Vasilije Mišković: The Cult of Student Activism, the Pharisaism of Our Time
The Cult of Student Activism, the Pharisaism of Our Time
For the past five months, groups of young people and students have been organizing protests, effectively taking control of society by seizing the initiative from both the government and the opposition. The youth have become our leaders, as if we’re living in some utopian novel. In the absence of a mature political elite, we’ve been left with immature boys and girls lecturing us and paralyzing the state. The blockade is total, but above all, it’s a mental and psychological one.
While successful societies focus on development, new technologies, and the economy, we are sinking into blockades, rebellions, protests, marches, ritual noise-making, and cycling pilgrimages to Brussels to beg for mercy or something similar. Perhaps it’s because I’m no longer young, but I didn’t like these students at first glance. Nor did I like their predecessors in the 1990s when I was young, starting with the protests on March 11, 1991, at Terazije in Belgrade, even though I sympathized with the anti-communist protests of March 9, just two days earlier. Although I eagerly awaited the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, I didn’t like the students who participated in the Velvet Revolution in Prague in 1989, whom I had the chance to see one Thursday on a political program.
I get chills when I think of the various leaders of student protests during the 1990s. Recently, while browsing Wikipedia, I came across the student protests of 1992 and Olga Kavran. She was one of the leaders of the student demonstrations in June 1992. Her boyfriend, Voja Božilović, killed Borjanka Tatić, a worker at the Majdanpek jewelry store in Belgrade, during a robbery in late July 1992. The investigation included Olga Kavran and Božilović’s friend, Slobodan Homen, whom Božilović visited after the robbery. The investigation later dropped charges against both of them. From 1997, Olga spent 14 years at the Hague Tribunal, rising to the position of spokesperson for the prosecution from 2006 to 2010 under Carla del Ponte and Serge Brammertz. Homen was a pioneer in the fight against Milošević and a member of the Otpor movement, eventually becoming a state secretary accused of defrauding the state of thousands of medals (their fate unknown—melted down or otherwise?). These are symbolic endings to the biographies of “students who change the world” and speak louder than entire books.
At the start of the current student rebellion, the most active were Mila Pajić from Dinko Gruhonjić’s circle and others who were arrested a month ago. However, despite this, many support these anarchists who make anti-Serbian and anti-state statements more often than the average pensioner eats meals. Among those supporting these fighters against the “criminal” Serbian state, army, and church are many patriots and clergy. Yes, you heard that right—those who advocate for Serbia’s historical guilt and the “genocide in Srebrenica” are supported by numerous nationalists and patriots, and these godless individuals who would close Serbian churches are backed by many priests, religious teachers, believers, and even bishops like Grigorije.
If we were to draw parallels between modern Serbian history and biblical history, this movement of students, “people of the book,” and those who idolize them to the point of idiocy most resembles the biblical Pharisees: young, conceited individuals who think they are intelligent, beautiful, and the best part of our society. They believe they’ve learned something and can teach those older than them, demanding that the entire nation follow them. The Pharisees had similar attitudes, avoiding even encounters with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other despised parts of society.
Our civic-oriented students in Belgrade and Novi Sad particularly despise the toothless or those who are uneducated and not on the “right side of history.” They constantly point fingers at corrupt and criminal phenomena in a moralistic manner, seeing themselves as the best part of society, its conscience.
The word “Pharisee” itself comes from the Hebrew perushim, meaning “separated” or “better part of the people.” Similarly, our civic students are separated from the rest of society, especially from their peers who are forced to work, some of whom work while studying. One such ordinary student said, “I’m not rich enough to be a leftist or a protester; I have a family and must work.” These are protests of well-dressed, well-fed members of the middle and upper classes.Particularly irritating is their use of the term ćaci and other derivatives. In Cyrillic, the letters ć and đ are very similar, and even experienced editors sometimes mix them up. Even more irritating is when they chant, “Whoever doesn’t jump is a ćaci.” It reminds one of ugly historical phenomena, like the Maidan neo-Nazis’ chant, “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Moskal” (i.e., a Russian). Their aggressive attitudes are imposed on the entire society. They are the “better Serbia,” the “Europeans in Serbia,” and some of them hold EU passports, even though some of their parents had to flee Croatia and Bosnia to save their lives. Another sad story of Serbian convertitis.
The students and their fervent supporters are zealous in their proselytism, refusing to allow others to remain neutral or uninterested in their protests, as this proves that their Manichean worldview holds no appeal. An aggressive sectarian spirit prevails: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us, and that means we’ll be against you.” Barely out of their social diapers, they already threaten adults who don’t support them with punishment or ridicule.
They constantly invoke the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, yet Article 43, Paragraph 2 states, “No one is obliged to declare their religious or other beliefs.” After the first failed strike, a website appeared listing all businesses that didn’t join the strike on a black SNS (Serbian Progressive Party) list, violating the Personal Data Protection Law, which prohibits creating such lists.Let’s add that, besides students, only education workers have joined the blockades. Thus, the state is being paralyzed by the most subsidized part of society and those with the highest-paid working hours (considering the number of hours worked and salary size). Add to that high school graduates and other secondary school students. The last time high school students were heavily involved in politics was in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1914, when they sparked World War I and the deaths of millions of Serbs across all their territories.
I almost forgot that this all started because of the collapse of a canopy, killing 16 people. At every gathering, they begin with a few minutes of silence, but then, at large events from the Autokomanda blockade onward, they break into shouting and general merriment—completely inappropriate for commemorative gatherings. On the Novi Sad portal 021, which I’ve followed regularly since last November and which likely has the most comments on its news, I see remarks like, “There’s no need to mourn the victims for long.” This was a response to a reader who pointed out the revelry and the reason for these protests, with comments like “your hands are bloody,” outbursts of anger against the SNS, calling dissenters bots and sandwich-eaters, insults toward people from Republika Srpska and Novi Sad’s suburban “progressive strongholds,” where the majority of those killed under the canopy came from.Since the 1990s, when I travel abroad, I like to pick up newspapers to see if Serbs or Serbia are mentioned. The best outcome is when we’re not mentioned at all, as when we are, it’s usually in a negative context—even with Djokovic. Unfortunately, the students have succeeded in putting us back in the spotlight of global media.
The most striking claim is that the canopy accident is a greater crime than the one committed by Martinović, who killed 12 people in Cetinje in a few hours. Someone called the canopy accident premeditated murder, but it wasn’t, as no one was killed intentionally, let alone with the conscious intent required to classify it as premeditated murder. Yet, when we consider everything, we become inclined to believe it was the work of dark forces seeking chaos in our country to divide and weaken it. And it wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened.
