so, i met an angry croatian nationalist last night. and, what is the difference between a serb and a croat, anyways?

"it's mostly about the religion, right?"

i have to tell you that i always thought they were mostly the same, really, and could never really figure this out. i knew serbs. i knew croats. one was catholic, the other orthodox - kind of a minor difference, given that they're both christians. now, the bosnians are a more complicated thing, as are the kosovars, but why the fuck are the serbians and the croats and the slovenians going after each other, anyways?

religion. as always. right.

no - and he got pretty mad at me for suggesting it, too. he claimed it had to do with a different history, but that didn't get through my bullshit filter, either. they were both under turkic domination for a while, and then they were both under austrian hegemony. before that, they were in the broad grouping of slavic raiders that set up on the outskirts of the empire, and periodically plundered greece. there's no history for either serbs or croats before that, and so you're stuck trying to figure out if they're ancestrally iranian or slavic, or something in between. even if you derive them from what herodotus called the "royal scythians", you're still stuck with the reality that their only history is greek until well into the middle ages, however far back you can extend it, and with whatever speciousness.

i asked him some questions, but i couldn't get a straight answer out of him, and it just left me remembering how stupid that nationalism is, as a concept. he may have been trolling me slightly, and i got that point. but, he honestly couldn't answer my question.

he could tell you he was proud to be a croat.

he could insist that the serbians weren't like him, and that his father was in the right when he fought against them.

but, he couldn't tell me what the difference between a croat and a serb really is.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.