Transcription
Welcome back everybody to Neutrality Studies. Today, with Dr. Vishlav Simich, a professor of state strategy and governance based in Mexico. Vishlav, welcome.
Thank you, Pascal. It's an honor to be on your show.
It's great having you, and thank you very much for reaching out. You've worked a lot, actually, on the Balkans region where you are originally from, and on the question of what the Slavs are and how they, how they are within, how they exist within the kind of European and framework of international relations. And maybe we can start there. But before, give us a little bit of more background on on your work and, um, how you came to now teach also in Mexico.
Thank you. Um, yes, I, I had to leave what used to be Yugoslavia before it was destroyed in 1988. Uh, early 1988, just at the time when Milošević was taking over. And I got my political asylum in the United States, where I eventually ended up in Boulder, Colorado, where I went to school. Uh, before that, I was in school in London, in, uh, here on the hill, uh, in, in, uh, in England, in Great Britain. And, uh, I got political asylum after actually having to explain a couple of times why I had to leave and why it would be dangerous to go back, because they were at that time convinced, and I have letters to prove, uh, claiming that Milošević was the greatest ally and asset and friend of the United States and the most progressive leader and all of that stuff. And, um, and we know how it ended. They killed him in the H in the end because they couldn't prove any of the charges against him. So they eliminated him, um, from the game. And then we all now believe, at least in the West, that he was a war criminal and everything. I was the first, actually, who warned that he was going to be a disaster. Although I will emphasize it, even now, he, he did not cause the destruction of Yugoslavia. He was one of the evil forces there. An old-fashioned, kind of stupid, limited intellectually and geopolitically, old-fashioned communist who just got lost in the big game and in the end tried to play a game with the, the US, and he lost.
So, in the end, I ended up in the United States, went to school there, and then my professors recommended me to go to Washington D.C. to, you know, to, to live and work there, which I did. Had some, uh, letters of introduction and had a very good career in front of me. But soon I realized that it would cost me my soul and a public declaration that Serbs are evil and the cause of all, uh, the bad stuff in the Balkans, and basically have always been the devil's instrument on this earth. So I refused that. And then I ended up doing some kind of secondary jobs for a while until I found a place as a consultant and, uh, interpreter for top-level officials in the US, because they claimed that I was very good and educated and I could actually translate and interpret all of these top-level negotiations and threats and blackmails and everything else that it goes for, uh, US diplom- diplomacy, you know, in quotes, uh, over the last couple of centuries, basically.
Anyway, I didn't cry about it. I was very happy, actually, to be like, uh, the fly, the, uh, proverbial fly on the wall, because I could sit there and become another piece of furniture for these, you know, princes of the earth, of this world who decide the fate of millions of people. And nobody can lie to me what happened and how it happened and who sold what to whom and, and who was threatened and everything else. I can tell you stories about these things. They're very interesting and entertaining. Sometimes I have to like entertain lots of friends telling them stories all over again about the famous people who did this and that.
Anyway, uh, after a couple of, basically 25 years of working in in America, finally, uh, had a revelation, let's say, or, or a logical conclusion that that world is collapsing and and disappearing. So, since I cannot go back to Serbia and have a productive and and happy life there, unless I visit as a tourist, uh, I came to Mexico, which I always liked because of its culture and the lifestyle and climate and everything. I really enjoy living here and got a job. Uh, again, a very interesting story how I ended up getting a job at one at probably the best private university in Latin America, south of the border, as they like to say in the US. And I was there since 2010. And people were saying in D.C. when I left, "You are jumping from the horse's back onto a donkey's back." And now they're sending me emails saying, "How can we move to Mexico?" You know. So, in the meantime, I became a Mexican citizen and have a nice life here and everything. And now they cannot afford to actually, even though they have really good jobs, they're struggling to keep their ends meet and have lots of emails, you know, and calls and visits. "How can we move to Mexico?" But it's now a little bit too late.
Anyway, I studied, >> I, I, I taught here for since, since 2010, and now I'm kind of quite retired because I had lots of problems even at this kind of very open university because of other colleagues, mostly European, uh, background, Western European, European Union, uh, who came here and then they clash with with me or my, uh, teachings clash. The students talk to each other. In the end, most of the students of these other professors come to my classes because they don't want to listen to ideology, uh, propaganda. They come to learn. Especially relating to Russia, and that was the biggest thing. You know, like, uh, since 19, I mean, 2022, when I came out at a conference and said, uh, "There is no invasion. This is a legitimate, uh, act of aid by one state to another." They exploded. They just started screaming and, you know, like all of that stuff. So I kind of, uh, quasi-retired, which is also fine. I'm at that age when I can actually, uh, do that. And sometimes I give lectures and teach and privately, kind of, coach lots of students who continue their studies, master's degree, and, and doctorates all over the place. And they're telling me now by email, mostly because I'm old-fashioned and I don't use these other things. They say, "Simich," as they call me, "Simich," or they call me "Mocktima," like "Mocktuma," uh, "the emperor." They gave me a nickname, Mocktima. Mocktima. "You were right. Like everything is happening the way you said, you know." So, they're scared.
But, >> Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this can happen anytime again. So, please consider subscribing not only here, but to my mailing list on Substack. That's pascalota.substack.com. The link's going to be in the description below. And now back to the video.
