I really hope their success carries over into governance.
There's definitely a chance of failure here.
It must be like a pit fight, but with connections and half truths
The large blocks need to be able to move forward in legislation but the more uglier and tumultuous the backroom dealing are (within legal bounds) the healthier the democracy is.
Basically, academic tenure is opposite from democracy.
Most of the electorate doesn't really understand it, constantly clamoring for one or the other to be the only guiding principle, but you need both - and one has to find a way even when they appear completely irreducible. Democracy is beautiful in a very messy way, a bit like nature.
It is not always obvious how to lay ground work over a decade ... or four of them.
It isn't even mostly about fixing problems. But how to make government act as an expedient rather than as an impediment.
The pure ideal is to get a field expert who is good at management — but sometimes hard to attain!
The question then really becomes if — for a manager — a senior expert is better than an experienced manager who can detect exactly when to pull in the experts?
And this is probably always on a case-by-case basis: it completely depends on the circumstances, individual qualities, and supporting people around them to decide which is better for a given situation.
I believe the same holds here: the best you can get is an expert with a wide grasp of the entire field they will be active in, supported by good, smart common-sense people to manage and guide their thinking and solutioning in the right way.
It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".
Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...
There's a lot under the umbrella of "politics" that happens after you get elected. If you want to accomplish anything after you get elected (heck, even if it's just personal enrichment) you have to be somewhat skilled at getting others to work with you, one way or another. As a politician you can have flawless convictions and be right and well-informed about all your decisions, but at the end of the day you're just one vote (to use legislators as an example) and it does nothing if you can't convince or work with others.
Getting elected is table stakes and shows you have the soft skills needed to organise, campaign and convince. Which is the minimum you need to get disparate groups of humans to pull in the same direction and make progress in advancing the country.
Theres no consolation if you get experts to plan solutions to problems but 1) the people you need to implement the plans have their own opinions or priorities and 2) the public want focus in some other priority and are start rioting if they don't feel heard.
You need schmoozers as much as you need tacticians.
I don't currently have any data that says otherwise and the counterfactual remains unexplored (but it will be with this parliament!), but things that people do and say to get elected often are things that if implemented...would not solve the problems the populace that elected is having.
I don't think we need schmoozers, we need people who understand the problems of their populace and have the structural power to implement their solutions. We shall see if they need more than this, but this would be the first exploration of the counterfactual.
People who have their "own" priorities don't end up upsetting the apple cart when we make success in implementing those solutions the same as their success (which if we are effective problem solvers, should be possible. See Deng Xiaoping)
I hope more people will realize that voting for uknown politicians that offers empty promises for artificially made problems means givig up our responsibility and at the end, make things worse as we see in current democratic countries.
They've been elected during a very special events. They know what's expected of them. Looks like compared to the previous powers this lot at least gives the country a fighting chance.
Imposing it top down requires oppression. Imposing or pressuring this huge layer from the bottom requires a continuously updated base so you can squeeze from the top and the bottom to enact the changes needed quickly.
It's impossible for leaders at the top, to personally vet the members of a village or city council for example.
I think I've never seen any of such concatenation of events and organization to have ever happened.
Having highly educated people in parliament is one thing; actually governing a country is another. Political leadership requires negotiation, compromise, institutional knowledge, and the ability to execute decisions.
I'm curious to see how Serbia handles the transition from academic expertise to actual governance, especially without a conventional party leadership structure.
One of the ways they made this work was by assigning temporary powers to elected/appointed individuals appropriate and sufficient to get their job done, whether that was provincial governor, tribunus plebis, consul or whatever. A notable title was that of "dictator" (where the modern word derives from) which gave sweeping temporary powers to a general sufficient to execute a war.
Julius Caesar famously abused this system, effectively becoming the first emperor (despite no such position existing) by assuming the title of "dictator perpetuo" (perpetual dictator), although that did not end well for him. His successor, Augustus (whose adopted name later became the name of the office of emperor) initiated a more acceptable version of this by simultaneously holding multiple "elected" positions thereby having the power of them all.
This became more centralized over time and as it did more executive power was needed at the top level. Augustus centralized the army under state control. Emperors in the late empire had nearly dictatorial authority and a massive state bureaucracy under their control.
