Prepare yourself ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump has just landed another yuuuuuuuuge endorsement. This time, it comes from Vojislav Seselj, the former Serbian Deputy Prime Minister presently awaiting a verdict from the International Criminal Court regarding his role in organizing crimes of genocide against Serbian Muslims.
“I call on brother Serbs who live in the USA to strongly support Republican Party candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential elections!” wrote the former Deputy Prime Minister on his Twitter page.
Seselj’s endorsement should be a dire warning to the American people about what lies at the end of Trump’s brand of offensive politics. Seselj is currently awaiting a verdict from the International Criminal Court, where he is on trial for organizing horrific crimes against humanity and for inciting genocide against Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslav Wars. The indictment makes a point to focus on the role that Seselj’s “inflammatory speeches” played in exacerbating the level of brutality that the Serbian forces inflicted on their victims.
Trump wants to make America “great” again, and to deny Muslims from entering our nation; Seselj himself dreams of a “Greater Serbia” – one without Muslims entirely. Even two decades after the conflict, Seselj is still known for saying Trumpian things like “If the Muslim fundamentalists don’t like that, they can pack their bags and leave!” It is extremely alarming to see Trump’s anti-Muslim comments being endorsed by a man who is almost certainly guilty of organizing ethnic cleansing. While we do not mean to imply that Trump wishes to follow a similar path, or that such an horror could it serves as a stark warning of the savagery that lies in the souls of men and how easily hateful and deliberately divisive rabble-rousing can bring it out that barbarism.