Now, you know, this is this is quite important. I mean, as soon as you have, uh, a different interpretation of what is currently going on, especially in Western Europe at the moment, you are immediately outcasted. I mean, it happened to great scholars like, um, it's, it will, it currently also, the climate in within academia, especially in in Western Europe, is quite poisonous. Uh, and I, I'm very sad to hear that it extends all the way to Mexico. But then again, it also makes sense because it's a, it's a thing about how we view the world. Um, can we talk about how, I mean, you pointed out to me that still today, you know, the way that Western Europe treats the Slavs, the, the Eastern Europeans, basically, and of course, Russians are also a good part of the Russians are Slavs. Of course, there are non-Slavic Russians, including the like Kazakhs and so on and, and other, and Khazars and, uh, other denominations. Um, but what do you think from also your research is important to understand how the West treats the Slavs, the southern Slavs, the Yugoslavs? I mean, Yugoslavia treats southern Slavic rights. Um, you pointed out before the discussion that the Slavs and Eastern Europe is basically also today, in even in international relations and history, often written out of history books, are just not, not perceived like, uh, anything, anything west of, uh, anything east of East Germany is basically, is just a blank spot. Can you talk about this a bit?
Yes. As you were, uh, saying all of this, I remember in 1992, when the sanctions were imposed by the UN Security Council against Serbia, at that time Yugoslavia, which was at that time composed of Serbia and Montenegro. Uh, and there was a, a big exhibit on the Byzantine, so-called Byzantine Empire, uh, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in, in New York. And a group of us went from D.C., Serbs, because we consider ourselves part of the Roman Empire. And some of the Roman emperors, not some, but a majority, Spain today, Spain, and today's Serbia, and if you include all the Serbian lands which were taken away from us, uh, we are actually, we gave most of the Roman emperors. And we never considered it Byzantine. It's just the Roman Empire for us. And they never called themselves Byzantines. They always called themselves Romanoi, you know, the, the so-called Greeks. And, uh, our Emperor Dušan, uh, the Soulful One, uh, when he proclaimed his imperial, uh, constitution in the middle of the 14th century, which is, which was one of the, even today would be one of the most progressive constitutions in, in legal history. Uh, he called himself himself the, the emperor of the Roman Empire, not the Serbian Empire. He was obviously Serbian, and he was the emp- Serbian emperor by blood, but he was the emperor of the Romans. And, uh, it's very funny to to see these things when, uh, uh, when the West only considers themselves as, and, and they were actually the ones who destroyed Rome and created all the barbarian kingdoms, uh, who took more than a thousand years to come back to the Roman, uh, culture and, and traditions.
But anyway, we went to this exhibit, and we were shocked. Actually, I didn't expect anything else but this that happened to to us there. But my other friends were more artistic. They didn't know history or politics or anything. So they were really shocked and cried. Some of the ladies cried because Serbia was excluded. And then a couple of things that they actually, in the south, which is today Macedonia, they named it either Greek or Albanian, because at that time they did not recognize Macedonia as, as, uh, you know, Northern Macedonia or separate from Serbia and all that stuff. So that's another interesting topic to talk about, because I have a family history with that. Because I'll tell you another time, because my father was actually born there in exile. The king exiled my grandfather, and my father was born in the south of today's Macedonia, Northern Macedonia. And then when he died, we asked for a birth certificate to complete the process, you know, how it goes when somebody dies. And we got it from today's Macedonian. It says that he was Bulgarian, changed our last name, uh, said that he didn't have any citizenship, and that he was baptized in the Bulgarian church, you know. So they're rewriting history right as we talk, you know.
So, but anyway, we were excluded. And then Russia had only like Kiev, and it said that it was run by the Greeks. You know, obviously, the Greek lobby there in New York and in the United States is very strong. So they took it. And the, the so-called Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, in today's, completely a CIA extension, and they take advantage to eliminate Russia, Russian Church, Serbian Church, any other, and to actually, uh, make everything so-called Greek, even though it didn't exist at that time, you know, as, as a, as a nationality or as an, as an ethnicity. It was only considered, considered, uh, as a religious community that was different from the Latin community. So that was something interesting. Again, they talk in all the schools. I was really educated mostly in the West. Uh, I had to interrupt my studies because of political problems in Serbia, and just before I graduated in Belgrade, in the School of Diplomacy, I had to leave in April, and I was supposed to graduate, I think, in June. I think that's when usually, uh, people graduate in, in that part of the world. And I had to continue my studies in, in the United States. Uh, and then I was shocked when they actually were teaching us in some of the classes that I took in politics and political science that nations were created in the 19th century. And I'm like, "What?" You know, like, this is absolutely unbelievable that a professor would teach something so fallacious and so crazy and and and and idiotic like that, when we know that Russians existed as a nation. We Serbs are one of the oldest. We have documents that claim this. They, uh, again, we were completely taken over by this in Serbia by now, in the last 25 years, since 26, since the, the, the US and the EU took over our educational system. So they're teaching kids in Serbia that there was never old Serbian language, that it was Old Slavonic, Old Slavic language. And if you look into our writers and women writers who we have documents, beautiful poetry written by our princesses and queens and everything in Serbian, who claim that they write in Serbian, that they are Serbian, you know, like in 12th, 13th, 14th centuries. St. Sava, the founder of the Serbian autocephalous, you know, sovereign church, uh, when he writes about his travels to the Holy Land, four times, where he bought the monasteries and the Christ's, uh, grave and all of this stuff, spending lots of money on restoring these things in, in the Holy Land, when he says, "I boarded the Serbian ship and on the Serbian ship I traveled, called in with our navy to the Holy Land." Like, why would he writing in Serbian, in Serbian Cyrillic, saying that he boarded the Serbian ship, writing this in his own language as the prince of Serbia, and he didn't write in our schools teach kids that we don't exist. The same thing in Russia. There is a big, uh, process of indoctrination and in, in creating this complex of inferiority, which is very obvious for centuries, because they've been doing this since, you know, like the last couple of centuries, especially since the Congress of Berlin in 1790, uh, 17, I mean, 1878. I'm very bad with numbers. Um, when one of the, one of the preconditions for the international recognition of Serbia as a sovereign state, completely, and Montenegro, was to accept the history, the version of the history that was going to be sent from Vienna and from Berlin. So they call it the Vienna and Berlin school of history that was imposed upon us. The same thing in, in Russia, where it was mostly the Germans who created a history of Russia and were teaching them that they were stupid and primitive, and it was only the Vikings who were not, uh, Slavic, uh, you know, totally crazy stuff that goes on that is contrary to all the chronicles and everything that was written. Even look into the old chronicles in the Czech Republic, in the Czech language. We learned that there was old English, middle English, um, middle French, high German, middle German, you know, like all this stuff. Everybody has their old version of the language. But no Russian, doesn't even Ukrainians have their ancient language, supposedly. But no Russian, s never actually spoke anything. They were just primitive barbarians who just barked at each other, and suddenly they appear as a threat and all this stuff.
