Invoking war in the name of peace

On Monday, April 14, students carried out another surprise action blocking both public media services. Television N1 sent reporters to the scene, but it was not the only one; he also had a live broadcast from Takovska Street Inform, and in the studio of this television sat well-known persons - editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief Dragan J. Vučićević and his right hand Dejan Vukelic, ready to dissect every detail of the new student protest to their viewers.

The Informer team tried to break through the blockade in Takovska, but it was not allowed. While one of the students explained live in the program that the Informer "wanted to go behind their lines", Vučićevuć and Vukelic were raging in their upholstered chairs. "Look at the little terrorist," said Vukelić. "How well he knows the terminology", added the deputy editor-in-chief of Informer.

The remark went unnoticed for a while - the word "terrorist" has become part of the regular vocabulary in the studio on Peka Dapčevića Boulevard in recent months, and it is used as if it were some kind of therapy - to improve intestinal flora, drink two "terrorisms" on an empty stomach, and so on three times a day.

However, the two editors agreed that "no matter how many terrorists are in front of RTS, they are not few".

"Even 1300 terrorists is a large number," was heard in the cacophony of voices. We cannot say with certainty which of the two editors made the estimate of the number of "terrorists" because the voices of DJV and his Petka - with one less "J" in their name - acquired the same characteristics over time, so they often cannot be distinguished from each other.

So the show continued as usual, as if that terrible qualification had not been uttered several times: terrorist. An enemy of the state and a bully who uses fear to achieve his goals. According to Informer, the streets have recently been flooded by terrorists, eager for blood and civil war. But not only Informer, the tabloid of tabloids, talks about terrorism and civil war.

photo: radio 021

WHO IS CALLING FOR CIVIL WAR?

"Do you want to burn assemblies? Do you want to persecute people? To beat people in the streets?", asked Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Saturday, April 12, looking from the stage at several tens of thousands of his supporters, who arrived and were dragged from all over Serbia.

The question was not addressed to those in front of the Assembly - some other citizens whistled and banged pots and pans from their windows at the moment of Vučić's speech, dissatisfied with the scene from the center of Belgrade. And when the chanting of "Aco, Serbs" died down and the fireworks began, the booing did not stop.

Probably, this little rebellion of "those others", a constant source of anxiety for the highest state officials, was not heard on Nikola Pašić Square. Allegedly, because of them, Serbia is economically stagnating, risking its stability and every day is getting closer to civil war, that terrifying phrase that, as time goes on, is more and more often thrown over the lips of progressives.

Who is calling for civil war in Serbia and why? Who is this message sent to? In the end, how permanent are the consequences that uttering such harsh words can have on the public?

"All messages sent by the regime are addressed, above all, to their voters," Jelena Kleut, professor of communication at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, explains to "Vreme". She points out that every time it mentions war, terrorism or any other semantic term that refers to violence, the regime is doing two things.

"First, they delegitimize those to whom they attribute a desire for violence. Second, they open room for maneuver to respond to that violence: with aggression, repression, arrests, detentions, police, disciplinary reports," says the "Vremena" interviewee. As he explains, "civil war" is a particularly problematic phrase: "This paves the way for some of the captured institutions to act according to such a characterization of behavior. With their words, they try to open space for some actions."

It finally came to that. Although the government's sporadic messages about the civil war were already in the first months of the student protests, true radicalization occurred on the eve of the large student and civil gathering on March 15. For days, the president of Serbia, walking from studio to studio, predicted "great violence" for that day. When, two days before the protest on March 15, several regime television stations broadcast a film about the alleged coup d'état and the planned raid on the RTS building, there followed another address by the president and a chorus of reports from the government-controlled media that "the plan for civil war has been exposed." In reality, it was a matter of the pub rant of a few activists overheard in the premises of the Novi Sad board of the Free Citizens Movement, which was illegally provided to the media.

However, the story of them trying to start a civil war got a lot of airplay. Not only have the tapped activists been imprisoned since March 14, but their detention was extended for an additional 30 days last week.

"When you say that someone was planning a violent overthrow of the constitutional order, and for months before that you characterized those people as thugs and terrorists, you have signaled not only to the prosecutor's office, but also to the public to whom they are addressing, that it is quite logical and natural for people to be stuck in prison for several weeks," says Jelena Kleut.

photo: phonet

FOR DISOBEDIENT INTIMIDATION...

How the media hot rabbit works in practice, through which the opponents of the regime slip through, can best be seen in the example of Peščanik columnist Dejan Ilic, who was detained on April 10 on charges of the criminal offense of "causing panic and disorder". The reason for the detention is Ilić's statement made on March 29, when, when asked by journalists about the transitional government, he said that he saw in it the right solution for getting out of the crisis. "You have to choose, either you will open the door for those people to take refuge, and the transitional government is also opening the door, or you will accept the fact that blood will flow in the streets, that we will lose I don't know how many lives and we don't know whose lives, in order to get rid of them," Ilić told Nova at the time.

