Anarchist, Autonomy, Capitalism, Politics, Protest, Serbia, Student, Transcribed

Prefiguring Autonomy: Student-led Social Movement in Serbia Shake The Government

"TFSR 3-23-25 | Prefiguring Autonomy: Student-Led Social Movement in Serbia Shakes The Government" featuring a photo of a night-time demonstration in a Serbian city with red flares lighting the night
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This week, we speak with Ilik and Koko, two students from Serbia, and another anarchist comrade who participated in student and other movements earlier in this century to speak about the anti-corruption protest that have rocked the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) government of president Vučić’ since the deadly collapse of a recently opened concrete train platform canopy in Novi Sad on November 1st 2024, so far killing 16 people.

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Starting with student demands for transparency and accountability from the government that were answered with violence and subterfuge, the protests have grown and drawn from wider and wider portions of the public into millions taking the streets, creating autonomous assemblies and plenums rejecting the political parties. The guests speak about the growth, the reactions against it, and the possibilites they see in what has the seeds that could bring it from social movement to social revolution.

Some other reading sources (thanks Rey!)

Announcement

Fundraiser for Journalist in North Gaza

As the Zionist Entity and it’s racist uncle, the USA, resume the genocide of Gaza, there’s a fundraiser going to support Hamza M Salha, a young journalist and English student and his extended family of 40 in the north.

You can find a video from Franklin Lopez about Hamza and links to his fundraiser at the following social media posts:

You can read some of Hamza’s writings below:

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Transcription

Ilik: Hi. My name is Ilik. I come from somewhere in the central Serbia. Right now I live and study in Belgrade. I’m a student and an anarchist. I go by they/any.

Random: You can call me Random, like ‘random anarchist.’ I am from Belgrade and currently live there, I’m in my 30s.

Koko: Hello. My name is Koko. I am a Bosnian anarchist living and studying in Serbia, in Belgrade.

TFSR: Awesome. Thank you all for taking the time to have this conversation. I really appreciate it. I know things are pretty busy right there. The Yugosphere has seen some of its largest demonstrations and blockades ever following a train disaster on November 1st, 2024. Could you speak a bit about what happened in Novi Sad and what has come out about the conditions there since the tragedy?

Koko: A train station canopy collapsed on the 1st of November, killing originally 15 people. That’s the number that most people remember. Now it’s 16 because another person died yesterday. The canopy was renovated just four months earlier by a foreign corporation, and it was officially opened. This has connected to a lot of people because it’s a place that many people have visited. I myself had been under that canopy just a few months before it had collapsed.

Concerning the last person who died just yesterday, they had been kept [alive with life support] since late January. Their brains had basically become mush and there was no hope of recovery. They literally didn’t have a brain. Their family was telling the doctors to turn off the machines and let the person die. But the state didn’t let them die because they knew that this would infuriate the people protesting.

TFSR: I know that information had come out after the fact about the conditions around which that construction had occurred, and whether or not there was due diligence, whether or not that construction was done in accord with the regulations for safety. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Ilik: As far as I know, we actually don’t have documents about that. Not all the documents are released. So that’s why [there are many] speculations.

Koko: The vast majority of documents haven’t been released. But it’s Serbia – it’s obvious they didn’t follow regulations.

Random: One of the main requests from the student movement is to release all the paperwork so we can know what happened. The government did release a large amount of papers, but nothing from those papers is actually the relevant part concerning responsibilities. What we know is that the president himself tried to speed up this [canopy construction] process. And the company working on this put a very high price. But he said, ‘You need to finish it. I don’t care. Just finish it in the quickest [time possible], because we told the public it will be finished till then’ and stuff like that.

[The construction] was done by foreign countries, but some sub-contractors are not foreign. So it’s foreign and domestic. Everybody is involved. Officially, on the day of the accident, the status of this railway station was still ‘in renovation,’ but it was free for the public to use. That’s what I wanted to add.

TFSR: I guess that’s an important point in terms of contractors and foreign-owned corporations. I know in situations like this, it could be pretty easy for the authorities who determined the safety of a space to say, ‘Oh, that was because of non-local contractors, and maybe they broke some rules that we didn’t know about, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ But if it was still listed under renovation, the official authorities are the ones who are taking responsibility for the safety of this public infrastructure that’s paid for by taxpayers. Great. Thank you for that clarification.

So can folks talk about what the state’s initial reactions to the demands by the student-led movement for transparency and accountability were? Were they open to it? Did they give just short, abrupt answers, or did the ruling SNS party respond in a reactionary manner? How did that go?

Koko: Initially, there were protests right after the collapse of the canopy, and they were essentially led by the opposition. A few communists attacked the municipality building in Novi Sad, and the opposition called them ‘government infiltrators’. The government didn’t respond much to these.

However, a student blockade started in Belgrade at the Faculty of Drama Arts, and this was independent of any party, and the state responded with violence. They arrested multiple students, even though the blockade had only been declared to last 22 hours. But after the arrests, the faculty went into full blockade, and many others followed.

After the blockade had started, the government ignored them for a while. They just thought it would die down. Then they made token amends and pretended that they had fulfilled all the demands, which they still pretend to do now. But they still didn’t talk much about the actual protests. Only now they started talking about them all the time, but they are becoming quite aggressive, openly talking about violence against the people in blockades.

Ilik: In the beginning, when the blockades were starting, some random government officials got fired as scapegoats. But it didn’t go well with the public, because people didn’t care about those specific people. People cared about the government as a whole and about releasing documents and finding those responsible. The whole government was responsible for that, not just a few specific individuals. Those people who were arrested were released after a few days. So those were fake arrests.

Koko: Multiple government officials had in the first days of the blockade, physically attacked students, and they weren’t punished. They never have been punished for it. There are also multiple cases of students getting run over by cars during their daily traffic blockades. They hold 15-minute traffic blockades, I suppose now it’s 16 minutes, and those people who were running over the students were usually discovered to be supporters of the government.

Ilik: Fortunately, no one died from car run-overs. But a lot of people were harmed by them. How many of them happened? I think, four or five, right?

Koko: Yeah, something like that.

TFSR: So there’s a lot there. It seems to me like ostensibly for a government that is supposed to be representative of the population, having demands for clarification and transparency should be pretty par for the course and pretty natural.

But when it’s part of the population that is not clearly a part of the electoral system or partisan that is offering critique or criticism, making demands for the state to have, especially when the concern relates to concepts of corruption, that sort of quick call for police to intervene and apply violence I think says a lot about the state apparatus. And maybe it touches a little too close to the truth.

Can you talk about that and a bit about what the blockades have looked like? Outside of the cars attacking people, what police violence has been like? Has it been soft blockades by the students, or have they been taking buses and blocking the streets? Or what does that look like?

