Twenty-six years after the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia that ended the Kosovo War, the resentment of Serbian society about the audacity of the “imperialist West” to intervene in what most people here consider a legitimate cause of upholding the Serbian world project is one of the bases for Serbia’s grievance-based politics.
Following the news that the development of Jared Kushner’s Belgrade property is on hold after the arrest of the cultural heritage official accused of forging the necessary documents, here is her clueless reaction to it:
Out MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow gleefully mocked Donald Trump for his latest scandal involving Serbian real estate, Jared Kushner, and a forged document.
Maddow explained to viewers that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is essentially that country’s “version of Donald Trump” and that massive protests have swept the country in an attempt to oust him.
No, he isn’t. “Anything I don’t like is Trump” is just another version of the childish reductio ad Hitlerum. But everyone seems to be reading into stuff that they like or dislike into faraway events displayed on social media, like this X user who seems to think that these are anti-capitalist events.
A STUNNING HUMAN TIDE in Serbia and Belgrade against BlackRock!
The world rises up against globalism and its 2030 Agenda
Guess dreams do come true, if you’re vacuous enough to make up your own version of events and head to Twitter. In the post-truth era, only the narrative counts, and how many brownie points someone gets when people hit that like button. Foreign commentators like Rachel Maddow and Timothy Snyder, just to name a few, who come in support of the supposed anti-authoritarian, anti-corruption protests in Serbia, are not doing us any favors by basing their opinions on wishful thinking and second-hand information.
Here’s what the real purpose of keeping the scars of long-gone Yugoslav Wars is:
Westsplaining continues, nonetheless:
Well, the Trump and Kushner families have been vying to build Europe’s first Trump Tower at the site of what Maddow called “the Serbian equivalent of Mt. Rushmore.” The historic landmark in Belgrade is the site of a NATO bombing that took place more than two decades ago. The wrecked building remains in the spot and serves as a national heritage site and memorial.
On this day 26 years ago, during the NATO aggression, the General Staff was bombed for the second time. The General Staff remains! It remains as a cultural monument, as a symbol, as a reminder. The history and suffering of a country are not for sale! Memory is not for sale! The General Staff is not for sale!
Does that bombed-out ruin in downtown Belgrade look like Mt. Rushmore to you, Rachel? And what kind of an idiotic society keeps it in the middle of a crowded settlement as a “reminder”?
Well, it keeps it there so it can have a “reminder”, an eternal scarecrow, of how “Western imperialists bombed us” as a part of the suffering culture and martyrdom cults pervasive in failed states like Serbia.
You know we really need that one special place to gather once a year and complain about how NATO bombed us. You gotta keep the narrative of Serbian victimhood alive. Russian ultras and football hooligans are also invited. Notice the Ministry of Defence banner displayed. Such culture, much heritage.
This is what a Serbian far-right supporter would say word for word, regardless of whether it’s a pro-government supporter or a protestor.
There are better ways to be informed about issues like this than relying on clueless pundits and agency news. The article Media propaganda vs public dialogue: the spatial memorialisation of conflict in Belgrade after the 1999 NATO bombing by Aleksandar Staničić sheds much better light on the issue of dealing with “…deep scars in its urban environment. The effort to reconstruct these damaged buildings, therefore, poses deeper questions about understanding the past, facing unpleasant truths, and setting the course for an uncertain future. This article will illuminate those multifarious processes by examining the role of media propaganda and public dialogue in the reconstruction of two structures in Belgrade that were damaged during the 1999 NATO bombing. Both buildings, the Avala Tower and the television headquarters on Aberdareva Street, were in use by the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS). In a fragmented society that is still struggling to make sense of these difficult issues, I argue that state-controlled media has a decisive influence on steering public debate, creating the false image of social consensus, and weighing in on architectural design, while downplaying the role of architects.“
It is worth mentioning that the narrative of Serbian right-wing agitprop refers to the NATO bombing, officially called “Operation Allied Force”, as the “Operation Merciful Angel”. The Milosevic’s propaganda machinery of that time concocted a story that the codename for the intervention against Yugoslavia was “Merciful Angel” to present the Western leaders and the media of NATO countries as cynical killers. A common person in Serbia will almost always refer to bombing as the Merciful Angel to affirm his or her patriotic credentials.
26 years later, the ruins of the Serbian Broadcasting Service, RTS building in Aberdareva Street in Belgrade, might be removed. “General Director of RTS, Dragan Bujošević, asked the Faculty of Civil Engineering to determine the condition of the Public Service building in Aberdareva and the possibility of its reconstruction. In the report prepared by that faculty, it is stated that the largest part of the wing of the building, previously destroyed and damaged during the bombing in 1999, needs to be removed.”, N1 reports.
What say you, investigative journos, is this also a Trump conspiracy?
Back to Rachel. Maddow didn’t hold back on the praise for my compatriots defending their heritage:
“Amid the just unrelenting, ever-increasing, ever-broadening, totally persistent, creative, totally unafraid pressure campaign from that country’s citizens, who have turned out into the street again and again and again, this whole mess is all now falling apart.”
