Thompson's concert in Zagreb spontaneously imposed a comparison of the public behavior of Croatian and Serbian youth. Thompson is an automatic rifle and has long been a euphoric mass symbol of Croatian youth, mostly because of the nickname of a favorite singer. Admittedly, Vučić's teacher Šešelj was also applauded when he said: "When a bullet from a 'Thompson' hits a Croat, both his eyes pop out." In both cases, the hope centered around the noun Thompson is a symbol of carving an ethnically pure state with a bullet. In the automatic device, mountain liberation and salon urban patriotism are combined. Identity and market. In the repressive tolerance of modern capitalism, the layers of chauvinism die like sinkholes, only to erupt anew with all their force. They are permanent and cumulative, pro-fascist and confessional, authoritarian and plural.
How much authentic generational resistance is in them?
WINNERS AND LOSERS
In Serbia, the course of the generational sinkhole is different from Croatia. This is only partly because Croatia acquired a new victorious political generation in the 1990s, while Serbia was deprived of the same. More important is the durability of the process. Since independence, Croatia has been in a political hangover, in the mix of triumph that breeds self-confident blindness. In contrast to triumph, as a rule, critical experience is drawn from defeat. A loser sees mistakes more acutely than an enthusiastic winner. This, however, is not observed with the Serbian progressive regime, which opposes the Croatian military triumph (in the absence of its own) with unsanctified Serbian victims. The proud mythologized defeat of Kosovo and the persecution of the Serbs in the "Storm" are seen as parts of an incessant historical sacrifice that should be used politically as symbolic capital. At the same time, the analysis of the victims does not favor the pathos of the myth.
Defeat is sometimes an inspiration for a rematch, and sometimes it is a passive commemorative lament. The order of not forgetting, the order of Christian forgiveness, the order of threat. The authorities are imaginatively mounting layers of blind patriotism. As a whole, the unceasing Serbian-Croatian civil war of memory has long been backward and explosive.
The resistance of Serbian students, however, is qualitatively different from the right-wing extremist machine symbol of blind patriotism mentioned in the title. It differs from the progressive, disguised radical and the concert Zagreb. Student anger has changed direction, it is not ethnic but civil. It is not aimed outward like the Zagreb Thompsons, but towards its own corrupt government. In Serbia, the regime switched to a police counter-offensive, the Croatian state supports the pro-Ustasha mass hyliasm of the youth. If the emotions of the student protest were similar to the Croatian ones, the regime would not have treated them as subversive. It is likely that the progressive Thompsons would rally together with them about the political economy of Serbian blood. But they did not meet with an ethnomoralist response. Why?
OLD AND YOUNG
Not only because the Croatian patriots went home happy, and Serbia still has no hangover from the blockade. The question is where there is generation, that is, the unity of intrusion and rupture. In Serbia, the effort of young people for change is impressive. An authentic generational experience was created, that is, a situation where the experience of the elderly does not help. The Croatian choir is led by a generation of young people who are proud of the liberating experience of their elders. The self-descriptions of young and old patriots are not irreconcilable. Their necessarily different experiences and expectations homogenize the trivial ethnic and prevent the fruitful generationalization of youth resistance. In other words, nationalism neutralizes generations.
Ustašoid Perković is a secondary link. For a large part of Croatian youth, the singer is a symbol of anti-anti-fascism. While Serbian students stepped forward and dared to take the risk of a new civil resistance, Croatian youth are stepping back because they are unable to get out of the vicious circle of sacral ethnic. In Serbia, there is a new rebellious set of meaning on the streets, in Croatia there is no devaluing of the experience of the elderly or contempt for their caution, which is the essence of generationalism. That is why contemporary Serbian and Croatian generational communities are contradictory. Serbian students overstepped ethnic boundaries, Croatian youth was deeply moved by Bojna Čavoglava's anthem. The explosion of new hope was suppressed because the unlived war experience was accepted. The second has not changed for a long time, the majority is against Yugoslavia and the Serbs. Because they have been unchanged "children of Art Nouveau" for thirty years, the Thompsons are not an authentic generation. But somewhere in us there is a flame of ethnic battles. Stone genes are tied to God and nation. From Tuđman to Plenković. Fasting patriots are in the minority. Thompson is just a flashy media joint. More precisely, it is about the anti-generation of young people deprived of a breakup and a new beginning. There is no discontinuity with 1995 and no devaluing of the experience of the elderly despite the age difference between the cohort of volunteers and their descendants. At the Zagreb Hippodrome, the anti-generational container of wartime liberation memory, now filled with younger newcomers, did not weaken but boiled over.
