
Allow me to paraphrase the famous Confucian wisdom – when the Progressives show citizens a bloody hand with the middle finger extended, only fools look at the middle finger. Because the fact that the Progressive regime treats citizens with arrogance and disdain is not news, there are countless examples of this. But it is the fact that the middle finger is coming from a bloody hand that has managed to shock even the most cynical observers of local political events.
As I already wrote, the bloody hand is a symbol of the government’s guilt for the tragedy in Novi Sad, stemming from its essentially corrupt model of governance. In the Parliament, when we tried to stick bloody hands on the seats of the government MPs, their reaction was vulgar, violent and aggressive: the Progressives shouted at the opposition MPs, spat at them, tried to prevent them from placing the bloody hand stickers, until, eventually, the president of the Parliament interrupted the session, not to be continued to this day. Even then, the president of the country started talking about bloody hands as a fabrication of the foreign services “from the handbook for color revolutions.”
This reaction was undoubtedly inappropriate and unworthy of the occasion, but, in a sense, it was also all too human. Who likes to be reminded of their guilt? And for something they didn’t intend to do (even if they should have foreseen it)? It is always easier to convince ourselves that those who remind us of our guilt are simply corrupt and malicious, than to think about our own responsibility. It was still possible for the Progressives to convince themselves that they are not guilty and that the critics simply hate them when these messages were still primarily coming from the usual suspects in the opposition, the civil sector and the anti-regime media. The real problem arose when the circle of those pointing to their bloody hands started to expand – first to university students, then to high school students, and then to teachers, artists, lawyers. There is no more room for self-deception and the truth must be faced: guilt is real and calls for accountability.
A different government would feel ashamed after such an experience, ready to face its own mistakes and accept responsibility for its actions, or, at the very least, to fake it all for the public. The Progressives, however, chose a different path. To the message “there is blood on your hands”, they now respond; “we know there is and we don’t really give a damn”. That is the real message of the bloody hand with the extended middle finger: we know we are guilty and there is nothing you can do about it. Here, however, we leave the domain of fragile humanity, subject to error, denial and avoidance of responsibility, and move into the domain of gangster-like flaunting of crime and one’s own impunity, or in other words, into the domain of naked violence.
A little over a month ago, I wrote: “When we place stickers with bloody hands on the seats of the ministers of the Government of Serbia, when we draw graffiti or carry banners with the message ‘There’s blood on your hands!’, we are saying: accept the obvious – you are responsible for the tragedy in Novi Sad. Only when you accept that, life in Serbia can begin to return to normal, and the political game to its relatively normal course.” Today, it is clear that accepting guilt won’t be enough for normalization, because the regime is clearly aware of its guilt for the tragedy in Novi Sad, and the only thing that came out of that awareness is the middle finger to all citizens who want justice. The only logical conclusion is that while the Progressives are in power, normalization is not possible.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 24.01.2025.