Serb clergy escalated from specific complaints to rhetorical genocide charges

Evidence

By 1982, in a Good Friday appeal by Serb priests and monks, the language had changed. With repeated allusions to the “crucifixion” of the Serb nation, the battle of 1389, a centuries-long plot by Albanians to exterminate Serb culture, and the depravity of the Ottoman Turks, the appeal culminated in the charge of genocide: “It is no exaggeration to say that planned GENOCIDE [emphasis in original] is being perpetrated against the Serbian people in Kosovo! What otherwise would be the meaning of `ethnically pure Kosovo’ which is being relentlessly put into effect through ceaseless and never-ending migrations?” — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 179

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the manufactured moral panic scaffolding analyzed in the reader’s prior work on sacrifice and moral panics.

Related

• Serb Orthodox clergy actively supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing (similarity 0.83)
• The Serbian Orthodox Church’s official voice published justification of the genocide (similarity 0.81)
• Serb Church leaders publicly sanctified the architects of genocide as following Christ (similarity 0.80)
• The Christ-killer charge is a theological problem for all Christian traditions (similarity 0.80)
• Organized grief rituals were channeled directly into genocidal mobilization (similarity 0.79)
• Serb extremists drew direct inspiration from religious epics glorifying Muslim extermination (similarity 0.79)
• A retrieved Serbian tradition could recast Kosovo’s traitor as the genocidaires themselves (similarity 0.79)
• The Bosnia genocide was religious in four distinct, compounding senses (similarity 0.78)