So, it's been a very persistent, uh, uh, uh, political. And I, I have a, a whole, um, string of classes on Russophobia that I was trying to teach, especially European Union students on exchange programs to Mexico, to warn them that by the time they become parents and, and have their businesses or have, you know, start their careers, they will be drafted into a war with Russia if they don't learn this history and organize themselves and oppose this, because they're crazy leaders. This was like 10, 15 years ago. In, in 2014, for example, when the whole thing came out in the open, and, and again, when I caused the scandal when I said, uh, they, they were claiming that Russia is going to be defeated and all this stuff, and I said, "Russia has already won, just by doing this in, in Crimea, uh, and in the Ukraine." Uh, Russia has already won geopolitically, philosophically, emotionally, uh, any, any other possible way except militarily. But it's a good process for Russia to get trained for the big clash with the evil empire, which will, will come very soon. And it has to be the United States. It's not going to be Europe. Europe will be like a, a flash, uh, in the pan, uh, like a couple of days, and then it's going to be a real war, because the, the real evil comes from the United States.
Do, do you view it as inevitable, by the way, that the international relations at the moment moves? And maybe we come back to to the issue of of nationality and ethnicity in a moment, which is very, very hard to, um, to somehow talk about because there's so many, you, you immediately rub people on the wrong shoulder if you do. But why, why do you, >> I may interrupt you. Remember your question. It's not difficult to talk about. It's difficult for these people to hear it. >> That's the problem. Well, I mean, the thing is, I, if Yugoslavia will always have a, a special place in my heart because it is an, it's a, it's a fascinating part of the B of Balkan history, and it's a beautiful place. And the, the my friends from Yugoslavia, from all like, uh, Croatia, Bosnia, and Ser- Serbia, and Kosovo, actually, and who are now luckily married and have a good life and have visited them, and it's such a beautiful place that has so much and, so much, uh, is so vibrant in culture, really, in, like, different, different, different levels of culture and, and how they intermix, because it, it goes, it has Turk influences, it has from from everywhere, Mediterranean and whatnot. But whenever I have a talk with somebody on my channel, I immediately get emails from somebody who says, like, "This is completely wrong, totally wrong." Whether it's about nationalism, ethnicity, and I have, for instance, like Professor Dr. Zlatko Hidic on on my channel, who talked about how toxic nationalism blew up, uh, Bosnia. And that is then opposed by certain, by certain other interpretations. So it's just also the, the interpretations of what happened historically are, are not only something that that people go deep into, but that they also attach a lot of emotional value to, for obvious reasons, because it's, it's very recent national history. Um, what is the most, to you, what's the most productive way to strike up a conversation about Yugoslavia that does not end in a shouting match?
Uh, to recognize that everybody has a, a place there, that everybody has part to play or, or has played a part in the general history and the development of culture and enrichment of that area. And that nobody basically should deny anybody the current present existence or whatever they feel that they are, but that they must recognize historical, uh, and, and documented facts, uh, that cannot be changed. Otherwise, that will cause problems, you know. And that is one of the biggest things because I know lots of Serbs, for example. I, I drive Serbs, you know, some of my friends, even crazy when I say that I actually recognize, uh, the Croats have something that they always say like a, a thousand-year-long culture of creation, creation culture, which is actually true. They are a very old nation, that they're one of the nations that are very old and very defined, uh, throughout history, more than a thousand years, probably 1500, 1600 years, just like the Serbs. But they cannot deny the same thing to the Serbs, especially they cannot kill us and exterminate and eliminate and, and, you know, eradicate everything Serbian that was in what they claim name is Croatia, you know. That's the, that's the problem, you know. Uh, for example, my name, Višič, they claim that it's only Croatian, and it's, it's, it's, it's not. Obviously, I'm Serbian. And, and, uh, many times I would get hugs because they would see me in, in some of these forums in the United States when there were different delegations, and they would think that I'm a Croat, and they would treat me as a Croat. I would keep my mouth shut. And I had the biggest, uh, Croatian Nazis who live in the United States who would actually show me pictures of their grandparents with heads of Serbs cut off and as as trophies. And this happened in Portland, Oregon, at a conference where there was a Croatian minister of agriculture or something like that, I don't remember who, actually was a very decent person and, and, uh, tried, you know, did not get involved in politics. He was involved in working for, um, you know, improving agriculture in Croatia, which was actually messed up by joining the European Union and was eliminated and destroyed, but that's a different story. So he didn't get involved in this. But I was part of his entourage with the State Department. And the other Croats who came to see him because he was a Croat, they came to me and they were showing me this. And then this guy, from Croatia, comes and says, "Do you realize that this guy is, as they, as we were saying goodbye, they were hugging me and saying, uh, 'If only Croatia would...' I was young at that time, and I went to the gym and I looked good, and I was in a suit, and I looked important. And they were saying, you know, like, these were older guys, and were saying, 'If only Croatia ended up in the hands of somebody like you.'" And this guy says, "Well, do you realize that the gentleman is actually Serbian?" And they just freaked out completely. And I said, "I wish even for one day Croatia would be in my hands because I would change political, if, if possible, you know, obviously it wouldn't be possible." But I want to emphasize, I recognize and I admire this centuries-long, more than a thousand years long strife and fight by Croatians, Croatian nationalists, for their independence and their specific roots and origins and and characteristics and and everything else. The only thing is, again, differently from what they teach in the West or what they propagate in the West. We never fought. Croats and Serbs never fought in our history until World War I, basically, when it was within the, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were drafted and they were trained and sent to Serbia to invade in World War I, and also Slovenians and Muslims from Bosnia. And we fought at that time. And then in World War II, there was this, you