No one saw a problem in his statement until the portal of the daily newspaper "Politika", ten days later, reported his statement, with the remark that it was a "kind of threatening message". This was followed by the arrest of Ilic, who was released later the same day.

Verbal delict, a criminal offense on the basis of which those who criticized the moves of the authorities during the communist era were imprisoned, persecuted and expelled, was abolished in 1989. The case of Dejan Ilic shows, however, that this type of repression is returning through the back door through the accusation of "causing panic". This crime is an ideal cover for covert repression, because it leaves a lot of room for free interpretation. Thus, the critics of the authorities are clearly told that they should keep their mouths shut if they do not want to face multi-year prison terms.

...FOR OBEDIENCE REWARDS

And while the regime is trying to rein in the "disobedient" part of the public, it is sending a message to its loyalists, supporters and propagandists: your hands are free. Not only can you do and say what you want, but sharper performances will be rewarded. The proof of this is the election of the new Minister of Education, Dejan Vuk Stanković, a professor at the Faculty of Teachers who is known to the public primarily for his unscrupulous guest appearances on RTS, Pink and Informer.

The loyalty of the regime's political analysts is rewarded, and the government also turns a blind eye to the, to put it mildly, worrying statements that are heard daily in the regime's media. "And that happened, Serbian blood was shed," Dejan Vukelic from Informer dramatically announced in March, after influencer and businessman Branko Babic falsely accused the man he called the "leader of the protest" of shooting another man in Odzaci. On that occasion, Babić stated that a civil war had begun in Serbia, and that the students started with peaceful protests, but that they "switched to guns". Neither Babić, nor the media editors who chorused his claims about the start of the civil war - were not heard. Moreover, the influencer who is called the "eyebrow king" enthusiastically, less than a month after the failed attempt to start a civil war, shared photos from the progressive rally "We will not give Serbia".

Namely, in the so-called spin dictatorship, which is based on media manipulation, intimidation with civil war is, it seems, quite acceptable and even desirable content - but only on the condition that it is announced by someone from the safe guest list in the prime time of the regime's television.

MANIPULATION TACTICS

The formula is simple: invent a crisis and then, ostensibly, solve it. In the 13 years of the Serbian Progressive Party's rule, this scenario has been seen so many times that it is no longer a novelty. However, the story has gone so far this time that there is a real fear that the fictional progressive crisis will grow from an invisible specter into a real problem. This can be seen from the reactions of the public - some citizens are so poisoned by the story of the overthrow of the state that they are ready to pull out a knife on dissenters, as the ultimate proof of patriotism. "All the talk about violence makes people extremely afraid of what will happen. Frightened people turn to what they see as support. There is a SNS propaganda tactic that says: 'Violence is everywhere, terrorists surround us, but we are here to save you'. A frightened person then looks for a straw of salvation and it will be easier to believe that one person is there to protect them from such an attack," says Jelena Kleut.

In order to successfully intimidate citizens, the regime uses various techniques of persuasion. The first is the "scarecrow argument", explains Oliver Tošković, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. "The scarecrow argument works by finding a scarecrow, such as terrorism, attaching it to the opponent and then attacking it from that side, even though it has nothing to do with it. Arguments that the regime used before no longer work, and that is why terrorism is used, because it is something that is close in time and scary to the majority of society, including the younger generations," Tošković points out.

Another persuasion tactic is a "false dilemma," he adds.

"First they call dissenters terrorists, and then they ask citizens if they are in favor of terrorism. Of course, everyone will say that they are not. Thus, citizens are presented with a false choice. By the way, this is a tactic that the regime often uses. For example, when they ask citizens if they are against the progress of the state."

photo: marija janković

DEEPLY DIVIDED SOCIETY

However, the effect of this kind of discourse is also felt on the other side. And the patience of citizens, who for months are labeled as a factor of instability, a danger to the state, and even terrorists - is getting shorter. The result is a society so divided that a solution seems out of reach at the moment. On the contrary, as time passes, the gap between political dissenters is getting bigger. On top of all that, instead of trying to heal a society in deep crisis, the regime has been fanning the flames for months. "The essence is the government's desire to get votes. Their goal is to stay in power and they stop at nothing to achieve that goal. I don't know if the justification of violence is intentional or a side effect, but it happens," Tošković says.

He explains that the deep division of society is a big problem and will have to be solved for years.

"Anyone who thinks differently is a terrorist. People attack each other at festivals, there are families that are divided over whether their child will support a strike at school or not. The division that begins to tear apart families, as the basis of a society, is the most terrible thing in all of this. And when you have such a divided society, there is dehumanization and the justification of violence. All of this damages society in the long term and it will take a long time to rehabilitate," concludes the "Vremena" interviewee.