The entire Big Idea of bringing down Aleksandar Vučić from power in Serbia by student and civic protesters has come down to right-wing virtue signaling that will cause a watershed event of some faux pas by the government, which will somehow delegitimize the ruling big-tent coalition.
While they are not busy calling out nonsensically irrelevant perceived slights and immoral acts commited by public figures of the ruling coalition, the opponents of the Serbian government recite ad nauseam a laundry list of “betrayals” like a supposed plot or government inaction to give up Kosovo to Albanians (resulting in racial slurs “Aco Šiptare” – Šiptar is a Serbian derogatory word for an Albanian, a local version of the n-word) or the recent protests in “defense” of the General Staff ruin that in the local dominant ideology represents the symbol of the armed struggle against “Western imperialism” and for Serbian “national interests”. The trouble with those interests was that they were an attempt at territorial expansion to create a Greater Serbia. It was no wonder that such endeavours were stopped by Western interference, and rightly so.
Those ideas live on, waiting for Russia and China to “rise up”.
The problem is, Russia came to Ukraine having similar ideas to its Serbian “allies”. And many Russian and North Korean soldiers were dispatched with ammunition made in Serbia, sold to Ukraine.
Of course that the opportunistic critics of Vučić jumped at the chance to cry “treason!”. But it didn’t put a dent in the hold that the Progressives have on power.
Serbs didn’t particularly contribute to the Russian war effort. Sure, there are obituaries here from time to time when a small-time crook or an ultra dies in Ukraine. But don’t think that many an average Serbian nationalist, no matter how loud and proud a Russophile he or she is, will put their money where their mouth is and sacrifice anything for Russia’s imperialist goals. They might be inclined to sacrifice someone else’s health and property for Russia, along the lines of the Serbian schadenfreude “I hope my neighbour’s cow dies” (Da komšiji crkne krava).
When Russians and their allied personnel and equipment get destroyed in Ukraine, Russia’s power fades, and the allure of authoritarianism fades with it.
Most people want security, food on the table, and a sense of accomplishment, either personal or national. The idea in authoritarian societies is that you don’t need democracy and human and civil rights to achieve that, so all kinds of softer or harsher tyrannies are seen as no worse or even superior to democracy.
Many people in Serbia and former Yugoslavia still think fondly of the one-party system of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and its long-gone leader, Josip Broz Tito. They are aware of the oppressive and destitute nature of such a form of government, but rarely mention it, and even if they do, they mostly try to put a positive spin on it as a necessary evil.
The communists of Yugoslavia, Tito in particular, are praised as people who built factories, were respected internationally, provided free and accessible education, maintained law and order, and in general made anime real.
Even the notorious gulags of the former Yugoslavia, the Goli Otok (Barren Island) and its neighbouring female prison Sveti Grgur, an epitome of Titoist repression that operated from 1949 to 1989, are quite often mentioned as a form of punishment that would be desirable for whatever kind of undesirables or “high traitors” that every frustrated Tom, Dick and Harry has in mind that day. “I’D SEND THEM ALL TO THE GOLI OTOK FOR THIS!” is a common cry in both public and private political discourse in Serbia.
Russia and China, and many other totalitarian states, plus alt-right governments and movements like Orban’s, are seen as success stories to be emulated. The general public sees nothing illegitimate or vile about them, or at best, twists its mind in a pretzel to whitewash their nastiness.
But that started to change (slightly, but it did) with the very public Russian defeats in Ukraine. You’d often hear rather conservative folks here say, “I’ve lost all respect for Russia, I used to think they were a Great Power, but look at this mess”.
The infosphere in Serbia took notice of that and basically stopped reporting on the war in Ukraine, other than regurgitating Russian talking points. The media that is not affiliated with the government, like the N1 television, mostly did that out of the silly notion that it would lose the pro-Russian audience. In turn, its increasingly pro-Kremlin stance got them the nickname Z1 by the more liberal Serbs.
PRC and the Russian Federation know full well that their Global South fanclubs look up to them to “stand up to the Collective West”, so they give them small tactical victories from time to time, to be exploited for maximum propaganda effect. For example, the Chinese reconnaissance plane shooting a laser at the German ship in the Red Sea, or the Russian drone provocations all over Europe.
But even places like Serbia know full well not to push their luck when it comes to supporting Russia, because actual monetary aid and trade come from, say, the EU.
Arrest of 3 Russians in a paramilitary training camp in the western part of Serbia along the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina, for organizing combat-tactical training for Moldovan and Romanian citizens, in order to provide more effective physical resistance to Moldovan police officers in case of riots during election day in that country or the Serbian police arresting 11 Serbian nationals accused of “inciting hatred” in France and Germany, including incidents of placing pigs’ heads near mosques and throwing paint at a Holocaust museum, allegedly trained by another suspect, “acting under the instructions of a foreign intelligence service,” are proof enough that eventually all populist “patriotic” organizations and governments, no matter how loudly pro-Russian, can come to Jesus.
“We may be brothers, but our purses are not sisters”, as the Serbian saying goes.
The cries of treason and colluding with the European Union to keep himself in power by offering ammunition that might end up in Ukraine fall on deaf ears when it comes to Vučić’s supporters. Their anti-Western appetites are sated.
Yes, Serbia will smooch will everyone to get what it needs. So did its dearly departed communist Yugoslavia through the Non-Aligned Movement. The post-2000 moderate governments tried to emulate this approach with the four-pillar policy, which designated the European Union, the United States, Russia, and China as the four main pillars of its foreign relations, by the then-president of Serbia, Boris Tadić, leader of the Democratic Party.
The foreign policies are a reflection of domestic policy, and the chief domestic policy of any party is to stay in power. The four pillars didn’t turn out so well for the Democratic Party, now reduced to a slavish appendage of the national-bolshevik student plenums. You can’t please everyone. It didn’t bring about Greatness, Food, nor Security – ergo, Democrats were deemed incompetent by mostly their own, more pro-European electorate.
The fact that any Serbian blue-collar or farmer conservative worth their salt will throw a bunch of expletives at the Russian ambassador for meddling in Serbian internal affairs or asking that no Serbian ammo gets shipped to Ukraine should be embraced by the opposition parties.
Serbianism 