If you couldn’t tell already since I’m too vocal about It, I’m from Serbia.
After the fall of Yugoslavia, this place has become a place of deepest reaction. The people here have been doomed to elect between a neoliberal big tent right wing ruling party and a pro-west liberal opposition, most of the higher ranking members being your typical bourgeoisie.
To update you on the student movement that made a lot of noise a while back. It’s falling apart really due to It losing It’s originally decent focus from having to concrete leadership. It unfocused from student demands to parliamentary elections and begging the EU to intervene. Then again what was I expecting?
I didn’t think I’d be jealous of American students protesting for Palestine while these fuckers are talking about “democracy and a fair state”. Whatever that means.
I fucking hate It here man.
I’ve learned to assume any movement that asks for “democracy” (in a country that already has elections) instead of an actual material thing like an anti-corruption campaign, reversing austerity policies, welfare, etc is probably a color revolution. Do you think it’s possible that pro-western NGOs or other groups played a role in coopting or sabotaging the protest movement there?
like an anti-corruption campaign
I’d be careful there. You’re thinking of chinese style anti corruption campaigns, but merely asking ‘anti corruption’ is as immaterial and manipulative as anything can be.
Western libs: “oh golly I sure would love a party actually fighting corruption!”
Communist Party of China: purges millions of members from the party, rising in the party is a tough meritocracy in which you have to live by the example, organizes anti-corruption propaganda campagins, literally fucking executes high-profile corruption offenders
Western libs: “oh no, that looks so authoritarian!! I hate it!!!”
In totalitarian gommulist 1849 gyna there are consequences for your actions
Get reeducated lmaooo gotteeeeeeeeeem
Yeah the far-right in Spain always run on anticorruption, for example
Well I should have saw It coming really. It was revealed a few days back the most active students on plenums (lib anarchist student councils basically) are full of NGO’s, lib activist groups and right-center liberal party members. Even though they promoted being ANTI-POLITICS early on.
My org thankfully saw It coming way earlier on with students misinterpreting and simplifying strikes as “taking a day off” and going the electoral route.
Anti-corruption is typical neolib slogan in the Eastern Europe along with democracy.
“democracy” (in a country that already has elections)
At least implementing ranked-choice or score voting system would be something less nebulous, an actual goal that could be reached in a short period of time
Wouldn’t be enough but if I were a liberal, getting rid of an arcane voting system would be something I’d protest about
I guess D’hondt is better than FPTP but whatever
I’m not that up-to-date about the Serbian electoral system though
I briefly dated a Croatian woman in college, and her entire family agreed that life under Tito fucking ruled. They’d go to work in the late morning, take lunch, then sometimes—if things were busy—punch in for an hour or two before checking out for the day.
Fuckin’ miss him manRecently, I learned that my grandpa, who flew a B-17 in WW2, at one point crash landed in territory controlled by Tito. Some partisans found them, and transported them close to an allied front line in exchange for the arms and munitions they had. This is against the rules, but somewhat acceptable considering Tito was on their side and they didn’t want to risk being shot by the partisans.
Just finding out I have a tangential relationship to Tito made me very proud. My grandpa was a reactionary misogynist pig, but at least he participated in the killing of fascists and sort of helped some communists circumstantially.
I am sorry to hear that it all feels as if it was for nothing. Fuck NATO for ruining eastern Europe. Hopefully things will begin to change in our lifetime.
Thanks. My grandpa actually cried when he saw Tito irl and then had a cold one with him. He said he was pretty chill and down to earth lol.
But yeah I hope things get better too.
That’s so sweet.
Can you please recommend anything to read about Tito or Yugoslavia? I’ve been meaning to check out Parenti’s book but haven’t yet so happy to replace it in the queue if you can recommend something better.
“To kill a nation” by Parenti is good. Though he’s a bit too optimistic and forgiving of Milošević who was a patsoc weirdo.
Thank you!
Communists have consistently been skeptical of student movements because of their naivety and class dynamics (usually petty bourgeois). They fall apart quickly, they lack the capacity to seriously organize with a consistent line and are easy to coopt because they rarely have robust leadership or committees to appeal to.
Incidentally, this is the same basic formula for NGO-based protests and liberal false catharsis protests and even many “anarchist” movements (keeping in mind most self-labeled Western anarchists are not serious and arguably not anarchists).
It’s not really better most places, including pre-socialist imperialist ones. Those American student protesters made bad deals with admins and shut themselves down when summer started. Many were coopted by petty bourgeois muslim student associations using tokenizing IDpol, then shut down for petty bourgeois concessions.
would you recommend slovenia for a vacation?
I would honestly. Beautiful place. I’ve been to It myself while traveling.
I only had a few days there but I really enjoyed myself.
update on the student movement that made a lot of noise a while back. It’s falling apart really due to It losing its originally decent focus from having concrete leadership. It unfocused from student demands to parliamentary elections and begging the EU to intervene.
Many such cases brother. We keep struggling
More like ex socialist
I have no hope nor belief in Europe ,I hope this place will know Pain
The only people I care about are our comrades in Africa and Asia