If you don't count the 80 years of off and on civil wars and political and social upheavals.
> and sufficient to get their job done
Well they were extremely successful military, internal politics were a mixed bag and it slowly turned into chaos and constant gridlock as soon as they ran out of external enemies to fight.
Rome had an arcane deeply adversarial political system which basically relied different powerful men in the elite competing and keeping each other in check while trying to amass as much wealth and political power they could get away with (Ceasar was hardly an aberration besides just being way more successful than countless aristocrats playing the same game).
> effectively becoming the first emperor (despite no such position existing) by assuming the title of "dictator perpetuo" (perpetual dictator),
Sula did that first, in many ways Caesar just emulated him (of course the decision to not murder all of this potential enemies came back to bite him)
The CIA sponsored extensive studies on this and came to the conclusion that democracies with a strong presidential role are associated with a greater risk of failure. It's not really surprising, and it can be seen in the US right now.
That system had to develop organically over many generations to be successful (in the case of Switzerland it was 500+ years with only a few significant interruptions) . In a centralized country with no traditions of communal and local politics it can just result in chaos.
But I do find it hilarious that apparently everyone assumes it to be the former, and that is quite telling about how most of this site's visitors think the other visitors of this site look at the world.
They will choose who will that be by a committee, but after that they have to function as usual.
In many cases, the executives / politicians / directors just rubber stamp what a working group / committee has decided.
Also, see the Tomato guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqUBdX1d3ok
In Germany the focus is usually on the parties and not the figurehead for over 70 years now.
edit: for the election
Academics don't have a great track record in politics or governance pretty much anywhere at anytime in history.
Diverse? Over-educated university graduates is possibly the least diverse set of thinkers one could hope to find.
> Dozens of them come from the academic world, and more than half have a Ph.D. or M.D.
Lord help up. This is going to be demonstration of hubris and an exercise in arrogance.
Academics really are naive and out of touch people. In a weird sort of way, being an academic means sacrificing your personal growth for either a) a deep love of their area of research or b) love of teaching. This means that the wider life skills one gains as an adult, they never get. They get to avoid consequences for being wrong but at quite a price. One of the worst things I have seen are what happens to academics who leave for the private sector later in their career. When they can't make it in the private sector, it is pretty crushing to many of them.
That being said, one of the prices of being an academics is being very "out of touch" with the rest of society. And that will take away your ability to read political situations or govern things well. Academics injecting themselves into such situations will almost always be disastrous as a result. Its just a consequence of how academia works. It doesn't have to be that way, but unless academia changes profoundly, it will be.
Academics do just fine picking up "adult life skills". Only a small minority of academics find academic employment from their mid-thirties or so on, so everyone moves to the private sector for the rest of their lives. It is not as if they are just hapless non-comformists or on the dole for the rest of their lives.
If most people realized that, we would have much less problems: academics are often shrouded in an aura of virtue and wisdom they don't deserve in the least. Like what you see in this thread, that their narrow (or worse, illusory) knowledge will somehow help them being good rulers/leaders.
Everything looks like a nail if you are a hammer and all that.
We also shouldn't forget that the vast majority of politicians today are lawyers by education. To whatever degree your assumption holds, it is true of the status quo today as well. Even in that case, having a more diverse set of "masters of one" would be an improvement.
For the US, 32% of the house and 47% of the senate holds a law degree.
A quick search suggests the economists associated with this movement are fairly 'mainstream' institutionalists of the type that's popular with government these days in the west. I don't think there will be big changes soon beyond dealing with corruption/nepotism.
Later on, I imagine they will push for faster EU integration on possibly slightly worse terms. Serbia may become marginally less independent in terms of fiscal policy at least and the markets might become even more exposed/beholden to foreign capital. This process has been in motion for years now and I don't expect the student movement to care - the upsides are broadly popular with younger people globally. Personally, I think it is deeply ironic that in the age of tariffs and huge government spending by the superpowers, small countries like Serbia are still signing up to be bound by the 'free market' consensus which is rapidly disintegrating globally.
I see this often in many areas. Perhaps they'll be lucky and have a few behavioral psychologists among them to maintain intellectual humility.
They don't have "domains", they are career politicians. It is nice when a politician has some experience in the topic they're legislating on but the system works by having generalists who bow in whatever direction winds are blowing the most money from.
