The months-long student protests in Serbia have set in motion a series of processes that show us beyond a doubt that it is possible to confront the demons of power. No matter how illusory it may seem and no matter how much fear blocks any action that citizens can take to express their dissatisfaction with what has befallen them, both literally and symbolically, it seems that much has been unblocked within the neighborhood. This is no longer an incidental rebellion, it is an effort to fundamentally reexamine everything that has been experienced in the last decades in this region. And we exist in constant captivity in the mythomaniac narratives of the nineties, which are repeatedly pushed to the forefront, and in the bloated turbo-capitalist reforms that cover up all those abysses that have remained unburied in the transitional desert.
In other words, all the talk about lightly understood progress, the alleged economic paradises that are being created here, is now coming to its end. Because what should have been questioned, in order to understand where we have ended up after the wars, this need to face what was left to us as a legacy from that time, is now coming back like a boomerang. Simply put, it is not possible to plan any present and future in a society that has not collided with the mistakes that were made in the past, it is not possible to sweep them under the carpet and pretend that they do not exist. Because the flow of time is not linear, everything that was run away from, what was turned away from at some point must await us again, only now it is coming much more forcefully and with deep tremors.
This is why there is so much panic in the government as well as among its international partners. Which tells us that those who supposedly watch over the peoples of the former Yugoslavia all this time are essentially complicit in keeping the citizens of these countries in three decades of lethargy and hopelessness. On the one hand, we are still badly needed cheap labor force in European capitals, so as such we are seen as premature babies who are not allowed to decide anything independently and devote themselves in any way. Obedience is expected from the states created after the war on the ruins of the former country, and in the most important positions they are appointed comprador elites who will sell everything without much fuss, keeping us in the permanent purgatory of the pre-Union waiting room. But it seems that few counted on the fact that there is a possibility that the impulse and awareness that a more dignified life is possible can come from within, from the defeated nations. It seemed that we were completely numb, that we were permanently anesthetized and freed from any thought that we could be worthy of our own struggle for some projected better society.
By following what is happening and at what level things are starting to come apart, it becomes clear that we are not yet completely beheaded, that is, that the post-Yugoslav peoples, no matter how much they have agreed to a state of vegetation and withering away, can, when necessary, show that they still have civic consciousness and conscience, that it is possible to understand anew what the pure power of people who have been burned to the core means. The support that is coming within regional frameworks to what is happening in the cities of Serbia, the hope that has flowed throughout this entire area, in addition to all of the above, leads us to the conclusion that the same dissatisfaction has been simmering in all other post-Yugoslav countries for a long time. The key thing in all of this is the need to overcome all differences, for people to finally turn to each other for once, because that is the only real strength. I am not deluding myself here that things will change overnight, but the importance of entering the process of liberating captive societies and the very awareness that it is possible to step outside the given matrices represents an extremely important step.
If we look at Bosnian and Herzegovinian society itself, we will see very clearly that our reality is a gloomy picture in all shades of gray. Therefore, the fact that the voice of what is happening across the Drina is heard here too, that young people are reacting positively to it, leads us to the conclusion that it is only a matter of days before the generations that we believed were incapable of doing anything, that they were trapped in the vortex of social networks and the internet, will draw the line here and tell themselves that it is time to rebel, to fight for the future that we are constantly denying them.
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