Serb nationalist justifications shifted positions endlessly, immune to any refutation
Evidence
To refute any part or even most of the Serb radical position would only lead to new charges and channel the rage in new directions. In justifying the atrocities in Bosnia, Serb nationalists would point to atrocities by Croatian army forces in World War II or in the 1991 Serb-Croat war. When it was pointed out that the largely Muslim population selected for extermination had nothing to do with the Croat army and indeed had been attacked by the Croat army in 1993, Serb nationalists would shift to blaming all Muslims for the acts of those who fought with the Ustashe in World War II. When it was pointed out that many of the families who suffered worst in the Serb army onslaught in Bosnia were families of World War II Partisans who fought against the Ustashe, Serb nationalists would shift to claims of Ottoman depravity and treat the Muslims as Turks. When it was pointed out that the Slavic Muslims were just as indigenous to the region as Orthodox Christians or Catholics, the discussion would then shift to allegations that the Bosnian Muslims were fundamentalists and that Serbia was defending the West against the fundamentalist threat of radical Islam. When it was pointed out that most Bosnian Muslims were antifundamentalist by tradition and character, the Serb nationalist would move to the final fallback position: that this was a civil war in which all sides were guilty, there were no angels, and the world should allow the people involved to solve their own problems. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 195
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A closed ideological loop that cannot be refuted — every factual rebuttal merely triggers a new charge. This is a paradigm of self-sealing, evidence-immune belief worth sitting with.
- XREF: Evokes the shifting-goalpost structure of conspiracy theories and denialism generally (e.g., Holocaust denial, climate denial).