What do "disobedient" students do in the blockade with a legacy that they neither chose nor created? They managed to hack the foundations of this system in just over a month of engagement. Authoritarianism is hacked by democracy, personality cult by depersonalization, fear by courage
With the transition from "young" to "mature" age, several simultaneous processes occur that lead to psychological, behavioral and value-ideological changes in people. For example, the older we get, the more inclined we are to spend our time with fewer people, usually surrounding ourselves with like-minded people. Then, with age, social values become more stable or, rather, more difficult to change. Also, studies show that with age, people lose interest in new cultural content, especially content created by a generation younger than them. However, one of the most widespread changes that occurs with age is forgetting what it's like to be young and forming a passive-aggressive attitude towards new generations.
THE PAST
Entering the "mature" age creates a kind of jealousy towards young people, which in our case often escalated into the stigmatization and devaluation of the Zed generation. The disqualification discourse of this generation most often contained the following narratives: "These young people today don't know anything, they just stare at the phone"; "They don't socialize at all, they are always inside their own worlds"; "They are not aware of what is happening in reality"; "This is not a generation, this is degeneration"; "They don't know who Dragan Nikolić is, but they know who Voyage is."
And then it happens and students u blockades and now the older generations sing in unison Ode to youth. How did this change happen? If we start from understanding the society that this generation of young people has inherited, it may be easier for us to understand why what they are doing is a generational turning point and what lessons other social groups can learn from them.
Generacija Zed has, above all, inherited from the Boomers and Generation X a society marked by an authoritarian political culture and the idealization of political power, corrupt institutions that are financed by a couple of citizens and act against the interests of those same citizens. They inherited a society characterized by a chronic lack of true individual freedom, low levels of social trust, and perpetuated cycles of trauma.
This legacy includes the transgenerational promotion of social passivity (especially by those disillusioned with the "October 5th Revolution") and social participation based on fear. Also, they inherited a society where politics is a dirty and dishonorable business, not a mechanism for organizing the community through democratic competition of different visions of the future. In a system in which they will realize themselves as mature people, head shakers, half-wits, cowards, ignoramuses and frauds of every kind are rewarded. All the qualities that this system rewards can be reduced to one common denominator - OBEDIENCE.
PRESENT
And what do the "disobedient" students in the blockade do with a legacy that they neither chose nor created? They managed to hack the foundations of this system in just over a month of engagement. Authoritarianism is hacked by democracy, personality cult by depersonalization, fear by courage. With their social skills and astute understanding of the authoritarian political environment, they have created a movement that behaves like Teflon when it comes to attacks by the authorities - every attack is simply repelled by them. On the other hand, their strategic creativity and insight with which they press the neuralgic points of this system creates social ripples whose amplitudes we could not even imagine just two months ago.
The authoritarianism of our political and social life is being hacked by students in the blockade with a democratic way of decision-making through plenums. While society has been accustomed for a decade to all important decisions in the state being made by one person, whose decision-making is mostly unconstitutional and illegal, students in blockades make decisions in a participatory manner. Although sometimes this way of decision-making can seem slow, it ensures that decisions are well thought out. Thoughtfulness is a consequence of the exceptional social skills and knowledge that the Zed generation possesses, but also of a plenary way of working that encourages argumentation and joint creative solutions for the acute social situation in which we find ourselves. In addition, because they participated in the process of making them, students recognize the decisions as their own and respect them with greater responsibility and consistency.
The subversive attitude towards the cult of personality was established on two levels, internal and external. At the internal level, this was achieved by depersonalizing blockages and placing the organizational and media focus on the collective rather than on individuals/leaders. With this tactical move, the students in the blockade disarmed the communication artillery of the Serbian Progressive Party, which cannot resort to its tried and tested uncivilized mechanism of character assassination of the opponent.
Since the students in the blockade do not have leaders but the communicators take turns, the focus remains on the idea or as some of them like to say - "collective thought", and not on the bearers of the narrative. In such a situation, no matter how hard it tries, the government fails to discredit the blockades by discrediting the leader, because there really is no leader. All they have to do is attack "collective thought" and the plenum, which is not easy at all and is almost certainly fruitless.
The students in the blockade applied the principle of depersonalization when it comes to the subversion of the cult of personality to the outside, which is perhaps the biggest novelty in political communication in the last 13 years. A simple but effective strategy of addressing the competent institutions, and not the non-institutional source of power - the President of the Republic of Serbia. The message "you are not in charge" is the first symbolic step of derogating the political power of Aleksandar Vučić and the general concept of authoritarian power that does not arise from institutions and is not limited by those same institutions. The way the students in the blockade treat the president as a blind spot completely demeans the cult of personality he created and puts his power back within constitutional limits.
The students in the blockade are doing another important thing when it comes to eroding the authoritarian power of the political structures that run the country. In every performance and action, they show expressed unimpression of the power of Aleksandar Vučić, the state system of coercion, the pro-government Goebbelsian media and the street criminals who work for this government.
They do it with their courage. This is important because, on the one hand, it sends a message to potential allies (older generations, influencers, athletes, etc.) that they have nothing to fear, while it sends a message to the authorities that their main trump card in managing society for more than a decade, the rule of fear, it doesn't work with them. Generation Z apparently has a built-in collective immunity to fear. Consequently, the courage of the students in the blockade caused the address where fear resides to change. Fear is now the tenant of Andrić's wreath.
THE FUTURE
As someone who has many years of experience working with college and high school students through various educational programs, I have often participated in discussions about the role of youth in society and politics. I always had the feeling that my presentation on those stands resembled The Defense of Socrates, given that it was aimed at breaking stereotypes and prejudices (those from the beginning of the text) about the Zed generation.
This generation is often perceived as apolitical and alienated from politics, although in fact politics is alienated from them. Considering what politics is like and what is offered to young people from the position and the opposition, their political involvement can be understood through the prism of disappointment rather than disinterest. In addition, this generation grew up in the narrative ambush of Boomers and Generation X, who spread the idea that fighting the system is futile with their depressing and passivating attitudes. Now that there is no need to defend them, we are free to praise them. One of my colleagues called this generation "the most powerful generation ever" and "myth creators" in 2019.
Their collective thought, courage, assembly, empathy, humanity, perseverance, democracy, patriotism, love of justice, knowledge, creativity and disobedience reveal a new future before us. This is the future to which the courage of twenty-year-old student of the Faculty of Law, Sonja Ponjavić, as well as all those who are risking their young lives, are trying to establish rules for the normal functioning of our society. Their activism works like physical therapy on generations who carry the burden of decades of bent spines. They are not just students now - they are social chiropractors helping society straighten its spine. They even have a slogan for it: "If you're missing a backbone, we'll put one in."
The author is an assistant professor at the FPN of the University of Belgrade
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