"The truth can not be drowned by any flood of false indictments"
About this Quote
Truth here is less a moral claim than a litigation strategy dressed up as destiny. Milosevic’s line borrows the cadence of a martyr insisting that history itself will acquit him: no matter how many accusations arrive in a “flood,” truth is an element that refuses to sink. The metaphor is slick because it flips the burden of proof. Indictments become “false” by default, a chaotic natural disaster rather than a measured legal response. Courts, prosecutors, and witnesses are recast as weather.
The specific intent is defensive and performative. Milosevic wasn’t speaking like a defendant trying to answer particulars; he was speaking like a political operator trying to keep his audience emotionally aligned. By treating charges as propaganda, he turns criminal accountability into a referendum on national pride and sovereignty. The line aims to inoculate supporters against evidence before they encounter it: any document, testimony, or forensic detail can be dismissed as another wave in the flood.
The subtext is a familiar authoritarian maneuver: truth is not a shared, verifiable record but a possession of the leader, revealed through endurance. If he can outlast the “flood,” then survival becomes proof. That’s why the image works rhetorically: it invites people to imagine themselves under siege alongside him, with skepticism reframed as loyalty.
Context sharpens the cynicism. In the shadow of the Yugoslav wars and the Hague tribunal, “false indictments” doesn’t just deny wrongdoing; it attempts to delegitimize the very idea that international justice can name crimes at all. The sentence is built to travel: simple, quotable, and resistant to refutation in the moment, precisely because it refuses the terrain of facts.
The specific intent is defensive and performative. Milosevic wasn’t speaking like a defendant trying to answer particulars; he was speaking like a political operator trying to keep his audience emotionally aligned. By treating charges as propaganda, he turns criminal accountability into a referendum on national pride and sovereignty. The line aims to inoculate supporters against evidence before they encounter it: any document, testimony, or forensic detail can be dismissed as another wave in the flood.
The subtext is a familiar authoritarian maneuver: truth is not a shared, verifiable record but a possession of the leader, revealed through endurance. If he can outlast the “flood,” then survival becomes proof. That’s why the image works rhetorically: it invites people to imagine themselves under siege alongside him, with skepticism reframed as loyalty.
Context sharpens the cynicism. In the shadow of the Yugoslav wars and the Hague tribunal, “false indictments” doesn’t just deny wrongdoing; it attempts to delegitimize the very idea that international justice can name crimes at all. The sentence is built to travel: simple, quotable, and resistant to refutation in the moment, precisely because it refuses the terrain of facts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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