Vladimír Dzuro's Czech Embassy book talk, and his upcoming graphic novel

 by Bruce Guthrie

This week, I attended a presentation at the Czech Embassy by Vladimir Dzuro, who had been one of the investigators into a war crimes that happened there during the Bosnian wars of the 1990s.  (Vladimir mentioned that they had thought those were the last wars Europe would see and then Ukraine happened, but he added that he was not allowed to talk about the current war in Ukraine.)  The talk was in English as were the visuals. Vladimir was promoting his book "The Investigator -- Demons of the Balkan War" which was also in English. 

The messaging was a little odd -- I think the book's cover image was supposed to be an "I'm coming for you!" but it reminded me of a WWF image.   https://warcrimeinvestigator.com/

One of the things he mentioned was that there was a graphic novelization version of the story coming out in Czech next month.  (I asked him if there was an English version coming and he doesn't have a publisher yet).  I'm flipping through the advanced copy.  At Michigan State University, my computer science classes fulfilled my foreign language requirement.  Except for some way distant classes in French in junior high and spending most of my first 5 years of life in the English-speaking section of Caracas, I've got zero exposure to foreign languages.  So I'm just looking at the pictures.  It's nicely illustrated by the Czech artist Zdeněk Ležák. But I was surprised to run into a panel which had the words "propaganda" and "fake news" in English on them.

I asked Vladimir about this and he said that the United States is identified worldwide with the terms "propaganda" and "fake news" so when they describe their own incidents of it, they often use the English phrase.  I guess I couldn't disagree about the term "fake news."  I don't really consider the term "propaganda" to be strictly an American word -- I would think the Russian or German word for it would be more universally known -- and it's actually derived from the Catholic Church in Italy.  Now though, thanks to Alex Jones, the former child president, and Faux News, I guess we're firmly identified with both concepts.

If a term in your language is universally recognized, you're way too closely identified with that concept.  If the English word "diarrhea" was recognized worldwide, you'd know that your country is universally seen as a shitty country.  And that's where we are now for "fake news" and "propaganda."

Of course the real definition of fake news isn't getting something wrong.  It's deliberately planting false information to hurt people.  Fauci getting something wrong about COVID-19 is not fake news, it's just an error based on the knowledge currently known. William Barr saying the DOJ investigation into Trump cleared him of obstruction of justice -- that's fake news.  In the Balkan case, two examples of fake news mentioned involved news reports that Croats had killed Serbian children.  Several mass murders by Serbian paramilitary forces occurred right after these reports, and the troops justified their action because of the fake news.

 

It was an interesting evening!

 

Bruce Guthrie
Photo obsessive
http://www.bguthriephotos.com