It is not possible to be an effective career politician by having firm principles or technical expertise. It requires a near total dedication to politicking. If they happen to have knowledge of a topic it is coincidence because the number of political topics is large and the number of politicians is comparatively small.
Literally the first name I clicked on from the UK government.
Running NHS (or any other health care system) is literally an economics problem.
Economics is a lot more than just money.
Best case would be multi-talented persons who have both IQ and EQ and good character. Just IQ is not enough.
I've heard stories of friends working in (say) such a niche part of fluid dynamics that there's two professors and a few dozen PhDs in the entire world who get it, and the professors refuse to work with anyone who ever cited the other in one of their papers.
On the other hand, I've worked as a programmer for molecular neurobiologists who were working on multi-million dollar research projects mapping out all cell types of the brain using single-cell RNA sequencing, and collaboration seemed much more common there.
The stakes don't get much higher than running the country you're from.
EDIT: Also, the city of Groningen elected a city council of young students and put a 24 year old in charge of the city’s traffic and urban development policy. We still brag about being one of he most bike-friendly cities in the country that was the result.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/29/how-groningen...
Intelligence is a tool - one that can be put to use against any problem. "Get diverse people to come to the table for compromises" is no exception.
Intelligence? Problem solving? Understanding statistics? Speaking in front of rooms full of people? Communicating complex ideas clearly? Useful for both jobs.
But an academic can be bookish, shy or haughty. Pursuing your own ideas is actively encouraged. There are arguments - but the main audience for the debates are other academics. They needn't collaborate on research with anyone they don't want to, and when they do collaborate everyone has the same destination in mind even if they disagree about the route to get there. When dealing with students, they've all chosen to be there, passed exams and paid money. The work is mostly low-medium stakes, with time to get important things right. And of course they have excellent job security.
Politicians, though? Gotta love campaigning and talking to voters. Gotta all get together behind the party's national platform. Even colleagues in your party are rivals because everyone wants the top job. 'Debates' all about playing to the audience and getting 3-second soundbites for social media, not engaging with the substance of arguments. No choice in who you collaborate with, including people with deep-seated disagreements about things like tax, debt, spending. Gotta represent voters many of whom hate you. Do well at the job and high stakes things you didn't even do get blamed on you, like train crashes and oil markets getting expensive. Oh, and every 4-5 years you're fired and get to re-apply for your job.
There's no shortage of haughty politicians either.
An academic can be an ivory tower type who thinks sports matches, superhero movies, social media and star musicians are a waste of time.
But politicians who think the Superbowl is a waste of time, that star wars is for children, and that Taylor Swift's music sucks pretty quickly figures out sharing those opinions loses far more votes than it gains.
Definitely a risk, but politicians are professionals at being overly confident. With this selection (there are not only PhDs, and not only academics), there is actually a chance of... actually trying to understand the problems?
It's a pity this disclaimer cannot be made to serve as a header for about 99% of the comments here today, because, holy shit...
* Everyone is quick to make judgement on something they don't know all the details of.
* There's not much agreement - mostly people disagreeing with each other.
* Everyone's opinion is important - they're smart so obviously, they're always right.
* Unrelated politics - my pet issue must be talked about.
* Anything is better - it's impossible for things to get worse.
* I disagree with this opinion so it must be a Russian bot.
Anyway, I wonder what will happen if you get together a bunch of intellectuals in government.
Being ruled by the career politicians is NOT an advantage, and the innumerable examples from all around the world will prove that.
Keep into account that the baseline for governing Serbia is low. As long as they can lower the corruption, they can do a lot wrong and still come out ahead.
I’m also reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who was a professor and wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” He ended up fleeing the country like a coward as it collapsed.
It’s notable that students played a major role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that ended up putting the Ayatollah in power. In fact to my knowledge, student-led revolutions have never produced a long term positive outcome. Any examples?
The mass protests that toppled the military regime in South Korea in 1987 was also led in large part by students and faculty members, who later became prominent leaders. [2]
This has also happened twice in Serbia now. Milošević was defeated in 2000 thanks in large part to Otpor, a student-led organization [2].
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8363827.stm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Democratic_Struggle#Stude...