Random: I can give one short answer, just one thing about car attacks. It’s important to mention that when the second or first car drove into the crowd the president himself said publicly on the television that is watched by all the country, that it was a legal thing to do. The driver just drove on his road and somebody blocked the road so he had a full right to drive through the crowd. And this is something that instigated other similar accidents, some of which were by official members of the ruling party. As well as other types of smaller violence, not [attacking] by car but just physically. But I will let the active students talk about the blockades in the faculties.

Koko: Concerning the demands. When you look into the demands, the first demand is to release all the documentation about the renovation of the canopy that had collapsed and the whole train station. The second demand is to release all the protesters, all the people who were arrested in relation to the student protests. The third demand is to arrest, process, and remove from their positions the officials who had attacked students. The fourth demand is the only social one, which is to increase spending for higher education by 20% and decrease scholarship costs by 50%. Because the government spending on higher education is only 0.91% of the GDP, while the average for Central and Eastern Europe is 1.71% which means the Serbian state should be spending almost twice as much on higher education as it is. And the difference is, of course, paid by us through scholarships.

Ilik: Also, just before the blockade started, there was a talk that the government wants to lower the budget for higher education and actually give it instead to foreign private universities to come and open schools here.

TFSR: One specific party has been in control for a little bit now, I think. Can you talk about the politics? If someone in the US hears about the Progressive Party in Serbia, they’re going to think of the terminology ‘progressive’ in modern usage in the US, which tends to mean a little left of liberal. Can you talk about the politics of the Progressive Party, how accountable they are to the voting populace, and what their policies tend to be?

Ilik: They’re actually a branch of the Serbian Radical Party, a far-right fascist party from the ‘90s.

Koko: Which has been responsible for many war crimes in the ‘90s. In fact, they had their own paramilitary unit which was infamous for committing war crimes in Croatia. Their leader was famously at [The International Court of Justice at] The Hague for many years, and he got off scot-free, which proves the incapability of The Hague court.

The current president was actually one of his best friends and most confident supporters before founding his own Progressive Party, which essentially retains the same people from the fascist party they were part of earlier. There are pictures of him from the ‘90s wearing neo-Nazi shirts and other [fascist] symbols.

Ilik: The whole concept of the party is that they are progressive in comparison to the Serbian Radical Party, in the sense they’re pretending to be more neoliberal. They are more pro-EU. And that’s about it, as far as the difference between them.

Koko: The Radical Party sucked Russia’s xxx. The Progressive Party sucks everyone’s xxx.

Random: For people listening outside of our cultural context that they don’t know. The parties that were in charge of leading the state before this party were mostly pro-EU, and the population was not satisfied with their politics, their neoliberal measures, killing off public sectors and stuff like that. So a lot of discontent was present in Serbia before the Progressive Party became the leaders.

Vučević [current Serbian prime minister and president] felt that and at that point decided to leave the Radical Party because the Radical Party was always the strongest in opposition. So the biggest part of the population and the most consistent votes were for the Radical Party. [The Progressive Party] said to all the donors of capital, ‘We will take a lot of these votes from the Radical Party, they will feed this nationalistic or this right-wing need of this populace, and they will vote for us. But we will switch to more liberal and neoliberal policies.’ This was their persuasion to be supported by capitalists from our country, from the European Union, from the West and East, from everybody.

That’s how they came to power. And from that point on they needed to fight for power on two fronts. One was propaganda to their voters. They were very clever with this, saying right-wing things to right-wing people, centrist things to centrist people, etc, and [the second was] to be ultra-pro-EU and to do whatever the European Union asks them to do for them to get international support.

In the end this is why, still to this day, those protests are not supported by EU, Russia, China or by US. Nobody supports those protests, because Vučević is (but I hope soon will stop to be) a great player and a great manipulator, an ex-fascist. So that’s what I wanted to say.

Ilik: I think it would be useful to give some historical context back from the ‘90s to the 2000s and then the government afterwards, until the SNS came into the power. Can you do that? You were alive back then during 2000s. I wasn’t.

Random: In the ‘90s socialist Yugoslavia has fallen. It was still socialist in name, but neoliberal reforms have already started, disguised. Socialist Party was in power, together with the Radical Party and the opposition was United Democratic Front, also neoliberal and nationalistic but highly anti-communist and anti-socialist. That was their main point of getting their votes.

In the ‘80s, when [the communist dictator] Tito died, nationalist movements started to creep all over Yugoslavia. That was cashed in in the ‘90s by the Socialist Party, the Radical Party, and the opposition. Everybody was highly nationalistic. It was a living hell.

People forget that these [oppositional] democratic parties were also highly nationalistic, just presented themselves and their nationalism in a more cultured way. So they came to the power after the 5th October, 2000, and they led European Union integration, neoliberal privatization…

Ilik: For the context, I don’t know how to explain it, but 5th October was basically a liberal revolution that lasted for a few days. The first [Serbian] government [after the collapse of Yugoslavia] was overturned and replaced with a neoliberal one.

Random: Yeah, that’s what happened. From 2000 up until Progressive Party [took power], different, small democratic parties that were all pro-EU and neoliberal were in power. And then this nationalistic dissatisfaction started to brew, and that’s where the Progressive Party comes as ex-Radical Party.

They were the most successful mobsters in continuing their propaganda: that they’re also progressive in a sense of European Union. Not really progressive, but liberal. But at the same time nationalistic. They are also big friends of Putin, for the people who like Putin, but they’re also big friends of whoever is the president of the USA because there are people who are pro-USA. They also present themselves as anti-NATO. This is a big part of Serbian culture because we were bombarded by NATO. But they also make some contracts with NATO.

So they did everything there. They’re like, ‘We do whatever we need to, to hold the power. We don’t have any ideology. We just have an active ideology of European Union that is neoliberal.’ And now all of this happened partly because people are fed up with these mobsters that overdid everything.

TFSR: If one of the early sources of opposition, following the disaster at the Novi Sad train station, was oppositional parties getting into the streets, does this feel like this is more of an autonomous social movement that’s been developing? Like I said, if the students are a non-partisan portion of the general population, does the energy from the last four months seem like it is something that could be co-opted by oppositional parties for electoral purposes? Or does it feel like it is managing to stand outside of the electoral framework and the opportunities that are ‘presented’ by the various parties that run for office?

Ilik: In the last few years we’ve had many different movements that were for one or other reason against the government. A small number of them both started by the opposition or opposition-aligned organizations, but most of them were started by random people who were very unhappy with the current government. All of them, literally, every single one of them was after some time co-opted by the opposition and started being used just for their popularity.

For context, the opposition is very unpopular because they were in power before SNS came into power and they were actually democratically replaced by SNS. That’s how much people didn’t like them. It’s very unusual here that someone is democratically replaced, we are used to dictators here, unfortunately.

All the protests they co-opted, they pacified. They were always calling for peaceful protests, for slow protests, for the changes in the government, basically using it for political points. Trying to get more of their people into the government instead of actually making a systemic change.

