Serbia has a history of “leaderless” protest movements—I put leaderless in quotes, because as you note, it is leaderless *by design,* and obviously people have put a lot of thought into that design. The current movement is undoubtedly built on the bones of Otpor, the student-led movement that overthrew Milosevic 25 years ago.
The original architects of that movement have since become consultants and trainers for various activist groups around the world, and there have been several attempts to seed Otpor-style movements in other countries—Extinction Rebellion is a notable example—none seem to have had the success that Otpor did.
First thanks for highlighting the events in Serbia, so important to have some attention on this! My instinctive resonance is with the Arab Spring, so I hope it works out better and that there is enough underlying structure to ‘catch enough water after the flood recedes’ as that seemed to be the systemic difficulty there. It’s difficult to transition your society from a ‘limited access order’ to an ‘open access order’ at the best of times, let alone now, as it requires deep reconfiguration of your institutions, as you mention. And right now the world’s biggest OAO is heading rapidly in the opposite direction! It's very hard to rebuild your first horizon on the fly… although given the conditions of the Great De-rangement everyone is having to do it one way or another at the moment… and we need a wholesale reappraisal really of what other options we have away from the narrow binary of LAO / OAO. I always found the Kurds in Rojava to be an extraordinary and hopeful example but it is so extraordinary it wears a near-permanent invisibility cloak…
Really interesting metaphor with the Upside Down.. I was just thinking yesterday that so much feels like the level below invading the level above, or inverting the relationship… from the internet eating IRL, to what is happening in the US which could be characterised as the corporation eating the government (and is even characterised that way by the neo-reactionaries)
But is it an invasion upwards, or are we descending into it? My sense is it feels more like the latter… we are in a fairly advanced rot process now, the bones are starting to show, the shadow/degenerative yin is very strong and has attracted degenerative yang.. (and on cue, war preparations are intensifying..) And if so, reforming the institutions isn’t really going to work now, the task is more salvage and then heading to new territory…
Which comes to the point about prefigurative culture.. The West is really in a bind here I think, because the West is already a strongly prefigurative culture and has been for some time, unfortunately this has been mostly happening unconsciously, and as a result, mostly darkly. I mean this in the ‘dreaming into the field’ sense.. Which we kind of know without knowing, even referring to Hollywood as the dream factory (!..) This is a subtle subject (that I am not expert in) and not a straightforward matter but suffice to say, attention is very important, mass attention produces mass amplification.. And of course the internet has turned this into serious attentional jiu-jitsu that works at a level much deeper than lakoff framing… (The internet itself is a tragedy, it had the potential to be the noosphere but that’s a whole other tangent!) I would say that this is an area that progressives really need to get more skilled at, and also everyone who is interested in working with our higher potentials, this is, as Ghandi would say, about BEING the change and being very aware of attention, where and how it is directed at all levels…
This movement coincides with the one in Greece on 28th of February. Millions of Greeks from around the world protested against the deep infiltrated corruption of the country. A tragic train accident that lost 57 mostly young souls in 2023 was the drop that spilled the cup. Not only wasn't justice served on this incident, but also evidence was destroyed and people were silenced by murder. The worst and most tantalising part was when politicians were publicly mocking and name calling as paranoid the parents and the relatives of the victims, when their questions weren't answered. The movement is called "I have no oxygen" which was a recording of the last minutes from the one of the victims' phones that called 112 sensing distress. The title "I have no oxygen" also refers to the feeling millions of Greeks are experiencing in their country letting them hopeless, angry, alienated and fleeing to other countries.
Hi Anastasia. My Serbian friends did mention that something similar had happened in Greece. It sounds like a national trauma. And “I have no oxygen” reminds me of “I can’t breathe” in the US Black Lives Matter context. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, indeed it is a trauma. I had the same thoughts about this phrase, and it puts you in a deep thinking about some dynamics right now around the world. Thank you for your informative essay 🙏🏻
The challenge of this movement as I understand it is what will happen as and when Vučić / if and when he gives up power. What is next? Plena are great for not being able to be targeted by the regime, but when there is no longer a regime, what comes next?
