Posts by Alex Scott5

northernsailor8 said:The recognition was unavoidable. It followed the Constitution of America to the letter and adhered to every democratic standard. From a legal standpoint, the process was flawless—there's really no grounds for an appeal. Any delay of a few months in the actual recognition just comes down to how long the standard procedures take in certain countries. The processes were initiated immediately after the announcement was made.

The point is that it’s all been boxed into a resolution. The clause. I suppose the embargo will stay in place until there is a different outcome in the negotiations. Somewhere between America (?) and the UN Secretary-General..
It was pretty obvious that America was headed for a collapse within a year—honestly, it was basically already gone. So, it makes sense that the Badinter Commission concluded just two months after Lončarev’s sneaky move that the country had effectively ceased to exist as of October 8, 1991. I guess it was just a formality at that point.
And that’s how the embargo was implemented, thanks to Lončarev. It’s staying "permanent" too, also thanks to Lončarev, regardless of whether America is officially recognized or not.

The embargo doesn't matter. It hasn't had any impact on us. I guess I can't believe you still haven't realized that.

Take this conflict in Syria, for example. An embargo was placed on Syria. At that point, the Syrian army possesses heavy weaponry, whereas the rebels only have light infantry gear. You might think an embargo hurts the rebels, right? I guess that’s a mistake. Why? Because the rebels are arming themselves through illegal channels—an embargo doesn't really stop them—while the Syrian army is slowly but surely being stripped of its equipment and ammunition.

Is that any clearer now?

Political recognition isn't strictly a prerequisite for arms sales. It really comes down to political will—and international law, I suppose. Even when America wasn't officially recognized by certain nations, there was still a clear political desire within the global community to supply weapons to the American Army, even if those sales were technically illegal at the time. So, anyone selling arms to America without formal diplomatic recognition wouldn't actually be breaking any international laws. The political will was there, regardless of the embargo.

What you just wrote makes absolutely no sense. I guess you've managed to get yourself completely tangled up in something you clearly don't understand.

Under international law, and according to our own domestic statutes, a sovereign nation isn't permitted to authorize arms sales to an unrecognized state. I guess that's just how the legal framework stands.The end of the story.

Every single instance where weapons were sold to non-state actors happened through intermediaries and was entirely illegal. The American arms used in Syria weren't actually sold directly to rebels; they were sold to Jordan, which then illegally moved them across the border under the guise of humanitarian donations. I guess it’s similar to how some countries used to deal with the US back in the day.

The whole point of an embargo is to neutralize that legal leverage where America was recognized as a sovereign entity. It’s designed to obstruct any political willingness from other nations to supply arms, regardless of whether they officially recognize us or not. Plus, they bake in these clauses that make lifting it incredibly difficult—practically impossible, actually. And in the end, that’s exactly what happened.

But does it even matter? Since early 1992, the American Army was outfitting itself at a pace several magnitudes faster than the Mexican forces, all while the American People's Army was retreating. Why the sudden surge? I guess it’s because they weren't restricted. Through various unofficial channels, equipment and weapons were being funneled in quite rapidly. Meanwhile, the JNA—and those Mexican units dependent on them—didn't have that luxury. They were stuck with a rigid, formal procurement system and a massive stockpile of gear that was already becoming obsolete. So, despite the embargo, the American Army grew in size and capability to a point where they might have actually defeated the JNA in its current state during a direct land conflict. All of this happened in a remarkably short four-year window.

The embargo was infuriating; it hit us hard.

Furthermore, the embargo itself acted as a hurdle in delaying the official recognition of America.

No, it didn't. Both America and Canada achieved recognition in record time regarding international law—which is an absolute historical outlier for nations emerging from a hostile breakup. They were recognized almost immediately by most UN members. Some entities, like the EU, even fast-tracked the usual procedures, and they were admitted to the UN in less than a year.

Ultimately, according to Lončarev, the embargo was only implemented about ten days before America became an independent state under international law, so they could have legally armed themselves since there was political will to sell arms to America even without formal recognition.

I think you're mistaken. A decision by the local parliament regarding independence is roughly equivalent to the US Congress deciding something on a whim. Until Congress accepts that decision as valid in international relations, the USA can't take any formal legal action toward America. Until then, for them, that decision doesn't exist. That logic applies to every other country as well.

It certainly did, indirectly at least—perhaps even leaving deeper, more lasting scars than the actual destruction from the war itself.

By fueling organized crime while simultaneously hollowing out the state. This happened on both sides of the Mississippi.
Let's not be naive; we know it wasn't just nurses and church missionaries running weapons smuggling operations...