Some of [those movements] were massive. Most of them had at least a few protests that were more than 100,000 people. But it didn’t lead anywhere.

This time, opposition tried to start protests, actually it did start the first protests, but it failed, of course. After that, students started blockading. That became very popular, and it spread, first in Belgrade and Novi Sad and after that throughout the whole country. That became a new front for fighting the government.

Students block the universities, and they also block the streets every day, with every school holding 15 minutes, now 16 minutes of silence for the people who died in Novi Sad. Throughout time methods evolved; there were walks from town to town to spread the information, because government propaganda is very strong, and not everyone uses social media. Older people don’t. But for younger people, information was mostly spread through social media. Opposition tried to co-opt that too, but it was very unsuccessful. People saw what they were doing because they had been doing that for the last few years.

Everyone is very angry at the government and a lot of people are angry at the opposition. And opposition, at the start, didn’t even try to co-opt [the student protests]. They were trying to co-opt them later, but at the beginning they tried to stop them, because they think the blockades are something that could also threaten them.

When they didn’t succeed in that, they tried to co-opt [the protests] by having their people infiltrate the blockades at schools. “Blockade” is the word we use for occupations. They have multiple “student organizations” or youth organizations. Some of them are pretending not to be aligned with opposition. Some of them are openly aligned with opposition. But all of them are advocating for the same thing that the opposition says: working with those [opposition] parties.

We had a lot of problems with them at the beginning, depending on the school. Many schools did have a problem with them at the start, but they lost control over universities very quickly. They actually never succeeded in fully taking control. So they tried to co-opt it, they’re still trying to co-opt it, but it’s not really working out.

This is now a social movement that first started as a student movement and then grew. Workers started helping, farmers joined in, average people started just being part of the movement, and now it’s a big social movement that opposition doesn’t really have power over. They’re trying to use it, of course, they’re trying to be a peaceful solution, where it’s going to be a transitional government, or there’s going to be an election, which they want to win because they are the only other party option. They’re not a single party or coalition, but they’re the only other option for the current government when it comes to parties. But they are not popular, and the more they try to push for elections and transitional government, anything that puts them into power, the more people are organizing by themselves.

The last week, after the [March] 15th, people started organizing a lot of people’s assemblies, and a lot of places throughout the country are starting to be more and more self-managed.

Koko: I just want to say that the opposition did organize the first protest, but it was over after two days, and the blockades have been going on for many months. People know that the opposition doesn’t want to change anything, because why would they? If they cause a change, they can’t make an election campaign on that. And after all, they were in power before Vučević, and we all know how they were. They were as bad or maybe even worse. They have been trying to co-op the blockades many times, and they had varying success rates at various universities. But I think the most outrageous attempt was when they planned to take over the protests that happened on the 15th of March [2025], the largest gathering in the history of Serbia and perhaps Yugoslavia, where they wanted to storm the Parliament after forcing the blockades into supporting them by organized chanting of “transitional government” and stuff like that, and essentially feigning popular support.

Random: I can add to this a little bit because I think for people who are anarchists or close to anarchism, it’s interesting to hear that, for example, we have this difference between parts of the opposition and the student movement that is led by direct democracy and anarchistic principles. The difference is that the youth part of the opposition wanted to do violent things, to storm the Parliament, to storm the president’s residence, and stuff like that. It’s an interesting twist that I didn’t expect, and also interesting for me as a little bit older anarchist involved in some earlier student fights, that students are so non-violent as a principle as a whole. That’s an interesting divide. We could discuss that if you want. It is anthropologically and sociologically interesting how this movement came to be in our history.

The other thing I wanted to talk about which is even more important, is for people who are listening to get the picture of how this biggest protest and this biggest movement in the history of Serbia and the Yugosphere was created. Because it didn’t come from nowhere. Nothing comes from nothing, I mean in social science kind of way.

One of the most important parts of this student movement is their principled direct democracy, assemblies and occupations of faculties, and it didn’t come to itself. It was a tradition in Serbia from 2006, actually. Every few or several years, occupations of some faculties happened, and they were all done with these principles in mind and against the Student Parliament movement.

We were fighting the Student Parliament movement that was ultra-soft reformist, while we had a more social approach, more anarchistic principles. But it never became this big. The last occupation was more than 10 years ago, and I thought this connection, this chain of occupations happening every few years, was over because there was nobody to pass these principles. But it actually happened.

And now I heard that in several faculties that were never connected to these fights before, like the Faculty of Pharmacology, the Faculty of Engineering, etc, the first assembly of these occupations was so full in these big halls that people didn’t have space to stand, not just to sit. In those big, big, big halls they were also standing outside looking in, to try to be part of these big assemblies.

So this is really an interesting point for me to discover. Why? Why now? How now? I don’t have the right answer, but I’m so glad it happened. And now these anarchistic principles of direct democracy and assemblies are spilling out of faculties and is starting to move through the cities all around Serbia.

I was part of an assembly organized for several blocks [of flats] together. People immediately agreed on direct democracy. Almost all the people who support this protest, and there are a lot of them, are also looking at this plenum, direct democracy, assembly, this way of organizing, they’re looking at it with love in their eyes, truly. And this is a big potential for anarchist movement.

Will it be used, or will it be not used to establish itself as something that will continue beyond these protests? I hope so. I don’t know if it will, but this is a magical moment for me to go to assembly of four blocks with random middle aged people. In 10 minutes everybody was ready to do an assembly, fully aware of all the technicalities and voting and arguing in good faith and coming to conclusion, making working groups and stuff like that.

I just wanted to mention it, we don’t have time to talk about this, but just to mention this string of anarchistic organizing that actually was one of the biggest reasons this is so successful now. Because students don’t have any leaders, it’s crucially forbidden. I mean, it’s radically forbidden for them to have leaders among themselves, voted by themselves. All this spilled from faculties to people, and now I am taking this example, but there are more examples.

[During] this assembly that I was part of, 300 – 400 local people [were present]. Everyone who took [space] to tell something at the assembly, said their name, and then they said, “And I am not part of any party.” So people are now making themselves valuable, you could say, by saying they are not part of any political party. And everybody is taking that as a most natural, most normal, most valued way of expressing and organizing at this moment. Will it continue? I don’t know, but I just wanted to take a little bit of time to tell all of this. That’s it.

Koko: Also worth mentioning that the first directly democratic blockades that were organized in 2006, as the comrade mentioned, were organized by anarchists, as were the ones in the following years.

Ilik: I have a few things to say about what the comrade was talking about people understanding direct democracy. I think it really even goes past that now. Just this morning, I saw a post on some random Instagram page. Not anarchist or leftist, just a random page. And it was a post asking people what they think about people’s assemblies. And all comments were like: “No, we don’t need government. We don’t need parliament. We can organize by ourselves.”