know, so-called Independent State of Croatia, where there were these genocides of of the Serbs and Jews and Gypsies, mostly of the Serbs in terms of numbers. And these were, and, and in the '90s, you know, the, these are the only instances. We never fought. We actually collaborated. The old nobility of Serbia and Croatia, they actually collaborated in, in terms of fighting the Germans and the, the, the Ottomans or the, the Caliphate, the, the empire. There was never any problem. The, the, the Muslims in Bosnia never fought as, as Bosnian Muslims. They fought as good soldiers of Allah in the jihad against the infidels. They were never, they never saw themselves as Bosnians as a nation. They are the creation of the Communist Party that wanted these converted Serbs or Croats, mostly Serbs, from my research and from the facts that I know. We know we have documents when they converted. They know that they will deny, you know, they will, you probably get emails about this, but they were considered, uh, a nation, a Muslim nation. They were not Bosnians. They were written with the capital M for a while from 1974. Before 1974, when we got the new constitution in Communist Yugoslavia, this is like a couple of years before Tito died, and he was already out of it. So these other forces were rewriting the constitution and restructuring the federation so that it would be ready for the breakup, which happened, uh, about 16 years later, openly. But already in the '90s, in, in the '80s, when Tito died, it started to break up. They created them into a separate nation as Muslims, as a Muslim nation, which shocked real Muslims who lived in other parts of of Yugoslavia, who said, "Even their leader said, you cannot be a nation. You cannot be a Muslim nation." There is a Nation of Islam in the United States, but it's a totally different thing. It's a, it's a black thing, African-American, whatever, but it's not like a nationality. And, and then in the '90s, when everything broke out in the open, they changed a couple of times, you know, from Bosnians to Bosnians to Herzegovinians. There was a big clash. I remember all of this when they were fighting in D.C. when I was there, present, sitting next to them, just like Macedonians when they would fight among themselves in the delegation, the official delegation of the new country of Macedonia, who is speaking Macedonian, because they didn't know what Macedonian was. It was actually a Croat who wrote them, uh, uh, grammar and, and created a Macedonian language. Just like, you know, there is that Bulgarian lady who, who found documents in the Austrian archives how the, the Albanian nation was created by the Austrians, Austro-Hungarian Empire to cut off Serbs and Russians from the Adriatic Sea. Lots of different things I'm throwing at you right now, but we have to recognize this, that these people have a right, and they were forces in the late '80s, in the early '90s, who wanted to unite, on every side, who wanted not to unite, but to work together to come to a solution so there would be no war. And most of the people didn't want it. But it was the West, the United States, specifically their embassy. We have the, the documents and the testimonies of the now late Canadian ambassador who went with this guy who invited him as an ally, thinking that Canada would just go along with it, and who, thank God, left us testimonies, firsthand experience and testimony, how they convinced the Muslim leadership, that horrible, uh, Satanist guy, Alija Izetbegović of Bosnia, to actually take away his signature from the peace agreement in Bosnia and start a war, and America will support him. The same thing they did in, in, in Ukraine. In the Ukraine, later, as I always say, Yugoslavia was the playground to prepare everything for Russia. We were the experimental stage of what was going to happen to Russia, and later to China.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that is overall, that's how it, it makes mo- a good sense to view what happened to Yugoslavia. Uh, this breakup in the 1990s was anything but, uh, predetermined. There were a lot of ways to, uh, to prevent it or to never ever let it go to that, to that place. There were internal factors and external ones. When it comes to nationality, I think, uh, Professor Dr. would, would, would have a different interpretation of, of, of, of Bosnia back also in the 19th century. But we can put that one aside and, and just maybe also focus a bit on, um, you know, this, maybe let's just call it the racist part, the racist part of the imperial project, um, which, which does contain, uh, divide and conquer. I mean, Yugoslavia was divided and conquered, and today it is conquered. If you look at the, the largest US, uh, uh, military base in the entire region is in Kosovo, of course. Uh, and how, how these, uh, yeah, let's leave it aside. Let's call it, let's, Yeah, let's leave it aside. I mean, the, it's, it's there. It's, it's >> the US, the US recognizes that Kosovo is part of Serbia. They have a signature on the resolution well before saying Kosovo is part, Kosovo and Metohija is a province of Serbia. >> Yeah. >> That >> that supersedes any other political arrangement. This is international law. So we should stick to that. >> In Serbian Kosovo. Kosovo. Yeah. I don't know how to phrase it. Um, but the point is the, the, the ba, the base is there, and, and, and we know how also the European Union is basically running, running Bosnia, and, you know, this way of, of control over an entire region. Um, and I had this just, sorry that I need to do this, but I had this, this interesting conversation with a friend of mine, a Taiwanese friend, years ago. Um, and I told him about my best friends in Switzerland, who again, Croat from, uh, from Bosnia, from, from Herzegovina, husband Serb from, well, Kosovo, uh, yeah, and, you know, they had a lot of problems to get married because of family history, but now they are, and things are good, luckily. Um, and I told my friend, my Taiwanese friend, how both of them, or all of them, both, all of their families were quite discriminated in Switzerland for a long time. The last, the last syllable in your name, uh, uh, you know, Simich, the "ić" will automatically out you, right? Especially in Switzerland, the largest immigrant groups in the '90s, you know, from the different Yugoslav, uh, uh, uh, uh, parts. Um, a lot of, a lot of racism. And then I showed him a picture of my friends, and then my, my Taiwanese friend goes like, "Pascal, they're white. >> They all look the same." >> And I told him like, "Yeah, that's how good we are in Europe to to to manage to be racist even against people of the same skin color." And we still do that to this day. And that brings us back to the Slavs, right? That of course, the Russians, and Mr. Putin is as white as is Mr. Merz and Mr. Macron, but that doesn't, the Russophobia, um, still, still works. And when we, when it goes to to the southern Slavs, to the, the Yugoslavs, you know, there's a similar kind of racism. I mean, how do you, how do you view that part, which definitely is coming, that kind of racism is coming from the western part of Europe?