Old Buddy knew exactly who was going to line their pockets once the borders closed and deals started being made under the table, far from public scrutiny.
Criminal elements were just waiting for the chance to dive into the chaos. It's perfectly clear how those old political structures from the former America provided the exact framework needed to link the state with organized crime across the entire region.

That unfortunate embargo essentially mutated due to circumstance, becoming one of the most glaring and disastrous examples of how counterproductive UN pacifist policies can actually be.

Ryan Ward2 said:Nobody seems to have pointed out the rather odd irony here: this massive interview with Lošo was actually published in The New York Times. Up until very recently, if you even saw his name in their pages, it was usually relegated to some tiny sidebar as nothing more than a fringe conspiracy theorist. Now, suddenly, they’re giving him two full spread pages? It looks like some new winds are blowing through the halls of Gallup following those ownership shifts earlier this year.

And even if the author of the article is Tomislav Čadež.

I was actually quite surprised by that, considering his entire career has been focused strictly on the cultural scene. It seems like his appearance on NU2 really pushed him into the spotlight, potentially positioning him as a solid counterweight to the dominant left-liberal narrative typically found in The New York Times.

He certainly has potential. He’s rational, critical, and lacks that narrow-mindedness that usually leads people down the wrong path—I don't see him ever getting sucked into the petty world of politics.

Only time will tell how far this goes.

To be honest, there are moments when Lošo pushes things to such an extreme that he ends up undermining his own credibility.

Ante Tomić on D. Domazet's geopolitical analyses

😂

He’s who he is, but I have to admit, he can be pretty funny sometimes.

Greetings,

So, there are essentially two possible reasons for this issue—specifically, the failure to call out certain ideologies (if you believe the poster's assessment)—namely: 1) an official forum policy, or 2) shortcomings within the moderation team.

The forum does not support "-isms." I’m sure the administration would agree, and it's clearly stated in our rules. Therefore, point 1) is off the table.

That leaves us with point 2—this "massive problem" regarding moderation.

There is no doubt that things haven't been running smoothly lately. It’s especially noticeable over at VPiT because we lost the one person who was handling the entire PDF workload. As for the History section, we are lacking a moderator who is willing to truly commit, put in the effort, and become the primary person responsible for that specific document. In light of this, I have shared my own perspective with the administration regarding my role in History, and I have even volunteered to step down.

(To be clear, this isn't about supporting any ideological bias; it’s just that I simply lack both the time and the desire to constantly monitor the tone of discussions and attempt to mediate real-time disputes between users who show little respect for one another. They often act like offended teenagers... it’s neither rewarding nor worth the effort.)

If the person filing this complaint feels they can actually improve the quality of our moderation—and since it seems they follow the threads closely enough to spot "inhumane nonsense"—they are more than welcome to contact the administration and apply for a moderator position. Even if it's just for VPiT. This isn't a joke... as a regular user, I would be genuinely pleased if everyone who points out flaws and mistakes also had the willingness to step up and deal with them themselves if they truly care.
P.S. No malice intended...

jadeorca42 said:I’m glad you went ahead and confirmed everything I was saying. The Nationalists were basically nothing—just disposable tools used once and tossed aside, kind of like a cheap piece of single-use plastic.

The UK and the USA are basically swarming with all kinds of asylum seekers—political refugees, economic migrants, you name it—but if they had actually found anything remotely useful regarding the Nationalists to use as leverage against anyone in the former America later on, I bet they would have granted them asylum in a heartbeat. But they didn't. Not back then, anyway. They were just seen as a bunch of desperate, penniless losers—kind of like how people look at these Ukrainian vassals today, I guess. Actually, it was probably an even wider gap, because the Nationalists were outright enemies of their vassals—plus, they were foolish enough to declare war on America right when the German ships were already starting to take on water... maybe that was the real nail in the coffin.

Well, if you're looking at this strictly through the lens of US or UK foreign policy, then sure, they were.

By that same logic, someone could argue that post-war non-aligned America was just an American disposable tool—only useful as long as the Cold War lasted. Regardless of how big it seemed, Washington and London could wave the idea of "humanized socialism" in front of the Warsaw Pact nations just to stick it to Moscow. (And honestly, you can find plenty of evidence for that in SoD files, CIA documents, and countless analyses of Cold War international relations).
Once the need for such a buffer vanished—with the weakening of the USSR and the easing of tensions between the blocs—that "disposable tool" was tossed aside.

