No one wanted to listen to the president when he said dozens of times that he had called an end to student and civil protests and blockades, and maybe he should have. Namely, we did not know how these months-long protests would end and what they would ultimately lead to. It will end bloody - with a dictatorship or a civil war - and that war will be fought by two Greater Serbian groups. The goal of one will be to stay in power, and the other to come to power and realize the nazi(onalistic) dreams of Greater Serbia, which the former wanted to create, but failed to do...
This scenario follows from two texts about the student rally for Vidovdan: "Student demonstrations, rebellion and consequences: How the movement leads to dictatorship or civil war", by the famous economist Branko Milanović and "Protests against Vučić: The dark side of the Serbian student movement" by the German journalist and writer Michael Martens.
NEGOTIATIONS AND THE FOUR HEROES
What does professor Milanović complain about to the students? In short - political irresponsibility, failure to create political bodies within the movement and - violence. According to Milanović, the Movement should have created bodies with which the government will be able to talk or negotiate. Instead, "the Movement has become anti-democratic in its way of working and completely non-transparent".
Even if Milanović is right about this - and he is not, because plenums are a form of direct democracy in which each of the students can participate - give the local so-called any representative of the students to the media would mean the immediate and several-day destruction of the life of that student and his family. With their "non-transparency", the students, justifiably, saved their lives.
Furthermore, the government does not want to talk and negotiate with any opponent - it denies him the right to exist. It is an enemy of Serbia, paid and trained from abroad, with the aim of destroying the country and especially the president and his family, so it is known how such an enemy should be treated - it should be destroyed, bought or blackmailed.
It is the "negotiating platform" of the SNS and that is exactly how the "democratic dialogue" has been going in Serbia for the last 13 years. This means that we are witnessing how the fiercest opponents of the government overnight "recognize the president's program and energy" and become his biggest fans and promoters. The students stayed out of this story for a reason, because there can't and shouldn't be an agreement with the mafia.
(Probably many people will think that these words are too strong: there is no final or first-instance verdict for any organized criminal group whose members are high-ranking state and party officials. And yet, this is generally the case when the mafia controls the state, and thus its judiciary).
What would those negotiations even consist of? About the government starting to respect the laws of this country?
YOU BETTER NOT TOUCH IT
Milanović then criticizes that the movement failed to define political goals, nor did it unite forces "for the next regular elections" and entered into negotiations with the opposition, but then says that after the demand for early elections, and Vučević's resignation, the movement moved "when nothing else worked, to open violence", and he wonders what will prevent a new SNS from coming to power by force if Vučić now leaves it by force. On the same day that Milanović published his text in which he accuses the student movement of violence, Vučić acquitted four SNS thugs - heroes, he says - who broke a girl's jaw with baseball bats in Novi Sad.
That example alone is enough for an impartial observer to see who supports and who promotes violence, and daily life in Serbia in the last 13 years would help in this.
Respect students for calling for violence in society that has been going on for more than a decade breathing the everyday and all kinds of violence spread by the government is completely cynical. Students do not have a monopoly on violence, and neither does the state, because the SNS has usurped that basic function of the state. The Party orders and manages the police, security services, finances, the economy and the prosecutor's office... In other words, the Party controls and influences all social processes, including violence in society.
Prof. Milanović does not see that violence is the essence of the Serbian Progressive Party, nor does he notice that Serbia has not long been a country where elections are "the way to get (or leave) power", because for years there has been no change of power across the entire state vertical - from local communities, through local self-governments, to the government and the president. Well, in spite of that, students persistently demand extraordinary elections, aware that there is no other way.
This seems contradictory if one does not look at the example of Kosjerić and partially Zaječar, where students together with citizens and the opposition organized and implemented a campaign and almost won in the end a game in which they were complete outsiders.
By the very fact that they are advocating for the change of government in elections and not by violence, there is no fear that the same or a subsequent SNS will emulate the supposed student violent coup, gather their people and start to overthrow some future government.
This is especially because it is absolutely necessary for any future government to hold a "maxi trial", where a large number of current and former party and state officials would be primarily occupied with their defense and thus unable to change the government on the street.
Because, if that trial does not happen, some new - or the same - progressives will not have to come to power by force, but will come in the elections, only a year after the change. The decades-old mafia system, which has never been uprooted - on the contrary, it has been abundantly watered and nurtured - will easily and quickly find or create its new political representative.
