The magnificent student-led protest in Belgrade and the fear that it would be subverted by staged incidents and attempts to provoke violence are all behind us. Neither ćaciland,1 nor the eerie firing of a sound cannon, nor the aspirations of some to trigger another October 5th, managed to cause chaos. People remained responsible and kept collected, and the students successfully maintained control over their gathering, deciding to disband it at the first sign of danger, persevering in their intention to take no “final steps” but rather make “tectonic changes”. The fight goes on! There’s still a lot of “pumping” to be done, so let’s continue, without fear, straight into ideology, the plague-ridden terrain.
After months of ideological confusion, i.e.: non-declaration, clearer ideological orientations have been taking shape lately, both among students and in the wider society. On the one hand, they are made visible in the appearance and growing presence of “No Surrender” flags2 (as well as Russian Orthodox Army flags and Chetnik symbols), and on the other, in the efforts of the opposition and the liberal public – and of certain student-led groups – to reduce the student rebellion and social uprising to regime-change, to translate it into the language of institutional politics, veer it onto the track of liberal democracy, under the temporary administration of an “expert” government that will ensure conditions for free and fair elections and so on.
The two positions evoke the narrative of Two Serbias – nationalist vs liberal – the main paradigm of 1990s and early 2000s, but its time, too, has passed. Contrary to the common wisdom of politics in Serbia (and beyond), this classic binary is not inevitable. It is indeed possible to criticise both positions simultaneously; in fact, they represent two sides of the same capitalist coin.
Both point us to the key pillars of the system. Flags, and the fact that students have not distanced themselves from them, reveal neuralgic points of the existing order: the first-class raison d’état of the state of Serbia – Kosovo, and the state’s ethno-national framing and its entanglement with the Serbian Orthodox Church – black spots, dangerous off-limits areas that, by general consensus, are not to be questioned. On the seemingly opposite side, the insistence on the political framework of liberal democracy keeps us within the matrix of “capitalist realism”.
It is understandable (though we may not like it), that since the students are basing their struggle within constitutional order, they are not raising those issues which are proclaimed by the Constitution itself: in the preamble, that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia (hence “No Surrender”), and in the first article, that Serbia is first and foremost the state of the Serbian people, and then everyone else’s (hence, the national formulation of state and its interest). Obviously, these questions are not the subject of the student struggle and students’ demands have nothing to do with them.
It is not down to the students to raise and articulate each and every question. They speak to this themselves: “The answers to the most general questions concerning the state and society do not concern students only, and therefore cannot fall only on students’ shoulders.”
Many find it difficult to process what they have already raised – with their fourth demand, their direct democracy, their statements (such as the Letter to the People of Serbia, the Student Edict, the Letter to Students Around the World) – that question liberal (representative) democracy and its neoliberal economic framework and call for a “systemic change”. What exactly is meant by that change remains partly vague, so that numerous contradictions of the struggle allow everyone to interpret said change according to their preferences.
Regime change or the change in governing?
On the surface, system change implies regime change. This is the level at which the entire opposition, including media and mainstream commentators of all stripes operate. The same talking heads (or their ideological followers) yet again promise the same liberal democracy, as if the past thirty-odd years had not happened, as if liberal democracy had not collapsed at its very core. In the words of Boris Buden, for them, “the final purpose of the protest is clear and indisputable: to clean up the state of corrupt elements and thus perform a sort of general overhaul on it, after which it will be as good as new.” I guess, according to third-time’s-a-charm line of reasoning, Serbia will finally become a “normal” country.
From this perspective, which reduces politics to the political system of liberal democracy, the student protest is criticised as anti-political. “The solution must be found in the political arena”, they say, which means via political parties, elections, parliament, etc. For it to succeed, the rebellion of the “amorphous, politically inarticulate masses” must be go through the adequate channels – political system and civil society.
Luckily, politics is much broader than institutionalised politics, and the agent of rebellion in Serbia are neither the “amorphous masses” nor the civil sector that translates the masses’ demands for the benefit of the so-called “decision-makers”, but society. Namely what Partha Chatterjee, when analysing political actions of communities that “transgress the strict lines of legality in struggling to live and work”, in contrast to civil society, called political society.
