On April 15, Austrian Nobel laureate Peter Handke was supposed to appear on Austria\u2019s national broadcaster ORF to talk about his new writings. Instead, he proceeded to once again deny that the Srebrenica genocide happened, calling it Brudermord \u2013 biblical fratricide and framing it as a spiritual tragedy rather than a crime against humanity.<\/p>\n
ORF stood by its decision to interview Handke when it faced criticism. It claimed that it had done nothing wrong since the interviewer acknowledged the genocide in a question.<\/p>\n
That a European broadcaster would choose to platform genocide denial at this time is hardly surprising.<\/p>\n
Europe faces a crisis not only of memory but of dangerous continuity. From the Holocaust to Srebrenica to Gaza, denial of state violence against marginalised groups seeks to erase past atrocities, normalise present ones, and pave the way for future ones.<\/p>\n
Fratricide as \u2018the worst crime\u2019<\/p>\n
The Bosnian genocide was the first genocide broadcast on television. In 1995, distressing images from Srebrenica filled living rooms worldwide, exposing the failure of international protection. Despite a lengthy process of prosecuting war crimes through the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and court decisions implicating the complicity of European peacekeepers in the massacres, denial of the Bosnian genocide continues to be well tolerated in Europe.<\/p>\n
While Handke is by far not the only prominent public figure who engages in it, his rhetoric makes clear how this crime has come to be weaponised in minimising German and Austrian guilt for the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
Handke portrays the Bosnian genocide as a tragic civil war between \u201cbrothers\u201d \u2013 Brudermord. He romanticises war criminals as victims and embeds genocide denial in a fascist narrative of redemption through ethnic violence.<\/p>\n
According to him, fratricide is \u201cmuch worse\u201d than genocide \u2013 ie, those who kill their \u201cbrothers\u201d must be deemed worse criminals than the Nazis who killed \u201cthe other\u201d. By framing atrocities this way, Handke effectively minimises the responsibility of Germans and Austrians for the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
In this twisted narrative, the descendants of the Nazis can claim moral superiority, insisting they did not commit the \u201cworst crime of all\u201d- Brudermord. The chilling implication is that Jews were never truly \u201cbrothers\u201d to Europeans like Handke.<\/p>\n
Serb nationalists may see Handke as an ally in genocide denial, but he doesn\u2019t defend them \u2013 he uses them. Through them, white Europe cleans its hands of its bloody crimes \u2013 from Auschwitz to Algeria, from Congo to Rwanda. Handke\u2019s theological language is an alchemy of European conscience, shifting guilt onto the Muslims, the Jews, and the \u201cBalkan savages\u201d.<\/p>\n
Transplanting anti-Semitism<\/p>\n
Handke\u2019s logic parallels and reinforces the broader campaign to shift the blame for anti-Semitism \u2013 and even the Holocaust \u2013 onto Arabs and Muslims. In Germany, this trend has been fully embraced by the state and various public institutions, which \u2013 against all evidence \u2013 have begun to claim that the immigrant Muslim community in the country is responsible for rising anti-Semitic sentiment.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the German parliament, the Bundestag, passed a resolution stating that \u201cthe alarming extent of anti-Semitism\u201d is \u201cdriven by immigration from North African and Middle Eastern countries\u201d.<\/p>\n