In an essay on the relationship between Jews and Palestinians, David Grossman tells an anecdote that goes something like this. During the Vietnam War, a man stands in front of the White House every day with an anti-war banner. After a few months, a journalist asked him if he really believed that he alone could change the world. He replies, with mild confusion, "I never thought I could change the world, I just don't want the world to change me."
Students and high school students in Serbia have shown during the past year that they have grown into personalities that have not been touched by the blackness of the regime and what that regime has done to society. And at the same time, unlike the aforementioned Washington protester, they also showed that they are capable of changing the world around them. Dignity and compassion are at the center of their actions, words and silence. And the regime has no answer to that, because it simply does not understand that language. All those former odes, not only of supporters, but also of critics Aleksandar Vučić how he is a good politician, invincible, a man who understands the soul of the people and the techniques of government better than everyone else, they proved to be completely missed. It is about a man ready for anything, without a single internal brake - whether it is imposed by the moral law or humanity. And nothing more.
We saw this again and extremely nakedly in the days leading up to the commemoration in Novi Sad, then on November 1, and then on Sunday, Monday... However, the way students and rebellious citizens respond to his inhumanity shows that the future of society - despite the years that the regime's locusts have slipped by - is bright. Unfortunately, what cannot be brought back are the lives lost.
"And what about on Saturday, is there a game or what?" Aleksandar Vučić declared on October 30, when asked by a journalist what he expected for that day. This statement could perhaps be compared to the moment when Brnabić, Mali and Vučić, on May 12, 2023, eight and nine days after the mass murder of children in the elementary school "Vladislav Ribnikar" and young people in the villages of Dubona and Malo Orašje, published a photo of themselves choking with laughter. This time, after commenting on the match, the President of Serbia said: "There will be a much, much bigger gathering in Novi Sad ten days later, ten days later."
What did he mean by that? That for him the day in which 16 people were killed and the 17th victim was seriously injured has no significance, except as a form of competition - whose sum is greater - and an event in which more political points can be lost or won.
That terrifying callousness towards other people's pain and towards the victims was seen on November 2, when smiling and singing members of the ruling party, employees, among other things, in the city's municipalities, swayed to the lyrics "The mother of her son went to look for her", in the immediate vicinity of Diana Hrka, Stefan's mother, who started the hunger strike.
And before the commemorative meeting on November 1, the government showed its entire range of dishonor: its leading people, as well as small belligerents and the media army, said that the "blockaders" were preparing terrible violence; there were stories about terrorism as the cause of the fall of the canopy; traffic is stopped; hate speech against students from Novi Pazar who walked to Novi Sad was normalized; many students slept in the open in Indjija because the regime closed schools and sports halls for them…
Bizarre mischief even included the Book Fair, where entry was free on November 1st. The more the regime tried to thwart the commemorative gathering, the more forcefully it waved its hands in living mud. Against that stood the strength of togetherness and dignity, solidarity and pain.
There were more than 100.000 people at the rally. During the 16 minutes of silence, children aged 12 and 13 sobbed for the victims, while their mothers hugged them. The male and female students who walked from various parts of Serbia could barely walk due to fatigue, but they walked to the railway station with tears in their eyes. People from the profession spoke about what we know so far about the fall of the canopy and the responsibility of the authorities, Tihomir Stanić recited a passage from Simović's "Hasanaginica", the blockade choir sang "Everything is the same in my area, only I am no longer there"... Dijana Hrka spoke. Everything was extremely emotional, appropriate for the event, but without kitsch and abuse.
In short, the regime lost. The meeting in Novi Sad, like no other before it, showed that the government has force, but that it does not have power. That he has a huge propaganda machine, but that he is losing the battle in front of the truth. There is another important fact: for years, Aleksandar Vučić built and strengthened the narrative about Serbs as the absolute victims of previous decades and himself as the one who restores dignity and the right to memory to those victims. It was, according to the way he did it, another misuse and instrumentalization of the dead, another poison for the already wounded society and the entire region. That self-victimization narrative - in which he was at the center - served him to hunt for votes. Today, some young people are restoring the dignity of some other victims, for whom this regime is responsible and guilty, and thus become the main actors in the fight against oblivion.