That very society has been politically self-organising over the past four months, beyond formal political institutions. It is acting politically on a daily basis: in student plenums, in the newly formed informal associations of teachers on strike, in the Culture in Blockade initiatives in Belgrade and Kikinda, the National Library plenum, in various neighbourhood and parents’ groups that support teachers and students, in the occupations of private universities; in the protests and demands of Belgrade Public Transit workers, GSP,pharmacists in Belgrade, Kragujevac and Užice, in farmers’ blockades in Bogatić and Rača, in the Demands of Serbia’s Engineers, in the boycotts of mass-trade chains, in the movement against the Jadar project, in formal and informal groups that fight against “development projects” such as EXPO and Jared Kushner’s Hotel; in the effort of IT sector workers to provide financial aid to educators on strike,3 the list goes on and on. With the exception of a few semi-engaged trade unions and professional associations, all these political initiatives are non-institutional. The rare exception being the city of Kraljevo where political opposition enjoys sufficient legitimacy for society to stand behind it.
In their Letter to the People of Serbia (I will note, which fills me with hope, that the students are not addressing the Serbian people, but the people of Serbia), the students literally join the dots of what has been implied in their actions for months, but what is consistently ignored by commentators and supposed political representatives. In response to the question “What is the next step?”, the students unequivocally answer “Everybody in assemblies”, calling for direct democracy in other public domains.
It really couldn’t be more obvious that students’ understanding of systemic change reaches deeper than a mere regime change. They advocate for a change in the way society is governed, for institutions that are built from the ground-up.
Both politicians and on-duty opinion holders miserably fail this test of support to students even though they supposedly fully back them. But so do the more progressive actors, such as the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, KCB, the first non-student institution to be partly occupied. As it turns out, they support the rebellion in so far as it doesn’t question them too, choosing to virtue-signal rather than wager a real stake in the game. Whereas the “liberation of KCB” certainly has its own important problems, it cannot be denied that by occupying physical space, it opened a crack in the usual order of things and thus allowed us to speak about it, confirming that, as Christine Ross points out following Chernyshevsky, “actions produce dreams and ideas, and not the reverse”.
Jacque Rancière emphasizes the same in his letter of support to students: “For those who fight against oppression, there is no other organisation than self-organisation (…) The movement of students and youth in Serbia reminds us that we cannot separate the goal and the means and that democracy is not an external goal but a practice.” The beauty and dreams of the rebellion all stem from the very practice of student democracy.
Against the backdrop of liberal democracy
Virtue-signalling is a favourite pose of the concerned liberal public, which frowns upon “No Surrender” flags and other right-wing memorabilia, while at the same time nurturing the “myth of Zoran”, uncritically canonising, instead of problematising, the legacy of the politician who equated chetniks to partisans, introduced religious education in schools and was inclined to make “pragmatic” alliances. Ultimately, regarding Kosovo, the policy of the government he led did not differ significantly from that proclaimed by the 2006 Constitution, whose adoption was supported by his political and ideological successors. Not to mention the balance sheet of his economic policies.
Moreover, its biggest trump cards, the “normality” it has been promising for decades and the “European values”, i.e.: the “European way of life” it strives for, have meanwhile become weaponized by the radical right. Lest we forget, the election slogan of the German AFD during the recent federal elections: “Germany, but normal”. In the same vein, the defence of the “European way of life” is the main discursive tool the EU and its member states use to justify the deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean.
Notwithstanding all the linguistic bravado, especially visible in the juxtaposition of civil versus ethnic nationalism, the foundation of European liberal democracy (as well as our own attempts at it) is nothing but the nation state, true to the bone to the “founding equation of the Modern Republican State”, as Etienne Balibar had called it, nationality = citizenship.
The opposition, and the liberal public, keep away from those stinking waters. God, forbid they take a look in the mirror! They would rather stay safe within the shells of formal political institutions, where no politics is to be found. Not even from weeds; politics is elsewhere.
As the students, unlike the opposition, deem democracy “not an external goal but a practice” they have kicked off this conversation too. Thanks to their struggle, we can see what is happening in Novi Pazar,4 we can see Bosniaks, Slovaks, Vlachs, Roma, not as caricatures of their political representatives, nor as “minorities”, but as equal members of society.
