Everybody says the dictator is holding up quite well in court. Many are beginning to cheer for him. No wonder, because “the butcher of the Balkans” does not look like a monster, as someone may have expected. He is a grayish-haired gentleman, at the threshold of old age but quite fit; decently dressed, proudly wearing a “patriotic” cravat in the colours of Yugoslav flag. He is said to be a polite and patient prisoner. Reads Hemmingway and Updike, listens to Frank Sinatra. However, he does not recognize the Hague Tribunal, and for this reason he raises his tone at times, and points his finger threateningly, but it all remains within the boundaries of decent manners. In his own handwriting, in Cyrillic alphabet, he wrote, on the 2^nd of July 2001, the following: “I do not recognize the so-called Tribunal, which I consider false and illegal, and therefore I have no intention of engaging a lawyer to represent me in front of a nonexistent institution.” These words are inscribed in a sure handwriting of a man who might be described as having no dilemmas nor anxieties. Clearly legible letters, strung out in irreproachably regular lines. Oh, well, a letter or two is missing, actually, but that is a theme for those who believe that handwriting may reveal something about the personality. Just as his personality may be revealed by his official declaration to the court that he has no intention of committing suicide. Which inspired one Belgrade psychiatrist to say that insistence on something without visible cause may mean that an entirely opposite desire is concealed behind it.

This is how it is in borderline situations in life. All options are open. You can be pathetic, or pompous or stupid, or all three. The most difficult option is to be wise. Hitler’s minister of aviation Herman Goring exclaimed in court in Nuremberg: “When your time comes, your time comes, that’s my philosophy for you. Accept responsibility and surrender but with trumpets and fanfare.” Eichmann offered, in Jerusalem, to publicly hang himself, so as to help the young Germans to throw the burden of guilt off themselves.

But all these are bad comparisons. The man with the patriotic cravat is neither Goering in Nuremberg, nor Eichmann in Jerusalem. His supporters are also aware of this, so they prefer to remind themselves of the trial of Josip Broz Tito in Zagreb, Croatia, shortly before World War 2. At that time, at the so-called “Bombers' proces” Tito said: “I do not recognize this court, I only recognize the court of my Party.” But Tito was at that time only a young Stalinist who had not yet had enough time to commit serious crimes. Besides, at that trial Tito, unlike the man on trial in the Hague today, decided to hire a lawyer after all. And, finally, Tito referred to his political Party, while our dictator claims to represent the entire nation. Even more convenient for appeasement of unclean conscience is a comparison with the trial of Georgi Dimitrov, accused of setting Reichstag on fire. Nazi Germany brought Dimitrov to trial, just as the Balkanese dictator, as his supporters see it, is brought to trial by NATO, an alliance to which they like to ascribe Nazi character. Dimitrov defended himself eloquently and skillfully in the courtroom, and, look, the Hague prisoner is said to dominate the courtroom, too. In the end, Dimitrov’s argumentation forced even a Nazi court to set him free. An ideal comparison, but sufficient only for creating a mirage of a parallel, fictive reality.

So we are not discussing Goering here, nor Eichmann, Tito, nor Dimitrov. This is not even a modern Al Capone, although the man we are talking about was building a structure of power that resembled, in many ways, the Mafia organization. This is simply a man who was the elected president of a country, and who remains aware of that fact. And, even more importantly, a man who claims, without any dilemma, to have absolutely clean conscience. If Eichman in Jerusalem was a specimen of what was later named “the banality of evil”, then the Balkan dictator is an example of what might be described as pathology of clean conscience.

The Hague trial will obviously be a marathon journey through dark times. It will be a reminder of hundreds of thousands of dead and more than one million displaced persons. Someone should finally be made responsible for that. Let us avoid any misunderstanding: the prosecutor in the Hague says in her opening speech that there is no collective guilt. “This is not a trial of Serbian people,” says she. Guilt is individualized, each person is individually responsible for whatever he did in his life. However, the ex-dictator has a clear resolve to take along with himself, on that journey, the entire Serbian nation, constantly reminding us of the popular support which he, in fact, did have. And not only that. Protesting that both he and his people are innocent victims of a world-wide conspiracy against truth and justice, he, from the very start of the trial, implicitly insists on collective responsibility. Whether or not he will, on this road, defending himself stubbornly with his nation and his clean conscience, begin to look like a clown, or whether the face of the cold-blooded strategist of the Balkan disaster will finally be revealed, is not of any great importance. The crucially important point is whether the goddess of justice will find her proper way between collective and individual guilt/innocence. Because it is hard to believe, after all, that one single dictator is responsible for everything, just as it is hard to believe that an entire nation is completely innocent.

Copyright © Dusan Velickovic & Alexandria Press, 2002