An Epidemic of Hope: Stepping Out of the Muddle of Mature Opposition

Worse than hopelessness - say people with serious experience (survivors from Nazi camps, for example) - is only hope without a cover. But if hope is not just a mere phantasm, then those who hope become a serious threat to the team, which, as the Serbian case shows, is a favorite social atmosphere of hopelessness (like the scorpions of Memla, for example). Environmental protests have sparked something, and the referendum seems to have awakened hope that the barbarian siege might loosen, even collapse. Is it a hope based on real foundations, or is it, after all, at work what the English call wishful thinking (in the Serbian translation: what is babi milo, that's what she dreamed of)?

There is every chance that hope is not just an illusion, although it is very healthy to maintain a certain distance towards too free conclusions. Hope, this time, is born primarily from the determination of the opposition to smart, leaving aside personal animosities and impossible groupings (grouping with Boško Obradović, for example), opposed the barbarians. It is precisely in this shift of emphasis from barbarians to articulated resistance, from the regime to the opposition, that the answer to the question of where hope comes from and why now, and not, say, five years ago when the situation was no better, is hidden.

Namely, hope received a political articulation. It's not just that the people got sick of the regime: they got sick of it a long time ago. It's not even about the regime making catastrophic mistakes: this regime is the epitome of disaster from the first moment (it was a disaster even before it came to power, the only thing is that the white voters were not able to understand it). Finally, it is not a question of new people appearing on the political scene who suddenly appear and solve the matter, because they did not. Simply, the political actors in the opposition have matured and started to think politically (and not in panic), to group around ideas (and not around the metro, for example, in an unnamed field in the vicinity of Belgrade), around clear and concrete plans, rather than general ones. and vague desires. A political idea, for example, which arises out of necessity (but it is still an idea, no matter how obvious): either we will cooperate or, like the whole country, we will be consumed by darkness. In other words, the regime has, for now, failed in what it proved very successful at throughout its barbaric rule: to destroy the possibility of political articulation. This time, Vučić and his obscurantist team are not taking the lead, although, of course, they don't stop talking, but the ball, as sports journalists would say, is in the opposition's feet. Hence the hope.

And when the hope fades, and still takes on some recognizable form in reality, it is very difficult to extinguish it. So tough, it becomes contagious and, whatever the barbarians do, it undermines the ground on which they stand (not to mention that this barbarian regime, from the very beginning, is on very unstable ground: the entire hypertrophied body of the Party stands on a fragile crust made of from lies, clients, lawlessness, savagery, open theft and, most importantly, the hopelessness that afflicts the members themselves...so, on a barbaric, not a civilized infrastructure). This is why hope is a dangerous opponent to any authoritarian or, even worse, totalitarian regime.

A man who hopes simply does not depend on such and such a regime, but on something that comes from outside it. In the same way that hopeful people interpret environmental protests and referendum results, barbarians interpret them in the same way. Both of them know what it is that they see and hear (just as the Russian cannons were heard equally well by the camp inmates and the Nazis). Therefore, both of them will do the same thing, they will just push in opposite directions: the barbarians will try to destroy hope, they will try to buy it - because they don't know any other way - or drive it out by force. The resistance, on the other hand, is organized politically around ideas of civilization, and going to the polls is one of them. Citizens simply lacked a clear political articulation of ideas all these years, so a huge number of people, finding all kinds of excuses, refused to bring their bodies to vote, suffocating - whether it was justified or not - in hopelessness. If opposition groups and citizens remain in the political order and do not fall for barbaric tricks - hope will begin to take shape in reality. There is no doubt about that.

It is, of course, important to be careful when it comes to technical details: the media space is full of barbaric savagery, and no matter how articulate Marinika Tepić, General Ponoš, Professor Janković and Dobrica Veselinović are, they will simply not be seen or heard from the savage jumping of barbarians. from their dreka. Therefore, it is up to this and such an opposition to come up with a way to present their candidates. They, along with all those who, in the age of the epidemic, were infected with hope.

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