The regime of the arrogant and infantile tyrant Aleksandar Vučić, composed of the most corrupt leftovers of all political parties, stands as one of the most fatal occurrences to befall Serbia in the past two centuries. A former wartime Minister of Information under Milošević, during whose tenure journalists were murdered, Vučić was rehabilitated by Western power centers and rebranded as a reformist in 2012. Despite his chauvinist past, he was given a free hand to suppress basic freedoms within a “hybrid stabilocracy” in exchange for fulfilling a few key points from the agenda of his employers and patrons: cheap labor and natural resources, Serbia’s territorial disintegration, migrant transit and readmissions, the execution of the pandemic psychodrama, the renting out of the population for experimental purposes, and the zealous implementation of perversions conceived in Davos. In short, Vučić is a puppet who must be urgently removed like a neglected metastasis from Serbia’s political scene.
The problem is that, due to his eager servility, Vučić still retains support from the EU (state subsidies to foreign companies, lithium, jadarite), the USA (Kosovo, coal, lead, zinc), Russia (colonizing Belgrade with hundreds of thousands of young Russians and their IT companies), China (gold, copper, lithium), and Arab sheikhs (prime agricultural land, water sources). In other words, to prolong his incompetent rule, Vučić has turned Serbia into an eldorado for extractive colonialism, recently sparking resistance over a controversial Rio Tinto project by making a shocking statement: “We have no right to destroy the lives of more people than originally planned”.
“We have no right to destroy the lives of more people than originally planned” – Aleksandar Vučić
In recent months, protests in Serbia have become defined by visual spectacles and performances, reflecting earlier “color” political movements worldwide. The collapse of the canopy at the renovated railway station in Novi Sad and the tragic deaths of fifteen people became the trigger for another recent round of protests. Attention soon shifted to painting the Novi Sad square red, inspired by the protests in Skopje in 2016, where red paint had symbolized spilled blood and served as a warning to the new government after the overthrow of an authoritarian leader. Is rehashing old performances a symptom of a lack of originality, or is it part of an already-written screenplay signed by the same director?
The symbolism of the protests further evolved with the introduction of the bloodied hand, strikingly similar to the Open Society Foundation’s Mjaft project in Albania. Meanwhile, university faculties and high schools have organized into “plenums” (a term heavily exploited during the one-party communist era), now used to gather teachers and students in a collective blockade of classes. Students who remained passive until 2023 despite the government’s repressive measures (numerous election frauds, political assassinations, corruption, sadistic response to the pandemic operation) have suddenly become active, draped in yellow vests and equipped with megaphones and walkie-talkies. Dozens of new NGOs and professional activists sporting Che Guevara-style headscarves have emerged, skillfully diluting the protests at critical moments and dispersing an obedient mass that dutifully changes profile picture frames on social media, chants the same slogans, like “Pump it!”, that invites staying in rhythm without pause or surrender.
Rather than concrete action, the protests increasingly resemble coordinated visual performances and “revolutionary tourism”, with drones capturing massive night-time spectacles from a bird’s-eye view. Just as the earlier fascination with comparing vax-selfies and antibody levels was once seen as proof of patriotism, the most vocal and prominent protesters, who once strongly promoted vaccines and climate hysteria, have now begun competing in producing “iconic” selfies in crowded city squares.
The protests increasingly resemble coordinated visual performances and “revolutionary tourism”.
The protest narrative relies on flashy historical motifs from both Serbian and Yugoslav liberation and anti-fascist traditions—from simulations of grueling Partisan marches of WWII to recent pandemic-era quarantine imagery. A girl wearing a traditional šajkača cap, known on social media as “Milunka Savić”, evokes wartime history with a great deal of pathos—much like the anesthesiologist who, five years ago, was placing patients on respirators while being mythologized in the media as a modern counterpart to the Serbian heroine of the 1912–18 liberation wars. Meanwhile, Reuters, EPA, and BBC News in Serbian circulate self-victimizing photos of protesters, whether on crutches or wearing face masks, similar to those from the golden age of the “pandemic”, when medical staff were depicted as martyrs with wounds from protective equipment.
On social media, viral posts urgently call for surgeons and physiotherapists to treat blisters among marching protesters, while taxi drivers and lawyers are also depicted as benevolent assistants. The renewed humanization of the most corrupt professions in Serbia, supposedly self-sacrificing and altruistic, is part of the same hyperbolic propaganda that characterized the pandemic narrative and now dominates public portrayals of this protest phenomenon, which ostensibly has a noble goal: removing a tyrannical and corrupt regime.
Another element of the spectacle involves TikTok videos of tractor convoys with the inevitable flashing lights and makeshift lodgings for “pilgrims” in school gyms, neatly lined with mattresses, resembling improvised pandemic hospitals. Students march, simulating the Albanian Golgotha retreat, while well-funded “freedom fighters” book hotel suites around central squares, observing the stage from their VIP boxes. Despite the overt Orthodox Christian iconography, the protests emphasize a supranational character, so much so that the image of a Bosniak mother from Novi Pazar sending off her son to Kragujevac is mourned on social media as if he were going to war in a different country rather than for a night out in a city 150 km away. Collective euphoria is swelling again, making any questioning or skepticism heretical, while multifunctional white tents have once again appeared across Serbian cities—just like in every previously scene of the dilettante globalist theater (PCR testing and triage, vaccination, Ukraine, climate and energy crisis, migrants, Gaza, isolated terrorist episodes, from mass shootings to car ramming attacks, etc.).
The protests emphasize a supranational character, so much so that the image of a Bosniak mother from Novi Pazar sending off her son to Kragujevac is mourned on social media as if he were going to war in a different country rather than for a night out in a city 150 km away.
All of this creates the impression of widespread resistance, but skeptics like me wonder how much of a real threat these protests pose to a regime still tightly embraced not only by the controversial EU bureaucracy and unelected Davos powerbrokers, but also by Moscow, Beijing, and Washington. Following their collaboration in pandemic advertising and intimidation, the government and fake opposition in the Serbian parliament periodically arrange choreographed wrestling matches to divert attention away from pressing issues. Will these protests dissolve into yet another inefficient episode of political kitsch, or is there time for concrete action before the movement loses its momentum? If the goal and strategy are not clearly defined, this manifestation of the Debordian “society of the spectacle” may undermine the movement, causing it to quickly lose both potency and meaning. Some see the solution in global solidarity against regimes that thrive on the alliance between neoliberal democracy, big capital, and neo-fascist forces, but the question persists: will this wave of oddly well-orchestrated protests end up as just another staged spectacle?
Will this wave of oddly well-orchestrated protests end up as just another staged spectacle?
A major civic/student protest rally is scheduled for March 15 in Belgrade, with columns of young pedestrians expected to converge on the capital. On the other hand, the supreme tyrant has also announced a counter-gathering of his supporters in the city. Is Serbia heading for a color revolution on the Ides of March, or is this seemingly harmonious internal turmoil merely a prelude to some regional conflict meant to distract from the morbid yet exhausted Ukrainian farce? My fundamental stance remains unchanged: since the early 1990s, I firmly opposed the dictatorship embodied by Milošević and Vučić, dedicating a significant part of my life to its downfall in 2000. However, I am disturbed by the plethora of agenda-driven associations that subconsciously make me doubt the sincerity of this rebellion because, since March 2020, I have decided to question everything.
But one way or another, I’m grabbing popcorn and watching.
