Reader of Slovenian news site 24ur.com sent them a story about an Austrian store with an unusual sign at their door – besides the regular “Everybody welcome” sign, the manager of the store wrote “no Slovenians + Croatians.” When the reader asked one of the staff what’s that supposed to mean, she got a reply that some Slovenians and Croatians made 800 euros worth of damage – so that’s why they thought it would be clever to put up a sign there. How stupid you have to be to do such a thing, I wonder.

This reminded me of one of the Balkan urban legends that circled around in the nineties – and still lives on I must say – the rumor claimed that the band Nirvana had written in small print in credits on their Nevermind album cover “not for Serbs and dogs.” The rumor was easy to spread because at that time we were at war with Croatia, and the bass player, Krist Novoselich, was of Croatian descent. Plus, it wasn’t so easy to get your hands on an original album cover to check this. It was a good way to spread propaganda and hatred among people necessary to fuel the ongoing war, like in the last case of “NATO the Merciful Angel” discussed in the last paragraph of this article.

In the case of Baumax store manager in Austria, it was simply the case of a stupid person. I am not sure what is more dangerous, a generalization made unintentionally by someone stupid or intentionally by someone smart.

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