And if I didn't have information from diplomats, journalists and marquises, there was a postman, the husband of the woman who washed the stairs in the building where I lived. Because whenever it is Mussolini said somewhere, that postman was being ordered to be present under the balcony of the Venice palace. The whole of Rome was full of such petty municipal officials, who were invited to witness historical moments. Kab, his wife, would tell us, confidentially, that her husband had warned her that on that day and that day, at so many hours, he had to go there, I knew that something big was being prepared... The big political parties had the ambition, in that past Europe, that as many people as possible would listen to their speaker. And for the declaration of war, they wanted to have as large a crowd as possible, as in a plebiscite. All members of the party had to attend, Miloš Crnjanski wrote in the novel Among the Hyperboreans, about his experiences as a diplomatic officer Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1938 and 1941 in Italy.
When Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić, splitting the Serbian Radical Party, stabbed Vojislav Šešelj in the back, who was in prison at the Hague Tribunal, they founded the Serbian Progressive Party as a political party. Very quickly, however, it transformed into a people's movement - an organization whose goal was not to compete in the political life of the state, but to subjugate state institutions, destroy competition and penetrate into every pore of society.
The people who overnight exchanged dreams of the Greater Serbian border of Karlovac-Karlobag-Ogulin-Virovitica for a promise to bring Serbia into the European Union, rejected all ideology as a limiting factor. Creating a cult of leader around Aleksandar Vučić, they collected everything they could find - both left and right, and those who are for the West, and those whose hearts beat for the East, both tails and crooks, handing out party booklets like deeds for privileges.
Loyalty to the Leader became the basic criterion for membership and functions in the state apparatus and public enterprises, for lucrative jobs paid from the budget, and Aleksandar Vučić "God among usThus SNS grew into, for Serbian conditions, an oversized interest community with hundreds of thousands of members and a strict vertical hierarchy.
Anti-blockade farce
The structure of this system, its organization and self-sustainability, as well as its focus on a worshiped and untouchable leader very quickly began to resemble the organization of Mussolini's National Fascist Party and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party.
And so also with regard to the obligation of all members of the organization that dominates the state to gather at public gatherings where the leader speaks or invites. The way Crnjanski described it while living in fascist Italy. Since Aleksandar Vučić does not have any historical decisions to announce, progressive gatherings have long since turned into a farce, as happens with plagiarists of history.
The "anti-blockade" gatherings organized by the SNS are a demonstration of logistical supremacy and flaunting of resources with the aim of maintaining the appearance of dominance, to round up wavering half-hearted people in their own ranks, to remind them of their obligations, to intimidate the other side with the thought of a civil war, and to show Western and Eastern powers that "the people" are still with Vučić.
People who get into buses three weekends in a row and go to these "anti-blockade" gatherings, however, do not give the slightest impression that they are ready to enter any kind of battle for the leader. And as for the image of the status of the beloved leader intended for the leaders of functional Western democracies - it is all too transparent and unoriginal to deceive anyone, except, perhaps, a few viewers of Pink and Informer television.
No more pretending.
The police and SNS assault squads remain, those big "guys" in black T-shirts with bars tied to their backs who appear at progressive rallies, to defend the system built by the Vučić brothers and their collaborators, against which a large number of citizens rebelled. The blatant abuse of party-controlled state power finally put the progressives led by Vučić on the same level as the organizations on which various dictatorships rested, and still rest.
SNS-Sturmabteilung: Advanced Assault Divisions
What European Union Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said: "We have a problem in Belgrade." Admittedly, her reaction was caused by the fact that the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, called the European parliamentarians who were in Novi Sad during the September 5 protest "European scum" who dared to come to Serbia in order not to destroy it.
Let's go back to the postman in Fascist Italy from the beginning of the text. One day, Serbian postmen, people employed in the Government of Serbia or ministries, in the Chamber of Commerce, public companies or companies owned by some progressive director will find the courage to refuse to go and click Aci Srbina. Then it will remain alone Marko Kricak and other commanders of special police units loyal to Vučić force their subordinates to use batons, tear gas, shock bombs and who knows what else to defend the regime.
Describing the Nazis and Germany under their rule, Thomas Mann wrote of a "turning away from faith in reason," a return to irrational, orgiastic behavior. National Socialism, he continued, mingles with "a huge wave of eccentric barbarism and primitive, crude mass-democratic fairs," as a product of the wild, confusing and at the same time nervously stimulating, intoxicating impressions that are produced in the people.
Immune to propaganda stimulants, citizens dissatisfied with the progressive government and students in blockades throughout Serbia stepped into the eleventh month of protests. How long will the anti-blockade protests be under the auspices of the Serbian Progressive Party?
