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Demystifying Genocide: an Exploration of Yugoslavia's Bloody Breakdown

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On June 28, 1989, at exactly high noon, a helicopter descended from the sky upon the field of Kosovo Polje. From its doors emerged Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian politician and soon-to-be president of Yugoslavia. He mounted the stage, saluted the audience of one million, and set Yugoslavia down a path of bloody genocide not seen since World War Two. Six hundred years earlier to the day, cavalry, knights and infantry clashed on the same ground now occupied by Milosevic’s supporters. It was the Battle of Kosovo Polje , where, at the “Field of the Blackbirds,” Serbian Prince Lazar mustered his forces to fight a decisive conflict against the Ottoman Empire. By the end of that day in 1389, Prince Lazar lay dead, and the Ottomans proclaimed victory. It marked the beginning of several centuries of Ottoman domination over Serbia. “Slo-bo! Slo-bo! Slo-bo! Slo-bo!” Chanted the crowd before Milosevic. Prince Lazar’s bones were on display, having just returned from a pilgrimage across the c...
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The Islamic Straw Man: How the United States Conjured Its Own Terror

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When Donald Trump was declared president of the United States on November 9, 2016, the nation erupted into a wild fervor of both joy and despair. As some people cried in front of their television screens, white supremacists celebrated, spray painting swastikas and hateful slogans on storefronts , cars, billboards , public transit, schools and parks across the country. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke proclaimed that the election was a great victory for “our people.” In front of a crowd of 200 mostly young men a few blocks from the White House, Richard Spencer , the founder and leading ideologue of the alt-right, railed against Jews and quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “ children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald Trump, were “ awakening to their own identity.” As he finished, several audience members outstretched t...
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In Bolivia, the Legend of Tupac Katari Lives on

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On November 10, 2019, Bolivia’s first indigenous president was forced to resign just weeks after securing his fourth term in office. As he exiled himself to Mexico, right-wing Christian politician Jeanine Áñez, whose party won only 4.21% of the vote in the prior election , marched into the Presidential Palace wielding an absurdly large Bible and declared herself interim president of Bolivia. Soldiers roamed the streets of La Paz armed with rifles while fighter jets streaked across the sky. In a country which had suffered under the boot of colonial and neocolonial domination for five centuries, Evo Morales delivered fourteen years of relief. Apparently, that was too much for the capitalist class. Reactionaries like Áñez had been itching to rip power away from the indigenous majority and place it back in Christian hands long before the October 30 election, but a binding audit of the vote tally by the Organization of American States (OAS) gave them the pretext to oust the popular so...
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