Rock and roll fails

Did Vuk Drašković decide to retire as a politician?! Although I don't believe in it at all, it is perfectly logical to think something like that, considering that the man recently published a very extensive book of sorts, um, poetic memoirs under the title Reminders (Srpska reč, Beograd 2001), whose "hidden subtitle" could also be deciphered as follows: "What did I tell you, and you, unfortunate ones, did not know how to listen". Between its covers, namely, there is an abundance of Drašković's texts, speeches, interviews and other statements about "our social reality" from 1989 to the summer of 2000; the book ends with the author's afterword from January of this year, in which the writer tries to explain what to bi, respectively kako je failed Rock and Roll from Ravnagorsk Woodstock... As much as a reminder of some of Drašković's correct and honorable words and actions, this book is also a chronicle of great wanderings and imposing delusions which, admittedly, were not only his, but, unfortunately, were an integral part baby the era of Serbian post-communism (and Drašković will undoubtedly remain a kind of icons of that period).

Such "archival" activities are usually carried out by politicians who have played their part, and they are aware of it; I am not sure that this is the case with Drašković, at least when it comes to the latter. However, this is perhaps the right occasion to examine a ten-year career with the Ever Elusive Happy, or rather the reasons why she had to end up where she is. The reasons for that, after all, were given by Drašković himself when the other day, on the occasion of a promotion Reminders, carefully warns that "after the fall of the serial killer, Serbia must return to its pre-communist foundations, history and traditions" (v. Today from 10-11. 3. 2001), and that because, as he says in the foreword of the book, "our faith in God and the traditional virtues and values ​​of the Serbian nation". These are not the only current Drašković's statements of this kind, and with them the proud author of "The Night of the General" proves that he has remained faithful to a decade-old rhetoric and "worldview", so whatever it costs, it costs.

Drašković's problem, namely, from the very beginning, was the contradiction of his "strength" behind which he hid epochal weakness which suited the clients of the Stunned State so well: his party - or mass movement - was indeed, unlike the others in the opposition, "big" and visible to the naked eye, but its further mobilizing potential was almost equal to zero: it could not attract new supporters outside the separate circle of fans of the kitsch, canonized "tradition" and "partisan-Chetnik genre", and similar futile lovers Retro-clothing; since, on the other hand, the VD was "big" enough that it figured in the mass consciousness for years as synonym za the opposition, Milosevic's regime could not fall until that spell was broken, until someone was legitimately declared the "icon" of the opposition civil face (as it is), that is, the one that will be deprived of the cockade, pentacle, boots, beard, commissar's purse and other Bulajić antagonisms. However, with his new appearances, Drašković proves that he has no idea what actually happened to him, let alone why. Having built an entire - vivid, but meaningless - ideology on the symbolic opposition of the dominant representation of "partisans" and "Chetniks" (while it is not known which of these is less "authentic"), he cannot imagine that now, in changed circumstances, either look for a new ideological foundation or give up the boring work; instead, Drašković, in the so-called Afterword, elaborates at length on Fr so of communism who, of course, seized power on October 5, which is nothing more than a kind of - and very futile - symbolic reanimation of the Enemy who is dead and buried; it should, however, be revived because without it there is no us either: its symbolic disappearance abolishes the remnants of the meaningfulness of our existence. Who, for example, are "Chetniks" if there are no "partisans"? Ridiculously dressed chocolates parading in furs in the middle of summer; for such children cry out in the street. That's why "partisans" have to be, so Drašković himself forcibly dressed them in their blouses.

Throughout all these years, Vuk Drašković was both the main creator and leading user of what Raoul Girarde calls the "myth of the Golden Age", one of the favorite political manipulative techniques, which refers to "traditional values" (let's say those of the "Serbian host") from the time when sve bilo better, by the fact that it comes from an empirically unverifiable section of the idealized past: "Such a past, therefore, is never directly known: its evocative power actually lies in the offered pattern, archetype, role model." Because the fact that they rise from the darkness of ancient times seems to give them some additional value, the value of an example that should be followed... (...) And from the mythologizing of such privileged moments to their sacralization, there is only one step: the transition is imminent and fast. Because against the image of the present, experienced and described as a period of sadness and decay, rises the absolute of the past characterized by fullness and light. Therefore, it is almost inevitable that the idea of ​​'old times', condensing all the violent rapture of imagination and daydreaming, will grow into a myth. And that in the fullest sense of the word: a myth that is at the same time fiction, and a complete explanatory system, and a mobilizing message for the masses" (Raoul Girarde: "Political Myths and Mythologies", Biblioteka XX vek, Belgrade 2000).

This "mobilizing message", however, played its part. From the very beginning, she was by definition a minority and a half default loser; with the factual and symbolic termination of the order that was parasitizing on the mutant ruins of (post)communism, even the weak remains of its "seductiveness" disappear. That's why, say, this year's Woodstock on Ravna Gora will be by far the saddest of all: deprived of the stimulating presence of the "partisan" order, the "Chetniks" will be Alone in the World, abandoned and betrayed like those Japanese soldiers who hid in forests and islands for decades after the war, all the while "warring" against invisible Americans. In the end, you feel sorry for them, like all people whose greatest joy in life is taken away by someone or something.