Karadžić the poet and the Rwandan poet
example · Yugoslav/Balkan + Rwandan ·
retold in 8 talks
The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was a poet, and a Rwandan poet spent years laying the ideological foundations for the slaughter, founding poetry desensitizes people to ethnic cleansing.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 7
“no ethnic cleansing without poetry or something like poetry”
“the leader of Bosnian Serbs was Karadžić a poet even in Rwanda I looked into it ah-ah there was a poet who was laying the foundation for genocide for years”
“if you go to rwanda, i discovered karadžić there... there was a big national poet who for two decades laid the ground for that slaughter”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
poetic-military complex
×5
mythopoetic structure
×1
corruptio optimi pessima
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Henry Farrell2Radovan Karadžić7Ratko Mladić2Shoshana Zuboff2Arthur Koestler2Ivan Illich1Günter Anders1Emanuel Swedenborg1
alongside works
Every retelling 7
The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was a poet, and a Rwandan poet spent years laying the ideological foundations for the slaughter, founding poetry desensitizes people to ethnic cleansing., illustrating no ethnic cleansing without poetry,mythopoetic structure
Žižek notes that the Bosnian Serb leader Karadžić was a poet, and that in Rwanda a poet had been laying the groundwork for genocide for years, used to argue that poetry, not philosophy, provides the ideological opium enabling ethnic violence., illustrating ideology,poetry as ideological opium
Žižek notes that the Bosnian Serb leader Karadžić was a poet, and that a Rwandan national poet similarly prepared the ground for genocide over two decades, illustrating that totalitarian systems require not just philosophers but poets and religious mythologists to make good people do evil., illustrating corruptio optimi pessima,poetry and political violence
5:38 Žižek sobre la exclusión del psicoanálisis del presupuesto de salud púbica de Francia - G10 20252025 · 11:24
Žižek cites Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, a well-known poet, as evidence that ethnic cleansing is always backed by national poets who preach violence as a sacred mission., illustrating ethnic cleansing without poetry
Žižek argues soldiers are not bad per se; what makes ethnic cleansing possible is the combination of soldiers with nationalist poets who anesthetize ordinary sensitivity to suffering. In ex-Yugoslavia this was the 'poetic-military complex', personified by poet Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić., illustrating ideology as anesthesia,nationalism,poetry and violence,poetic-military complex
Following ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda, there is always a poet behind it: soldiers alone are not deadly per se, soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry or religion are. To do horrible things we must be anesthetized, and for that a sacred cause is needed., illustrating revolution-violence,religion-theology