Blockaders’ logic:Protests like „Stop the Bloody Shirts“, „One in Five Million“, „Serbia Against Violence“ started as anti-violence but ended up promoting it

The logic whereby one rises up to protest against violence and then uses violence to ensure those protests continue is not a product of the current blockade movement. It is a pattern that has recurred in Serbia several times within a very short timeframe, involving alarmingly many of the same political actors.

We observed precisely that the pattern was repeating and that the declaration of a fight against violence was merely a false and appealing label, concealing the true intentions of unseen organizers and the true purpose of the people assembled in this way around that imposed narrative.

“Stop the Bloody Shirts”, “One in Five Million”, “Serbia Against Violence”… all these were training exercises for what began under the slogan “Stop, Serbia”, and turned into an almost year-long paralysis of normal life and the collapse of higher education in Serbia. All those protests started on a wave of anti-violence sentiment and then ended as promoters of violence in society. Kurir followed, throughout these months, how everything became twisted, warning of the dangerous spiral of violence. The wounding of a man in front of the National Assembly simply because he thought differently is the escalation of violence that, judging by everything we have seen, was prepared and packaged in various ways.

Every insult and threat directed at a political opponent, every stone thrown at the head of those who think differently, every destroyed façade and broken window during the blockader protests across Serbia, every blockade that deprived citizens of their guaranteed right to free movement… were unacceptable acts of violence, not social activism, as they were justified in blockader circles.

Because of this relativization of violence, the logic of the blockaders has degenerated into a grotesque and dangerous force in which even shooting at a person has become permissible. From the slogan “Serbia Against Violence”, the anti-government protests have issued the chilling call: “Shoot to Kill.” The path our society travelled from the supposed uprising against violence, through the protests “Stop the Bloody Shirts”, “One in Five Million” and “Serbia Against Violence”, to street terror by a minority against the majority, has been terrifyingly short. It is not difficult to see that the same political actors have always resorted to street violence as a means of seizing power without elections.

Only within the current crisis can one fully grasp the entire arsenal of manipulations used by the blockaders to justify their own violence and to maintain the level of tension necessary to keep going. And so, it has lasted nearly a year. This year has felt long, but in fact, it is far too short a time to lead a society so completely astray — a path that began with the collapse of a canopy and the deaths of sixteen people and ended with a bullet fired at a dissenter. Between those two events lies a sequence of harmful occurrences that must be called by their proper name – violence.

We have responsibly pointed out numerous fake news items and fabricated scandals, such as claims about the use of a sonic cannon, the deployment of CN gas, the story of a non-existent boy allegedly beaten during protests in Valjevo, or the fabricated tale of a girl supposedly subjected to brutal treatment while in police custody. None of this was true, but it was used to artificially provoke hysteria and maintain the level of tension needed for the continuation of street – and ever more violent – actions.

These falsehoods are closely tied to the production of the violence we have witnessed, and that is why they have been dissected in the pages of Kurir. As a responsible media outlet, we have considered it of crucial importance to demystify the methods used by the blockaders throughout these months in their so-called fight against violence. It began with the cry “Serbia Against Violence” and descended into a dangerous vortex in which an attack on life itself became a means of political confrontation. And this, unfortunately for all of us who wish our country well, was predictable – as we have persistently written throughout these past months.

Kurir Editorial Team