Photo: Sava Radovanović/TanjugThe two tragedies in Serbia carry a universal gene in them: the horror is common, the sadness is shared by all of us. This horror and this sadness are not preceded by political divisions. But despite that, the nature of Vučić's rule, as well as the mentality of the people gathered at the court, does not allow for a universal model that is a direct effect of civilization. Vučić and his team are unable to deal with anything universal, nothing that does not concern them, only them and no one but them. That's why they tried to monopolize the pain. That's why they turned to the universal
There is no need for circumlocution. The gathering of citizens in Belgrade on Friday, May 12, at the third protest "Serbia against tyranny", was a political act. The discomfort in the face of such a direct naming stems primarily from 1. the contamination of the term political with what is secondary in that term; 2. from the propaganda of the government, which is trying to inflict on the citizens and civil opposition what it has been doing since the first moment: the shameless politicization of the tragedy.
Aleksandar Vučić's government strategy rests on a paradox: if everything is politics - and Vučić and his court tried to make politics out of everything - nothing is politics. The paradox is not difficult to understand. If there is no area of life that Vučić leaves out of politics, then it is not possible to draw a line between politics and non-politics, and the one who holds the media, money, and organs of power in his hands completely arbitrarily draws the lines between politics and non-politics. When it suits him, he will declare even the most harmless non-political act to be political. And vice versa. Only this time he didn't succeed. And that had to happen once. Authoritarian regimes stumble in the most unexpected places. (Who would have thought that the Czechoslovak communist regime would collapse in 1968 because of a general's love affair.)
Therefore, gathering of citizens, walking and stopping traffic on Gazela is a political act par excellence as a reaction to the shameless abuse of tragedies in Belgrade and the surroundings of Mladenovac and Smederevo. One of the meanings of politics is the drawing of boundaries between opposing political projects: one group believes that society can be organized in one way, another group in another way. A thing, therefore, quite normal (and desirable) in free (democratic) orders.
The universal tragedy gene
Nevertheless, there are important moments in the life of a community when it is necessary to suspend that division. Such gestures are usually referred to as suprapolitical, and are expressed, for example, by the formula "national unity". In such gestures, in free societies, priority is given to universal values, as opposed to individual or group (party) interests.
The two tragedies in Serbia carry a universal gene in them: the horror is common, the sadness is shared by all of us. This horror and sadness are not preceded by political divisions (which, to make sure there is no confusion, does not absolve the government from responsibility, although Vučić and his court, this time, are not the culprits of the tragedies; it is about what is called objective responsibility). But despite that, the nature of Vučić's rule, as well as the mentality of the people gathered at the court, does not allow for a universal model that is a direct effect of civilization. Vučić and his team are unable to deal with anything universal, nothing that does not concern them, only them and no one but them. That's why they tried to monopolize the pain. That's why they focused on the universal, that is, on what makes every man of this country whose brains were not eaten by crows, and whose cruel life in this country turned into moral nothingness, a member of the human race.
That's why they gave up their humanity (if they ever had it). That is why they tried in the most shameless way possible to take advantage of the tragedy for themselves: the pro-Russian Ružić promptly blamed Western values for the tragedy in Belgrade, Vučić drew attention to himself (so that Ružić would not threaten his advantage in uttering nastiness), and Brnabić , according to her custom, in raving and parading her inhumanity, surpassed herself.
And then those citizens who know what pain, sadness and universal values are - and there are quite a few of them, as we have seen - took to the streets to universal with a political act opposed the shameless political rapacity of Vučić and his court - "political vulture", as the president poetically put it, accusing the civil opposition of what he and his court had been doing since the first shots in "Ribnikar".
Characteristics of a free society
According to the theory of the Nazi jurist Karl Schmitt, universal values are not political because if, writes Schmitt, we wake up one day on a planet that shares the same values, the political - what makes politics politics - would be lost because we would not be able to name a political enemy. . And a world without a political enemy, namely a Nazi jurist, would be a world without a recognizable subjectivity, which he, Schmidt, ensconced in the Nazi welfare and rule of subjectivity of a psychopath, considered inadmissible.
Schmidt's theory is seductive, but free societies cannot be built on that theory because a free society, as a set of mutually opposed political projects, must by definition nurture i universal values. As Vučić and the court enslaved Serbia and turned it into a community of unfree people, universal values increasingly appeared as a surplus and a nuisance that should be banished and replaced by, for example, Russian (therefore particular) values, the myth of Emperor Constantine (which is primitive nonsense ), medieval (therefore ineffective) mythology, or, again, the values imposed by a group of primitive people devoid of civilizational scruples (Assembly, Government, Pink, Happy, informers and other tabloids, especially Vučić himself).
By taking to the streets, the citizens of Belgrade confirmed that universal values have not died out, and that it is precisely these values that stand in opposition to disastrous particular interests. The citizens of Belgrade showed that politics is not what Vučić, his parliamentary team and his courtiers are trying to sell as politics (robbery and senseless violence), but that politics is, above all, caring for others and for the community.
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