By creative, totally unafraid chanting “Vučić, you faggot”.
Some Roman salutes in the style of Elon Musk can be seen on this one:
Here’s a confirmation from a different Serbian-speaking source for the homophobic and nationalist sentiment that permeates the protests, if you think I’m biased.
Yay, homophobia! But it’s all for a greater cause, right, Rachel?
Serbianism 
“In the post-truth era, only the narrative counts, and how many brownie points someone gets when people hit that like button.”
Yes. That is eminently quotable.
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Why, thank you. So let’s be outrageous and acknowledge reality so we can deal with it, instead of shaping reality into narratives, popularity and conformism be damned.
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Comparing the General Staff Building in Belgrade to Mount Rushmore (also known as the ‘Shrine of Democracy’) is clearly an absurd and misleading comparison. However, referring to the ruins as the ‘Shrine of Victimhood’, or more precisely, drawing parallels with the Confederate monuments, would completely undermine the pun intended by the MSNBC news commentator aimed at Trump.
Yet I see two intertwined issues discussed in your article.
Firstly, the building itself has architectural value. It was built by Nikola Dobrović, a leading interwar and postwar architect, who is (if I understand correctly) the main author of the Novi Beograd city extension, as well as buildings in Prague and Dubrovnik. For most people, the symbolism of the General Staff Building is clearly victimhood. According to your description, the far/extreme right is the most visible group in the media.
Secondly, what is your opinion of the protesters – and the groups that supported them initially and still support them now? Perhaps you have already written about it and I have not read the right article. To me, it seems natural that any protest against a long-term authoritarian government would unite forces that would otherwise not cooperate. Thinking about Hungary, the leader of the protests for some time was the slightly mainstreamed far-right Jobbik party. Now it is TISZA, led by the former FIDESZ Magyar. In a far-right-dominated country, it seems to me that protests can only come from a large enough right-wing opposition that cannot really be criticised for being traitors. But I wonder if it’s natural, as in communist Poland, that the critique could only come from system-glorified leftist worker unions?
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1. The building’s architectural value is not even of secondary importance in the discourse surrounding it. Everything centered on the narrative of “resistance” – to Vučić, NATO, the US business interests, you name it, which is the bread and butter of the local right wing. The sale was stopped (I wrote about it) and there is a court case now over the forged documents produced by government officials that was to facilitate it, but unfortunately, this is NOT a win for brighter future of Serbia. The non-government media and commentariat seems to placed its bets on the far-right to unseat the Progressives, and keep doubling down on that bad bet.
2. Not flattering. I did write extensively as to why the different flavor of populist parochialism and anti-corruption demagoguery (which is no different than the one offered by the ruling coalition for four decades now) that the student popular front is pursuing is both neither an answer for our problems nor it will be able to unseat the ruling coalition, because it won’t work. This is the opposite of TISZA’s meteoric rise in popularity. Pluralist approach would be better, as evidenced by the local elections last Sunday.
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Thanks for your replies.
Sure. It is clear to me that architectural value is relevant to maximally 1% of voters. Yet I wanted to point out, it is there. Also – now I understand better what you mean by betting of non-gov media on the far right. That will definitely now work. Even in Hungary Jobbik seemed as the biggest opposition when it tried to get less radical. I assume there is no similar change in Serbian far-right?
Thanks for elaborating. You wrote: „Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the Serbian political discourse, the best opposition results were achieved in municipalities that had the most cohesive joint electoral lists of the centrist opposition and the student movement, such as the one in Bor. On the other hand, Kladovo and Smederevska Palanka, where the divisive tactics of the student movement even prompted their sympathisers to make public calls to stop driving a wedge between them and the opposition parties, had the worst results.“ That sounds like the student movement worked when it cooperated with others – while mostly it tried to distance itself even from the opposition parties, which was not effective?
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My pleasure and thank you for the feedback.
It does work best when it cooperates with established opposition parties and tones down on the nationalist rhetoric. The recent protests after the unexplained death of a female student in front of the Philosophy Faculty in downtown Belgrade created a public exposure of the Belgrade university rector Vladan Đokić as the front-man might indicate that someone somewhere in the student popular front is getting the message. Đokić doesn’t foam at the mouth spouting nationalist vitriol (unlike many during the protests) and is genuinely a tactful person. Going full right was not the answer – it never was. Trouble is that the student movement has already created much bad blood with people of various political persuasions left of them – it might be too late for a change.
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I see. Thanks for more details. I am trying to follow how democracy in post-communist countries is doing – yet for Serbia I do not see that much information – thus your analysis is very valuable for me. Thank you for sharing it!
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Well, information about Serbia, in English is…there, but all over the place. The rather clueless and manipulative Serbian media aren’t much help to outsiders, while specialized blogs and portals are easy to miss. I have the links page here to places that are helpful to foreign people to get a grasp of this country.
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