Moralocracy

...

The neologism in the title does not mean the supervision of morality, but the rule of moralizing. It is not a banal self-praise of the government, but a calculated use of morality. Moral sells well, and in political rhetoric it is always profitable. In economic terms, the political surplus value of moral capital is created and appropriated. It is not about moral reputation but symbolic capital that serves subjugation and also provides material profit. The strategy of moralocracy is: divide, rigorously moralize and rule! Distinguish yourself as a patriot and honest from a traitor and corrupt.

About rhetoric President of Serbia a lot has been written. Something should be said here about the concepts and emotions of the domestic moralocracy. Moralism is an aggressive distribution of respect and is read through terms: shame, liars, traitors, patriots, wretches, anti-Serb scum. In a domestic political culture devoid of a reliable moral compass, people are hated and despised without conscience. Contempt brings hatred, and hatred is revenge for humiliation suffered, a form of savage justice.

ORDER OF HEROIZATION, ORDER OF HUMILITY

In this moralistic crowd, President A. V is officially the leader, not only because he is in the media every day. His personal and national self-victimization, which is justified as self-defense, is striking. Personal power is self-moralized by banal ethnocentrism, opening new plants to foreign capital, so-called reputation in the world, etc. The moralization is imbued with a dual narrative of pride and contempt, the dramaturgy of the suffering victim and the threatening fighter. They follow the belittling and dehumanizing of non-patriots and foreign mercenaries against their own defense of the national interest. The personal tone gives her a schizophrenic contrast of defiant exuberance and humble contrition, in which the president seemingly modestly admits that he is wrong and that he is learning. The order of heroization, the order of modesty, and hypermoralism in between. The frequent warning "Shame on you" is not a verbal refrain of AV's public performances, but a frame of moralizing one's own integrity over other people's immorality. Embarrassing the opposition is not banal, but an active planned shaming and pretension to dominance. It is easy to understand that it is easier to rule when moral supremacy is ensured. However, it is risky to create an explosive climate in which the good are allowed to hate the bad with a clear conscience.

GAŠIĆ AS A CONCEPT-A METAPHOR

Aggressive moralocracy is the party's legacy. It is an unconquered radical hatred directed against everyone who hates not enough. It would be more harmless if it were banal party moralism or the unreflective self-praise of a narcissistic individual. However, there is systemically institutionalized active adjudication at work. Immoral patriots and the opposition should be excluded from the legitimate discussion, different ideologies should be stigmatized and other people's interests should be disparaged. AV's moralism is more than a raised index finger. There are threats, humiliations and pretensions to incomparability in humanity.

However, in recent months, there has been a new resistance to personal authority and on the moral level. The front is also open in the fight for hegemony over morality. The collision of the institutionalized moral-political coercion of the forum authorities and the non-institutionalized moralized resistance of student plenums is visible. The moralocratic asymmetry is striking even in the clash of concepts. Concepts are important mediators because condensing values ​​become effective only when they are successfully moralized with the binary logic of good-bad. The hypermoralized terms used by AV express pride (over foreign investments), arrogance (over unpatriotic opposition), pity (for the elderly), contempt (for patriots), humiliation (of traitors) and combativeness ("I will not give Gašić"). Gašić is a concept-metaphor of sovereign self-choice, and the defiance "I don't give" is the leader's decisionism. These fighting terms and metaphors are mandatory guidelines for the morals of party membership and optional moral guidelines addressed to voters. On the other side, the students' moral concepts and metaphors are highlighted: injustice, rotten to the core, scoundrels, red gloves, captive media, mafia, change, justice, conscience. Conceptually condensed breakthrough symbol of the amoralism of the government is corruption. The politicization of moral indignation over corruption is a prerequisite for the awakening of anger.

HATE AS THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE

Scandalization, polarization and moralization as a rhetorical structure are visible on both sides. However, only the form is similar, and the content is different. The government is more influential in the media, and the regime's media have a long experience in reconciling the omnipresent autocratic leader with morality. But since the protest does not subside, with the regime media's fascination with the success of its own amoralism, fear is increasingly present and turns into defensive aggression. If the leader leaves, we are done. That is why the government organizes hatred as the last line of defense against the "street", but also against feelings of own helplessness. Aggressive self-encouragement is followed by thoughts on how to escape in time. So RTS is already divided, but TV Pink still resists and ensures the leader's monopoly in the distribution of respect. Media hypermoralism is reduced to planned scandalization of betrayal. The leader in the nightmare is finding it increasingly difficult to control moral emotions. In Kantian terms, he tries to combine generosity, compassion and duty. However, the unmastered fan and radical habitus from his youth blocks him in this. A mentally unstable person is not able to control his anger. More and more often, he moralizes belligerently. There is no nuance in the amplitude between personal pride and contempt for dissenters. A mass protest by students is pushing him to openly employ a strategy of aggressive shaming, harsh and dirty rhetoric long honed in the radical workshop of rusty spoons. Hypermoralistic coercion is at work, which prepares loyalist violence with concepts and emotions. The government offers hatred in the market of arrogance. The generous rhetoric of pathologizing (extremists, traitors, mercenaries) disciplines the loyal as much as the offer of material dividends.

Less important here is the logical objection to moralism that it is at work replacing the thesis that challenges the opponent's arguments by doubting his moral integrity. It is more important to point out that moralists usually despise those with whom they do not find solidarity in hatred. There is no self-moralization (we are good) without anti-moralization (you are evil). AV's rigid moralism is self-empowerment in which the division into good and bad stifles dialogue and coercion of argument. The goal of bizarre pity for one's own ancestors and descendants is the awakening of empathy and a populist reminder that one is an ordinary person. The ruler's combination of contrition and defiance is schizophrenic. But these are all trifles compared to the leaders of the megamoralization of deregulation, the boundless enrichment and corruption of party cadres, the profitability of domestic investors and various foreign speculators (from Arab Belgrade on the water to the towers of Trump's son-in-law). SNS party cadres demolish hotels, build shopping centers and expensive apartments. Cities are being destroyed. And the leader's contrite plea to the unions not to anger foreign investors is neoliberal cynicism.

HOW TO AWAKE UP THE SLEEPING SOCIAL IRRACCONIMILITIES

On the other hand, the concepts of student protest show an anti-institutional moralization of politics. It testifies to spontaneous and not planned automoralization. But they are devoid of subversive social potential (defense of the poor without a share) and centered around resistance to procedural abuse (corruption, media terror). The impression is that the economic antagonism has been tamed by both the authorities and the students. It is not the result of the general pressure of the spirit of the times in which the values ​​of the middle class are hegemonic, but it is a consequence of the weakness of the left. The discursively thickened moralisms of the authorities and students in the squares of Serbia are not economic, but procedural. It is not a clash of classes, but of political cultures. Plenums lack the social decomposition of the inhuman. Political requirements should be supplemented with social ones. This lack of practice is a consequence of the weakness of theory. That is, the professor. There is neither V. Štrek nor A. Badiou in Serbia. Truth be told, there are not even neoliberal EU flags at the protests.

In the past, various abnormalities were the impetus for the explosion of the new. Student plenums should devise a more complex resistance. An alliance with critical humanistic intelligence is necessary. Plenums should not deal with psychological instability
AV not only by the broken procedure of the government, but also by the official moralization of unlimited tyranny. To respond to the moralism of the government with economic metamoralism. Economy is an authentic topic that separates the democratic plenum from the administrative forum. If the field of student engagement is resistance to giving in to corruption, then the existence of engagement should be the awakening of dormant social irreconcilability. Bloody hands and amoral corruption are the supporting moralistic armature of protests, but they are not active systemic threats.