>> Yes, I, I will tell you a funny story, and, and I'll try not to make it sound racist, even though it is actually, uh, but reversed. I remember in one of the think tanks in D.C., one of the institutes, I will not name it. I was waiting for a delegation. I was, of course, with the American side, and if I keep my mouth shut, I can pass, you know, like all dressed up with the suit and everything, uh, as as an American, you know, which I am officially American citizen, and I was working for the American side from the State Department in this institute where they were supposed to have like this, uh, dialogue or, or whatever forum, and the Serbian delegation. This was just after Milošević was overthrown, the new government and everything. And we are sitting there, and the, the Serbs were coming, you know, whatever they were. I don't know if all of them were Serbs or, or they were other ethnicities. Uh, but a black young lady, uh, turns to me. She just happened to stand next to me. I never met her before and never after that, but I remember this. She turns to me and says, "You can tell the Slavs are coming. They stink, you know." So I just swallow it and, and, you know, don't say anything. But I use it as as an example that even a black person who will claim probably she now was part of Black Lives Matter and Antifa or whatever, because this was, you know, during the, the Obama years. Um, uh, she, she's claiming probably like racism, systemic racism against black people in the United States. She herself got this this Anglo-Saxon, Western European American racism incorporated into her psyche when it comes to Russians. And I said, this also cost me a lot of, uh, positions and jobs and, and, and status in D.C. when I said many, many decades ago that the, the racism that they cannot express anymore against blacks, Mexicans, women, well, anti- you know, women, uh, sentiments, Jews, whoever it is, because it's all forbidden, you lose your job. You, you concentrate that and you aim it, throw it at the white people from Europe who have no one to defend them and who are seen as evil. Even though, especially southern Slavs, we had never had colonies. We were not colonial powers. We were actually colonized. This is something that shocks my Mexican students many times when I tell them in classes when they start saying, "Español," you know, like the Spanish are responsible for, you know, everything that's bad in Mexico. It's the Spanish, you know. I'm like, "Okay, don't be like the Serbs, like my people. Whenever something is wrong, it's the Turks," because we were under the Turks for 500 years, which is not true, but that's like a myth. And the Spanish were, I mean, the Mexicans or Latinos or the original population, so many nations here, you know, like even today, they're 68 nations who deserve their own independence according to Western European and American standards when it applies, when they're applied to Eastern Europe and Russia. Uh, why don't they apply it to Canada and to the United States and to Mexico, for example, and then create 68 new countries in in Mexico and about 420 in the United States and over 600 in Canada? Can you imagine the United Nations suddenly has over about a thousand new new members, and the United States reduces to like a third of its size, and, and Canada just disappears basically? But anyway, I tell my Mexican students, "Shut up. Don't complain. The Spanish have been gone since, let's say, 1810. In Serbia, the Turks have been gone since 1804. You cannot blame anybody but yourselves, and we cannot blame anyone but but but ourselves for all the little things, corruption, and everything. We should fight it." So, I'm very critical of of my own. But then again, uh, this racism is, is so internalized, they don't even recognize it. And you can see the smirk, you know, like when you say something, you know, like that actually the civilization started in what is today Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, the agriculture, their documents and, and evidence and everything in agriculture, mythology, and all this stuff. They just go like, you know, like it's, it's, it's, it's so obvious. It's, it's very easy to to see. Uh, I remember in the UN, for example, when I went again with the American delegation, this was during Yeltsin years and the early, uh, Ukrainian so-called independence, when in the Security Council, there was a Russian ambassador, and we were entering, and I remember a British guy, like second, third level, fourth level in the hierarchy in the British embassy to the United Nations, was telling, and I don't know if I should use it. I don't like to use bad words and all of that stuff, but I'm just quoting. He was calling them [ __ ] you know, the Ukrainian ambassador and the Russian ambassador in front of everybody at the UN, at the Security Council, you know, like it's, it was like unbelievable in one of the sessions, you know, aside, not in the main room, and all of this stuff. And they were just going, you know, with the horrible complexes of inferiority because they were ready to take everything and anything, just not to be in Moscow or in Kiev, in the Ukraine or in Russia, because the fantasy was that the good life was in New York, in the, in the UN. And I lived in Moscow. I worked in Moscow in Russia, and later in Georgia and Tbilisi. And I remember how I lived in New York before that. And I remember when I went to Moscow, even though I visited Moscow during communist times as a student, but I remember how much richer in terms of multiculturalism and everything else. It was poor. These were the worst years, '95, '96, when I was there in terms of economics and, and finance and everything, but it was more grandiose than any time in New York when I lived there. And New York was dirty and filthy and cranky, and everybody was nasty, and it was filthy and greasy everywhere, and rats and everything. And even in those horrible years in, in Russia, it was still grandiose and magnificent. Of course, now you will get emails that he's Simich is, is like, uh, you know, totally obsessed with Russia and all that stuff, but the facts tell the story. Just go to Moscow today, and you will compare it. Uh, you, you will see with your own eyes. Again, if you're part of the press corps, you will, you know, like during the Olympics in Sochi, remember when they were showing like a toilet that doesn't work in the Olympic village, and this is typical for Russia, nothing works and all of that stuff. So, you know, it depends what you want to see. But racism is there, and you can see it all the way back to the 16th century from England, and it, it comes from this, this grandiose idea that came to England, England with the, the Jewish re-immigration and infection of the, uh, uh, uh, uh, Protestants there, uh, under Cromwell, with this superiority complex that they picked up from, from the Jews, that they are the chosen ones. So this is the clash between the so-called Zionist Christians who claim that they are the, the chosen ones, and they actually hate the Jews. I, I know this. I have heard them when they, you know, speak openly, uh, because they claim they are not the chosen ones, but they are useful to them.