In contrast to them, students in Serbia have shown that they are the personnel for the change of generations. The Other has changed, the structure of hope has been changed, the exceeding of what is permitted and ideologically desirable is visible. In Serbia, there is no heroic generation or mobile pathos of marching bands. But that's why heroic emphasis is abundantly used by an unbalanced president. While non-heroic consumer generations predominate in the West: Jeans, Golf, SMS, heroic ones are still in the region. Mostly in Croatia and Kosovo. Heroes are not only liberators, but all those who suffered from the Yugoslav yoke.
Only a generation of winners can be heroic. The defeated do not have it. In Croatia, heroization has affected age cohorts of all ages. As a metaphor, Thompson rhythmically maintains an exclusive ecstatic experience, a cross-generational combination of liberation experience and hope for an ethnically pure state. Perković, of course, did not set the civil war to music, but the exclusive struggle for national independence. It clericalizes the youth with frontier Catholicism. That's why the Pope accepted him. But in order for this struggle not to remain an episode, it needs to be grounded historically. Finding an antecedent in the past means building on the NDH. Celebrating the Ustasha is not an insolent provocation but a necessary historical foundation of state independence.
And Tuđman leaned on the same historical section. This history is, admittedly, inglorious, but it is much needed history. It confirms that the independent Croatian state is not from yesterday. That's why the "Storm" is not an episode, but a continuity of national sacrifice for sovereignty. State independence needs to be founded historically, even if fascism was its support. NDH is not a bitter pill but a proud part of Croatian sovereignty. "Ready for Home" is not defiance but a historical step. There is no identity without continuity, even from Pavelić to HDZ. Deprived of NDH, "Storm" would have remained an accidental triumph and the fortune of war, and not part of a planned historical project. In order for its actors to remain not only a heroic but also a historical generation, it is necessary, in addition to historians, to Thompson.
Reminiscent of the Ustashas in terms of planning, it confirms "Oluja" as the link of a cross-generational Croatian alliance of all ages. And the battle bond of long historical processes that should be set to music and attract young people. We are not from yesterday, nor from 1995, but from 1941. That's why mass singing with Thompson is not only an unforgettable celebration of the conquest of Knin, but a confirmation of a deep and invincible historical project, a combination of a small personal and a large official Croatian history. And there is the anti-generational spell. There is no authentic generational breakthrough. Less important is that the ecstatic community of liberation memory centered around the Homeland War is full of self-attribution and fabrication. More important is historical continuity, foundation in the past, even in the Ustasha state. The goal is for those who do not remember the wars to join the glorious liberating continuity with musical ecstasy. That's why the answer "ready" is not a symbol of defiance but of the desire to be a part of history. But what kind?
"THE WORLD IS THE PLACE OF HEROES, AND WHERE ARE WE GOING"
Croatia's heroic ethnic anti-generationalism, which stifles the new breakthroughs of young people, is not unique on the whole. All post-socialist generations (1990ers) are part of the global European restorative generation carried by anti-communism, nationalism and religion. In Serbia, a similar nationalist young generation of incursions and disruptions was launched in the XNUMXs, but there was no war victory to irrationally and permanently heroize it. Luckily or unluckily? Be that as it may, the current student protest is not carried by a heroic, consumer or media generation, but by an authentically new political one that has freed itself from ethnic exclusivism and chauvinism. Its new beginning is not an armed victory but the fall of the canopy, the explosive cumulative point of a long civil discontent with corruption and the media blockade of the government. Contrary to the students, the regime in Serbia persistently heroizes the civil war of memory with the environment and, similar to the Croatian one, records short wars and unsanctified victims as glorious pages of national history, rather than long periods of peace. In the inflation of constructed heroizations, students in Serbia repeated Brecht's question: "The world is the place where heroes live, but where will we go?"
