In Serbia, the long-standing social consensus between the government and the opposition has been shattered—a consensus in which, much like in The History of the Peloponnesian War, the strong do what they must, and the weak endure what they must. And blaming Kosovo and the Albanians won’t help the government this time.
By: Veton Surroi
1.
There is an almost infallible indicator of generational change within a state: the moment when those in power start looking for external scapegoats to explain a generation’s rebellion against them. Yesterday in Serbia felt exactly like that, after three months of student protests against the government. At first, the protesting students were accused of being manipulated by Western intelligence services—ranging from Britain to Croatia. Then, they were said to be part of a grand conspiracy to detach Vojvodina from Serbia. And finally, they arrived at the ultimate, time-tested, go-to culprit: the Albanians of Kosovo.
Yesterday, opposition members in the Serbian parliament set off smoke and tear gas canisters—something usually seen at football and basketball matches in Serbia. This was done to disrupt the parliamentary session, serving as a metaphor to show that the situation in Serbia is far from normal, and that opposition MPs wanted to express solidarity with the students who, for three months straight, have been demonstrating against what they see as an abnormal state—a state that is undemocratic.
Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabić reached the point of describing opposition MPs as people working for the interests of Kosovo Albanians, Prime Minister Kurti, and Albanian-language media. And with that, she pushed Serbia into the same state that other countries have found themselves in just before their ruling elites were toppled: the phase of blaming “the other,” preferably the one that has been traditionally demonized.
2.
Throughout the 20th century—and in these lands, throughout socialism—the list of “enemies” stirring up unrest has always been long. In Yugoslavia, it was sometimes British imperialists, other times Stalin and the Informbiro, Greek royalists, the Albanian Sigurimi, and so on. No protest, no dissatisfaction, no criticism of those in power could possibly have originated within the people (students, workers, etc.) themselves—who, by definition, were “pure.” It had to be the work of foreign agents.
But this wasn’t unique to socialism. In Hitler’s Germany, an entire ideology was built on the premise that the purity of German thought and action was being poisoned by Jewish influence (history later showed how Hitler intended to “preserve” this German purity).
And this phenomenon isn’t limited to totalitarian states. In the United States, a whole movement led by Senator McCarthy was launched to investigate “Communist agents” in Hollywood. How could an American director or actor possibly look critically at the reality of a democracy like America?
The outsider must always be to blame—just as when parents are unhappy with their child’s behavior, their first instinct is to blame bad company.
3.
Perhaps this analogy of children can be extended further in Serbia’s case. Since the start of the student protests—initially sparked by the railway station tragedy in Novi Sad and now evolved into a broader movement against what they perceive as Serbia’s undemocratic and dysfunctional state—the government’s rhetoric has revolved around the idea of “children” making demands.
In the government’s traditional worldview—one that has lost the self-regulating mechanisms of democracy (fair elections, a free public sphere, an independent judiciary)—these “children” could not have risen up on their own against the government unless influenced by bad company. The government itself is designed this way, with the hyper-presence of President Vučić, who appears on television from morning to night, explaining everything that these “children” need to know—how much a railway pillar weighs, the current position of Russian troops in some obscure Ukrainian village, the latest price of Azerbaijani gas on the European market, how AI-driven energy demands in the UAE might cause electricity shortages, mortgage rates for one-bedroom apartments, how many potatoes Serbia had in storage in 2019 versus now, and even Vučić’s latest approval ratings from a poll in Shenzhen, China.
These “children,” filled with all the information provided by their president, could not possibly be mistaken—unless someone else was teaching them otherwise.
Now, the Speaker of Parliament is realizing that it’s not just the “children” who are rebelling. The opposition is joining them, too.
For years, this opposition has been part of a social consensus in which, as Thucydides put it in the 5th century BC in The History of the Peloponnesian War, the strong do what they must, and the weak endure what they must.
That consensus in Serbia was broken at the end of last year. The students have proven that the weak do not have to endure what they must. And now, the opposition has joined them.
The next logical step for the students and the opposition is to show that the strong can no longer do what they must. And the government knows this—because they are the ones who, as the strong, have always done whatever they thought they must.
4.
President Vučić calls the student uprising a “delayed colored revolution,” using the term associated with the democratic revolts in Ukraine and Georgia that overthrew pro-Putin governments. In doing so, he is clumsily admitting his own alignment with Putin’s style of rule.
And perhaps he is right—perhaps this is, indeed, a “colored revolution.” But to me, it feels far more indigenous. It feels like an organic, horizontal movement, a revolution marking the final death throes of the former Yugoslavia.
In the long and bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia, Serbia has concerned itself with everyone and everything—Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo. It has inserted itself into global conflicts, siding with Russia and China while insisting it is on a European path. Every day and night, the government-controlled media solve the world’s problems—past and present—defending the genocide in Bosnia, debating crimes against humanity in Gaza, justifying Russia’s right to attack Ukraine while simultaneously defending Ukraine’s right to fight back using Serbian-made ammunition, lamenting the shortage of doctors in Germany and bus drivers in Britain.
Children born at the beginning of this century have been taught to care about everything—except their own country, Serbia.
And now they have risen, demanding that their homeland be a normal, democratic, ethical, and non-violent state. They are demanding these things in abstract terms—because normality itself is an abstraction in Serbia. They have no past reference point for what it even looks like.
I don’t know how this revolt will unfold. But one thing seems certain: Serbia cannot return to the Thucydidean state where the strong do what they must.
And while a sudden transformation into a fully democratic state is unlikely, this movement may one day become the critical mass that finally pushes Serbia toward a fundamental shift—perhaps toward something that other European countries already have: free and fair elections.
In the days and weeks ahead, more and more students and citizens will rally behind this movement. There could be thousands of them. But for a government that does not understand why it has reached its own downfall, it won’t help to keep believing its own final lie—that these are all Albanians.
One day, to its own eyes, the government will see them as a million Albanian students in Belgrade. And on that day, it will realize it has nowhere left to go.