I cannot describe how happy I am to see that. It’s really beautiful to see, especially here, where I didn’t expect anything like this to happen ever. Of course, that’s a small post on a random Instagram page, but it seems that people [writing] there were just the general population. It’s very nice to see that people understand that it’s not something temporary, but that they actually don’t need government, that they can organize like this for everything. That’s one thing.

Another important thing I wanted to say about this whole movement is that this movement is now lasting more than four months. It’s very important, because when things last for a very short time, some people during that period might get radicalized, might continue using those principles, but when something lasts this long, and especially on the scale it is, it’s gonna get into people’s consciousness, and people are gonna continue organizing like this, and seeing this as a normal way of organizing. That is very important for our movement and generally for the future of this place.

People’s assemblies started just now, around a week ago, but they’re already doing a lot better than we expected. People understand already how they’re working, so that’s a great thing. We were a bit scared about that, that people wouldn’t understand. Because at the beginning students had a lot of problems with organizing until everyone understood how direct democracy works. That no one has power. That everyone can say whatever they think. That everyone has a right to have an opinion. People didn’t understand that. It took students multiple months till it got where it needed to be.

But with [other] people, they seem to have learned from students, and it looks like people who are organizing now are organized pretty well right from the start, which is a surprising and a very good thing to see.

I also wanted to ask the older comrade. You said that this is a principle for organizing student occupations since 2006 here [in Serbia]. But student occupations have been organized this way not only here, but in the whole Yugosphere. I think I noticed that in Croatia they were organized this way in 2012. But I would guess there were more blockades like this. Also in Slovenia student occupations were pretty common and from what I heard from Slovenian comrades, they were also organized similarly. So I want to ask, if this is something that goes back to student blockades from Yugoslavia, however they organized back then? Or is it something that started in this country?

I mean, it’s normal that it would spread both to Croatia and Slovenia or the other way around because we’re all very culturally connected. As a matter of fact, in Croatia and Serbia we speak the same language, and we can understand Slovenian, and Slovenians can understand Serbo-Croatian. So it’s very natural that it would spread. But I’m interested, is it really something from this century or does it go back to [the times of] Yugoslavia?

Random: That’s a great and important topic to talk about. You know, the first example of a student movement being obviously anarchistically based in organization was in 1968 in France, and the famous pamphlet [‘On the poverty of student life’] was spread around faculties on the first day of [the academic year]. That’s how they started to do this. I think it was not being used [in Serbia] before the 1990s, and I’m sure it wasn’t used in the ‘90s…

Ilik: Sorry for interrupting you. You said it was spread on university grounds. Where? Are you talking about France? Are you talking about here and what specific blockade are we talking about?

Random: I’m talking about France, and it was spread on faculties. Basically, anarchist and situationist groups printed this pamphlet and put one on every chair of the guys and girls who were starting the university. So on the first day on faculty, everybody had received their own copy of this pamphlet all across France. Illegally – I mean, it was obviously not planned by the faculty. [It was placed on] all the chairs where the students were sitting to have this official introduction lecture by faculty members. That’s 1968.

In Yugoslavia I don’t think something like this ever happened, as far as I know. In the ‘90s there was a strong student leadership that produced some gross political figures, be it highly right-wing reactionary or neoliberal, half-reactionary idiots. This was the bad part of the student movement.

There is this big metaphysical border between the ‘90s and the 2006 movement, because [in the ‘90s] they were fighting against the big war-making tyrant. And in 2006 there was nothing radical like this to help all the population, to get them up. But [the 2006 movement] was mostly a social [movement], calling for free education. They were using communist and anarchist symbolism. And there was a lot of fighting back from the public sector, from politicians, from the opposition, from everybody, because they were still in this era of active anti-communism, active anti-socialism. “Communism” was a taboo word. You looked like a madman if you used that word in 2006.

The comrades that participated in this fight shared their experience with Croatian anarchists and activists. They, in turn, applied this direct democracy in Croatia, which was very successful, and then they wrote “Blokadna kuharica”. It’s like a cookbook for student occupation with [the use of] direct democracy that was later passed to my generation, [during the occupations of] 2011 and 2014. The same pamphlet on how to do direct democracy from Croatia was read by the [current] student movement. So this is a 21st-century thing in this context.

Ilik: Funny thing about that: our dictator or president, however you want to call him, labeled all students as Croatian anarchists who are working for Croatian intelligence agency, because of that pamphlet. Throughout this whole movement, he used many different labels for students, anywhere from anarchists, to Croatian spies to…

Koko: Bolshevik Assemblists…

Ilik: Yeah, yeah…

TFSR: Ustaši…

Ilik: Yeah. Croatian fascist from the Second World War. He also called us ZBORaši, which were Yugoslav fascists from the Second World War, a very small faction, but they did exist. So it’s very funny how many different labels he gave us. He gave us literally every label that exists as extreme on a political compass.

Koko: It takes quite a lot of creativity to think of all these labels that he gave us, which to me, proves that they think about this stuff a lot in their free time. You know, that they’re seething while trying to fall asleep.

TFSR: You’re living rent-free in their heads, as we say.

Koko: Yeah, they’re crying themselves to sleep thinking about this stuff.

TFSR: Yeah, but it’s interesting too. They’ve made claims that the student movements are funneled or being paid by the US or other states through the related NGOs, which, in some ways seems like stuff that Putin has said, for instance, in the past trying to suppress social movements.

It’s not untrue to say that the US has used NGO connections or what have you to fund opposition movements in countries that it’s trying to overthrow. It seems as if the social movement is expanding to wider and wider parts of the population, from pensioners to professionals to lawyers and law students, engineers, as was mentioned, a cops union that has signed statements and also demanded more pay. Does it seem like parts of the population are actually buying the idea that this is some sort of controlled opposition from outside that’s threatening to destabilize the glorious Serbian country?

Ilik: That’s actually very funny because, in this situation, the government is supported by the US.

Koko: Yeah, actually since the old General Staff building was bombed by America in 1999, it was left in its half-destroyed state, as a monument to the people who lost their lives during the bombing. And now, just like a week ago or something, Vučević signed a deal with Trump Jr. to destroy the old General Staff building and replace it with a large luxury hotel.

By the way, the old General Staff building is one of the main tourist attractions of Belgrade. Everyone wants to see the old destroyed building,

TFSR: And now they can stay in it for luxury money.

But I mean, I guess maybe when these statements were being made, it was the Biden administration that was in power, the one that was arming and giving intelligence to Ukraine in opposition to the Russian invasion. I think there are a lot of different factors that have shifted over the last few months, and probably the stories that Vučević is telling about why this popular movement is bad are having to shift, according to the times and his allies.

