The meeting on May 23, 2026 at Slavija is more important than the one on March 15, 2025 at the same place: two days ago, on May 23, quantity turned into quality. The gathering of March 15 last year (as Nemanja Rujević already noted) was the result of inertia, the rebellion was in full swing, students wrote their blood groups and phone numbers on their skin, the citizens, filled with anger, were ready for anything, the regime was disillusioned and dangerous (they only came up with sound cannon and it returned to the middle of their foreheads). Hence the understandable disappointment of not a small number of citizens that "nothing happened" that day. (On the contrary, on that 15th of March the regime fell and since then we have been witnessing the rotting of the corpse. To remind you, this is a game for life and impatience is not a good ally.)
Two days ago, however, on May 23, students and citizens met at Slavija peacefully, aware of their strength. And they came to show it off. To himself and to the bloody regime. This is precisely the quality that has grown out of sheer numbers.
The number is important.
In one of his famous texts, Slavoj Žižek asked himself at what moment does quantity, number, turn into quality, into a property that possesses essence? At what point, with which grain, does a pile of sand become something else? In other words: what event transforms a large number of people (multitude) into a self-aware political subject? That event is called "Celebration on May 23, 2026" (last post Belgrade). Because, when the momentum of the rebellion subsided - which is normal and expected - we couldn't help but wonder how many of us are left?
On Saturday, we saw: no one who even once, in the country of Serbia, came out to greet students, no one who even once went to a student rally, no one who is guided by freedom, did not give up (no matter how much he doubted, no matter how much uncertainty tormented him, no matter how impatient or ideologically confused he was).
And it is not at all true that the number was not important. If there were no number, there would be no transition from number to something else (to quality). Or, to stick with Žižek's image: if there is not enough sand, concrete cannot be made.
Let us recall that on March 15, the Archive for Public Meetings offered a conservative estimate of between 270 and 330 citizens in Slavia. But there were more than half a million people on the streets of Belgrade that day (again, a conservative estimate) because all the time citizens were circulating, taking turns, hundreds of thousands came to the city that day and after some time went home, while, at the same moment, hundreds of thousands of citizens came to meet them (let's remember that tens of thousands of people that day could not even cross the Brankov Bridge from New Belgrade). So - yes, the number is important. It can be like this: the image of the number is important.
When a political actor - and the student movement was a political actor from the very beginning, even when he refused to be one - collected approximately 400 signatures with five days of campaigning, when he opposed the (seemingly) all-powerful regime in the local elections, together with citizens and political parties, and (so there is no confusion) fundamentally defeated him, when he easily gathered hundreds of thousands of citizens in Slavija (according to the Archive's estimate, about 200, but it is quite certain that is a significantly higher number) and everything passes without a single incident (except staged ones), we can't help but feel the smell of freedom in our nostrils.
Unnecessary distraction
And nothing about Vučićević (Inform, jel) dot software, upgraded with bluster, was not worth it, nor could it divert anyone's attention with simple, disgusting, hilariously stupid behavior over Dink Gruhonjić and Aleksej Kišjuhas, just as, after all, even the terrified Vučić did not manage to fool anyone with his beating-police game show after the rally at Slavia. It was depressing to watch those mighty policemen and hummers and trucks and what not, running around the deserted city following the depictions of Vučić's private nightmares.
It's worthless, my friend. The citizens of this country no longer want you, and as Etienne de la Boessy observed in his brilliant Discuss voluntary slavery, when people are more they don't want tyrant, tyrant is no more.
On Saturday, May 23, none of those who came to Belgrade from the interior, none of the Belgraders who walked to Slavia, even thought that "something could happen" (except, of course, what the regime could do and did, after all; quite miserable, admittedly), but they came, very determined, very calm, the way winners come. On Saturday, a political body was constituted that will consign the remains of Vučić's regime to the dustbin of history. Well, it happened on May 23, 2026.
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