>> Yeah, that's, that's a point about Christian Zionism. They, they use the Jews in order to get to the end. And the, and the government in, in Israel is using, and those who support it, using them, the power of the United States. But that's a different story. But this complex of superiority in England grew from this Protestant kind of vision of themselves as being chosen, and then when they immigrated to the United States, they installed it in their Protestant, WASPy, uh, upper class who was running the United States. And it's obvious in all the literature and everything in both countries. And then it spread to all the other parts of Western Europe. The, what do you think is the main factor to explain all of this? Because I mean, you made the very good point that the, the southern Slavs didn't really, they, they didn't move. I mean, they didn't really go about and start conquering large swaths of land. And also the fact, I mean, the reason why then, uh, you know, the, the war was so horrible and, and the different, the different extermination campaigns is because, uh, Serbs and Croats and, and Bosniaks and so on were living right next next to each other. Not just village next to village, but within the villages, they were living next to each other. So, which obviously meant that for hundreds of years, it was fine. It was okay to be next to each other until it wasn't, right? And then, then it collapsed. Um, but that's, that's one thing of a people that stayed stable. One, one of the, one of the things these days that that I kind of strikes me as very, very important is that the Western Europeans never stood, uh, stable. They always tried to go somewhere. Um, they went, they had crusades to the, down to the Holy Lands, on the one hand, they had campaigns to, uh, overthrow Russia, right? Napoleon, maybe just being one of the largest at the time. Um, and of course, they went west, um, and then they exterminated people in the west, in, uh, in North America. They just, they just sat there, said, "It's our land," and then killed the people who were there before, either, I mean, through various means, and then expanded, expanded, expanded. I mean, that's the one thing that that that Western Europeans expanded, uh, um, the, the physical territory that was under the control of people who looked like them. And of course, they kept also, um, uh, uh, rights, political rights, very closely to them. I mean, it took, it took literally a war to, to expand also to the, the black population, and like we can have an entire different discussion about how, how well-developed those, those, uh, uh, those rights today are. But the others, they, they, they, they more or less stayed put. Do you think that that has an influence also on this, on this development of culture in certain places and the, the lack of culture in others, and the imitation, right? That that the Supreme Court and so on of the United States is modeled after ancient Greek temples, which is kind of bizarre for a nation that's 250 years old, right? But, uh, a nation or a country, political system, can you speak to that?
Yes, I, I think that it's a, it's a clash. It's a psychological issue, I think, because they have this thing installed into themselves, you know. I, I also have a, a whole bunch of lectures showing the development of this, this, uh, sense of superiority and the need to lead, you know, like the white man's burden, as they call it. And I always protest because I don't consider myself white. Others do. I, I'm Serbian. I have different citizenships, but my ethnicity, my culture, my everything is, is, is Serbian, and I don't see myself, I don't see, well, other than general humanity and, and cultural background and all this stuff, but I'm different from the Swiss, I'm not equal to the Swedish or English or Portuguese or whatever, you know. So don't put me in this, you know, like. So it's the English, English upper class who developed this and this need, this necessity to feel superior, in spite of the fact that they are, they were actually over centuries very inferior, and that they became rich and, and mighty through piracy, which we see coming up again. Trump >> said, "We are like pirates." Except that you don't need the word "like." "We are pirates." We Americans. They are just robbing and grabbing. This is how Queen Elizabeth with the, uh, Francis Drake and the others who, who, uh, stole the stolen gold through the genocide by the Spanish and the Portuguese from Latin America, from the native people, from the original races and, and nations who were very sophisticated and, and developed in their own way. Uh, let's not be anachronistic and judge from our point of view today, because they have beautiful poetry, like the Aztecs, so-called Aztecs, Nahua. I actually translated a whole bunch of of so-called ancient Aztec poetry into Serbian, trying to do the rhythm and everything, but they never published it, obviously, because I, uh, I don't get anything published in Serbia. But anyway, it's very beautiful, and all of this stuff. But they impose piracy internationally to steal from the, from the, well, the French too, and the, and the Portuguese, and the, the Spanish, especially. And then internally, they impose, uh, the belief in witchcraft and eliminating witches, which if you study this, and there are lots of good studies and, and facts, it was not a religious thing at all. It was used like today when they talk about, you know, religious issues with Islam, for example, and all of this. It was the same thing. They, and it was very rarely the Catholic Church. Being Serbian, I'm not very, very friendly or, or very, I'm very suspicious and very fearful of the Catholic Church hierarchy, not ordinary Catholics, who are, you know, they just happen to be born into a Catholic family, just like I was born into a Serbian Orthodox. So I don't see them as enemies or anything. They're just people whom I have to meet and then judge them based on my relationship with them and what they do. So, but the hierarchy, I have to defend the, the most of the movies in the West, in, in Hollywood, are against the Catholic Church burning witches. Very few witches were burned by the, by the Catholics. Some crazy bishops and the hierarchy said, "No, this is superstition." It was this, the crazy primitive, uh, English and Germans and barbaric, uh, Anglo-Saxons who did it. >> The Protestants. The >> Protestants. Yes. The ones who played off and trees that they did it. But you know why? Because there were lots of widows that they had to eliminate, elder women. And at that time, remember, it's not 60 or 70, 80 years old. This was a 40-year-old woman who inherited from three, four husbands who died before, lots of property, and it was useless in a woman's hands. So how do you get rid of her? Well, you get the last son of the last husband, or the firstborn son of the last husband from maybe a previous marriage, three wives before this woman who married, uh, his mother married this, this man, and he wants his father's property, but it goes to this woman, who now can marry somebody else, and he wants it. So it was a big coordination between the so-called Protestant church, which from the Orthodox view is a heretical, uh, organization, to actually take away percentage, like Henry VIII did, the whole.
