Serbia is eternal as long as its children are faithful to her – a patriotic slogan, first used by the Serbian Cultural Club, founded in 1937 by a group of influential Serbian intellectuals
The student and civic protesters, who represent the third, latest manifestation of Serbian alt-right populist sentiment, following the one that gave rise to Slobodan Milošević in the late 1980s during the Yogurt Revolution and the second one that returned Aleksandar Vučić to power in 2012, are now facing a shortage of baton fodder.
When the Serbian Radical Party and its far-right tagalongs, the predecessors of the present ruling big tent coalition, held riots in defense of war criminals, attacked Pride Day parades, and looted Belgrade’s stores in an event known colloquially as “Kosovo for sneakers” (Kosovo za patike), named that way because supposedly hyper-patriotic defenders of Kosovo robbed every expensive shoe store in Belgrade they could find in their path after clashing with the police, there was no shortage of willing participants. It was a socially acceptable thing to do, because everyone was looking for excuses for those poor unfortunate souls, “victims of unjust transition”, “poisoned by propaganda” who “suffered throughout life” so they needed a new pair of Nikes and a Givenchy cologne.
Serbia will be eternal, as long as there is a pool of people willing to work in Serbian conditions for Serbian paychecks, often 48 or 60 hours a week.
Serbia will be eternal as long as there is a pool of people ready to go to wars to “liberate” Serbian speakers in the Serbian World.
Serbia will be eternal as long as there is a pool of people ready to join the next riot to save war criminal Ratko Mladić from well-deserved justice.
These days, such enthusiasm seems to be gone when a new generation of old washed-up activists like Aleksandar Kavčić, Ratibor Trivunac (a convicted felon, by the way), and Nemanja Šarović are calling to action.
If the anti-government demonstrations were truly overwhelmingly popular, then the security forces would have been overpowered by now, as they were on October 5th, 2000, when Milošević was ousted. But this time, the protesters did their darndest to chase away any possible ally. In their mind, the moderate opposition parties are corrupt pro-EU traitors that deservedly got ousted in 2012 for “selling out Serbian national interests” and “ruining the country”. Yeah, they sure ruined that Garden of Eden that Vučić left them in 2000 after a series of wars.
The majority of the opposition-minded citizenry received the message loud and clear – stay away from student fanatics.
Especially when they are wearing Serbian and Russian far-right paraphernalia, like Mr. Tomić from the Instagram video.
Another bright idea was to get rid of any opposition competition. From online troll army throwing racial slurs at Marinika Tepić from the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), calling her “Romanian scum” (she’s an ethnic Romanian, nee Chobanu), to making a petition for the opposition parties to abstain from the election.
It was supposed to be a slam dunk. But it failed. The motley crew of far-right and far-left yahoos buzzing around the student protesters, supported by the rather clueless and manipulative Serbian media and social media users, has found a myriad of imaginary reasons as to why this is all a failure so far.
One of the things it created is the notion of the “neutrals”, the supposedly bought off, cowardly, stupid, and otherwise worthless people who didn’t join the magnificence of the “beautiful, flawless, untarnished students” and their “beautiful, flawless, untarnished” older confederates, like the ones that appeared at the Vidovdan protest, led by Milo Lompar, a university proffesor known for being an apologist of WW2 Nazi collaborators or the useless war veterans strolling their stomachs around, calling themselves the “iron cavarly”.
The media and the Serbian conventional wisdom offered a panacea for such disobedience – strike fear into their treasonous hearts by launching a barrage of insults and impotent threats, both in person, but more often online, safe behind their screens. And blame everything on the EU, that will show ’em.
Protesters in Požarevac heckling the people sitting in caffe venues for not joining them:
Way before the recent wave of protests started after a Chinese-reconstructed canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, the Serbian public discourse had already pushed the line that “all politicians, both the government and the opposition, are the same, they serve the EU interests, they are corrupt and only care about getting elected”.
The onlookers, like the ones in the X post, got the message loud and clear and thought to themselves, “If everyone dealing in politics is the same, that means you’re also corrupt, you also care only about getting elected, you will also serve EU interests”.
Go figure, short-sighted cynicism backfires.
To paraphrase Yulia Latynina and her comments about possible support to the likes of late Eduard Limonov as a potential replacement for Putin, I also won’t risk getting my bones broken at a protest just so I could switch the nationalist kakistocracy and lawlessness of the Serbian Progressive Party with the nationalist kakistocracy and lawlessness of the student list.
Meanwhile, reality strikes back with the politicians from the moderate opposition parties standing with the protestors during the latest wave of protests. And they have cracked heads to prove it.
Serbianism 