Mind Game

Everyone knows the truth about this war. It started with unprovoked attacks on civilians, grew into widespread aggression and is now an unchecked attempt to destroy an entire people. Ask any Belgrader whether that's true, and he'll say yes--but he won't be agreeing with you. For most people in Yugoslavia, it's NATO's attacks on Serbia that are the crime, not Serbian attacks on Kosovo. While NATO accuses Serbs of aggression, Serbian media accuse NATO of aggression. When NATO cries genocide, Serbian media cry genocide. And with almost no outside points of reference in Yugoslavia, who's to know the difference? It is the ultimate Orwellian nightmare: from the streets of Belgrade to the rural villages of Serbia, truth and lies are evenly transposed.

That wasn't always the case. Before NATO's campaign began, the propaganda of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic hit its limits in the credulity of many Serbs. His message mostly found purchase with the impoverished, rural and uneducated. In the cities you could seek out independent sources of information that put Milosevic's retrograde, neocommunist line in context. But with the war on, those independent voices are either snuffed out or taken over. Now, even among the educated elite, a slow, sad transformation is taking hold as Milosevic's distorted media prism resolves every shade of gray into black and white.

This is partly why NATO officials have insisted that propaganda--along with the special police--is one of Milosevic's two keys to power. It is also why, in a brutal attempt to end that information imbalance last Friday, NATO blasted a Serbian state television station in Belgrade. A barrage of bombs hit the building before dawn, killing at least 10 of the estimated 70 people inside. But if the attack was brutal, it was also ineffectual. Serbian state TV was back on the air within six hours, broadcasting its regular fare, including a statement by the Serbian Information Ministry saying that "by targeting [Serbian TV], NATO aggressors have revealed criminal intentions that would make even Hitler wince."

The air war has played a big part in making such wild accusations credible with Serbs. Nothing lays the groundwork for propaganda like seeing parts of your hometown blown away. NATO has bombed targets ranging from bridges to office blocks in its attempt to weaken the Serbian war machine and break Milosevic's resistance. But with "collateral damage" now including Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians alike, the strikes have also provided all the material that Milosevic's minions need to win over even die-hard skeptics. NATO, the propaganda insists, simply wants to kill Serbs at any cost. "Most people--myself included--see this as an aggression against Serbia, not just against Milosevic," says Goran Svilanovic, 39, the chairman of Civic Alliance, a once ardently critical anti-Milosevic party.