There will be no more withdrawals

In this society, only the real culprits must not be brought to justice, let alone behind bars. Instead of them, behind bars in Novi Sad now they are the ones who demanded that those responsible for the death of innocent people be arrested. In this society, everything is allowed - theft, corruption, fake diplomas, accidents and deaths for which no one is to blame, but the government has shamelessly drawn the colorful paper of commitment and the path to the European Union over all this.

Because of 15 fresh mounds of completely innocent people who happened to be at the same time under the canopy of the Railway Station in Novi Sad, which fell on them with all its force after the reconstruction, not even three weeks later no one was accused, convicted, imprisoned. Just as if they were to blame for their own death. This earthquake that started from Novi Sad on the tragic 1st of November shook every pore of society and many have already said that the entire society is now facing the final act, in a mere struggle for survival.

With the professor of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade dr Jovo Bakić, a sociologist of politics, a leftist, an impressive and active participant in the political public of Serbia, we are discussing the state of social impotence that has been going on here for a long time. Why is it so and how do we proceed? At the time of this conversation, mass civil protests in Novi Sad and Belgrade had already largely been held, and young activists, assisted by citizens, occasionally organized blockades - bridges, intersections... Events in front of the courthouse in Novi Sad, i.e. the actions of the prosecution's blockade in the execution of provincial and republican deputies, followed later.

"WEATHER" Based on current developments, what can we say? Is this the beginning?, an introduction to further fighting or its final phase, calming?

JOVO BAKIĆ: Here I have to speak from two analytically separate angles, as a citizen and as a sociologist. As a citizen, I hope this is the beginning. It gives me hope that since a few days, even weeks ago, I see significant changes in the academic community. And the academic community has been sedated for a long time, and I think now there is reason for optimism. It seems to me that he will no longer be a passive observer of what is happening in society, he will not only suffer, but he will be an active participant and among the first in the protest.

The Faculty of Philosophy is the first, and for now the only one, from Belgrade sent an appeal of support to the arrested students in Novi Sad.

The academic community is waking up, its most active parts are waking up - to be precise. Because even the active parts of the academic community that I know for sure did not agree with most of what happened during the past decade and more have remained silent until now. For the first time I see a more massive mood to stop being silent, for the first time I see an understanding of the seriousness of the situation. The entire education system in Serbia, from primary school to university, is threatened and humiliated.

Last year, after the terrible tragedies in "Ribnikar", Mali Orašje and Dubona, a significant part of society also rose from despair. However, he quickly got back into the groove. Now it's something similar. The difference is in academia. Once it's up, it doesn't stop. And I don't think there will be any retreat at all now.

You spoke earlier as a citizen, and as a sociologist?

As a sociologist, I remain skeptical. If there is no awakening of wider social layers, we cannot do anything.

Let's remember the anti-lithium protests throughout Serbia at the end of 2021, blocking Gazelle, until the unusual mass protests in Belgrade, Novi Sad, They are not. Haven't the wider social strata already woken up??

They didn't. Not only the middle classes and the broadest social classes in Jadro, which are directly affected by this, must stand up, but also the broadest social classes from every part of Serbia, who must feel solidarity with the people in Jadro. After all, just as we should be in solidarity with Eastern Serbia, and not act as if the rest of Serbia sacrificed the health and lives of our fellow citizens in the Timok Krajina.

Even citizens who have awakened so far have been asking questions about the meaning of their activism for some time. They wonder, go out again and walk or not?

This means that we have inserted people in the opposition. And at the top of the opposition.

photo: marija janković

You are talking about the opposition that a good part of the citizens trust, about the opposition that strongly criticizes the government, calls for protests, organizes them?

Organizes walkers. It's delusional. We walk a little, we talk a little in the parliament. Without any goal, without any purpose, without any effect. We have to clear up the relations between us; in other words, some among us are not ours.

What else can be expected from the opposition, which is also constrained by this system?

I don't expect anything from this opposition. Part of them is the regime opposition, they are in the service of the regime and serve to lead the people left and right. Some of them are honest, but they have to understand who they are dealing with. The repression is intensifying. Now we already have detentions, closures, and there will be more and more of them. It shows that the regime is aware that it is no longer in such a comfortable position. That part of the opposition that is sincere must understand that the usual methods of struggle will not give results. And now the question is: are we ready for it or not? If not, then let's all retire to our homes and let this one rule for life. If someone takes away your rights and you don't fight for them, you will never have them. In order to have rights, you have to fight for them, and if you are resigned to not having them, go ahead, you will be serfs. It all depends on what we want.

What exactly can and should the opposition do??

She needs to be more active. And let me say something right away as a sociologist of politics: the constitutive, defining part of politics is power. And with power comes force. Whoever does not want to talk about force, should not engage in politics. Let him retire to humanitarian organizations, centers for social work, let him do whatever he thinks is necessary, help the elderly, the infirm, the sick, but let him not engage in politics. That liberal mantra "we don't want violence" is constantly repeated - and let the regime trample us, let it destroy us. What is that? It is a vicious disease that has destroyed the opposition. If someone steps on you, I guess you will fight back, I guess you will fight for your rights, for your dignity. But no, we will let them wipe their shoes on us.

