In order to keep the country strong and united, it was forbidden to say of which nation you are. If you would say what is your nationality and you wouldn't be a member of Tito's party, you would disappear. If you realized on time that you were being foolish saying what you shouldn't then you would better escape to Argentina, Chile or US without writing to anybody home because if you would write, Udba would find you and you would disappear abroad also. The biggest offence and the most fearful phrase among kids was not 'You hate God' or 'Your mother will die' but 'You do not love Tito'. Yugoslavia was very corrupt. All those who were in administration, judges, doctors or everybody who would work in any position to do some kind of favor to people would receive bribes. It was a topic of humoristic series and jokes and nobody intended to do anything about it, it was the style of life. The country would feed you and tell you what you should think.  If you would shut up and never ever say anything that had a political note, would not object to bribery, you would live ok, because the country took care of you, even if you did not want to work. The only crime was to say which nationality you are, even if you really did not have any further 'intentions'. In history that was thought there existed only fascists and partisans. Croats were fascists because they had a military regime of NDH during the WWII and did a massacre of Serbs in Jasenovac and it was one argument more to 'clean' bad guys which said they are Croats because they did genocide over Serbs so now everybody has to shut up about which nation they were. Partisans= Yugoslavs were heroes that now rule the country, they did not have any flaws and the name of Bleiburg where partisans with Chetniks massacred a lot of Ustashe and other Croats could not be mentioned. The number of victims at Jasenovac was thus inflated so that any partisans' crimes, that people knew about and would not be allowed to say, would be neglected in compare to tremendous genocides of those Croat nationalists. The language was artificially made uniform in the Novi Sad agreement (source: wikipedia)  favorizing Serbian language. Croatian-origin Tito was created an icon ruling from Serbia where the whole empire was centralized, gathering the money from all republics and paying first the luxury of communist 'big sharks' there and then deciding how to distribute it all over the country.

After several decades of that system, the power of Yougoslavia was weakening. First Tito died and all politicians left there would want to be the new Tito but they were not strong enough and did not have the arguments because Yugoslavia's economy was going downhill. Not producing enough, the country had to take more and more external credits to give to people to support the way of life as they were used to because the whole system was based on economy that was not sustainable, inflation was raging, people were complaining, politicians losing power. Some republics inside Yugoslavia wanted reforms saying that the global politics is not working well because some sectors that could be developed more need the local attention. It led to confrontations and it started the rupture of the country and eventually led to the independence of its republics. In them, old-new leaders emerged, who once were fighting again the nationalism, now were the first to flag with it. And no, they were not nationalists at all. They were opportunists, just like Tito, but without economic power, they used nationalism as the only thing they could take to unite at least the people inside their republics and make themselves as leaders. Croatia needed a nationalist who would carry out its independence while Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia at that time, certainly would loose his power in '90. if he didn't ignite the Serbian nationalism and the war. How else, after breaking down and cutting sources from Croatia and Bosnia they would be able to maintain what they built in Belgrade? The most income of Serbia was coming from the mines in Kosovo, but they already had some problems down there. But they need a motive for the common people to go to another country to war. The answer is hatred. The whole media converted to one House of lies. People were already used to passively assimilate the public truth in communism. So they started informing about 'harrasment of Serbs in Pakrac' saying that Ustache (Croats) killed even their orthodox priest (the same priest appeared later alive on Croatian television saying that nothing happened to him), saying that Croats slaughtered 41-43 babies in Vukovar that was the only thing they had to retrieve later.

(The guy was describing in detail how they were slaughtering Serb children while they were showing the dead family of Croatian nurse killed by their bomb.) The same way saying that Serbian babies were thrown to lions by Muslims in Bosnia, inventing or inflating Serbian victims everywhere. That created fear and rage among people who felt that they had to go to the war to defend their naked lives and to revenge their nationals. And they still do! At the same time, they were exposing Seselj in media

saying notorious things about killing Croats by his Chetniks and claiming that Croatian territory is Serbia while people were heartedly approving and laughing.  

That media politics never stopped and it is hard for young people to grow up in Serbia without being convinced that the whole world is against them, that everybody outside lies to about all those facts. Even today, they continue that politics of multiple inflation of victims. NATO bombings for them is the proof that they shouldn't believe any information that comes from outside because US, the representative of that world bombed them. For them it is not true that that bombing produced 400-500 victims but, at least 2 thousands as their version of wikipedia says (see the line: `У бомбардовању је погунуло око 2.000 цивила' in the Serbian wikipedia)  while in the rest of their media they claim there were 3.5 to 8 thousands. Everybody who has seen the real war and those videos of NATO bombings knows that it is obviously impossible. But that brain washing is so strong and then those inflated numbers are used later in statistics to prove how the whole world is racist and unfair to them. This planted so much hatred in Serbian people and those past events so much bitterness in Croats and Muslims that seeing all that I get the impression that it would be almost impossible to avoid more wars in the future. There were real crimes against Serbs but this outrageous inflation together with testimonials of those who were really struck by it leads to belief that they are entitled to do whatever and that any actions they did are justified. If people believe that they are being treated unfair, discriminated, killed and put in danger they will fight against that and never stop. Any sanction or action is not enough if the media war is not over!