Yesterday, April 10, Serbia was relieved for a few hours: Dejan Ilić was finally arrested. But alas. As soon as we picked up the small children and pets and went outside - so that the children and canaries could see the sun while the villain rotted in the basement - the news that Ilić had been released spread like an icy wave. "Y... you country", I thought, "which is not able to keep Ilic behind bars for even 48 hours", and then in a panic I picked up the small children and rushed home headlong.
And now seriously. What did the regime want to achieve by arresting Dejan Ilić on the somnambulistic charge of causing panic?
If, for example, he wanted to remove a harsh critic from the public space, he did it, to put it mildly, stupidly and ineffectively. May Dejan Ilić not write another word after this prosecutorial hogwash, or utter a single sentence in public (which is hard to believe), this arrest is so heinous and insane that the regime has brought absolutely nothing.
The second assumption is that the regime did not want to remove Ilić from the public space, but to offer his arrest as an example of how intellectuals and citizens who not only do not worship a supreme being, but also blasphemers, will be executed. Of course, the regime is trying to intimidate intellectuals and citizens - is there anything else left for it considering the composition and profile of personalities that make up that regime - but by arresting an honorable and respected publisher, writer, columnist and loyal citizen of this country, it is unlikely that, with all the propaganda artillery, it will cause anything other than the anger of the citizens.
May his will be done.
All this, however, is less important despite the man being mistreated. The question is what does this act mean?
For citizens who believe that the regime - which (for now) keeps the prosecution and the police under control - is the cause of all the evils in this area, the arrest of Dejan Ilić is only a confirmation of that position. Depriving the freedom of an intellectual with an impeccable life and work biography, without the slightest meaningful reason, is just one of the brutal indicators that the regime has turned against its own citizens (if there is anyone who didn't realize it after March 15). Except, of course, if criticism of the regime and the leader is not considered a legal basis for arrest, which, however, has nothing to do with law, but has to do with dictatorship as an order that rests not on laws but on the will of one man.
This is that one man (let's remember) who chose to express himself in his own way volji pointed to the intensive care room at the Clinical Center of Serbia and felt those unfortunate Macedonians there. Therefore, Dejan Ilić was not arrested because he thinks, but because wrong thoughts. (And it could be noticed that it is anyone who thinks enemy of this regime.)
The logic of falling
Furthermore, it means that the prosecutor's office and the police, at the behest of the leader, intensify the already high level of violence and slowly enter the phase of terror. We knew things would turn out that way because that is the nature of a collapsing dictatorship. It is simply about the logic of the fall.
There is almost no doubt that state terror will increase every day, and the target is, literally, everyone who believes that the regime, for the sake of the personal benefit of a very narrow circle of people, is leading the country to ruin with a sure step.
Nevertheless, the fact that the regime lashed out at Dejan Ilic in this way also speaks to a very disconcerting circumstance for the regime itself: Macron's incompetent friend is hitting blindly. As much as he is the leader of a machine that coldly calculates the gains and losses of its moves, and the machine seems rational (ratio, let's recall, means calculation), it is only part of the technology of government, and such an incoherent move like the arrest of Dejan Ilić is by no means the result of a calculation, but rather of a disoriented mind.
Dictatorial logic tells the leader that he must increase violence against the citizens, start seducing terror and plow the few avenues left for him to retreat - all this in order to stay in power regardless of the price paid by the citizens - but choosing Ilic as an instructive example of retribution for disobedient intellectuals and citizens is an extremely bad choice - provided that there is a good choice for the regime in general.
