The X account of Milo Lompar, one of the prominent faces of the student protests in Serbia and a regular speaker at their rallies, had this to share after Ratko Mladić’s death.
The problem with the Serbian student movement isn’t just that they are just as much Serbian nationalists as the ruling Progressives – they are dumb as a rock, as well.
Nationalist voters already have the ruling Progressives to vote for, plus the Socialist Party of Slobodan Milošević (Vučić’s government member), Radicals of Vojislav Šešelj (also convicted in ICTY), plus a wide variety of established opposition alt-right, like the New DSS, whose position on Mladić is that “[he] had led the struggle for the freedom of the Serb people” and “that he would not be forgotten.”
No need for student nationalist-bolsheviks and recycled folks like Lompar, who was a member of the far-right Dveri movement’s political council.
This isn’t our first rodeo. In the election cycle after the COVID lockdown, pretty much the same people who are now pushing the idea that only the students can defeat Vučić were hyping up the “Enough is enough” anti-EU antivaxxers, later dubbed the “Sovereignists” as a coalition, the Oathtakers and Dveri as “the only serious opposition to Vučić”.
Guess what? Oathtakers joined the ruling coalition after failing to cross the 3 percent electoral treshold, “Enough is enough/Sovereignists” and Dveri are out of parliament now, but they are latching on to the student movement, and the same marketing agencies/think tanks and media are maintaining the notion that the only acceptable option is now the student ticket, based on the assumption that Serbian people only accept nationalist, parochial revanchism as an acceptable ideology.
Welp, eventually so many right-wing crocodiles can’t fit in a small electoral pond. And guess to whom the ruling coalition lost ground during the last two elections? To the centrist opposition, branded by the alt-right opposition and the student ticket as “Western puppets, traitors, Vučić’s loyal opposition,” etc. Take a wild guess how the student list will fare at the coming elections.
Students will pretty much end up like their predecessors from Dveri and “Enough is enough” (among others), and other minor alt-righters that comprise the student movement. They won’t magically stop being a failure, this isn’t a referendum, and the situation in Serbia is NOT “life or death”, so no need for radicalism.
[CAPTION: “Powdered Šešelj – sweet transition” political satire (Facebook)]
Serbianism 