Let's immediately answer the question from the title of the text: Niccolò Machiavelli, looking at the Serbian political scene - and he knew how to look - would say that Aleksandar Vučić is an unseen pest who shamelessly destroys his own country. However, for those who know something about Machiavelli, this answer would not be convincing: didn't Machiavelli say that a ruler can use all means - including blood up to his knees - in order to win power and then keep it? To that extent, Vučić is a pure Machiavellian – he is still in power, with certain prospects that he will stay in power for a while longer and wreak havoc on the country as much as he can. However, the problem is that Machiavelli himself was not a Machiavellian.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS
There are few writers, even fewer philosophers, who after their death lived as full a life as Machiavelli: from 1527 to today, i.e. 500 years, there was no period in which Machiavelli was not in one way or another the center of philosophical and political attention. Even the irresistible Spinoza was out of focus for a time (who knows why), but not Machiavelli. Why is that so? A brutal answer might be: no philosophical writer has penetrated so deeply into the living wound of human nature, no one has reached the very heart of darkness and returned from there to convey his experience to us.
Something less brutal: there is no writer whose life and what he wrote to that extent coincide and derive from each other: Machiavelli wrote what he lived and lived what he wrote. Literally. His diplomatic reports, for example, from which great works were later created, were written while his life was hanging in the balance, and he took care of every sentence, every word. When he lied, he did it to survive. When he told the truth, he did it to survive. When he kept quiet, it meant his head was in the bag. When he brutally appointed, he himself exposed his neck to the gallows. I Ruler is, to that extent, a book with many entrances and several exits, and certainly with three or four bottoms, a house with false staircases, secret chambers, a closet with locked drawers. What we will come across in that booklet depends on our reading skills.
Machiavelli's writings Ruler of barely a hundred pages still causes the deepest outrage today (number of interpretations Ruler is unexamined), and Machiavelli is not only considered the prince of darkness and the leader of a band of robbers (as a distinguished twentieth-century philosopher will call him), which is why the Catholic Church is his delce (relaxed) put on the list of forbidden books (which, naturally, only increased the interest in the booklet), but they consider him a personal teacher of Satan. In all of this, however, several things remained puzzling. Besides Ruler Machiavelli also wrote a masterpiece Discussions on the first ten books of Titus Livius, which readers Ruler they can skip because it is a large book. In addition, in many ways it is Machiavelli's key work. But it's not Ruler the only seditious book in history. From ancient times to today, both before Machiavelli and after him, we have a bunch of Machiavellians - Plato has a bunch, Thucydides even more, not to mention historical figures (here we have Stalin, Hitler, Milošević, Putin) - but the derogatory word Machiavellian is derived from Machiavelli's name, not from Thucydides (what's wrong with Thucydides, for example?). In fact, Machiavelli's writing is overwhelming. Let's just compare Hitler's Mein Kampf i Ruler: Hitler's work is the most banal and boring thing imaginable, and the reader cannot separate himself from Machiavelli's writings. This is why we believe Machiavelli even when he lies. That's why we don't believe Hitler even when he tells the truth.
CORRUPTION
For Machiavelli, the state was in the first place (state) and the republic as a form of state organization. If the state is the goal, then the list of means for maintaining the state is quite, shall we say, extensive. Cesare Borgia was the greatest bloodthirsty of Europe at the time when Machiavelli, as the representative of Florence, was at his court in Imola. Machiavelli did not hide his sympathy for Borgia even when he was a direct witness of Borgia's political crimes. After all, Borgia also knew who he was dealing with, so he took Machiavelli, the representative of enemy Florence, as a witness who - Borgia knew - would write perfect reports about his bloody undertakings.
Without going into their complex relations, it should be said here that Borgia did not rob the citizens of his Romagna. During Borgia's time, Romagna became a country worthy of attention. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances according to Borgia, he stayed in power too short to realize some of Machiavelli's ideas, especially the one about a united Italy. On the other hand, Machiavelli could not stand rulers who worked against the interests of their own country, and for the sake of accumulating personal wealth. Corruption is one of the most common and notorious words in his writings. A corrupt ruler is a cancer of a society, because it devours its own country, and the greatest danger is that such a ruler can corrupt the whole society to the extent that it will never recover from it. A community of corrupt citizens simply collapses sooner or later.
This is why Machiavelli would look down on Vučić, who turned corruption into a principle of governance. But Vučić constantly repeats that he does everything in the name of Serbia, and that only Serbia (that is, the country, that is, society, that is the community) is on his mind (which is why, after all, he sleeps on the floor in Brussels, buys books at night in New York bookstores and wraps himself in the flag in the United Nations building). But one thing is a story, and another is actions. Machiavelli believed in deeds more than words. Vučić's stories have no basis in reality.
REPUBLIC AND PASSIONS
But that is not all. Discussions on the first ten books of Titus Livius they show Machiavelli as a staunch republican, which, after all, he was in his political activity. After all, since the Medici returned to Florence after the fall of the republic, Machiavelli was dragged a bit to determine whether he participated in the conspiracy of the republicans against the dictatorial Medici government or not. Some testimonies say that he held on heroically during torture and did not participate in the conspiracy. Therefore, for the sake of defending the republic, everything is allowed, because only the republican arrangement guarantees the sustainability of a society. It is hardly necessary to say how Vučić thoroughly destroyed the constitutional order of Serbia, i.e. the first Serbian republic. Machiavelli considered the enemies of the republic to be the most difficult political creatures and recalled that the founder of the Roman republic, Lucius Junius Brutus, sacrificed his own sons for the sake of preserving that republic, and even, in accordance with the law, attended their execution.
Finally, one of Machiavelli's most important political discoveries is that he did not try, like ancient philosophers, to banish passions from politics - because that is impossible (what is a man without passion?). Machiavelli was too involved in politics from a young age not to know that politics cannot be reduced to rational schemes. He saw with his own eyes how passion conquers and how passion destroys, and he scattered examples of passionate politicians through his work - whether, like Pope Julius II, they succeeded or like Cesare Borgia, they failed. Therefore, instead of putting a ban on passions, he understood that passions must be given space for expression without, at the same time, endangering order. The space for the expression of passion must be free, and that is the republican public space. (This is why the Soviet Union, that huge concentration camp, was a gray, sad creation of suppressed passions, just like Serbia under Vučić is today.) To that extent, the free public space is precisely the place where mutually opposing passions collide, which, as Machiavelli said, is a good conflict. A bad conflict is one that threatens to destroy the order, a conflict in which the one in power does not want to step down even at the cost of ruining the country. Vučić, therefore, closed the public space for everyone but himself, and when the citizens rebelled, it did not occur to him that he could channel the accumulated passions, so they poured out into the streets. Such a conflict cannot end well. Either the government will leave in an inglorious way or the order will end in ruins.
PRINCE OF LIBERTY
Machiavelli, therefore, did not shy away from conflict, which he considered a basic ingredient of political life. A bad conflict, however, arises when the leader locks up political life, when he sits on all the chairs of the public and does not stop spinning the same story, his own. But reality cannot bear that, so the concrete canopies that are held on the connective tissue of corruption begin to fall and kill people, and the leader, driven by paranoia, unable to distinguish reality from his own lies, closes himself in his bandits' nest.
On one side are him, his band of robbers, and an unhappy world that does not distinguish reality from the illusion the leader creates. On the other side are the citizens who see that the crazed team is leading them to nothingness. To that extent, the struggle of the citizens of Serbia is a struggle for free public space, that is, for the republic. On which side the prince of liberty, as Machiavelli called Spinoza, would be, is not at all difficult to guess.