Random: It is completely paradoxical, because Vučević was working closely with Biden and with Trump on an equal level, and loved both equally. So he’s not closer to the right-wing one. It doesn’t matter from where the money comes. He likes them. It doesn’t matter who it is, but it is a populist thing to be anti-American, and he knows this, that’s why he says it. And this narrative of him working with NATO, working with America, doesn’t go too much into the public eye for people that are not on social media, so they see him as some kind of savior from that.

But also there is this vile thing because, for example, the Russian state helps him actively against these protests. So both Russia and US are against these protests and actively helping this government. As well as China. But China is, I think, the least involved directly. I’m not excusing them. There is the EU also, and EU is the most clandestine…

Ilik: They love lithium.

Random: Yeah. They love lithium. They need to dig lithium for the car industry in Germany. And it is this big, ironically, ecological movement of the EU that wants to dig up lithium from Serbia. This is a real thing.

So Vučević knows what he’s doing. He’s talking against everybody that he thinks his voters don’t like, but he’s working closely with all the governments. He is actively being helped by the East and by the West. And the only people who are getting xxx with that are working class and students.

TFSR: In 2021 we interviewed a Serbian anarchist about, among other things, a demonstration against the Rio Tinto-run lithium mine in the Jadar Valley, which threatened the health of [the local population] and [their] access to drinking water, as well as local agriculture. The mine was halted by public protests. In 2024 the Serbian Constitutional Court overruled the cancellation of this mining project, which has led to a restart to the demonstrations. A bunch of farmers have been joining, maybe for their own anti-corruption reasons, but maybe also looking at this as a wider corruption scandal.

I wonder if you could talk about how the ecological and farmers struggle in Jadar has informed the ongoing demonstration against corruption. They’ve been bringing their tractors in and helping to block traffic, right?

Koko: To me, personally, as you know, a farmer, a peasant from Bosnia, it’s not very different from being a farmer in Serbia. We are used to every incarnation of the state xxxx us over and we do not expect any good to come out of the state or capitalism. However, farmers have generally been passive and the Rio Tinto situation has changed this somewhat, because the people living there in Jadar Valley stand to lose their homes and their entire legacy.

Here it’s not like in the West, where people see home as just a place where they live. Here, at least for farmers, where their ancestors are from is very important. My family has been living on the same piece of land for 200 years, it means something to us.

Ilik: For cultural context, I think that’s only [relevant] for villages. It’s very much not a thing in the city.

Koko: These farmers in Jadar are not just very unhappy. They’re willing to work against the state on this. In fact, arguably, the situation in Western Serbia is even more radical than in Belgrade. A few months ago they actually stormed their municipal building in Bogatić and forced all the politicians out. Yesterday or two days ago they were throwing eggs at the municipality building and at their mayor, who is from the ruling party.

Ilik: It’s a tradition out there. From what I’m seeing they’re doing it regularly, and not just the municipality building, but also the mayor’s house. And it’s not like 5 eggs, it’s hundreds and hundreds of eggs.

Koko: And even beyond Western Serbia, for instance, in Vojvodina, the north of the country, farmers have been leading their own protests, which have now integrated into the wider popular movement. They have been helping the blockades, and even before that, they were working on their own. This is for different reasons though, because they got xxx over by the state, the state promised them greater subsidies, and then they didn’t give them greater subsidies. So essentially, the state scammed them.

Ilik: For ecological movement context behind that: Rio Tinto found a lot of lithium in Matra, Western Serbia, where there is a lot of farmland and many rivers. Mining that lithium would harm the whole environment, and would put a lot of heavy metals into the water, which would pretty much poison the land all over. And on top of that environmental damage that would happen, a lot of people would need to move out for the mining to start.

Rio Tinto is a comically evil company or corporation. They have been working with pretty much every fascist government. They have worked with Franco in Spain. They have worked with Hitler. They have mined resources by displacing a lot of natives in Australia.

Koko: They’re primarily active in Australia, yes.

Ilik: So they’re kind of a comically evil company. If you wanted to write a story and make a comic-label company you wouldn’t be able to make as comic-label company as this one is.

Koko: In Australia, some years ago, there was a pretty famous case. In their mining expedition, there was a cave with native art inside, and it was kind of in their way, not directly but they were kind of afraid that the state would impose sanctions on their mining operation to protect the cave. So what did they do? They destroyed the cave, and eventually, the court actually ordered them to rebuild the cave. Like actually reconstruct a cave.

Ilik: They’re comically evil.

Random: Can I add something? There is this funny anecdote that kind of demonstrates what’s happening. Some ecological activists complained to the European Union that this lithium deal in Serbia applies to a large amount of land and a big population and is actually very harmful to Serbian people and local communities. So the European Union held some kind of assembly on this topic. Only one or two people from Serbia were allowed to talk against lithium [mining]. [On the other hand] there were several representatives of Rio Tinto, several representatives of countries that support this [project]. The biggest part of the European Union supports it, I think there are only two or three countries that don’t, like Slovakia.

[Additionally] a documentary was shown as an argument [in favor of mining]. This documentary was filmed by a Dutch University, and it’s a Dutch University for mineral extraction or mining, I don’t know what this part of science is called. This university is famous for having a cool documentary part of the studies, where they are asking their students to film something about some mining somewhere and to explain in this documentary why mining is actually fine, ecological, productive, and good for everybody.

So they used this documentary [at the EU assembly] that shows local Serbian people as dumb, as not having any arguments [against mining]. You all know how documentaries can look if you know how to cut them and how to direct them. They’re even using the anti-Russian sentiment in Europe to get their points for mining lithium. [In the movie] they’re saying that all people who are against lithium [mining] are actually pro-Russian paid activists. In the same way, Russian agents use anti-liberalism to gain the support of the Serbian people. So it’s a two-way street. But at this moment we are much more in danger from Rio Tinto in Western Serbia [than from Russia].

We are also in danger from a Chinese company Zijin in Eastern Serbia that is starting to mine every xxxx hill and every xxxx valley, to the point where one of the biggest cities in Eastern Serbia was trying to sign – listen to this and please believe me – they were trying to sign some approval for Zijin to be a representative of Zaječar in state bureaucracy of Serbia. You heard me right. For Zijin to be a representative of Zaječar in state parliament and state bureaucracy. Why? They wanted to build roads on unapproved, urbanistically un-planned land so they could cut costs for transporting stuff that they extracted and for transporting machinery to cut the land.

This was stopped basically by people trying to enter the small local parliament of this town and this paper was not signed. But it is like a South Park episode, to have a Chinese company be a representative of the whole city on the state level. This was luckily stopped, and this luckily was in the time or maybe a day after these big walks around the country by the student movement, which was very important and raised the atmosphere in this small town. The day after, when this paper [giving the representation of Zaječar to Zijin] was supposed to be signed in the local parliament, people were fired up by student movement passing through their town and physically stopped this from happening, and now they’re stopping it every time it is supposed to happen.