How do you think violence will cure anything? Haven't we already seen violence in previous protests and with what results?

Here people don't understand the difference between a strategic plan and a tactical plan. Strategically, in the long term, we will not win the battle against the regime without force. That means we have to be ready and organized when that moment comes. But tactically, of course we will protest peacefully. So, first of all, we should protest quite peacefully. Now the most important thing is for the people to come out en masse and show that they are with us. And to organize. Because at some point the regime will lose its nerve. Second, we must be prepared for force. One does not exclude the other at all. At this moment, it is not appropriate to use aimless force just like that, pointlessly, on the part of the opposition. That is precisely why the opposition must organize a police service. He must not allow inserted elements, which were present in Novi Sad for example, to compromise the meeting. And on the other hand, the police service should also restrain angry young people, whose anger I completely understand, because they are disenfranchised, because they see injustice, but they have to come to their senses because they are causing damage, not because they want to, but because they don't understand the bigger picture. Namely, if after 12 years of rule by an authoritarian and deeply criminalized regime, you do not have a security service or, even worse, if you have one, but it is invisible or ineffective, what does that say about you? It means you are not organized. This means that you do not even deserve the name opposition; you are headless flies, a chaotic mass.

Any conflict was unacceptable, as we saw both in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the largest number of protesters.

We must understand the society we live in and the nature of the regime. We are not faced with a political opponent, but with organized crime in power. Nepomenik will not leave with mercy, that will not happen. The sooner we realize that, the better for us. He now has all possible support, all the support of the West, Russia and China; the odds are currently on his side, but the timing is not working for him. Over time, more and more of us will understand who, what and what kind of regime it is.

You said recently that protests must become resourceful.

Of course. Before the Novi Sad protests, he told everything about what was going to happen on television, which means that he had his own people in the organization of the protests. Since he said everything in advance, it is incomprehensible that the organizers of the protest did nothing about it. Couldn't everything have been moved to another location at the last minute? Couldn't the mass, which was huge, incredible for the circumstances of Novi Sad, and Belgrade wouldn't be ashamed at all, to divert to another place at the last moment, to change the plan? Don't you have the idea to compete with the unmemorial? No, you're going to fuck him. It means that you didn't think too much, that you can't, and that's shocking. So, you have to be able to reach, escape and exist in a terrible place. If you are not the staff, don't play opposition.

Does the opposition have citizens ready for the same??

I think the citizens will have to be ready. And if they are not, we are dying anyway, we are dying as a society, as a nation. We can come to terms with that, and that is legitimate, to say that everything is fine, step on us, we will suffer peacefully, you bring your investors, dig, make one big mine out of the whole of Serbia, wash dirty money on the water in Belgrade from drugs, demolish, do anything you can think of to us. Well, if we agree to that, we don't deserve anything else. This people once knew how to rise up, if they don't know how to rise up against the occupier, let them suffer under the occupation.

Let's look at the other side., What is it that the government is doing?, that is, Vučić scares the most?

He is primarily afraid of the lack of support from the West. He learned a lesson from Slobodan Milosevic and knows very well what he must not do - he must not enter into a conflict with the West. And when he came into conflict with the outgoing German government, he found a solution very quickly. So dig in. You need lithium for your auto industry and I'm ready to give it to you. To no parliamentary party in Germany, with the exception of the Left, the German auto industry did not give less than half a million euros. The Greens received half a million, and the others more than a million or two million euros. He knows very well what the laws of capitalist society are and respects them. He is an agent of large capital in Serbia and he does it exceptionally well. There is no better agent of large capital, both foreign and domestic, and especially foreign. In that sense, he will have their support.

How will any protest rebellion deal with that?

We can now say, if he has such support, there is no salvation for us. And we can curse them, as Goran Ješić did, and even more fiercely, and try to do something about it. It's our choice. If we want this to be a country like it is today, a depopulated country where many more people die than are born, a country from which people leave, then that is our decision. That means certain extinction within a hundred years or so. If that is our goal, if we are happy with it, then it says the worst about us.

Do you have the impression that here, despite everything, he still mostly lives in the safe zone of his own environment and interests?

I think that's how it was and that it's slowly changing now. Ever since the tragic events of May last year, and especially now after the fall of the canopy, people understand more and more that our country has been hijacked. There is no state, this is organized crime, not a state. How many serious texts, based on documents, were published by "Vreme" and "Radar" and the former NIN and Krik, so did the prosecution ever react? It's not. What does that tell us? This means that we are not dealing with a political opponent, we are dealing with organized crime that stole our republic from us. And now we can come to terms with that and say, go ahead, we survived the Turks for several centuries, we will survive you too. But will we? The one who wants to enslave us may succeed, or may not. In any case, he will pay the price, and so will we. Without the willingness to pay the price of freedom, there is no freedom. And when asked what the non-memorial is afraid of, apart from the loss of support from the West, he is also afraid that there are enough people who will say - we do not agree to this criminal way of ruling. On the other hand, the opposition does need mass disapproval, but that is not enough. We need the willingness of the opposition and a sufficient number of citizens to take the risk. If there is no such thing, let's be clear right now, this regime will rule as long as the life of the unmemorial lasts. And it will outlive society, because society will die in the meantime.

