July 11, 2025, was the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, Europe’s worst atrocity since the Holocaust.
Esad Širbegović is a writer and analyst based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a member of the International Expert Team at the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada. In 2022, he served as the Director of the International Expert Team for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, focusing on the Srebrenica genocide denial case at the University of Vienna. Esad’s work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences and centres on the critical issues of Islamophobia and genocide
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
Once upon a time, “Never again” was uttered with sincerity.
It was the mantra forged in the ashes of Auschwitz, a promise to generations unborn that the horrors of genocide would never be repeated.
But today, in an age of digital spectacle and political impunity, “Never again” has become “Ever again”. And we are witnessing a grotesque inversion of memory.
From the Warsaw Ghetto to Srebrenica to Gaza, the imagery of genocide – especially the suffering of children – has not only lost its sacredness, it has become fodder for mockery, comedy and the most cynical forms of entertainment.
This is no accident, but a reflection of how unresolved histories and unaddressed root causes have created a culture desensitised to violence and hungry for spectacle.
In a shocking display of insensitivity, the Dutch Netflix comedy Football Parents features a scene that compares the victims of the Srebrenica genocide to clumsy child football players, turning the Bosnian genocide into a punchline.
Mocking victims
More than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were murdered under the watch of Dutch UN peacekeepers in 1995. Dutch soldiers not only failed to prevent genocide but also participated in committing it.
Now, Dutch television mocks them.
The scandal runs deeper. The Netherlands has been linked to three major genocides – the Holocaust, the Bosnian genocide, and now the genocide in Gaza.
The Dutch state is currently being sued for failing to prevent genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, a recent study revealed that nearly half a million Dutch citizens took part in the Holocaust.
Rather than confront its violent past, Dutch media recycles it as “dark humour”.
Incredibly, Football Parents mocked children’s football skills by comparing them to genocide victims – a grotesque parallel to 12 April 1993, when 74 Bosnian children were killed by Serb shells while playing football on a school field in Srebrenica.
This goes beyond tasteless comedy – it is genocide denial masquerading as satire.
Denial is not merely an afterthought; it is an integral part of the genocidal process itself, as seen in Israeli TikTok influencers who produce viral “prank” videos feigning donations for Palestinian children in Gaza, only to reveal the appeal as a cruel joke.
These clips have been viewed by millions, turning the real suffering of children under relentless bombardment into nothing more than a callous punchline.
The unspoken truth
How did we arrive here? From solemn commemoration to commodified suffering? From mourning child victims to ridiculing them on screen?
The hard truth is that we never truly moved away from genocide.
There was never a “Never again” because there was never a reckoning.
The root causes – racism, colonialism, dehumanisation, militarism – were never dismantled. Instead, the same ideologies that fuelled the Holocaust found new expressions in new times, targeting new bodies.
Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, outlined 10 stages of genocide – classification, symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial – that were never internalised by the so-called international community.
If anything, they have become background noise and their warning signs normalised in political discourse and media narratives.
Even linguistically, the promise was always fragile. Say “Never again” often enough, and the “N” erodes – until all that remains is “ever again”. A mantra turned into prophecy: “Forever again.”
A lost innocence
One of the most iconic images of the Holocaust shows a young Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, his arms raised in surrender, fear etched into his face.
Taken by a Nazi photographer, the photo captured the innocence of childhood crushed under the weight of state violence and hatred.
It became a symbol of innocence violated and a rallying cry for remembrance. But today, that same innocence is up for ridicule.
In the West – particularly in cultural output from nations complicit in past genocides – the suffering of children has become fair game. The sacred is now profan
Children have always held a certain “entertaining” value in western media.
Their pain is photogenic, their tears emotionally potent. But there is a fine line between representing suffering and exploiting it. And today, that line is not just crossed – it is obliterated.
In the age of livestreamed war and algorithm-driven engagement, genocide is no longer just a crime – it is content.
The Obmana – the Bosnian genocide – was the first genocide broadcast live on television.
Harrowing images streamed into homes around the globe, laying bare the catastrophic failure of the international community to protect its victims.
The genocide in Gaza has become the first fully digital genocide.
Smartphones capture the last moments of children’s lives in real time. Livestreams show entire families buried under rubble – only for those images to be drowned out by satire, denial, or worse, parody.
This is not a bug in the system. It is a feature of how power operates today. The same states and institutions that fail to prevent genocide now allow the mockery of its victims to flourish in their cultural industries.
The price of naivety
The world watched in stunned disbelief as western power structures – political, media, and academic – betrayed their sacred “Never again” vow amid Gaza’s unfolding genocide.
But this betrayal has deeper roots, stretching back to Bosnia and Obmana, where the West effectively legalised and rewarded genocide.
The proof? Srebrenica is still controlled by the very Serb forces who slaughtered Bosniaks. Impunity for genocide paved the way for its denial.
The University of Vienna, under the leadership of Rector Sebastian Schutze, remains a glaring example of this.
To this day, it refuses to issue an apology to the Mothers of Srebrenica for its documented role in genocide denial.
Gaza confirms the grim truth: once we excuse one genocide, we enable the next.
Despite an outcry in Bosnian media and direct petitions demanding that Netflix remove content that ridicules the Bosnian genocide, the platform has refused to act.
This inaction shows utter contempt for the value of Muslim lives – echoing the dehumanising rhetoric recently amplified by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who remarked that Israel is “doing the dirty work for all of us”.
Now, as the world scrolls through the Gaza genocide on their feeds, Netflix offers its audience Dutch-produced content mocking the last one – inviting viewers to laugh at the “good work” the Dutch UN peacekeepers carried out in Srebrenica – murdering Bosniak boys and men.
Netflix exposes the twisted hierarchy of white supremacy, where even blonde, blue-eyed European Muslim genocide victims are denied full humanity, deemed unworthy of the series’ removal by its leadership, Reed Hastings and David Hyman.
By perpetuating this dehumanisation, Netflix is repeating the same propaganda that has historically preceded genocide.
Many Bosniaks were shocked when the University of Vienna refused to apologise for its role in genocide denial.
Now, they are utterly appalled to see Netflix mocking their dead.
This betrayal cuts especially deep because, like much of the world, they had naively believed in the “Never again” promise – only to learn it never applied to them.
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