Serbians have long been ignored by Western media sources for a number of reasons. Partly because of the association with Bosnian Serbs and the role in the horrific atrocities during the Bosnian conflict and later Kosovo, yes, but also due to the nature of many Serbian people themselves. Loyal, stubborn, passionate, there was no massive spend on PR agencies like Ruder Finn after the conflict to rehabilitate the national image (Croatia, Bosnia). And even for the West - also guilty to some degree for the conflict (DutchBat in Srebenića, failed intervention and indecisive action for four years of the Sarajevo siege, Germany wanting to recognise Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia and applying pressure to other EU member states to do the same) - Serbia serves as a convenient scapegoat to focus attention and blame from *all* of the causative factors behind the conflict.
Today Serbia is in a fairly sorry state. This is not the first mass protest in recent years - eg protiv nasilje in 2023 - but it has gathered huge steam. As you know with your Serbian friends, Serbian people are warm, giving and deserve much more than they have at the (red) hands of Vučić - after all a junior minister in Milošević's government - and I wish the movement the very best of luck and courage. The lesson of Serbia is lesson for all of us in 2025 and all around the world: the dangers of nationalism, jingoism, distorted media and that which leads to an overall lack of critical thinking, both in and outside of the country.
Hello Jonathan, thanks for this fascinating read! As a recent immigrant to the U.S. (where I am now a citizen), I am looking at this development with some awe and, admittedly, timid hope that my fellow citizens will remember *their duty*...
My sense is that (1) elected officials (Congressmen and Senators alike) in the U.S. have largely given up on *the need for understanding* what their decisions do, and in consequence (2) many decisions are made based on cutting corners. This has (3) led to an ever-increasing shift of decision making authority from Congress to the administrative (MAGA language: deep) state, which allowed Trump to "single-handedly" (4) pull and pool all of that authority in the single role of "chief executive" (Presidency). The Constitution, as far as I understand it at least, did not intend to give this much power to the person who inhabits that office, but due to the abdication of responsibility, the amorphous field of bureaucrats was more or less put to sleep (either by being fired, or by having their departments thoroughly put in disarray), and, yes, it was in my opinion (5) the sleepiness of Joe Biden (and the Democratic Party, as well as the pre-Trump Republican party elites) that made this even more likely, since it gave this state apparatus the experience of not having to report to anyone (or being held accountable for their decisions) for too long.
Ultimately, what is happening at the moment seems (unfortunately) necessary, *AND* without any kind of recognition that this kind of governance style cannot last, I believe we will see much more harm and pain than would be necessary. So, I will wait and see how much Americans *DO WANT* a kind of authoritarian king in the 21st century, because they have lost the will and appetite to self-govern, and they would rather see an impetuous leader with whose judgment they emotionally resonate choose for them instead. If that becomes my assessment (i.e., by and large, that Americans have become tired of self-government through elected officials), I will have to pack my bags and seek a different location that at least still attempts to fulfill the promise made by the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent Constitution...
Really enjoyed this article Jonathan, if for no other reason, to get some clarity on what is happening in Serbia. It's hard to get a clear picture from mainstream media...no surprise there. We need these stories of what is happening in such places in the world, the complexity of the challenges, and the hope...
Your observation about the 'social glue' is important and references the thoughtless assaults on on dictators such as Gaddafi who, for all their dictatorial violence and corruption, imposed an order on a fractured society.
Regime change is fraught with problems and new, well-meaning administrations (assuming one is ready to go) face the enormous task of reforming institutions and rebuilding trust in a timescale that populations will tolerate amidst the atmosphere of hope and distrust and attempts by oppositions to derail.
The stability of administrations of all colours are generally built on incremental change so achieving that 'first horizon' in the heat of revolution, while not impossible, would require herculean effort and not a little serendipity.
An excellent piece by Jonathan Rowson that gives such an interesting take and analysis on the hopes of the people of Serbia who long for freedom from the kind of oppressive corruption that pertains in Russia and many other countries.
Let us do all we can to magnify the message from those brave Serbs who are in such an effective and clever way standing up to their corrupt oppressors.
Funny comment on paid subscribers, although of their importance and supplement, can you see how it actually controls the free part of speaking, for a constrained effort of scripting?
Vocational skills perhaps, the scripts are not the gestalt capability, but being paid for your time.
It’s a wonder friendship is a rare commodity, when life is reduced to bullet points.
Serbia has a history of “leaderless” protest movements—I put leaderless in quotes, because as you note, it is leaderless *by design,* and obviously people have put a lot of thought into that design. The current movement is undoubtedly built on the bones of Otpor, the student-led movement that overthrew Milosevic 25 years ago.