Reformation to just dispossess the Catholic Church, uh, who was the greatest dispossessor of wealth and and land in in England. And he left his daughter Elizabeth the First a magnificent kingdom, very rich in in in in finance, and and and and growth potential because he took somebody else's money. So these two things made them economically, financially, and politically powerful: piracy and and uh hunting down witches, and then this religious view that they are superior because God has chosen them.
But then still read the documents from their descriptions of Russia, and don't go for the western abridged versions where they only talk how Russians are smelly, stinky, primitive barbarians. But reread the the letters of their wives, for example, or their mistresses, uh, going back to France, to England, to other western countries, talking about how, or the the nannies who write back to France and to to Germany and to England, and how magnificent Russia is, and how they're shocked by the wealth and the the enormity of of this land, and how sophisticated. They could not stand it.
So the combination of this fake superiority, or religiously induced, religiously fanatically induced necessity for superiority, and then fear and envy, because as I said before we started recording this, Slavs are the biggest chunk of the so-called white population, and we do not see ourselves as white. We see ourselves as Polish, Russian, Serbian, Croat, whatever. And this is the part of the European uh family of nations, if you want, in terms not of states but nations, nationalities, ethnic groups, that is the only one remaining uninfected by all of this stuff that is destroying the western nations.
If they like it, this whole wokeness and everything else that they're doing in the west, if they think that is beneficial to them, that's fine. We don't care. But it's obvious to everybody in the world that it is destroying them. Look at the political structure in the West. It's falling apart. Look at the European Union, the so-called European Union. It is not European Union. They talk about Europe, and they they do not have two biggest countries in Europe uh part as part of of the European Union. Russia is almost half of of the European territory, and only European side of Russia. The culture, they, if you tell me that it's not a sick group of people who who forbid Tchaikovsky or Tolstoy or uh uh Dostoyevsky and other Russian artists and writers and all of this stuff, you you you can then what whatever you want to believe, you know. But but people who cannot distinguish between past and present, they live in this uh warp that lots of uh people escape to this mystic and and esoteric uh kind of niche area on the internet where they talk about lizard people and uh the time warp and, you know, like all of this stuff. I think that Europeans mostly are in that because they confuse past and present.
I I was uh uh recently talking to some people about our Serbian uh uh writer uh uh playwright and and poet uh a bishop prince of what is today Montenegro, but he considered himself Serbian, Njegos, who actually uh was brought up in the Hague at the International Court of Justice because this shows how sick and uneducated and primitive these people who are in his highest positions, who were going to bring up charges against Njegos, who died in the middle of the 19th century, because in one of his poems he is describing the massacre between the Ottoman, well, the Caliphate at that time, people talk about the Ottoman Empire, yes, it was Ottoman Empire, but it was actually the Islamic Caliphate who was trying to exterminate Serbs in Montenegro, what is today Montenegro, and this clash, and he described this this these events happened in the middle kind of of uh 18th century, and he lived in the middle of the 19th century, first half. So he was describing this, and some of these lawyers, you know, prosecutor's office in the Hague was going to bring up charges, and we have it on, it's on YouTube, I think still, I have it somewhere in my archives because I save everything because it's all scrubbed and eliminated, and they were talking about bringing up charges against this Serbian nationalist, that probably people who write to you these emails will say, yes, it's our interpretation of this. Well, if if a writer is describing, you know, like the the killings of the Jews in in Auschwitz or whatever, you know, and then you're claiming that this writer is a Nazi, and we should actually ban his books because he described it so well that we actually almost feel like it's real, which was real. But anyway, uh, and and we confused. This tells you that these people are in this warp of time and space that they cannot distinguish between past, present, and future. That they're completely messed up in in in their psychology, in their emotions, in everything else.
This need to feel superior is projected then upon anybody who can be pointed at as nasty, evil, ugly, horrible, you know, whatever, just so that I come out as good. And this is what we have seen in this wokeness, in this whole thing against Russia, against the Slavs, because they, I always show my Mexican students typical news items from Mexico, what they were complaining in the West about Trump, for example, saying he is saying that all Mexicans are rapists and and lazy people who just come to live off of the benefits from, or Muslims come to Europe and live off these, like no Muslims work, you know, in Europe. You There are obviously people who take advantage of these things, but you set it up for them. The same thing in the United States. And then I tell them like, okay, but Trump is only voicing what your media have been showing to you all the time, because when you look at the the news from Mexico, they always show like these ugly kind of murderous Mexican men who look kind of wild and nasty and you don't trust them. and their women are always seen as kind of like kind of chubby, small, not really good-looking and everything. Mexico is full of beautiful people. Like any place, Switzerland or Serbia or Japan, wherever you can find ugly, you can find fat, you can find perfect, you know, angelic looking people. It's just what you choose to see and what you choose to project.
