On January 28, 2020, HarperCollins Publishers released My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide by Jessica Stern – a glorified personal account of Radovan Karadzic and his role as a convicted war criminal in the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Throughout the book, Stern invites the reader to empathize with Karadzic and see the genocide from his perspective as justified. She conflates myth with fact and cherry picks her sources with thinly veiled attempts at objectivity. Stern’s take is a violent affront to the victims and survivors of the genocide. Instead of unequivocally standing with the victims of Karadžić’s crimes, Dr. Jessica Stern decided to stand in the ranks of genocide skeptics and deniers, and individuals who spread dangerous Islamophobic hatred – the very hatred that Karadžić used to mobilize the perpetrators of genocide. Today, Karadžić continues to inspire white supremacists and acts of terrorism from Pittsburg to Poway, from Utoya to Christchurch.