The human brain starts as an empty slate and everyone is a product of their circumstances and environment.

And the product of the Serbian circumstances in the 1990s was commonplace hyper nationalist genocidal mentality that wasn’t forced and hard-driven by an authoritarian regime as you’d like to present it; neither were they ignorant of the extent of the atrocities so that isn’t an excuse either. If you don’t want to categorise that as “evil” then sure, but it sure as hell wasn’t good.

Of course no population or people is intrinsically evil, I wouldn’t call a Serb “evil” by virtue of being a Serb that’s just blatant racism.

But its not a lie to say a substantial bulk of the Serbian population in 1990s held an “evil” mentality and political ideology that wasn’t forced upon them, and a substantial bulk of the older generation still hold that mentality.

Evil is banal, by ‘horrible’ people they were still normal people who got along with their neighbours, had friends over for dinner, took their children to school, went to church/worship, and believed in concepts like justice and kindness.

A majority of them also wholeheartedly believed Bosnians deserved to be slaughtered and their women mass raped and were willing to carry it out or atleast glorify those who did in song and culture.

I’ll amend my statement, the Serbian people in the 1990s weren’t intrinsically evil, but the predominant Serbian political beliefs and social culture in the 1990s were most definitely evil, and that has consequences.