After the victory over Vučić in Serbia: A peaceful overall monster

Every generation has its revolution, but this one delivered. That's what I'm thinking as I sit on the Vienna tram number 2 and watch various kind and vicious monsters. I'm going to write this sentence down for my third article about Serbia since the student list won the election.

I'm constantly invited to comment, even though I live in Austria and am not the most informed person in the world - because I'm a hyper-individualistic zombie writer, and that's my job. Okay: and because I was excited and I don't care about the country. In any case, I'm going a little crazy, something new happens every five minutes, the state television station in Novi Sad apologizes, attempts at shredding are prevented, hate graffiti is painted over.

But this evening is simply Halloween in Vienna. Witches, devils and unicorns sit obediently on the tram on the way to the respective party. Not all monsters are in costume. Next to me, a confused alcoholic fidgets and keeps checking to see if there isn't another beer in his plastic bag. He is a powerless city creature. Three fake injuries get in and sit opposite him.

Later I walk past a Serbian restaurant with bad-tempered men standing in front of it. They smoke, spit and curse. They look like their lives are over. I think I can see in their looks that they are hardened, no-care, corrupt bros with a penchant for violence. These men are the losers of the revolution that took place in Serbia a few days ago. Their smuggling routes and deals are at risk. Their criminal powers are no longer effective. The following main villains in the story were defeated together with them:

First, the eternally hungry, neoliberal, slimy aliens like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from David Lynch's Dune. This also includes the great leader of this group, Aleksandar Vučić.

Secondly, the poorest creatures without money, hope, morals, integrity, without any chance, those who allowed themselves to be sold for a sandwich, they are called sandwich people in Belgrade.

Thirdly, together with suspicious men with hoods and metal rods who are always ready to beat the students, they form the collecting monster Ćaci, which has also finally fallen.

Ćaci gathered in Pionirski Park in central Belgrade during two years of student protests. The word comes from the disruptive actions of government supporters against the protests. Vučić repeatedly said that real students want to learn instead of protesting. As a result, someone spray-painted on a wall in Novi Sad: “Students, back to schools!” Only this person misspelled the word student (ćaci instead of đaci). At the same time, Vučić set up the supposed pro-Vučić student camp in Pionirski Park. Belgrade women called this place, where dark parties were held and fires broke out again and again, Ćaciland, and they used Mordor as an explanatory reference.

At all the protests, Ćaciland threatened to open its gates and escalate the violence, individual hooded men with stones in their jacket pockets crawled out, darkened minivans and police cars drove in, but the students were very careful to get to their destination peacefully and calmly, through legal means. And the orcs apparently never received the order to attack.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

It's unbelievable how a student movement has managed, despite everything, to mobilize the population of Serbia en masse over the past two years, blockade the universities and build interesting flat structures. A movement without individual decision-makers (even without those in charge, but okay), which relies on knowledge and has a functioning, non-corrupt democracy as its primary political goal. I'll keep my fingers crossed, join in where I can and hope that nationalist and mob tendencies don't overwhelm the delicate structure. That was and is definitely a beautiful revolution!

“Time has passed you by,” a friendly student said to me while we were standing in line in Vienna to cast our votes for the student list in the election. "Your 90s dichotomies are no longer important. Everyone who wants to join us in building a better society is welcome." She told how the movement grew from plenum to plenum to megaplenum and how it did not rely on any single protagonist. A face was only allowed to appear twice in the media, and as soon as someone threatened to become too big, they were pushed back to the periphery.

We are a collective, she said happily. At that moment I realized that they are a bit like the Borgs from Star Trek, but in this case an overall monster connected by mobile data that has so far been very good and peaceful.

The Democracy Borgs show every day that change is possible and that it is not too late for positive initiatives. The student was right. Time has overtaken me and a few others who I then considered to be “we” who protested when the Milošević regime was overthrown in the 1990s. Our medium was radio, especially the station B92. Our drugs were all we could get. We believed in the divide between cosmopolitan and nationalist, city and country, urban and rural. It was important to us to belong to a rare subculture. We refined our taste in music until we were left alone with our favorite bands.

Zombies can appear in crowds, but each staggers their own way. We were individual zombies. Since wars were waged in our name and against our will, it was our sport to recognize when something was no longer acceptable to us and the time had come to leave the respective group. So now we wander a bit aimlessly through the world with our individual successes and our individual fates. You know us as your friends from the former Yugoslavia.

Have you noticed how everyone now knows how to cut your own forehead fringe and cook original Thai curry or make various repairs? This also applies to revolutions. The new Borg thing is better, faster and more accurately informed in many ways. The student list communicated with its followers not via TV, but via Instagram. That's why it was possible to gain so much following and generate so much euphoria in a country where no medium was completely free and most were ridiculously dependent on the government.

This power came at the expense of some themes from the past that were particularly important to us zombies, such as taking responsibility after the wars of the 1990s. But perhaps this will be achieved in a sensible parliament, in a completely different atmosphere. A lot is still undecided.

“Great,” I said to the student, “what kind of music do you listen to these days?” The question was a joke about time overtaking me.

But back to me on Halloween. I just left the house, without a costume, like the writing zombie that I am, to meet my ex-Yu girlfriends, who also belong to my generation. I enter the cinema and notice that they have all come as student borgs. You can tell by their charisma and the topics of conversation. Apparently I'm the only zombie. Me, me, me.

I'm ashamed that I didn't notice it before. It's time for change. No props are needed for the character change, no disguise, you don't have to do anything. You (zombie) just have to be willing to think differently and tackle the world a bit.