Therefore, since there cannot be a civil war from Milanović's text and title because one of the imagined parties has neither the desire nor the means for such a war, the conclusion could be that this kind of protest - still non-violent, whatever Milanović (and the government, after all) claims - will lead to Vučić's dictatorship. In translation - you better not touch it, so it doesn't get worse.
This is where we come to the second part of the dramatic unfolding of these student protests: after the violent coup and coming to power, the violent students will become a specter for the entire Balkans because of their Greater Serbian ideology, which has territorial pretensions towards the surrounding countries.
What Milanović mentions in one sentence when he says that "extreme self-destructive nationalists also appeared, because probably part of the Movement saw in nationalism the traditionally strongest political lever with which the government can be replaced", forms the backbone of the second mentioned text about student protests.
BRAIDE THEM WITH MILOSEVIC
German journalist Michael Martens analyzed the speeches and speakers at the June 28 protest and, in short, wrote in his text that Greater Serbian nationalism gained primacy in the student movement, that in the Vidovdan speeches there was a spread of Greater Serbian ideology, which eventually ended with mass graves and Srebrenica.
Both of these texts have a certain fatalistic undertone: it's over, this has completely twisted and petrified in nationalism. And the movement is still a living thing, constantly changing. At the same time, it is the only hope for a large number of people, so many emotional reactions can be understood from this.
It seems that in his text, Martens lightly characterized an extremely heterogeneous social group with an expression that everyone in Europe understands, which carries with it a huge burden of the past and very easily evokes negative emotions. Martens draws the conclusion from a single student and civic gathering that the entire movement and protest fell under Greater Serbian nationalism and writes that the movement now reminds him of the time of "early" Slobodan Milošević.
And where there is Milosevic, there is the Great Serbian ideology, there are also wars against neighbors, there are mass graves and Srebrenica.
It is as if Martens wrote about the future of Serbia by rewriting its past, ignoring that such history cannot be repeated despite the existence of a certain number of Serbian citizens who are in favor of its repetition.
It cannot happen again, because now is not 1989 or 1991. War incitement, in which, of course, the current government is the loudest (but which has continued continuously for almost 40 years) in the environment of the NATO countries, has been reduced to the right measure: the impotent "patriots" who are better armed and the measurement of who has the bigger jidipis. This has been the "range" of nationalist incitement for years: it is directed inwards, for the sake of further poisoning citizens, staying in power and continuing to tirelessly plunder state resources.
Martens' arguments can be countered by the fact that, after the student actions and protests, the citizens of Novi Pazar declared that "for the first time in their lives" they felt Serbia as their country; one can also recall the student bike ride to Strasbourg, the marathon to Brussels and the meetings there with European officials, which is in direct opposition to the interests of the authorities and "Greater Serbian nationalists".
Also, it could be discussed whether the fact that the students scheduled the rally on Vidovdan "suggested something bad", as Martens writes, or whether it was an attempt by a "catch-all" movement to take away another part of the voters from Vučić. Or even more simply - the students' attempt to defend themselves against the regime's propaganda: why would the "Nazis" and "Ustasha" gather on Vidovdan?
However, this article in "Vremen" is not an apology for the student movement and their actions. Martens' text is oversimplifying and leads to the wrong conclusions, but he recognizes the potential beginning of the problem. The article by Boris Dežulović precisely lists all the "right turns" of the student movement since the beginning of the year, and the articles by Mijat Lakićević in Peščanik and Safeta Biševac in the newspaper "Danas" also warn. These are all important insights and should not be ignored.
It is true that you cannot defeat Vučić with nationalism and right-wing. It is dangerous - but not for the neighbors, but for the citizens of Serbia - if the student movement continues to move along this path, because it would only prolong the current agony.
Because Serbia got to this state because what Vučić and the Vučićs call "patriotism" presupposed the rule of law. If you are "ours", it doesn't matter if you are a murderer, rapist or robber, you will not be punished. This impunity is the basic characteristic of the government - both from the nineties and now, although one of the most beautiful sayings on this topic was coined by Dragan Jočić in 2004 when he said: "How can you ask me about the tobacconist while Hilandar is burning?".
As we said, the movement is a living thing and the students within it determine its further destiny and the direction in which it will move. But even if Martens and Milanović are completely right, even if the student movement has grown into another nationalist group that will be easily trampled by Vučić, the fact remains that the students have unmistakably shown what is the only thing that brings down the mafia in power: solidarity and unquestionable insistence on transparency and the rule of law. In this sense, social change has already been made. Even if it is not political now, it will be someday.