One more thing I wanted to say is about these students who are walking hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. If you can imagine, people who are listening, walking in big groups through the cities, through the smallest villages, and just hugging people and, I don’t know, saying some meaningless: “We are all together. Let’s fight this stuff, things like that. People are for the first time seeing that somebody is against this and that it’s not some evil Western agents or whoever. It’s just students trying to do their best for their people. So this is also an important thing to mention, these big, big, crazy big walks in the middle of winter. They’re making big heroes for themselves by doing this.

Koko: By the way, concerning Rio Tinto, looking at the Wikipedia page, their controversy section includes such gems as: poor working conditions, the Rio Tinto massacre, interference from Axis Powers during World War II, racism, bullying and sexual harassment, rook and gorge destruction–that’s the one I mentioned–and misplaced radioactive capsules, environment, labor and human rights and corruption allegations. They’re just comically evil.

Ilik: That’s comically evil, you can’t write a more comic-label thing.

To go back to the EU and Rio Tinto. Basically for the EU mining is great because Rio Tinto and Serbia made a deal with the European Union, or with Germany. I don’t know which one it is. Germany would get a lot of that lithium for cheap, from what I know, because they need it for their car industry, for lithium-based batteries.

You mentioned that there were protests against Rio Tinto back in 2021. Yeah, they were happening back then. There was international campaign and they stopped [the mining]. Though they haven’t really stopped, they just paused and they restarted last year, I think, a few months before this thing in Novi Sad happened, and farmers have been fighting them ever since.

TFSR: That’s really cool to be seeing the confluence of these different social parts of the general population coming in and contributing and saying, “Yeah, there’s corruption. We don’t trust the current administration. We want clarity about this disaster that happened. And also here’s another element of what kind of society we want. We want better pay. We want more funding for education.” You’ve had medical workers come to the demonstrations and participate or go on short strikes.

So at the end of January, Prime Minister Vučević of the ruling SNS party and the mayor of Novi Sad both offered to resign their positions in response to attacks against demonstrators on the 28th January by party-aligned hooligans. Vučević was stating that those responsible for the train station disaster also must be held to account. Protests have continued through the months to bring huge amounts of people into the streets, with occupations of state media outlets, the peremptory shutdown of National Assembly for “safety concerns,” promises of general strikes by unions and increased violence by party loyalists against those in the streets.

Can you talk about the demonstrations that happened on the 15th of March [2025] and what has come out of that? What have the responses been to those demonstrations?

Ilik: For Vučević, the Prime Minister, that whole resignation was just a public stunt. Officially by law, his resignation should have been accepted at the first assembly of the parliament, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t accepted for two months. It was accepted a few days ago, and a few days ago when it was accepted, the government officially fell. So at that point, it was very expected to happen. But the important thing is that his resignation was just a public stunt at that moment. For the 15th, does any of the comrades want to talk?

Koko: Alright, so large protests have been happening in Serbia since December.

Ilik: Actually every 15 days there was a big protest in a different city.

Koko: And the 15th [of March] was going to be the largest protest. And indeed it was. But what’s really important is that the state threatened violence and expected a great degree of violence. In fact, they had driven even tanks into Belgrade. They had increased the salaries of the gendarmerie and given policemen much greater privileges in committing violence. They had driven lots of tractors from random places in Serbia, and the general expectation was that he [the prime minister] was going to block every entrance and exit from the city, institute a curfew, and perhaps cut telecommunication and that he was going to destroy the protests violently. That’s the prelude to the 15th.

Ilik: I’m going to talk about the15th itself. There are many speculations about how many people were there. State said there were 107,000, they’re always underestimating by at least 5 to 10 times. Other estimates go anywhere from 375,000, most of them are 500,000 to 800,000 and some go as far as 1,650,000.

The streets were really full. There were definitely multiple hundreds of thousands. When it comes to actual number, I think it’s important to mention that Ana Brnabić, the current president of the National Assembly of the parliament, accidentally said that at the protest there were three and a half million ears. So there is a guess that the official number is actually 1,750,000.

TFSR: Wow.

Ilik: Which would be on the higher end of estimates. Though, we don’t know if that’s just a thing that came out of her mouth accidentally. So we don’t know if that is official government information. It’s not official, because officially, they’re saying that there were only 107,000 which is definitely not true. There was 107,000 just at one of the meeting places, two and a half hours before the protest started.

The protest lasted from 4:00pm to 10:00pm and it was expected for that time to be peaceful, because the students called for a peaceful protest. The president said that if the protest isn’t peaceful, the ones who will be blamed for that will be the organizers, which are students, so pretty much all students would be blamed for that. Everyone expected that from 4:00pm to 10:00pm it will be peaceful, and then after 10:00pm chaos will start.

What ended up happening was that protest was peaceful, and around 8:00pm during the 15 minutes of silence (back then, it was still 15), government used sound cannons. What’s the acronym for that?

TFSR: LRAD

Ilik: Yeah. A lot of people were harmed by that. Officially, that same evening, 55 people came into the hospital, though most people came one or two days later. Numbers so far are in the hundreds. We don’t know the numbers specifically, but what we know is that people were very discriminated in the hospitals, their papers were labeled with “protest,” and people who called for help were just told, “Do not come. We cannot give you help.”

When the sound cannons were activated, chaos started. I wasn’t there. I was a bit further away, a kilometer or two in a tunnel, actually, so I was protected from the sound cannons. But when I came out on the other side, we saw thousands and thousands of people just running down the street and totally disoriented. Me and my friends started asking people what was going on, but no one knew what was going on. Everyone was scared and was just trying to get out.

We started running in the opposite direction from the one people were running from in order to see what’s going on there. And there we saw that blue flares were lit up and that signaled the retreat. Students called for retreat to the faculties. At that point, faculties were full. In the matter of minutes, they were full of people. They then notified everyone that it’s an end of the student protest, because the government attacked. Immediately after that, there were many names right there: People’s Protest or Workers’ Protest. However, they called it, it started immediately after, and people came back ready to fight instead of just for a peaceful protest.

People came in front of the Parliament. There was a lot of gendarmerie and police. It was borderline militarized. A lot of hooligans were there and attacked people. Some fights happened, a standoff happened, then another fight, and people retreated for the second time. And that’s when it ended.

It seems from his speech at 10:00pm that Vučević was ready for bloodshed and for a curfew, but none of that happened because students called for a retreat. Then at the second protest that happened immediately afterwards, people retreated instead of fighting. Back then it didn’t seem like [fighting] was that smart of an option. Vučević immediately proclaimed the victory over the “color revolution,” as he calls it, and we expected that there’s gonna be more pressure from the government and all of that. But instead, what happened is that people started organizing immediately afterwards. People’s assemblies started appearing everywhere, and now we have a situation where people are attacking government officials. People are organizing by themselves and making decisions for the community on the level of that community.