None of this concerns the opposition. It wanders around lost and incapable of finding a role for itself. Perhaps it could try acting as a mediator rather than a representative? Instead of speaking on its behalf, it could be opening up space for society to speak on its own (which society is anyhow already doing). Instead of attempting to form a transitional government amongst themselves, that would hardly have the legitimacy to represent anyone but itself, it could try having this discussion with the self-organised political society.
And when I say society, I don’t mean (only) the civil sector (which is threatened by imminent collapse anyway, following the withdrawal of US funds), nor ProGlas.5 I am certainly not referring to (radical) right-wing groups and their efforts to rebrand or take over the student struggle (as has been the case in Čačak).
I am thinking of the Association of Schools on Strike, the rebelling pharmacists, teachers, social and cultural workers, I am thinking of farmers, The Association of Environmental Organizations of Serbia (SEOS) and other groups for the defence of nature, the numerous citizens’ assemblies that keep forming. Of all the workers of those vital sectors who have yet to be won over or helped to rebel. I am thinking of the repressive apparatus.
If it wants to become relevant and, above all, if it wants to be useful, the opposition could engage in dialogue with these groups, listen to them, empower and connect them with each other, agree on strategies, transitional solutions, representatives and priorities with them. The opposition could make an effort to be present in the places where new politics is being honed, where new institutions and new views are being built. There it could raise questions, even those painful and unpleasant – about the past and the state foundations.
Political economy and the black spot of student protests
A departure from “capitalist realism” is implicit in student struggle and that of other rebellious, social groups. All of them start from the obvious fact that the joyful times of globalisation are long gone, and that capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal clothes, has not brought prosperity, but destruction, signalling that a change of economic paradigm is needed. Students, cultural, health and social workers demand greater public investments; pharmacists and public transit workers demand that privatisations be stopped and the existing public-private contracts revised. SEOS demands a complete suspension of the Jadar project and Proleter workers from Ivanjica hold the factory under blockade, demanding that they be paid the wages they are owed.
The reluctance to question the economic status quo is evident in the tendency to ignore the actors and elements of the struggle that challenge it. Thus, the blockades of private universities are overlooked, despite the pressures their students have suffered. As Tatjana Rosić wrote, they raise the question of whether academic freedom can exist in a corporate private firm, for which, ultimately, making profit is the sole purpose. And more broadly, whether there can be a private agora, a private property dedicated to public freedoms? The answer should be more than clear to us if we look at the rapid transformation of the late Twitter into fascist X. Most recently, the arrest and planned deportation of the pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalili in the US, carried out with the support of Columbia University, his academic institution, tells us everything about the possibility of academic freedom within the framework of a private corporation.
With political economy lenses on, we can now circle back to the black spots of the student protests, the unquestionable Kosovo and the national formulation of state interest. Just as the “No Surrender” flags dominate the space because the Constitution encourages them to, the national interest, by inertia, tends to suppress the class nature of social rebellion. The discrepancy between national and class interests, that is, the question of whether the class or national perspective of the struggle will prevail, is crucial for the future of both the rebellion and Serbia.
Let’s take a step back for a moment to consider the performance of national “anti-establishment” projects. In his analysis of the economic programmes of the radical right-wing parties in Europe, Jan Rettig concludes that their politics can be considered partly anti-systemic, as they break with blind faith in the market. However, the break is done exclusively for the purpose of protecting domestic private capital. While protective measures are introduced, the neoliberal pillage of the public sector and the disenfranchisement of workers is not interrupted but increased.
This trajectory became clear in the first few months of Trump’s presidency. The most consequential warrior “against the establishment” is giving billions in government contracts and subsidies to his informal second-in-command (and richest man in the world), while at the same time cancelling programmes to support the poor, shutting down funding for universities and scientific projects, radically reducing the public sector, leaving thousands of people without work and income.
In Europe, both right-wing and centrist governments (including the terribly disappointing Die Linke), in their frenzied war-craze, are injecting money into private military industries, revealing themselves, amid their shock at Trump’s betrayal, as loyal followers of his imperial turn. On the streets of Berlin, billboards can be seen everywhere advertising the German-made military drones of the company Quantum Systems. One of its major investors happens to be the owner of Palantir, Trump’s long-term financier and proven radical right-winger, or should I say fascist, Peter Thiel. According to the media reports, Quantum Systems will double the production of drones for the war in Ukraine in 2025.
