Today is the second anniversary of the Novi Sad, Serbia, canopy collapse, and an entire mythology about the supposed anti-corruption movement it sparked is now set in stone.
It is getting the Student List into trouble.
The narrative that formed immediately is the same narrative that we have had since the 1980s – evil Westerners who want to subdue Serbia, working through their secretly Albanian puppet government, and the assorted “bad Serbs” are to blame for The Worst Thing Ever™. We had plenty of those Worst Things.
Similar stories are spun around the “unjust and unprovoked” NATO bombing, “unjust and unprovoked” sanctions against Serbia in the 1990s, and the lost wars, in which Serbia officially didn’t participate, unless folks proud of being veterans of the Yugoslav Wars want to don a red beret and stand at attention at public gatherings, like those gentlemen forming a line in front of the Novi Sad train station.
A Chinese canopy collapses, and the Suffering Serbian People, The Smartest and Most Beautiful Nation In The World, blame the EU. EEEE-UUUUU, WEEEEE-YOOOOO! Like they always did. The problematic part is that the EU and its member states are the chief financial aid donors to Serbia. This country would be in an even worse shape if it hadn’t been for foreign aid and trade.
So when a Student List wins the elections, promising the same foreign policy of aligning with Russia and China so they can reclaim Kosovo, and criticizing the Artist Known As Vučić for not bringing enough Church and Tradition into our lives, it does raise some eyebrows in Brussels.
So now, the Student List, after a storm of interviews to Russian media banned in that same EU, where they kept reiterating how they are grateful to Russia (for what, exactly?), that there will be no sanctions, that Russia is undoubtedly winning, and the rest of the repertoire of the same propaganda that Vučić’s government spouted, is announcing a referendum on important issues like the sanctions against Russia and whether or not we want to join the EU. All the while expecting more financial aid, as if the EU owes us something.
Worst of all, the Student Ticket plays dumb, claiming that the EU accession process is not explained well, and The Most Intelligent People In The World (Serbs) don’t understand what the EU means. That’s rich, coming from the people who produced as much anti-EU bile as Vučić’s government did.
And here we are now, stuck with the next generation of anti-corruption demagogues and vatniks, dreaming of Greater Serbia, while asking for the “decadent” EU to foot the bill (which isn’t happening). It should be noted that the EU withheld funds from Orban’s Hungary when it started being silly.
This did have an interesting international side effect: it did confirm that many people in developed countries think with their phones instead of their brains.
Yes, super-wonderful.
Prof. Dr. Zoran Stojiljković, a future MP from the “Student Ticket”, speaking to RT Balkans: “Serbia has no interest in imposing sanctions on Russia now, when peace negotiations have been announced…It’s like joining the Chetniks in 1945 [losing side]. Completely illogical.”
The Western audience was presented with an image of a youth grassroots movement, leaderless and nominating people presented as experts.
So how did Serbia, that technological powerhouse, manage to produce an anti-corruption, pro-Russian movement of such epically cerebral proportions, while at the same time suffering under the brutal dictatorship of Ursula von der Leyen’s puppet Vučić? The same way it produced the rest of its Potemkin’s villages – it concocted a story about it, supported by clueless foreign cheerleaders.
I like you guys, go team (yes, even Djokić…kinda). But copy-paste sloganism will be the death of us all. Vučić became an MP in 1993, this ain’t his first rodeo, and there has been no personality cult in Serbia ever since Tito died.
The legacy media were even worse.
You know who called Vučuć names like “pussylips”, “big mouth,” and such? His voters, mostly. They didn’t hold any respect for him at all. Sure, there were a small number of retired or old folks who cried when he resigned, but they are more of a caricature of dementia than a rule.
So what is the entity the planet refers to as “Vučić” (for, in the imagination of the infosphere, it was never an ideology, it’s just a personal matter of a few Bad People) up to, anyway? Same as always, being a political animal through and through.
No longer a Supreme Commander, but a Leader of the Opposition, vowing to resist the “revolutionary terror”. The media affiliated with the ousted Progressives (and there are plenty of those) is now blasting a non-stop victimhood narrative about “being persecuted“.
They are used to being “persecuted”. The Suffering Serbian People™ was born persecuted. Luckily, the smartest parliament in the world we just elected will fight against the persecution of Serbs. And pray, like a lot.
The conventional wisdom about what the “brainiest parliament” of Serbia will achieve: dismantle the clientelist/criminal network associated with the ancien régime, and presto, Serbian nationalism is gone, the region achieves World Peace™, and the EU guaranteed for all.
Folks become alt/far-right because of money, right? Evil Wizards like Vučić, under the control of the Even More Evil Wizards in Putinland, go around and bribe everyone with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Not because someone holds such values, oh no. Nationalists and authoritarians are uneducated, of course, they can be defeated by casting PhD rays at them.
So professors intend to keep it stable.
“Our plan is to stabilize and develop the country, not to destabilize it with some abrupt change of course on foreign policy,” Oliver Toskovic, a psychology professor and future member of parliament (Student List), told DW in an article, “Serbia after Vucic: The winners are losing patience”. “[Student Ticket] is focused on making changes in domestic politics and wants to advance European Union accession talks by implementing real reforms. The List opposes sanctions on Russia and the recognition of Kosovo – positions that almost the entire population of Serbia agrees with.”
Yeah, like totally, we can’t destabilize Serbia, the green oasis of Europe. We have to preserve this pearl of outdoor tourism and quality food for Our Children(TM) to reap its boon, and welcome, with open arms, all those foreign tourists rushing to enjoy Serbia’s unspoiled nature.
“The estimated health bill of pollution emitted by the coal power plants in Serbia in 2020 is 2,326 deaths, 666,939 workdays lost, and EUR 5.16 billion.” – https://caneurope.org/publications/busting-the-coal-myth-serbia/
So why would anyone want a layer of EU oversight over such beauty like the Serbian state-owned coal industry and its strip mines, or the Chinese-owned copper mines and ironworks, which totally don’t produce pollution, but instead emit anointed perfumes of the blessed St. Sava Orthodoxy?
DW: “Where Vucic would frequently take aim at Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading representatives of the new List have promised better relationships with Serbia’s neighbors and a reduction in tensions.”
Yeah, Students are totes different, my dudes.
Radomir Saičić of the Most Wonderful Students: “Speaking about relations between Serbia and Republika Srpska, Saičić emphasized that they are connected by a common people and special ties, as well as obligations that, as he said, go beyond legal frameworks. ‘We are the same people, just like our brothers in the Republika Srpska. We are divided by some border that is fictitious and geometric. We are the guarantor of the Dayton Agreement; we also have an Agreement on Special and Parallel Relations with them, and we stand honorably behind that…which is a much greater obligation for us than a legal one’, said Saičić.”, SAFF Portal reports.
There is no such thing as a non-corrupt, competent pro-Russian, pro-Chinese society and a government it produces. There will be no “fight against corruption” here, just as there wasn’t during Vučić’s tenure. This place will continue to deteriorate through compounded effects of pollution, an elderly, sickly population, and ludicrous incompetence. Sending aid to Serbia is like sending aid to Belarus.
Stop wasting your time, for the Serbian people and the political class they created will again reap the consequences of asking for the impossible things and getting BRICS per capita in the process.
But at least, national unity has been achieved (“sabornost”), not just in matters of Serbia’s foreign policy.
Also published on Substack.