Random: I wanted to add because people like students, like the two of them [Ilik and Koko], they’re involved so much, and maybe can’t see how good the greater picture looks the sense of a self-organized biggest protest in the history of the region. Let’s call it a million.

So I know there is a critique and a valid critique of the Safety Working Group of the student assemblies that are acting a little bit like police inside the student movement. But if we take this criticism and just put it away for a second, people like us, anarchists, should know, should affirm this too, and should pass this to everybody in the world. Self-organized, fully self-organized people, students were guards–how do you say, “redari?”–the ones that were saying who should go where, that you cannot pass the street here, whatever. It was fully self-organized, and it was almost perfectly organized for the biggest protest in the history of the region.

This should be underlined. This should be studied. This should be an argument for anarchists that self-organization works even in very complex, very dangerous, and very massive movements and actions of these movements.

For example, those blue flares. Can you imagine not being able to see the end of the people, and somewhere there you see a blue flare, and somewhere like 45 degrees from there you see a blue flare, and it was all self-organized to know this is a retreat. And it’s not a retreat of a black bloc movement. This is a million people. And a million people threatened by violence.

I can talk about fascist groups that inside different wildly weird, bizarre touristy parts of the city. This was also weird. I can talk about it if you think I should, but it should always be important that this is self-organized and was helped by motorcyclists that were helping students and stuff like that.

Ilik: I think it’s also important to mention about fascists. But before that, I want to mention about self-organizing. You didn’t actually say the most important part about self-organizing, that during the weekend,the ruling party sent a messageto all companies that drive buses and trains, etc.that they should not work during the weekend. So all the public transport throughout the whole country during the whole weekend was canceled, and people weren’t able to come.

What happened was that people, by themselves, organized transportation and hundreds of thousands of people came to Belgrade. And this is not a huge country, it’s like 6 million people, or 6.5, something like that. And out of that, around 20% live in the capital. So hundreds of thousands of people coming from outside the capital was a huge thing. Especially when it’s self-organized.

On top of that, all those people stayed in Belgrade in self-organized housing. People just opened their doors to people, and hundreds of thousands of people were housed by just normal people here. And all other things, like food, water, all of that was self-organized for hundreds of thousands of people, which is just insane to think about, and it just proves the power of self-organizing and that people can actually organize things. That’s all I have to say. Comrade, continue.

Random: So for the listeners, imagine hundreds of thousands of people arriving in your city, and then, I saw this, you open a Google Sheet document, where you have thousands of people writing: how many rooms they have, is it for smoking or not, is it for pets or not, what pets, is it for children or not, what food they can offer, what donations they take or don’t, from what time to what time, what kind of beds.

This was all fully, fully, fully self-organized. So there was not a single manager of this. This is an important point, and this can be historically an argument for anarchistic organizing. That’s something that we should remind ourselves, as the comrade said, so that’s what I wanted to say.

I can talk about fascists that were paid by the government, arriving with the sticks, all dressed in dark clothes and hidden faces. Famously, there was this Russian fascist group, pro-Russian, there was this ultra-Serbian, nationalistic fascist group that was organized and paid and came to this one small part of a park.

The park that is in front of the President’s palace where the protest took place, was surrounded by wires by the government and filled with fake students who wanted to learn, who wanted to study and wanted the occupations of the faculties to stop. They were there for several days and it became a tourist attraction. You could be paid by the government under the table to be there for one shift or two shifts, to act as a student who wants to study and wants the occupations to stop.

It was actually an ugly scene. It’s not very funny. I mean, you can make fun of this government decision, but the people that were there were basically mostly poor people who needed some money, so they were acting as students. But this part of the park with the wire was being prepared for when the protest happens, [for people who will] defend the President’s policy. And just before the protest it was filled with fascists. 5000 fascists, strong, strong men. How can I say that? I saw the clips.

Koko: Goons.

Random: Yeah. With goons. That’s why students decided that one big part of the street in the middle of this million-people protest was not to be entered at all. The self-organized people just didn’t enter the street. A million people were barely breathing in this massive protest, and nobody was making a step into the street just because student guards were saying, “No, let’s not do this.”

Ilik: On top of that. They also put Red Berets in that park to scare people. Red Berets are an elite unit, a paramilitary organization of the intelligence agency from the ‘90s.

Koko: Responsible for many war crimes.

Ilik: Yeah. They committed the worst war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Actually, as a matter of fact, they were formed from the worst paramilitary organizations that committed the worst war crimes. So the worst war criminals from the worst paramilitary organization from the ‘90s formed this unit. They have been banned since 2003 and they cannot go out in public in their uniform. But the government, which is well connected to the war criminals, called them and put them in the park for multiple days to scare people.

They aren’t really a threat now. They are brutal murderers and rapists and all of that, but now they’re in their ‘50s and ‘60s, so they aren’t a threat to people. People could have easily beaten them up, but it was a sign from the government to show people that they would attack people if the government felt threatened.

TFSR: The scope of this and the cooperation that’s self-organized among the population of the cities where these demonstrations have been occurring, or Belgrade in particular, is pretty mind-blowing.

Considering how many parts of the population have been participating in this, they’re organizing in their neighborhoods and their industries these plenums or assemblies, making decisions for themselves, and people are identifying themselves as not being aligned with a party in this. Saying that this is a matter for us as neighbors or people who live in this city or this country, and not me, promoting a specific agenda of a political party. Or the student movements, as was mentioned, specifically rejecting leadership, the kind of people that could get co-opted into the power structures. This seems really, really hopeful for the revolutionary potential for decentralized administration as a next step.

I know the demands have been more about funding for this aspect of life in Serbia, or that aspect, or transparency and accountability around issues of attacks in the streets against demonstrators, or who was responsible for the Novi Sad tragedy. Are there discussions going on about creating substantive, autonomous, and lasting power outside of demonstrations and demands for a change in the administration? Is there the potential at this point, or the potential for the potential of people to start getting together in their workplaces and to ask themselves, “If the government decides to shut down transport during days when there are demonstrations to make it harder, so many transport workers are a part of this movement. How do we make sure that transport happens?”

Does that revolutionary horizon seem like it’s reachable at this point, or will it take more work?

Ilik: I think it’ll take a lot more work, but it’s starting to appear. People are starting to understand that they don’t need government but it’s only on a smaller scale. It’s only individuals or smaller groups of people so far. But that mentality is starting to appear, and it’s getting more popular. Hopefully, if this lasts longer, it’s going to become a lot more popular. But if not, there is going to be at least a substantial place from where we can build on that mentality.

Koko: For the longest time, these protests have been pacifist Gandhi stuff. But since recently, people have been looking into actively resisting the state. Until recently, people wouldn’t dare to not follow rules, so the one day general strike was a major achievement. Now it looks absolutely doable.