The original architects of that movement have since become consultants and trainers for various activist groups around the world, and there have been several attempts to seed Otpor-style movements in other countries—Extinction Rebellion is a notable example—none seem to have had the success that Otpor did.
This is fascinating on many levels..
First thanks for highlighting the events in Serbia, so important to have some attention on this! My instinctive resonance is with the Arab Spring, so I hope it works out better and that there is enough underlying structure to ‘catch enough water after the flood recedes’ as that seemed to be the systemic difficulty there. It’s difficult to transition your society from a ‘limited access order’ to an ‘open access order’ at the best of times, let alone now, as it requires deep reconfiguration of your institutions, as you mention. And right now the world’s biggest OAO is heading rapidly in the opposite direction! It's very hard to rebuild your first horizon on the fly… although given the conditions of the Great De-rangement everyone is having to do it one way or another at the moment… and we need a wholesale reappraisal really of what other options we have away from the narrow binary of LAO / OAO. I always found the Kurds in Rojava to be an extraordinary and hopeful example but it is so extraordinary it wears a near-permanent invisibility cloak…
Really interesting metaphor with the Upside Down.. I was just thinking yesterday that so much feels like the level below invading the level above, or inverting the relationship… from the internet eating IRL, to what is happening in the US which could be characterised as the corporation eating the government (and is even characterised that way by the neo-reactionaries)
But is it an invasion upwards, or are we descending into it? My sense is it feels more like the latter… we are in a fairly advanced rot process now, the bones are starting to show, the shadow/degenerative yin is very strong and has attracted degenerative yang.. (and on cue, war preparations are intensifying..) And if so, reforming the institutions isn’t really going to work now, the task is more salvage and then heading to new territory…
Which comes to the point about prefigurative culture.. The West is really in a bind here I think, because the West is already a strongly prefigurative culture and has been for some time, unfortunately this has been mostly happening unconsciously, and as a result, mostly darkly. I mean this in the ‘dreaming into the field’ sense.. Which we kind of know without knowing, even referring to Hollywood as the dream factory (!..) This is a subtle subject (that I am not expert in) and not a straightforward matter but suffice to say, attention is very important, mass attention produces mass amplification.. And of course the internet has turned this into serious attentional jiu-jitsu that works at a level much deeper than lakoff framing… (The internet itself is a tragedy, it had the potential to be the noosphere but that’s a whole other tangent!) I would say that this is an area that progressives really need to get more skilled at, and also everyone who is interested in working with our higher potentials, this is, as Ghandi would say, about BEING the change and being very aware of attention, where and how it is directed at all levels…
This movement coincides with the one in Greece on 28th of February. Millions of Greeks from around the world protested against the deep infiltrated corruption of the country. A tragic train accident that lost 57 mostly young souls in 2023 was the drop that spilled the cup. Not only wasn't justice served on this incident, but also evidence was destroyed and people were silenced by murder. The worst and most tantalising part was when politicians were publicly mocking and name calling as paranoid the parents and the relatives of the victims, when their questions weren't answered. The movement is called "I have no oxygen" which was a recording of the last minutes from the one of the victims' phones that called 112 sensing distress. The title "I have no oxygen" also refers to the feeling millions of Greeks are experiencing in their country letting them hopeless, angry, alienated and fleeing to other countries.
Hi Anastasia. My Serbian friends did mention that something similar had happened in Greece. It sounds like a national trauma. And “I have no oxygen” reminds me of “I can’t breathe” in the US Black Lives Matter context. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, indeed it is a trauma. I had the same thoughts about this phrase, and it puts you in a deep thinking about some dynamics right now around the world. Thank you for your informative essay 🙏🏻
The challenge of this movement as I understand it is what will happen as and when Vučić / if and when he gives up power. What is next? Plena are great for not being able to be targeted by the regime, but when there is no longer a regime, what comes next?
Serbians have long been ignored by Western media sources for a number of reasons. Partly because of the association with Bosnian Serbs and the role in the horrific atrocities during the Bosnian conflict and later Kosovo, yes, but also due to the nature of many Serbian people themselves. Loyal, stubborn, passionate, there was no massive spend on PR agencies like Ruder Finn after the conflict to rehabilitate the national image (Croatia, Bosnia). And even for the West - also guilty to some degree for the conflict (DutchBat in Srebenića, failed intervention and indecisive action for four years of the Sarajevo siege, Germany wanting to recognise Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia and applying pressure to other EU member states to do the same) - Serbia serves as a convenient scapegoat to focus attention and blame from *all* of the causative factors behind the conflict.
