of people in and out of government who would participate in, and profit from, such a venture is only surprising if you are truly clueless about such things.

To recap, according to Johnstone, the breakup of Yugoslavia was driven by: nationalist groups (Croats, Muslims, Albanians) who had not achieved the high level of national consciousness, inclusive nation-building institutions, and functioning statehood as the Serbs and therefore resented and hated that misunderstood national group which alone stood firm in defense of the multiethnic/multinational ideal of Yugolavia; in collusion with imperialist Western hyper-capitalists intent on dismantling the sovereignty of small nations in order to achieve the global supremacy of global NGOs in service to the neoliberal, globalist New World Order.

Is that sophisticated and nuanced enough for you?