Do you see any possibility for an institutional struggle??

No.

photo: marija janković

At the Belgrade protest, we heard that the demands were being returned to the parliament.

What kind of parliament? Does anyone really believe that the assembly is the place where anything is decided? It is not possible to expect anything from any institution here, because institutions do not exist. There are conscientious individuals in each of them, but the institutions do not exist because they, like the entire country, are trapped. Organized crime has captured the state and all its institutions, it has destroyed them - that is the current situation. This means that anything you try through the institutions cannot yield results. You cannot expect that a well-founded suspicion of criminal association, organized criminal activity of the president of the state, the prime minister, the president of the assembly, would have to be established and that they would have to resign as in any normal and civilized state, in order to prepare for the defense in court. And that you now expect that something will change here through the institutions? They won't. The prosecution is silent here. Because it doesn't exist. And that's the beginning and the end of the story.

What then is the role of the parliamentary opposition?

None. Moreover, their role is to some extent harmful. They legitimize such a regime and that is why I call them the regime opposition. The assembly itself is meaningless today, it is nonsense.

Would the government suffer from boycotting the elections??

That doesn't mean anything either. I'm generally against boycotts, but everything makes sense if the goal is to fight. Peaceful protests have their meaning, elections have their meaning, if the entire opposition agreed to boycott the elections - fine, if there is no agreement of the entire opposition, then the boycott is nonsense. This is a hybrid system, in theory it is called an electoral authoritarian system or a competitive authoritarian system. So, you have the competition of several parties, but it is completely clear that it is a decorum, and that the dominant party with an authoritarian leader remains in power after every election. Look at Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, they are all similar regimes to this one here, only this one, in my opinion, is the most criminalized. I would compare it to Latin American regimes, extreme right-wing authoritarian regimes in which there is a combination of the military, the church, organized crime and the extreme right. Something similar is here. Maybe not all institutions are fully engaged, but we are on the path of Latin Americanization. And let me say right away, without US support for such regimes, it would not exist. Everything is in the service, on the one hand, of US imperialism, and on the other, of big capital and, of course, organized criminals.

Trump's return to power was met with great anxiety in the world, and with us, welcome.

In the USA, the radical right won, completely comparable to the European extreme right. I sincerely hope that they will not get into some mess that could lead to the third world war. In relation to us, everything will be the same, only this regime will have even more support. Unhappy Serbian nationalists think that Trump will return something from Kosovo, but he will not return anything, everything will be as it was. However, there will be changes as much as this regime will have carte blanche from the USA to do whatever he wants with us.

What then is the perspective and chance of awakened citizens?

The perspective is, if we are alive, to organize ourselves. While in a fascist prison, Gramsci wrote in his prison notes that he was a pessimist of intellect and an optimist of will. In other words, the intellect tells you that everything here has failed, but since you already live here, then you have to have confidence in your will, your own in the first place, and then all the people who think in a way similar to yours. I am much more optimistic than I was a few months ago. Time will tell if I'm right.

If the most active part of BU with its students, teachers and associates is raised, it will already be a slightly different story. We did not have that during this regime. We had that in the nineties, and it formed the backbone of the protests. Without that, nothing would have happened, just as there would have been no collapse of that regime if the Kolubara workers had not joined in at key moments. So, first of all, awareness must be spread as to how much we live in an abnormal society, the most disgusting mixture of capitalism, organized crime, authoritarian and banal nationalism (it gets louder as the national defeats are more severe and capitalist exploitation more shameless) and primitive tabloid-iotization, which is increasingly by the will of an institution that deals with business and does not pay taxes. The changes in the academic community are something that could be a flywheel for wider social protests, which will not stop there. Although they temporarily go out, in a few months they will appear again because dissatisfaction is constantly growing. The key thing is what we want from ourselves. What is our idea and do we have an idea.

Let's start from the idea of ​​the current society in which we live...

If the material is the only meaning of life, then we have died. If sweet Orthodoxy provides the only meaning of life, then we have extinguished it. Especially since the first and second go well with each other. The Church blesses all the social inequalities that have grown in the past few decades. Everything is mined from the top of the church, while burghers, casinos and pimps are sanctified and the power of organized crime is justified as if it were legitimate.

Do we have any other values? Do we want to fight to be free, mutually equal and brothers? These are the enlightened foundations of the French Revolution. Man should be brought back to the center of attention. If we were to exclude the authoritarianism in the political system of the former Yugoslavia and the lack of political freedoms, because that was its basic problem as an authoritarian socialism, the level of social justice that existed then was far higher than it is today. We have regressed in all segments of social life (economy, culture, politics) for almost 35 years.

I see young people going to the church precisely because of the need to alleviate suffering and the daily annulment of human dignity in the workplace, in schools, in politics. It is understandable, but it also nullifies human dignity, because every person has dignity independent of any authority. Let's be free and mutually equal individuals, let's be brothers and sisters, and we will overthrow the regime of organized crime and systematically organized dumbing down.