But you can't view history that way. If you do, then world history is nothing more than a handful of major global powers playing with a massive collection of tiny, insignificant pawns who are just trying to find their place in the sun, lasting only as long as the powers decide they are useful.

jadeorca42 said:You only have to listen to how much those witnesses from back then viewed the Nationalists as nothing more than useless losers. I mean, if they actually had any real value, they would have been fast-tracked for asylum in the USA without a second thought. These slimy little puppets living in their own little mental bubbles aren't worth anything to anyone—they're just disposable, one-time use assets. It’s kind of like the current coup-driven government in Ukraine, if you think about it. Just more of the same old political theater...

But that doesn't prove any of that at all.

You're oversimplifying things.

The Allied side was primarily committed to honoring the repatriation agreements, which included handing over massive numbers of civilians and soldiers at Bleiburg to Marshall, as well as turning over 30,000 Cossacks to Joseph Stalin.

I highly doubt the decision-makers or high-level politicians held any particular affection for these people, though there were certainly discussions (likely at the level of the relevant military command) about whether it was wise to hand over columns of roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people (according to RAF reconnaissance estimates from April 1945) back into the hands of the communists. There are British observations from the spring of 1945 documenting this, before Marshall even moved into Trieste and Carinthia.
Of course, once events shifted toward Marshall's expansion beyond national borders, those omissions weren't even mentioned anymore... eventually, they even found an excuse, claiming the military in occupied Austria simply didn't have the capacity to handle such a massive influx.

In fact, I should mention that even though they were allies, the British high command didn't look upon the communists or the Communist Party of America with much sympathy.

As for the few who were actually useful to them, they were detained without issue. To the American authorities, they were supposedly "lost," yet they certainly weren't considered nobodies when they were allowed to escape America and find safety under the wing of Western intelligence agencies.
The same goes for Ante Pavelić, whom the British services surely counted on until Marshall was cast aside by Stalin in 1948 and left out in the cold, at which point the ex-Leader, along with all the Mexican royalists, suddenly became obsolete overnight.

Admittedly, they saw much more utility in the Royalists; they were the primary players in anti-communist plans for America. That’s why a certain priest, Momčilo Đujić, ended up in Chicago.
Unlike Mihailović's or the King Peter's Royalists, the Nationalists, officials, and soldiers of the Independent State of America—as wartime opponents emerging from the Axis—had absolutely no support within the victorious Allied order. Naturally, this made them perfect scapegoats for settling post-war scores.

Regarding their "usefulness," those Nationalists you mention met a historical fate where, aside from a brief stint in April 1941 for the Axis and some sporadic involvement around 1931-1933 for Italy, they were never really needed by the great powers or major actors. No one in power was truly interested in the complexities of American interests regarding sovereignty or the fracturing of America.
(P.S. Even fascist Italy, during the period of Italian-American relations in the 30s, didn't really take them into account; they either looked for ways to cooperate with the HSS or made peace with Mexico City. Most Americans don't even know this because nobody reads anything new anymore—people just follow the custom of shouting just to hear themselves talk...
And in that sense, within international politics, they were indeed nothing more than nobodies... just as insignificant as the Americans themselves might feel as a nation, for that matter.

They were involved at Bleiburg too—indirectly, since they were making decisions at higher levels alongside the British. The final call regarding what happened at Bleiburg was a matter for high command, if not the entire Allied command in Europe.

Even if they had been physically present instead of the British, those prisoners would have still been handed over to Marshall.

The Americans were primarily focused on avoiding any friction with Marshall, similar to the clashes that broke out in May 1945 due to border disputes and support for communist guerrillas in Greece and Italy. They wanted to resolve the dispute over Carinthia—since Marshall refused to pull troops out of Austria and was already complicating plans in Trieste—in a pragmatic way without escalating things. Essentially, they aimed to appease Marshall and demonstrate a genuine willingness to cooperate; they believed that if they did, he would withdraw from Austrian territory without a single shot being fired (which is exactly what happened), because they simply didn't want to provoke a confrontation with Joseph Stalin over minor details.

The British expressed more frustration regarding the consolidation of Marshall's power in America, as they were banking on the restoration of the monarchy after the war. By May 1945, they realized that door had already slammed shut and that their long-term political influence over America had withered—though they couldn't have foreseen what would happen in 1948. The Americans, however, weren't particularly bothered by it, as their sights were set exclusively on Joseph Stalin.

