Remembering the Causes of Collective Violence and the Role of Propaganda in the Yugoslav Wars

Abstract Legal narratives about collective violence have given an outsized explanatory role to propaganda in conflicts such as the Rwandan genocide and Yugoslav Wars. While post-conflict ethnographies examined what Rwandans remember violence, similar studies not been undertaken territories of former Yugoslavia. The present ethnographic study fills this gap. After introducing theoretical empirical problems that stemmed from recent speech crime trials international criminal law, I examine causes Wars remembered by combatants, survivors, greater populations regions Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia. show causes, including propaganda, vary significantly between combatants populations. Nevertheless, local perspectives, especially among converge on effects populist movements following Yugoslavia’s economic crisis rise ethnic, religious, nationalist leaders who engaged inflammatory rhetoric misinformation mobilize war efforts. This article thus corroborates key findings other which plays a secondary but significant cultural manufacturing state-sponsored ethnicity logics violence.