Trump’s open rejection of international law and post-WWII “rules-based” order, in favour of an undisguised imperial policy, has exposed Europe as a periphery, not a partner but a sphere of interest, the proverbial Middle East or Latin America, where the former “benevolent” hegemon does as he pleases, while looking to make a deal with another potential empire (Russia) on the distribution of the spoils (Ukraine).
Land, not territory
Where will these militarists look for resources needed for their imperial endeavours? Who will they use as cannon fodder? Certainly not their children, but ours. And by ours, I don’t mean only Serbian, but all peripheral, all marginalised, all working-class, all children at borders, such as the children of Ukraine; all “superfluous” children, such as the children of Palestine who occupy a space that could become a “beautiful riviera”.
If the national interests, embodied by the “No Surrender” flags, prevail in the struggle over the meaning and goals of the social revolt, Serbia will have no choice but to align itself with a first, second, third or fifth imperial power to which it will offer everything it has – people, land, resources. In this scenario, only the comprador elites, political and economic, can do well.
Unlike the national perspective, which is, as far as I can see, present only symbolically, the class and intersectional perspectives permeate all aspects of student and social rebellion. Its watchwords are justice, solidarity, equality, mutual aid and dignified life for every human being.
As opposed to the anti-systemic right, which is based in essentialism and nativism, gender, class, racial and ethno-national hierarchies, the anti-systemic charge of the student struggle is a deeply feminist one, as it places the ethics of care at its foreground. Care for the excluded, the weak, the oppressed, the invisible and the forgotten. It deeply values life (not just human life), advocates for non-violence, unity and care for the common good. The student struggle is an anti-fascist one, because it is concerned with the well-being of others. It is anti-colonial and anti-imperial, because it rejects the logic of (white) supremacy, and it most definitely is a class struggle because it does not accept the “naturalness” of appropriation and exploitation.
No matter how much our redundant politicians strive to establish some new iteration of liberal democracy, the international system in which Serbia exists, nolens volens, has been irreversibly altered. We cannot go back. And why should we? This past is responsible for the apocalypse we are currently living in – political, economic, ecological – which deprives today’s youth of their right to a future. Instead of choosing if they should perish in a nuclear war or be scorched by the sun, the youth is choosing to at least fight for the possibility of a different future.
This very text can therefore be read as a plea to liberals that if they don’t want to or are not able to help them, to at least not stand in their way. There is no blueprint, and we should certainly not go with the one that already failed. There are no well-trodden paths, a way forward is highly risky and the outcome is uncertain. The student movement is politically sketchy, occasionally clumsy in the articulation of its principles, condemned, like the rest of us, to the terminology and conceptual apparatus inherited from a dying system. Their ideals are not fully developed, but the concreteness of their struggle produces “ideas and dreams”.
In collectively thinking and imagining different economic and political realities, we may want to raise our heads above our individual struggle. To look into the past, in the experience of the Paris Commune, in the direction of the so-called Global South, at Rojava, a society without a state, at the pluri-national Bolivia. In the direction of the Palestinian resistance that takes the olive tree as its symbol and places land at the centre of its struggle, not as state territory, nor as property, but as life-giving soil. “Countries and borders are all made up, the real thing is the land, and the land accepts us wherever we die,” as the wise Yusra says, in the Mo series. The land is ours not because we are indigenous to it, nor because we own it, but because we take responsibility to care for it, to restore it, because only by restoring land we can restore ourselves.
Translated from Serbian by M.J.
- “Ćaciland“, a colloquial term used to describe an encampment of „students who want to study” that was set up in the park across the street from the Parliament in the days preceding the student protest. Besides “students 2.0” the camp was filled with SNS supporters and officials.
- “Nema predaje”, flags that imply that Serbia has not given up on re-taking Kosovo.
- Elementary and high school teachers, and more recently university professors and staff got their salaries reduced in an (illegal) attempt by the Ministry of Education to pressure them into stopping their months-long strike (around 20.000 teachers and staff received no or reduced wages). So far, around half a million euros has been distributed to more than 1500 educators.
- A majority Bosniak town and municipality in Western Serbia.
- A group of professors, academics and public figures who have been campaigning against the capture of the state and institutions by SNS since late 2023.
