My people, is it possible: Fans as role models for society

In order to write about Partizan, I have to say something about myself - people, I'm a star player. However, there are moments - true, very rare - when both red and white and black and white fade. One of those moments is taking place right now, and Dragan Bjelogrlić rightly calls it "Spirit of Prtiznov Arena". The reader knows: it is an unprecedented attendance and an even more fascinating atmosphere during the matches of this team in the Euroleague.

Of course, none of that would happen without it Željko Obradović and his team, but the real heroes are the audience. In short: there is singing, shouting and cheering in the Arena, but there are no fights, racism, chauvinist insults and similar bullshit, so characteristic of domestic sports. Namely, through those matches, Serbia acts as a normal country that possesses something that makes it a European phenomenon.

Does it really matter? Somewhere it wouldn't be, but here it is. Quite simply, Serbia is a country where generations are growing up who have never seen a decent political debate on national frequencies, nor news without starting with "The President of the Republic Aleksandar Vučić today is (write at will)..."

Likewise, there is no responsibility for the holders of power. A current example is provided by the mayor of Belgrade. Although his chief of staff is Nenad Milanović filmed offering to rig the tender to the representatives of the Turkish company Kentkart, Aleksandar Šapić, like the actor of so many regime hogwashes, coldly addresses the public with two famous Vučić words - "so what?"

And why not? Society has been steeped in arrogance, personal insults, labeling, hyper-emotional reality rhetoric, aggression, defamation and vulgar violence from positions of power for a decade and a half. It's like that everywhere from the top of the country to the market stall. No matter how much I know that nothing from this and the previous paragraph is normal, people have long ago googled it and got used to this kind of reality.

That's why I'm going back to Partizan. I do not believe in the reconciliation of gypsies and gravediggers, partisans and Chetniks, leftists and rightists, and similar hollow slogans - such "national unity", history teaches, is always and everywhere the road to hell. But what I believe in is that Serbia, with all its differences, can become a normal and democratic European country. That's why I'm not very interested in what Obradović and the team will do in the Euroleague in relation to the possibility of spreading Bjelogrlic's good spirit outside the Arena. Normality has to start somewhere, even in the stands.