Radina Vučetić for NIN: Violence is the government’s last line of defence

Not a single political crisis involving the relationship between Serbia’s government and opposition has been resolved without spilling over into its streets. Why can’t Serbia establish a stable democratic system and the rule of law, apparently preferring rebellions and overthrows to ballots? This would be a question for Radina Vučetić, a historian teaching that the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.

How would you describe Serbia after 12 years of Aleksandar Vučić’s rule, and in the wake of the last elections on the 17 of December?

If pressed for a metaphor, it would be the abandoned Railway Station in the Savski Trg square. It once was a central railway hub from where a network of paths would reach out to the world, and now behind the glaring new façade, suggestive of everything else in this Potemkin village of ours, too, there’s a stinking trash pile. Once a place where Serbia would meet the world and greet a steady flow of people, the Railway Station has been completely neglected to let the Belgrade Waterfront grow. Across the entrance an oversized, obtrusive monument to Stefan Nemanja is towering, the cost of which will probably remain secret forever. The severed rails covered with trash is perhaps the best portrayal of a state that has lost touch with its present and its future, but also with the world

Behind that glaring façade corruption, self-entitlement and violence flourish – is that what you want to say? 

The first thing that leaps to mind is violence. Everything in Serbia is violence: Vučić’s best man Nikola Petrović crashing a EUR300,000 McLaren in a reckless-driving episode; another best man’s son driving a Lamborghini full blast through the streets; Željko Mitrović’s son killing a girl, Andrea Bojanić; Dragan Vučićević hitting a girl with a car; and the two minutes worth of footage missing from a video of the accident at the Doljevac toll station in which Stanika Gligorijević was killed. The way this government communicates with people is violence, too. What they are doing to the University is also violence – appointing incompetent people to the university councils, beating and arresting students. The atmosphere of intimidation surrounding the elections, and the violence used in the election campaign against the opposition are unparalleled. Changing the will of the voters, and beating the people who defend democracy is also violence. And violence has already spiraled out of control, I’m afraid.

The prophetic tone of the title of Dubravka Stojanović’s book Prošlost dolazi (The Past is Coming) rings loudly, doesn’t it? It appears that the past is indeed coming back, through familiar ideologies and images, nationalism, historical revisionism, celebrated war criminals, Serbia’s attitude towards Europe and the world. What are those underlying long-term processes resting on continuity with the past, which Serbia apparently can’t step out of?

The book title “The Past is Coming” is relevant in more ways than one, because in Serbia you rule using the past, the past triggers intense emotional reactions, the past is used to interpret the present, but to turn to the future Serbia shall not. The past is a noose around Serbia’s neck; it’s not yet tight enough to strangle us, but it definitely won’t let us move forward. 

In everything they do, the authorities in Serbia rely heavily on propaganda – it’s how they handle the media, keep the power, pursue a foreign policy, or treat the wars back in the 1990s. They have made every sentenced war criminal who returned home a hero. War criminals are interviewed, they have found their way into school curricula, laughing at us from wall murals. The Serbian president, no less, allied with a war criminal during the election campaign. The authorities in Serbia are trying to cement the narrative that there were no other war victims but the Serbs, and that the Serbs exclusively fought wars of liberation.

It’s probably the reason why surveys show that the young people who were socialised in such a social climate are more conservative than their parents, isn’t it?

Xenophobia, anti-Europeanism and nationalism among young people have risen compared to the 1990s, when I was a student. Many things this government does slide under the radar, including a deliberate change of the dominant narrative in order to promote the wars of the 1990s as liberation wars. The purpose of history lessons is to develop a national identity, and reports suggest that the state will take charge of textbook printing for the subjects important for the preservation of identity. The printing campaign includes children’s books advertised as those written to “nurture your child’s soul”, namely, Košare: novi Kosovski boj, (Košare – the New Battle of Kosovo) Dogodine u Prizrenu – san o slobodi, (Next Year in Prizren – a Dream of Freedom), Srbi protiv NATO: od 1991. do 1999. godine, (Serbs against NATO, 1991-1990) Srpski junaci – od Kosovskog boja do Košara (Serbian Heroes – from the Battle of Kosovo to Košare). We live in a tainted place where the state poisons children with such content, where the Pink and Happy broadcasters poison with their reality television and other scandalous TV shows. It’s not only polluted air and aflatoxin in milk that poison us, but also the stories of war criminals portrayed as heroes. It’s unbelievable that we are still alive, whatever the angle.

If at the core of propaganda lie fearmongering, a cult of the leader and control of the public space, does that mean that Vučić is enslaving Serbia on a scientific basis?

I believe that Vučić is a true connoisseur of propaganda and its mechanism, and I think he’s using various propaganda experiences and techniques deliberately. With Vučić we have gotten a Frankenstein hybrid of authoritarian and totalitarian leaders. I have recognised in his actions the fragments of Nazi propaganda, the propaganda exploited in the Stalin era, and even some bizarre elements of the North Korean propaganda, but he also relies on domestic sources, which we have plenty, given the scarcity of democracy in Serbia.

You have compared Vučić’s propaganda with that used by Milan Stojadinović in the 1938 election campaign. What are the similarities?