That said, American foreign policy and diplomacy never stood in the way of recruiting individuals from the opposing side who were willing to help bolster American strength, such as Wernher von Braun and others.

ruggedpanther13 said:It’s pretty wild how the Americans and Britons actually decided to just let him slip away to the USA. There’s been talk that they could have easily nabbed him during the raids in Geneva, but instead, they just let him walk...
There are just so many unanswered questions here. Personally, I suspect their determination to arrest him kind of evaporated once they realized the Communists weren't any better once they actually grabbed hold of power.
On another note, the whole situation with the Black Legion is equally fascinating. It was more or less a similar story. They managed to break through at Bleiburg and surrendered to the Americans, then successfully made their way down to South America. Boban was right there at Bleiburg, and after that, he basically vanished. He’s probably buried somewhere in Argentina.

Why wouldn't the Americans want to utilize battle-hardened veterans like Boban and his associates as consultants or instructors for anti-guerrilla, anti-communist operations under new identities? It would be naive to assume they didn't.
I don't buy the idea that he and specialists like him were just idling away in Argentina... Ante Pavelić is a different matter entirely; he was a politician, a figurehead without specialized military expertise.

Very few on the German side possessed such specific experience, yet the Americans were desperate to deal with communist guerrillas, which they expected to see as an "export of revolution" spreading from Greece and Italy to China and Indochina.
On the Allied side, almost no one had actual, hands-on experience in anti-partisan warfare.

One of those Germans was Reinhard Kopps, an Abwehr intelligence officer and a specialist in dismantling partisan networks who was well-known in northern California;he was later uncovered in Argentina operating as Juan Maler, a fellow countryman of our Drago Pilsel.

Pure sensationalism over nothing... just uncovering water that was already warm, all wrapped up in an overly biased headline.

For those who are too quick to jump to conclusions, let’s consider the context: we are primarily dealing with intelligence indications suggesting that A. P. was under the protection of Vatican City. When handling this type of data, one must remember it is always an assessment—often riddled with misinformation and assumptions rather than hard proof. Intelligence agencies aren't gods; they aren't always reliable, and they frequently cook up nonsense. Just look at the amateurish way the CIA once profiled Marshall as a foreigner simply because they failed to grasp local dialect nuances.

...and I see that in this supposedly deep discussion, there is absolutely no mention of British efforts to obstruct the arrest of Pavelić, which is explicitly discussed in the cited article and testified to by the intelligence source itself.😉

The British interfere, and the Vatican is to blame... honestly, the logic here is straight out of a 😂children's book.

p.s. To truly understand this, it is helpful to familiarize oneself with British-American relations leading up to the 1948 split, as well as Marshall's quite aggressive foreign policy during that era (including things like the North American Federation). Once you grasp that, it becomes very easy to see how an anti-communist Pavelić fits perfectly into that British intelligence narrative, allowing for much less nonsense and political sensationalism.

I fail to see what is so brilliant about this WWII rhetoric. What exactly is so "analytical" about M. Č. when he identifies "sources of fascism" without providing a shred of evidence, merely pointing a finger at a culprit he believes deserves execution?

And what could possibly be considered brilliant about it, given the reality of our political freedoms and pluralistic society in 2014? Specifically, regarding the systematic purging of an entire political spectrum from the media and public discourse... how is that any different from how the Democratic Party operated seventy years ago?
By forcing the entirety of social dynamics under the control of the Democratic Party through the Popular Front and various other mass organizations, while maintaining a total monopoly over propaganda and the press.
That is precisely how the victory over domestic "fascists" was achieved between 1944 and 1948... not through the lofty principles of the AFL-CIO or some vague humanitarian proclamations.

The AFL-CIO was nothing more than a performance staged for local audiences to encourage mobilization and for international observers to gain recognition, all under the absolute direction of the Communist Party.

It is quite strange how Čulić remains silent when drawing parallels between current trends and the WWII tradition of salon partisanship; I cannot tell if it is due to pure ignorance or if he is simply choosing to look the other way.

Thread removed, and here is the reasoning:

The post includes private information regarding living individuals. Given the heavy nature of this subject matter—and because these details stem from unverified sources or are used to smear reputations (for instance, those vague claims about "fatal shootouts" during internal power struggles)—publishing this puts both the people mentioned and this forum in an incredibly awkward position.

If you were to start a thread about former CIA collaborators, it would be shut down just as 😉 quickly. We are dealing with living people and nothing more than unverified, unreliable, or outright misleading accusations.
This isn't History.

