The modern state service is citizens. Therefore, citizens do not exist because there is a state, but the state exists to serve the citizens. Citizens are the "owners" of the state who have given elected representatives (officials) a mandate to govern the country on their behalf. To that extent, the presidents of the state, the prime minister, Speaker of the Assembly, should work in the public interest and in the service of citizens, i.e. take care of the implementation and preservation of the constitutional order and law. On the other hand, those who go beyond the legal framework are under the attack of the law.
Even Plato's most stupid idea, namely the idea that philosophers should be the rulers of the state, went in that direction: since they know the most, Plato believed, philosophers should rule society. How ingenious this idea is is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that Plato, the philosopher - in an attempt to create a philosophical state - ended up as a slave in some market, so his friends barely bought him out and saved his life.
Photo: Tanjug / Ana PaunkovićMaja Gojković and Đuro Macut at the SNS pre-election rally for the 2026 local elections in the "Arena"
However, it is not the worst. Philosophers, namely, often have excellent ideas, the only thing is that sometimes they have no connection with reality, so they tend not to adapt ideas to reality, but to tailor reality to fit ideas. And then all hell breaks loose. Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Giste, then Comrades Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao Tse (let's stop at this esteemed society), were very attached to philosophical ideas, so, trying to implement them, they killed more people than died in wars.
Philosophers Zoran Đinđić, Tomaš Masarik, or Edvard Beneš are exceptions only because they stopped being philosophers when they entered politics. What remained of philosophy was the skill of thinking, but not the hard implementation of philosophical ideas.
Criminalizing oneself
But, as we said, even Plato's wonderful idea that philosophers govern society was guided by the idea of respecting the law. There is no state without laws and without those who take care of the implementation and preservation of laws.
Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party, however, went a step further: they did declare themselves a ruling caste - just as Plato wanted to declare philosophers a special group - but they introduced a surprising novelty in the art of managing society: they decided not to pay attention to laws, but only to themselves. In this way, they managed to do what was rarely seen in history: they criminalized themselves.
Photo: Tanjug Ana PaunkovićAna Brnabić and Marko Čadež in the service of the Serbian Progressive Party
So things stand like this. Aleksandar Vučić and his party have identified themselves with the state, and they declare any criticism of their rule as an attack on the state, the constitutional order and the president himself.
It is not, of course, a new technique of deceiving the target. Every authoritarian order uses a matrix: if you touch us, the leaders, the legitimately and legally elected representatives of the majority (while Vučić and his colleagues did not organize any legal elections, which means that their rule is not legitimate, but rests on terror and violence), you have touched the state and the order.
Mafia state
Let's leave aside even the circumstance that the modern state has legalized public criticism of the government in the form of the opposition, because it has been shown that precisely such a balance of forces best preserves the freedom of a society. Something even worse is at work here: Vučić and the SNS arbitrarily, joyfully, profitably, without caring for the public interest, have, therefore, brought themselves out of order, and now rule not on the basis of the law, but on the basis of the will of the first among them, therefore arbitrarily, with violence and terror against the citizens.
Robbery is undisguised and permitted. Not to mention lies. And the order that is established within the already existing order, and that order that is not based on written laws, but on an oath (omerta) and unconditional loyalty to the leader, cannot be called anything else until mafia.
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