A possibility civil war in Serbia it is mentioned too easily and too quickly. First of all, Serbia is not, as you may hear, divided society. Fragmented in a bad sense - it is, but it is not divided. The division implies two clearly defined parties arguing over different ideological projects, or representing two mutually irreconcilable understandings of the world, two mutually incommensurable sets of values.
But in Vučić's Serbia, ideological divisions are suppressed primarily because the regime itself is non-ideological - it can change several ideological masks in just one day, from the extreme right to the extreme left, and where the government has a monopoly on any ideology nothing it is not an ideology. Where the regime establishes values with its twisted language in which freedom means slavery, truth means lies, justice means loyalty to the Leader, resistance to such and such a regime is the only value that cannot be questioned.
Illegal enrichment of members of the regime at the expense of citizens is not an ideological project, nor a value that can be defended, but criminal activity. To that extent, there is a criminal regime, with its supporters, and citizens who oppose such and such a regime.
Regime supporters
Okay, but what about regime supporters? Aren't they the "other side" necessary for a civil war?
Actually they didn't. The age and educational composition of the people the regime pays or blackmails to stand in imitations of support for the Leader, suggests that they cannot be the party that would take up arms for the defense of the Leader and the inner circle around him. To that extent, the dividing line stretches between a large number of citizens on the one hand, and the regime, its thugs and part of the police on the other.
Where is the army in all of this?
We can only guess, as the regime can guess, and the only way to know if the army would attack the citizens is to try it.
In the balance of power described in this way, there are no parties that could start a civil war, but we have a dictatorial regime that tries to stay in power at all costs (this should be taken literally) and citizens who resist such and such a regime. Therefore, all possibilities are on the table for the regime except one: to step down voluntarily.
Since it does not operate within legal frameworks (therefore it does not respect the form), the regime of Aleksandar Vučić factually is a mode that only calculates with the power ratio. However, what is its legitimation basis - so real citizen support - weak, as it does not stand for any set of values around which a critical mass of supporters would gather, the regime has no choice but to use violence against citizens by paid criminals and parts of the police. And for a civil war, that is not enough.
Culture against anti-politics
The paradox of this position is the temporary separation of politics and culture. Despite the intuition that tells us otherwise - namely that politics and culture are two mutually opposed areas, and politics would be something dirty and culture clean, politics would be the area of necessity and culture the realm of freedom (and so on) - politics and culture have the same origin, community, and are mutually intertwined beyond recognition.
But to the extent that Vučić's regime destroyed the public space - that is, politics - culture appears as an action that opposes the non-political one. That is why the role of (non)politics and the role of culture in Serbia, today, remind us of the roles they had in totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes were, basically, non-political: there is no free public space, no politics as a public dispute about the ways in which the community can be organized, but because of this precisely culture appears as a space of freedom, and therefore as a political space.
Being in Novi Sad on November 1, because of that, means opposing the anti-political regime of Aleksandar Vučić with culture as politics. It means carrying, along with your body, a set of values that the regime seeks to suppress. Because, where citizens defend their freedom with their bodies - and they are not paid to act in a comedy organized by the regime - the regime necessarily falls apart.
Therefore, it took a year for the citizens to reduce it to 32 percent of support (from 47 percent, let's remind you). With such support, and especially with the way in which the support is manifested, the regime simply cannot rule. Two-thirds of the way has been passed and the regime cannot recover. When he rises to the ceiling, we can only hope that there will be no one under him whom he will kill, like the canopy in Novi Sad.
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