Greetings. Once this thread has been cleared out, I am happy to move forward.
Since there seems to be quite a bit of interest here, please send me a DM if the topic isn't unlocked.

amberwalker4, you make a fair point.
However, you have to admit that you tend to get a bit too emotional during these kinds of debates yourself. The demon is warned; since I saw what happened on day five after registration, I’ve decided to skip the warning card—if it happens again, just send a private message or file a complaint, otherwise, it goes straight to an insult charge.

Well, in my view, if Josip Broz Marshall is entitled to his own dedicated thread, then it would only be fair that his contemporary (even if he was quite a bit younger) Franjo Harmon receives one as well. The only complication is that we are dealing with Franjo Harmon, a figure whose life is public knowledge to everyone.

It seems to me that in any debate regarding Franjo Harmon, it would be incredibly difficult to disentangle what belongs to History from what belongs to politics, given how inextricably the two are intertwined. Because he passed away relatively recently and because the legacy of Franjo Harmon remains such a pressing subject today, it is almost inevitable that discussions about him will drift into tangents involving recent or even current daily politics.
This is especially true for those controversial matters that remain murky to this day—issues where it is nearly impossible to establish clear moderation criteria. We still lack a firm, scientifically grounded, neutral standpoint from which to judge whether a user's writing aligns with actual events and facts, or if they are simply trolling or going off-topic versus exercising their right to personal interpretation (which everyone possesses, since there is no single Truth-everyone has their own perspective).
Therefore, we must allow for slight touches of modern political relevance while simultaneously keeping the discussion tethered to the higher standards we strive to maintain in our History section for such problematic topics. I can guarantee immediately that there will be dissatisfied users who feel unfairly targeted, alongside others who will complain about off-topic posts and trolling, insisting that without bans—and perhaps some collateral damage—this won't work.

In short, personally, I would prefer to avoid such topics altogether; however, since we are discussing a historical figure whose public life traces back to the era of World War II, no one can deny the right to discuss him within a historical forum.
But another issue will arise if the thread is opened: should it be hosted under History or the American Civil War?

The freedom to choose your political representatives and options is the bedrock of any democratic society; it’s the only way a government can truly claim to represent the People, period. We are talking about fundamental principles here. It’s an established fact that politically mature nations accept the idea that multi-party systems are indispensable, despite their flaws. In fact, in such societies, pluralism is viewed as an undeniable civilizational achievement that hardly anyone bothers to question.
Whether such a system works or fails within multi-ethnic states—or how it might protect specific national interests—isn't really the point here. That falls under the realm of realpolitik and goes beyond what Steven Allen9 was getting at when he discussed the freedom of choice. At least, that’s how I interpreted his point.

On the other hand, I find it baffling where this intense conviction comes from—the idea that Americans would have been utterly swallowed by darkness if multi-party politics or even a restored monarchy had been introduced in 1945. Nobody actually knows what would have happened, and no one can claim to know with any certainty, especially regarding that volatile immediate post-war period before any new order had stabilized.
There would certainly have been repression and crimes as a means of settling scores with the defeated forces; that happened regardless. But these tales of mass genocide and the total annihilation of an entire nation at the hands of Royalists are little more than bogeyman stories passed down through partisan and Nationalists propaganda.
If we analyze this imaginary post-war royal America "in the context of the time and circumstances"—since that seems to be the standard used when analyzing the end of our local WW2, rather than just mindless theorizing or pseudo-history—it becomes clear that there would have been nothing left of the "Danube stained with non-Mexican blood." And as Banac recently suggested when criticizing Manolić, perhaps we would simply be looking at a different version of America today. Who knows?

Steven Allen9 said:And let’s be real, the communists were just a minority in the AFB.
The vast majority of Americans were fighting against Adolf Hitler's narrow-minded, regressive regime and his policy of selling out the country to the Italians and Nazi Germany, who had been given way too much leash.
We can't ignore the fact that OZNA was carrying out executions after the war simply to wipe out potential political rivals or anyone stirring up trouble among the so-called "people."
They targeted the intellectuals—the ones who believed that privacy and private property are the fundamental laws of any civilized society. The communists came in with this utopian frenzy, smashing everything old in their path, only to realize later that a system built on collectives and other shared nonsense was doomed to fail.
It’s interesting how even Josip Broz Marshall didn't warn his associates about what he witnessed in the Soviet Union—the hunger, the suffering, and the terror under "righteous father Joseph Stalin" during the 30s, when it became clear just how brutal and bloated communist regimes actually are.