In the historian Bojan Simić’s book Propaganda Milana Stojadinovića (Milan Stojadinović’s Propaganda) I have detected quite a few elements of Serbia’s reality. Stojadinović, too, wanted complete control over the media. There was one free media outlet, all others were under his control. Censorship committees worked from 9 a.m. to midnight, and a large number of papers were banned. Unlike the censored opposition, Stojadinović was all over the media. Intimidation of political opponents was his preferred strategy, which he exploited to the utmost, resorting frequently to a “verbal delict” as a punishable offense. Stojadinović’s Yugoslav Radical Community was actually a one-man political party. Stojadinović’s would often cross the boundaries of good taste with excessive bragging, knowing that it would make it easier for him to impress uneducated people. Stojadinović would also manipulate numbers and statistics, completely ignoring the accuracy thereof. What he wanted was to fascinate with numbers. His brother, Dragomir, played an important part as well, not only in the media sphere, but also as a man involved in clandestine political negotiations. Sounds familiar?

NIN / Đorđe Kojadinović

But Stojadinović stepped down shortly after the elections. Many would agree that this government, too, is well past its prime...

Milan Stojadinović stepped down two months after the elections due to a poor election result – he won 54 percent of the vote, and expected to win 75 percent. Despite the unmatched propaganda campaign, or precisely because of it, perhaps, Stojadinović became extremely unpopular. It wasn’t only the election score that led to his demise though. Not only was he completely unprepared to handle internal political problems, but his allegiances lay with the German Reich as well. What this tells us is that election winners may lose power sooner than they expect. I’m confident that this government is well past its prime, which is precisely why it will be increasingly violent – after all that arrogance, theft and corruption, it is clear that many office holders, once they step down, will have to be processed.

Are there more associated propaganda and enslavement techniques the authorities in Serbia are using? 

The purpose of propaganda is not only to make Serbian citizens believe that there’s no other option for Serbia than the one advocated by Vučić at any given time, but also to demoralize all those against it, until they lose every hope that change of government is possible. Opponents to the regime are demonised and marginalised, and it seems that it won’t be enough if they withdraw from their political engagement, but they need to give up their social life, too. However, there is one factor that needs to be taken into account if one wants to understand the way this government functions – money. The authorities in Serbia have shown that everything is for sale, people in particular. They are buying people – using the welfare assistance scheme, offering gifts before elections, or rigging selected bids. Everyone’s bribed or blackmailed, but everyone’s an accomplice, too, and that’s why they will fight tooth and nail to keep the system intact.

You described Vučić as a Frankenstein hybrid of the authoritarian and propaganda leaders of the 20th century. You have compared his propaganda with Goebbels’ machinery and North Korea’s propaganda system. What are the elements of either?

Orwell merged different totalitarian leaders in his “1984”, and Vučić combined their propaganda patterns. He took the most from Goebbels and Nazi propaganda – the absolute media control, a cult of the leader, eliminating the opposition and meticulously building up gleichschaltung, i.e. full political coordination of all aspects of society. Just like in Serbia today, state administration was completely in the hands of the Nazi Party, where the party people were employed systematically. Among the similarities is the opening of newly-built roads, as well as Kraft durch Freude (German for “Strength through Joy”), leisure organisation involving, among other things, paid picnics. The Progressives, too, are always organised as a group, for a trip to the Tumane monastery, a rally or a vote. The propaganda package involves an illusion of wellbeing and prosperity. I could go on forever, but the point is that it all led to a totalitarian regime, suppressing all dissonant tones. In copying the Nazi propaganda we have missed one thing – putting the Reichstag building on fire. Yet the most recent events suggest that we might not be very far from that.

There is more of an operetta style in following the Korean role models. Vučić has embraced the kitsch options of flattering the great leader, morphing him into a demigod. We already know a lot about Vučić’s childhood, we watched him save a child in a blizzard, we know he works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and doesn’t have time to go to the toilet, the same thing Kim Jong Un is proud of. Nebojša Bakarec, too, confirms that Serbia is a scene of an almost perfect totalitarian engineering: “It is easy to predict a Putinesque future for Vučić, hoping that he would use the Chinese model in structuring Serbia. He is an indispensable leader. Luckily for us, he’s young.”

And, what are the elements of the Stalinist tradition?

They, too, are easy to discern – a cult of the leader and demonising the enemy, which in Russia generated purges that took millions of lives. Stalin would seek enemies in everything that wasn’t functioning in the state, and in anything that might have been a source of criticism, even a hint of it. Little by little, everyone was his enemy.

What do you think about the ignorant treatment of the detailed reports by the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) on election manipulation by the authorities?

The CRTA’s report is perhaps the most accurate portrait of this criminal government. It describes the intent, the organisation, the plan behind the crime, and the perpetration thereof – the crime being election fraud. The report also reveals the astonishing absence of an effort to conceal manipulation and even crimes. Usurping the state and the law is a new normality in Serbia; it is normalised to the extent that the authorities are now enjoying the perceptibility of it. That’s yet another arrogant “because we can”, materialised most obviously in the Serbian prime minister’s public addresses. They behave as if they will never face the consequences of their actions. They have developed the “because we can” into a new philosophy. We can trample on anything we want, we can kill, we can demolish Savamala, we can afford plagiarism scandals, we can forge signatures, we can grow and sell marijuana, we can…whatever we want, we can…The problem is that I believe the people are sick and tired of the “because we can.”

Why Serbia puts up with violent, arrogant and overbearing governments so meekly, and so long, and why are the awakenings and resistances so late?  

The problem in Serbia is that we don’t have society. Serbia’s society has been murdered, or has committed suicide. I am not sure what we can expect from the society in which many, not only Vučić, participated in election rigging. Everything is rotten in the state of Serbia, including its society – and all those people who sold their votes, those who knew full well why they were bussed in, and it was all right with them, those who would insert three ballot papers into the ballot box slot at once, those who organised the vote counting, those sitting in the institutions that must have reacted – they are proof. Their actions speak volumes about the government, but also about this society of ours. This government is trying hard to make everyone an accomplice to their crime, but the question is what had happened to the people who accepted it so obediently?