Random: I can add that those assemblies on the local level are very important. I was acting optimistically, but I was thinking pessimistically. I never wrote or said something pessimistic just to hold the spirit of the people I was talking with. But for example, at the beginning of this assembly that I was part of, people were very legalistically opinionated. They wanted us to go to the local parliament of this local part of the city and to ask for a law [to allow] these assemblies. I said, “People, we don’t need any validation from any kind of law. We are here in this assembly, and by itself, it has its own meaning, value, and importance.”

Five minutes before that people were agreeing with the legalist guy. And just like that, five minutes later, they were all shaking hands in agreement with this non-legalistic or anti-legalistic approach. So there is this possibility. I don’t know how long this movement will last, but if it lasts long enough, some type of process will be definitely rolling. Already it is to some degree, but we will see.

The student movement demands don’t have a big social element. That’s what scared me at the beginning. But now, with assemblies people are starting to talk about their own problems on a local level, and that’s how people will start to think even more socially so to say, in the sense of what problems exist.

Ilik: I would describe this situation as some type of soft, cold revolution. We will see where it goes. But hopefully it’s going to continue. If this lasts for a long time, it’s going to be great, because in that case, we can actually build some type of revolutionary movement. But if not, we’re at least going to have a substantial base from where we can work. So it all depends on how long this lasts.

TFSR: That’s super inspiring, and I’m really excited to share what you all have been sharing, and this context and these stories with the listenership.

I guess the last question that I have is, is there international support? Is that a thing that you’re calling for at this time?

I know that the administration has attempted to weaponize that, and I’m sure the fascists in the streets would love to hear like, “Anarchists from Croatia really are supporting this” or whatever. But how can people learn more about this? How can people offer support from outside? And are there any good news sources that you would suggest people pay attention to around these issues?

Ilik: Well, people can always organize solidarity actions. It’s always welcome. It always helps the morale. The government isn’t going to use it, nor the fascists because there were already a lot of solidarity actions, from protest to some a bit more radical actions. But so far, the government hasn’t used anything. And if they use it now, it would be really weird to use any specific one. As a matter of fact, they choose to ignore it, so that it would seem that we don’t have support.

Random: I can add that we got some support from Greece, because probably you know that there are big protests in Greece as well, after a similar kind of accident. So they’re all supporting us and they’re co-fighting this fight. Also, North Macedonia had a big disaster, with over 50 teenagers killed in a fire at some discotheque. So students there immediately started to organize plenums and assemblies by following the Serbian student movement.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think that in Ireland there are some faculties that are organizing solidarity assemblies and trying to reenact assemblies by this principle. But a bigger structure supporting the movement doesn’t exist, and I kind of like it that way.

There is support from Serbian diaspora, people that live in USA, Europe or China or wherever. They’re sending their support and even financial donations to students, also organizing some actions. But there are no support structures.

Ilik: That’s not all of it. There are also some protests happening in Bosnia, some protests happening in Slovenia. So the whole region is now very active, and this way of organizing is spreading, which is a really great thing to see. Something happening in the whole region. It’s a positive thing, because usually there are just negative things happening in the whole region. Seeing that people are actually having solidarity for each other and not committing genocides against each other is, well, really surprising and really a great thing to see.

I would say that the best thing anyone can do is start organizing anywhere. As a matter of fact, it would be best if people started organizing everywhere. I would say that’s the best way you can show solidarity, start organizing in your own community.

TFSR: Yeah, that’s beautiful. You’ve been speaking in English for a long time, and I would imagine that’s very tiring. But are there any other topics that you want to cover while we’re still in this chat?

Random: The protests were organized by students in four different biggest cities in Serbia, and each of them held this new tradition for them to walk there hundreds of kilometers. One of these cities was Novi Pazar, which is the only city this large whose population is mostly Muslim. When students from Novi Pazar were walking hundreds of kilometers to this other city to support other city student movements, they organized everything by the book for the Muslim students to have self-organized for them to [be able to] pray, to eat halal food, to fast, according to all the [religious] rules. This is, I think, one of the first times in Serbia that self-organized Muslim support exists in such a grand way in a big movement. This needs to be mentioned. Because the movement is not anarchistic itself.

Koko: It has anarchist principles but it is not anarchist in itself.

Random: It really showed a big amount of acceptance of different religions in this sense that I mentioned, organizing stuff for them.

Ilik: In the ‘90s we had a lot of genocides, and most of them were based on religion. So this is a huge step.

TFSR: Yeah, that’s amazing.

Would you mind saying what you were saying about when the mic was off, about your experience as a queer person around these demonstrations?

Ilik: Oh, okay. Basically, before this society was mostly queerphobic. Some of the people were openly queerphobic, and they would shout slurs on the street, but most of the people were privately queerphobic. A closed queerphobic society, you could call it conservative.

We actually never had that step where we had liberal acceptance, where it’s like, “Oh, this group is defined by these characteristics, and they are also people, we should support them” and all of that. When this movement started, it went straight from queerphobia to radical acceptance, where it’s like, “We’re all people. What the xxx. Why would they hate you?” So it’s very interesting where we jump straight from queerphobia to radical acceptance, totally skipping that liberal transition.

Koko: And you specifically felt that as a non-binary person?

Ilik: Yeah, yeah. As someone who’s non-binary and bi and poly and queer as xxxx generally I experienced that. It’s very noticeable, and it’s not just me. I talk with other comrades and other queer people, they also have the exact same experience. So it’s something really unexpected, but something really fantastic to see.

TFSR: That’s really amazing.

Ilik: Especially because it went not to liberal acceptance, but it went into the radical acceptance. It’s really fantastic thing to see. I don’t know how we got here. I really don’t know how to explain it. It just happened.

TFSR: Casual misogyny, I think, exists everywhere in the world, sadly. And I feel like times of rupture can be opportunities for people to have conversations about like, “Oh, don’t make those assumptions about this person based on your reading of them being a woman or whatever.”

Has binary misogyny been challenged as well in these spaces? Does that question make sense? Sorry, it’s a lot of terms.

Ilik: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Koko: Some elements of society, which tend to be more conservative, such as the farmers or the student guards at protests have had some misogynistic [approaches]… I don’t think they’re aware that they were being misogynistic, I don’t think it was in bad faith. But for instance, dividing male and female guards and sending male guards to where they think is going to be more dangerous, because [they assumed] women are less capable of fighting or whatever. And the comments regarding that have been very against that. People recognize misogyny in such actions, and they oppose it.

Ilik: It’s very much not accepted, and it was more of a thing in the start.

TFSR: Okay. Well, thank you, all three of you, for having this conversation, and I wish you luck, solidarity and health, and I look forward to hearing about the successful revolution that will eventually spread and overthrow the golden dictatorship era of the United States here at home.

Ilik: Thank you for having us.

Koko: Thank you for inviting us.

Random: Thank you.