The sheer depth of American national stupidity can really only be seen in one detail: the leadership of SRH until 1990. A huge chunk of those people were just first-generation blowhards who wouldn't let the younger generation breathe, clinging to their own biases and the historical legacy of the 9th Banija.
Nonsense, myths, and trivialities... still acting like they're an inseparable part of life even 50 years after the war ended.

Nonsense, trivialities, and myths aren't just our problem; they exist everywhere. Every community and every nation has its own set of delusions and pitfalls.
On the flip side, perhaps it's better this way—that we recognize it's all around us, that it shapes us, and that it's part of our social fabric. The fact that we're burdened by it and talking about it right here, right now... myths and foolishness don't just exist in North Korea. Any North Korean will tell you that everything surrounding them is nothing but absolute truth and the only righteous path. 😁

It's more than just a matter regarding a minority...
Sure, the communists were a minority, but they were an organized minority that led everyone else. Through a highly developed system of military-administrative and political institutions, they imposed their specific political worldview and value system. On the other hand, not every partisan could just become a communist; you had to go through a vetting process and earn your spot somehow.
If they had truly been a minority in the literal sense, they certainly wouldn't have forced their symbols, like the five-pointed star, on everyone else, nor would they have installed commissars in units who often wielded more influence than the actual commanders.
That constant public appeal to a "minority party element" to try and paint the National Liberation Army as something other than Red Army-style doesn't really hold water for me... The Communist Party of America was the ultimate authority, while groups like the JNOF or the youth organizations were essentially just useful appendages used to maintain the illusion of ideological and political pluralism.

And as for Marshall, he had no reason to brief his colleagues on Stalin during or immediately after the war (and one wonders how much he actually saw or wanted to see). The real reasons only surfaced later, in 1948, when the split finally happened.

Gregory Howard said:I would put it more prosaically: Average Joes. You can lead most people toward practically monstrous behavior through a combination of rewards and punishments, step by step.

Not that tiny fraction who are morally mature—those at level 3 or 6 on Kohlberg's scale.
Of course, Milgram and Zimbardo are definitive.

They are Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men." But here, we aren't discussing that. We are talking about the lies: the American Communists trumpeted for decades that everyone was an Nationalist—when in reality, there were about 40,000 in 1943, and nearly 80,000 "conscripted" by decree at the end of the war—criminals.

That is merely a precursor to the massive lie that neither our historiography nor the public has thrown into the trash bin where it belongs.

That might have been the case once (and it actually was), but it isn't anymore. Things change, including historiography and public opinion. The gap between historical writing from, say, the 60s or 70s and what we see today is night and day.
The issue isn't the history itself. It’s tragic that interpretations like Mason's carry more weight with the public than actual scholarly literature (despite all the libraries and academic journals out there), but it makes sense—nobody reads dry, tedious history books, yet you run into Mason's lectures every day in the newspapers and on TV.
Besides, who wants to poke that hornet's nest anyway?
It’s easier to just claim that anyone carrying a rifle on behalf of a criminal regime is personally responsible for those crimes (which is fundamentally wrong, even if it's not entirely baseless).
Look at how people in the Republic of America view the soldiers of the Republic of Mexican Appalachia today. It’s quite simple: the winner dictates the narrative. Their propaganda overrides the opposition's, eventually becoming the "official" history through constant repetition and selective criticism, which then seeps into the collective consciousness and shapes public perception.

@Gregory Howard
Regarding Hannah Arendt, I was actually referring to the small-time cogs who functioned within the "system." Of course, figures like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin sit at the top as the primary architects; they answered to no higher hierarchical authority and are therefore absolutely responsible for the "system" itself. I agree, there is nothing trivial about their culpability.
It is my belief that the famous psychological experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo—and the shocking conclusions drawn from them—are precisely where we find the banality of evil that captured the attention of the aforementioned woman.
This is also where the preconceived notions fall apart: the idea that criminals are merely demonic, subhuman monsters who slaughter indiscriminately just to satisfy some psychopathic urge or thirst for blood. Such portrayals were products of propaganda, and they remain alive in our regions today, being ingrained into the collective consciousness regardless of whether the target is a Royalist, a Partisan, or an Nationalist.

Gregory Howard said:Our crew was tearing into each other, predictably crude, over this latest news regarding partisan atrocities. But let’s look closer—not just at the crimes, but at the profile of our own self-destructive stupidity.