Today Serbia is in a fairly sorry state. This is not the first mass protest in recent years - eg protiv nasilje in 2023 - but it has gathered huge steam. As you know with your Serbian friends, Serbian people are warm, giving and deserve much more than they have at the (red) hands of Vučić - after all a junior minister in Milošević's government - and I wish the movement the very best of luck and courage. The lesson of Serbia is lesson for all of us in 2025 and all around the world: the dangers of nationalism, jingoism, distorted media and that which leads to an overall lack of critical thinking, both in and outside of the country.
Hello Jonathan, thanks for this fascinating read! As a recent immigrant to the U.S. (where I am now a citizen), I am looking at this development with some awe and, admittedly, timid hope that my fellow citizens will remember *their duty*...
My sense is that (1) elected officials (Congressmen and Senators alike) in the U.S. have largely given up on *the need for understanding* what their decisions do, and in consequence (2) many decisions are made based on cutting corners. This has (3) led to an ever-increasing shift of decision making authority from Congress to the administrative (MAGA language: deep) state, which allowed Trump to "single-handedly" (4) pull and pool all of that authority in the single role of "chief executive" (Presidency). The Constitution, as far as I understand it at least, did not intend to give this much power to the person who inhabits that office, but due to the abdication of responsibility, the amorphous field of bureaucrats was more or less put to sleep (either by being fired, or by having their departments thoroughly put in disarray), and, yes, it was in my opinion (5) the sleepiness of Joe Biden (and the Democratic Party, as well as the pre-Trump Republican party elites) that made this even more likely, since it gave this state apparatus the experience of not having to report to anyone (or being held accountable for their decisions) for too long.
Ultimately, what is happening at the moment seems (unfortunately) necessary, *AND* without any kind of recognition that this kind of governance style cannot last, I believe we will see much more harm and pain than would be necessary. So, I will wait and see how much Americans *DO WANT* a kind of authoritarian king in the 21st century, because they have lost the will and appetite to self-govern, and they would rather see an impetuous leader with whose judgment they emotionally resonate choose for them instead. If that becomes my assessment (i.e., by and large, that Americans have become tired of self-government through elected officials), I will have to pack my bags and seek a different location that at least still attempts to fulfill the promise made by the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent Constitution...
Really enjoyed this article Jonathan, if for no other reason, to get some clarity on what is happening in Serbia. It's hard to get a clear picture from mainstream media...no surprise there. We need these stories of what is happening in such places in the world, the complexity of the challenges, and the hope...
Your observation about the 'social glue' is important and references the thoughtless assaults on on dictators such as Gaddafi who, for all their dictatorial violence and corruption, imposed an order on a fractured society.
Regime change is fraught with problems and new, well-meaning administrations (assuming one is ready to go) face the enormous task of reforming institutions and rebuilding trust in a timescale that populations will tolerate amidst the atmosphere of hope and distrust and attempts by oppositions to derail.
The stability of administrations of all colours are generally built on incremental change so achieving that 'first horizon' in the heat of revolution, while not impossible, would require herculean effort and not a little serendipity.
An excellent piece by Jonathan Rowson that gives such an interesting take and analysis on the hopes of the people of Serbia who long for freedom from the kind of oppressive corruption that pertains in Russia and many other countries.
Let us do all we can to magnify the message from those brave Serbs who are in such an effective and clever way standing up to their corrupt oppressors.
Thank you, Jonathan, for keeping us informed about what is possible when people have the courage to lean into what is emerging.
Good piece. The Upside Down metaphor is interesting.
Tks. My father’s heritage is from this part of the world.
This essay provides a very useful perspective on the situation in Serbia traumatized as was by the neo-liberal con artists.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/13/how-usaid-makes-people-homeless-in-serbia
Funny comment on paid subscribers, although of their importance and supplement, can you see how it actually controls the free part of speaking, for a constrained effort of scripting?
Vocational skills perhaps, the scripts are not the gestalt capability, but being paid for your time.
It’s a wonder friendship is a rare commodity, when life is reduced to bullet points.
How long will you survive in the vending machine?