The same thing about Russia, when they showed Russia, Russian people, or as I mentioned earlier, remember the Sochi Olympic Games when they would show like all of these things that, you know, let's let's see what's what happens in the United States now in the the the soccer thing that's coming up, you know, like we can always find probably a broken toilet and say, okay, America is falling apart. Yes, it's falling apart in certain places, but in certain places it's perfect. So these are like very limited views and very kind of uh stupid, I would say, approaches and and acceptance by the general populace. So, you create this vision of Mexicans as rapists and lazy and useless and just drunkards who make lots of noise. And of course, there are some, but they're also beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful people who work hard and make a good life in America and who bring lots of values in culture and history and everything else. The same thing with Russia. If you concentrate on showing chubby, fat Russian women who in the '90s didn't take showers because there was no running water, obviously you're going to see ugly people. If you see Russians who are drunkards because they lost their jobs, their son got killed in Afghanistan because he was sent there and you know they had only one one child and the father just gave up on life and is forgetting everything by getting drunk, like the middle class in America now with with this fentanyl, just escaping the the cruelty of modern American life. You can concentrate on that. So people show these videos of of LA and American cities uh where these fentanyl uh addicts are like all twisted around themselves, you know, like and and ugly and and smelly and all of that stuff. Yeah, that's also America. But there is also beautiful stuff. So it all depends, you know, we should, the problem with everybody. This is, and I I will finish with this. So then uh you can say something. I have a tendency to over over talk. Uh one thing that I like from Marx is one famous quote when he says that the philosophers before Marx, or whoever talked about Marx, I don't remember who said this, but it was about Marx, uh tended to describe the world, but Marx and Marxists wanted to change it, you know, like so this is what we should do. We should try to organize people all over the world into these communities of intellectuals and and really educated people who know how to organize political things, um, to actually work together to come to power and replace these idiots and these evil, nasty people in Switzerland, in Serbia. Like the Serbian government is one of the most corrupt, most evil, nasty people, murderers. They keep telling me that I'm overexaggerating all all the time, but they, the facts are telling us they're committing great treason all the time. They are murderers literally, and they're thieves. So is European Union. You you're very you're very good at distributing the equally to everybody.
>> Well, they deserve it.
>> But but I think if I had to boil down our discussion over the last hour, um, then it would be one about being aware of selective reality. How selective we get when we create these concepts, right? Be it from the national, who who or what is my nationality, all the way to uh uh how we perceive other countries and how how they're how they're portrayed, like how the selectiveness of the realities we live in, and how they then can clash when there's no need for clash if we just like broadened the the goddamn picture. Um, I very, very much enjoyed this. Um, and and we did, we did reach the 1 hour mark, but um, can we, can you tell me where people should go who would like to read more from you or listen to more of of your analysis?
>> Uh, unfortunately, I think this is just the second interview in English. I have given it to one of the alternative media that a friend of mine, the one I was telling you about who wanted to recommend me to you, uh, recommended, and that person called, but it's kind of like a niche group in the United States that is very anti-globalist and everything, which was very well received, and I got lots of emails and and communications from these people. Uh, but they are very American nationalistic and concentrated only on America, and they cannot really see anything other than that, and they still think that they're the best and the only ones, and that they have a mission to save the world. So, uh, this is my second time in in English or other than Serbian. I have given like for the last 20 years, I think, or so. Whenever YouTube started, I was on, and I stopped giving interviews about a year and a half ago because they just want to talk about witches and the government, and I want to talk about solutions, you know, like what we should do to actually not to talk about what they have done to us, but what we can do to actually eliminate them and then actually correct everything and put together alliances with Croats and Muslims and Albanians and whoever to create a better environment and save our ourselves. Collectively from Brussels and from the European Union and from the United States. But if you want to, I will give my email address and people can contact me and I will send them PDFs of these books and and everything, and maybe some other people will uh invite me for talks on on these uh these shows similar to yours, which I actually, I do want to say that I have watched almost every show of yours, and I always insist with my friends when we talk about you and your show, they all love your show and and your guests. Sometimes we disagree and we have big discussions and everything, but generally they're very informative, very high level intellectually, and and very decent, not very extremely decent and and and proper. But I always say neutrality studies, just go back to Westphalia, to the origins of the international order of sovereign states in which we officially still live, and the Peace of Augsburg, Peace of Peace of Westphalia, Peace of Utrecht, and Peace of Tilsit, and you will have neutrality. If we go back to the balance of power, if we go back to respect of like, don't get involved in other people's affairs, your country, my limit is my border, your border is sacred, and I don't get involved in yours, you don't get involved in mine, and we negotiate. Remember the the very good definition of diplomacy by René Albert, Alary, I I always have problems with French uh, Kay, who said that, uh, it is the management of the relations among sovereign nations through negotiations conducted by the appropriate agents, which we don't have anymore.
>> Yeah.
>> We have all sorts of not sovereign entities. What is European Union? It's not a sovereign entity. And we yet have even here in Mexico, an embassy of the European Union, uh, through appropriate agents, we use TikTok and and Twitter, whatever Trump is using. This is not diplomacy. And then stop practicing this revolutionary diplomacy in quotes that is that has been practiced by Americans in the last 40 years, which destroys. This is why I named my book on Kosovo, of privatization, Kosovo, uh, Kosovo, ground zero of the neoliberal world order. This is when it died. Not in Iraq, not in in Afghanistan, not now in in Gaza, in in in uh Iran. Uh, it died in Serbia in '99. in '95 in Bosnia, when they bombed uh Serbs in Bosnia. That's when everything died. But we don't want to talk about it because it upsets those, you know, they call them strawberries here because they're easily bruised, lasses like snowflakes in the United States. You know, this is it's it's another discussion that we need to have. And we we had planned to go to Kosovo, but we got absorbed by the uh by by the rest of what we had to talk about about the big picture, but I'm very grateful that we could do this. Um, uh, anyone who wants to get in touch with you, I'm happy to connect you via email and um, wishes love, image. Thank you so much for your time today.
>> Thank you, Pascal.