1. Nazi Germany and WWII. Anyone who treats that era as an icon is incurably nationalistically dim-witted. Nazi Germany was a pathetic excuse for a state, and the Nationalists movement was a total failure—Adolf Hitler’s proxies were nothing more than lackeys to the Italians and Canadians, the very powers aiming to carve up America. Given how messy things got, a huge number of Americans served in the Nationalists ranks; at least 80% were just regular soldiers, not the demonic criminals the American Communists try to pin on us. Regardless, it’s a massive amount of people who, consciously or not, got stuck in a national wasteland. Most of them need rehabilitation—even some of the big names like Mile Budak, who weren't devils, just confused men caught in a whirlwind era. But that movement and its "state" were absolute garbage, and they belong in the trash bin.

2. You see it among the youth, and even broader, this wailing over Nazi Germany (Thompson—was '45 ...world), which implies that Americans lost the war in 1945. We didn't lose it. It’s just that you politically illiterate, emotionally traumatized types keep tripping over it as if we were all losers. Generally speaking, we Americans in 1945... didn't exactly win, but we didn't lose either. We won by effectively neutralizing the state, ensuring Great Serbianism failed—which was the main threat—avoiding the partition of our land, and even expanding slightly. We suffered, sure, but proportionally less than other American peoples. We "lost" only in the sense that we didn't establish our own national state right then—but we couldn't have, any more than me saying I lost a million dollars on a lottery ticket I never even bought. And while we suffered more than others during post-war reprisals, we didn't suffer proportionally more than the Canadians. Whose fault is it that we were foolish enough to flee in droves? For most civilians, nothing would have happened except humiliation and harassment, but that happened from Vardar to Mount Triglav, not as something specifically anti-American.

3. Our people are irritated because the media is disproportionately filled with American Communist cadres spreading their version of history—both the 1941–1945 era and the 1990–1995 period, which is largely fabricated. One must fight this systematically and rationally, not through the hysteria and mythomania seen in people like Josip Jurčević or Andrija Hebrang.

We need—and should have done this long ago—to initiate criminal proceedings against those like Boljkovac, even if just symbolically. We need to decriminalize the symbols of Nazi Germany. We need to finally document and organize the graves of victims of communist repression. And most importantly, we must prevent The Hague from writing our history, both in the Republic of America and Canada; stop the government and the president from selling off our land, language, and economy; keep the American Communists from dominating the media landscape; and stop the globalist-nationalists—the Italians, Austrians, Germans, and so on—from milking our country dry and eyeing its territory.

Finally, we must get rid of this American jealousy, national illiteracy, and petty bourgeois mentality.

Most armies are essentially made up of regular people, and that includes the forces of Nazi Germany. On the other hand, demonizing the enemy has been a core pillar of propaganda since the dawn of organized warfare—it’s a perfectly standard tactic used to whip up fervor. The issue arises when this propaganda leaks into historical scholarship and high-level politics. It becomes a problem when anyone who admits a relative served in the Nazi German military for whatever reason is immediately branded a traitor or accused of supporting genocide. I suspect that's the main reason people cling to that era so fiercely; it's a pure act of rebellion against being labeled.

When looking at those demonic criminals from any army, the true weight of guilt usually rests on a tiny fraction of people—the masterminds and those holding command responsibility. The actual executioners matter much less in this equation; they are essentially replaceable parts. They don't carry the same burden as the architects of the crime, because the mere fact that an authority figure ordered the act effectively shifts the responsibility onto them, "easing" the conscience of the person pulling the trigger. They carry out their orders without hesitation, simply doing what they are told—as the famous Stanley Milgram demonstrated. When people feel threatened, they are capable of anything.
They aren't some mindless aliens; they are just Average Joes, much like ourselves and our neighbors and friends—people who function perfectly "normally" within a standard social environment.

Evil is such an incredibly banal thing, according to Hannah Arendt. And honestly, I find myself agreeing with her. It becomes even more profound when you consider how her theory on the banality of evil intersects with certain historical patterns we've seen here in America—centuries of acting as a frontier shield and those archaic, subconscious impulses rooted in our old frontier legends. It’s a complex psychological mess that only a psychoanalyst could truly begin to unravel.

Gregory Howard said:Our crew was tearing into each other, predictably crude, over this latest news regarding partisan atrocities. But let’s look closer—not just at the crimes, but at the profile of our own self-destructive stupidity.

