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Sanctions and fears - it can be, it doesn't have to mean

What is the meaning of the campaign to scare the citizens of Serbia that they will be visited very soon by the majority of riders of the apocalypse?

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Photo: BETAPHOTO
Photo: BETAPHOTO
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Unlike bayonets, which can help in gaining power, but cannot be sat on, fear can be controlled for quite a long time, if you know how to dose it, to time it and to "aim" it well. It's just that such rule can rarely have any meaning other than itself.

What, then, is the point of the campaign to scare the citizens of Serbia that they will be visited very soon by the majority of riders of the apocalypse?

We are threatened with hunger and we are threatened with freezing, and it will still be good if everything stays like that, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić tells us, followed by everyone else who usually elaborates on his messages. A nuclear winter could also befall us, but at least we can't do anything about it, which is a rather dubious comfort, but let's note that too, so that the list of future horrors is more complete and sounds even "better". Meanwhile, while the nation is "digesting" the true meaning of the terrifying warnings from the top of the state, hundreds of anonymous reports of bombs placed in public institutions of all kinds, mostly in schools, appear every day. The reports are thankfully fake, but the commotion they're causing is genuine.

No one has yet told us anything credible from which part of the darkness these reports are coming from, but it seems that everyone has the right to guess at their own pace and in accordance with their convictions and needs, which is understandable as long as it is not done by high-ranking public officials. But they do. Starting with the president of the outgoing government and going down. Thus, people who have a political mandate to make order out of the "natural" chaos and entropy to which every society is prone if it is not kept in order, actually enrich the chaos, establish it, make it a system of government, which is then much more than mere chatter and incompetence: it becomes a technique of ruling, a way of dealing with subjects. Citizens are something else, they are not governed in that way, in fact, they are not governed at all, but joint institutions are governed together with them for the general benefit. I know: when written like this, it sounds like a good joke to me too. Back to the dark warnings of a dark, cold and hungry future.

It was not long ago when Aleksandar Vučić comforted and reassured the nation that we have everything in abundance and that Serbia, whatever happens in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, which is actually at least a European crisis, will be an oasis of contentment and stability, even for those in need from all sides. will be able to warm up, since the government will provide us with all that, what from the West, what from Putin (we mustn't be squeamish, right? And who here even disgusts Putin, if we're being honest?), what from the internal resources - whatever, there is no concern for the country that has decided to choose the best for itself from every side, and wherever it is asked to make up its mind about something, it pretends to be fast asleep, so the discerning partners will probably leave it alone.

Now, just a few weeks later, we are facing a general disaster, and previous experiences, such as the one with the corona virus epidemic (when at one point he even threatened us that we would be "full of cemeteries"), teach us that Vučić never threatens just like that , but that he wants to tell us something. And of course, he wants to make sure about something in advance. The favorite theory of those whose job or distraction is to guess what is going on in the ruling heads who, realistically, are not accountable to anyone in this country (because they dismantled all accountability mechanisms, and we allowed them to do it, and even helped them in that) is that the nation is intimidated by the darkest scenarios of the future in order not to "soften" its position on Serbia joining the European sanctions against the Russian Federation. To that, the old supposedly popular wisdom says: "It can be, but it doesn't have to mean".

The biggest of the many paradoxes of that position is the unknown about what is even older, what is original? Are the "people" really so pro-Russian, read: pro-Putin oriented, or is it so in large part due to the fact that they have been exposed to relentless pro-Putin propaganda for years from the arsenal of the ruling caste and its allies? And that propaganda did not stop even with the attack on Ukraine, on the contrary? In other words, even if he tries to manipulate the fears of the "little man" for an ultimately inevitable purpose, it cannot be said that Vučić, as an individual and as a metaphor for a system, did not build what is today the backbone of his fears, and it is not that so much so that he did not deserve them to happen to him. And the rest of us? Whenever I see the letter Z on a wall, I think that we are not much more innocent there either - we are just much more powerless.

(Free Europe)

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