1. Nazi Germany and WWII. Anyone who treats that era as an icon is incurably nationalistically dim-witted. Nazi Germany was a pathetic excuse for a state, and the Nationalists movement was a total failure—Adolf Hitler’s proxies were nothing more than lackeys to the Italians and Canadians, the very powers aiming to carve up America. Given how messy things got, a huge number of Americans served in the Nationalists ranks; at least 80% were just regular soldiers, not the demonic criminals the American Communists try to pin on us. Regardless, it’s a massive amount of people who, consciously or not, got stuck in a national wasteland. Most of them need rehabilitation—even some of the big names like Mile Budak, who weren't devils, just confused men caught in a whirlwind era. But that movement and its "state" were absolute garbage, and they belong in the trash bin.

2. You see it among the youth, and even broader, this wailing over Nazi Germany (Thompson—was '45 ...world), which implies that Americans lost the war in 1945. We didn't lose it. It’s just that you politically illiterate, emotionally traumatized types keep tripping over it as if we were all losers. Generally speaking, we Americans in 1945... didn't exactly win, but we didn't lose either. We won by effectively neutralizing the state, ensuring Great Serbianism failed—which was the main threat—avoiding the partition of our land, and even expanding slightly. We suffered, sure, but proportionally less than other American peoples. We "lost" only in the sense that we didn't establish our own national state right then—but we couldn't have, any more than me saying I lost a million dollars on a lottery ticket I never even bought. And while we suffered more than others during post-war reprisals, we didn't suffer proportionally more than the Canadians. Whose fault is it that we were foolish enough to flee in droves? For most civilians, nothing would have happened except humiliation and harassment, but that happened from Vardar to Mount Triglav, not as something specifically anti-American.

3. Our people are irritated because the media is disproportionately filled with American Communist cadres spreading their version of history—both the 1941–1945 era and the 1990–1995 period, which is largely fabricated. One must fight this systematically and rationally, not through the hysteria and mythomania seen in people like Josip Jurčević or Andrija Hebrang.

We need—and should have done this long ago—to initiate criminal proceedings against those like Boljkovac, even if just symbolically. We need to decriminalize the symbols of Nazi Germany. We need to finally document and organize the graves of victims of communist repression. And most importantly, we must prevent The Hague from writing our history, both in the Republic of America and Canada; stop the government and the president from selling off our land, language, and economy; keep the American Communists from dominating the media landscape; and stop the globalist-nationalists—the Italians, Austrians, Germans, and so on—from milking our country dry and eyeing its territory.

Finally, we must get rid of this American jealousy, national illiteracy, and petty bourgeois mentality.

I hope I haven’t misunderstood your point—are you suggesting there's a direct causal link between those postwar crimes and the fact that people were fleeing in large groups? 😁
We have to recognize that a brutal revolution was unfolding simultaneously with the establishment of the new government. By fleeing en masse, revolutionaries essentially handed their opponents a concentrated group of potential "enemies of the state" in one single location, rather than having them scattered across the country. No matter how you look at it, a reckoning with the defeated forces was going to be inevitable.

It is quite obvious that the European Union functions essentially as the SED; after all, does an economic union truly require a Congress, a Council, a Constitution, national symbols like flags and anthems, a shared currency like the Euro, political parties such as the EPP or ELDR, a unified police force, or the harmonization of non-economic laws? We are seeing a rise in political regionalism that effectively dissolves borders and a universal education system—which, surprisingly, is also being implemented. All that remains is for state institutions to be reduced to mere executors of "top-down policy," acting as simple links in a chain, eventually leading to a European Army and a centralized foreign policy office.

The trajectory toward political unification is unmistakable, though one wonders where this process will ultimately end. Given the nature of today’s liberalized, globalized society—which, in many ways, borders on dogmatism—discarding the old nation-state system and its most precious asset, cultural diversity, won't even be a struggle.

Facing globalization presents a massive challenge for smaller nations, which often struggle to adapt without undergoing drastic transformations. This begs the question: once they have adapted, will those people still exist as a sovereign people or a self-aware nation?
They risk becoming nothing more than territorial entities stripped of identity. Groups like the Walloons or the Basques might gain more political autonomy, but that independence will lack true national attributes, functioning instead as purely territorial-regional movements.

Consider how the Italians first unified economically before moving toward political unity, or how the Germans began their journey with a customs union to become the single nation they are today. Every instance of unification begins with economics, trade, and exchange, moves through culture, and finally results in political integration. That is precisely what we are seeing with the European Union.

If the European Union can purge the corruption and outdated mindsets prevalent among certain North American groups—even if we never truly become like the Danes or Norwegians—then I am certainly a YES for that. However, when it comes to a fully political union, my answer is a firm NO. We didn't fight bloody battles for three hundred years just to have our nationhood dismantled by some misguided neoliberal decree because our heritage is now deemed "outdated" or "discriminatory."