[3] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/bringing-down-dictator#1
Alfred Nobel did not name economics in his will and it only started to be given out 70 years later by a bank in memory of Nobel.
Putting a single person in charge will always corrupt them
Google Aleksandar Vućiċ Voja Nevolja meat grinder…
Vučiċ is successor of people that assassinated Zoran Ðinďić, a Serbian prime minister. Basically drugs and arms dealers from either mafia, secret service or special forces.
Even if this government ends up being corrupt the level of moral lows they would need to hit to reach previous regime is staggering.
So people justifiably think it can’t get worse… but that only the time will tell…
I think it's inevitable that the "leaders" will just appear from the student list, then the student list gets destroyed, those leaders form their own parties and we'll elect another radical idiot who's not from the student list
Even now a few days after winning the election, you already have people from the SL who have a "brand", and who get idolized
Also people in our country are accustomed to corruption in our country, and if the new government starts beating down the corruption, the people will start hating the new government
Then again, I might just be hoping it is so. Given that, sadly, similar movements elsewhere (perhaps with not as much laurel leaves) have quickly fallen apart. (5 star movement in Italy and Piraty in Czech Republic come to mind)
Hopefully the Serbian youths learned from them.
In some ways it's the ultimate short term thinking, taking the mediocre but predictable steps, instead of risking the real world with its unbounded upsides.
Possibly that mindset is good in a parliament, but I wouldn't really classify it as long vs short term.
I would like to mention that when I was young, I figured that if young people ruled the world, then things would be much better. I was pretty sour on the bitter, cynical old farts that didn't have a stake in things, and had basically ruined our world.
Sound familiar?
After seeing what's happened in Silicon Valley, which is pretty much my "utopian dream," I have come to realize that young people can be much, much worse than "old farts."
Maximilien Robespierre was an intellectual.
Also the output of tech companies is ideally something tangible not just the careerist publish or perish mindset of academics. Academics are not exactly principled either they will go to exactly where the funding/grants are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5F1vfgA6XI
I wonder why hasn't Google banned this guy's channel.
I never mentioned any particular politicians and was making a general observation that if you haven't had to deal with unsavoury characters, dishonest actors and quasi-crooks, you will lack the experience of how to deal with them. These people exist in all walks of life.
The person I was replying to was playing team sports, which I find tiresome, because every post about everything has to become about Trump or whoever the current villain of the week is. It is quite frankly moronic.
The whole thread started with you pointing at specific group and claiming they are nore vulnerable to corruption.
But the idea of randomly selecting leaders as a leveling distribution is as old as Athens. We still practice it in Jury selection in much of the world.
So this experiment in Belgrade might be worth watching and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they outperform previous and regional governments.
These new batch of people are not randomly selected; they are thought of as more suitable to rule due to their being academics and scientific/technical experts, rather than lifetime politicians. Same as the old politicians who were cut from a certain cloth.
The cloth is now different, but a cloth it remains.
I would love to be governed by 500 average Joes and Janes, chosen at random, for a mandatory 4 years of (political) conscription.
But eventually they will themselves vote to abolish this in favour of career politics. It is one of those cursed problems there are no valid solutions to.
To be fair even if that worked out somehow they would be dominated by the professional bureaucrats running the civil service and other day to day government activities. Effectively it would turn into a technocracy with some degree of oversight.
However, I want to look at this experiment more optimistically, see if this assembly can defeat the stereotype. I'll be observing its activity with interest!
I'm a bit skeptic on all those professors and PhDs being a boon, though. In Portugal, we've been ruled by PhDs since 1926, if not before. Most ministers are professors, many of them independent. Results haven't been good. I hope Serbia proves us wrong.
The committee of doctors, surgeons and biophysicists I supported couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery...they all had PhDs.
At least this parliament is elected by people, not manipulated by a corrupted authoritarian / totalitarian party or such.
At least Serbia society can get a chance to rest or recovery after a lot of destruction happened.
Wish them the best.
I feel governments are made of people who barely know anything. It is getting worse. From the US to European nations, India to Australia. Make deals with powerful people, get a seat, serve the powerful. That is modern democracy.
Power to the people man!
I'm really excited for this to be successful and stay in place.
It's going to end up being something quite unique perhaps in a ways similar to Switzerland's unique democracy.
And then there’ll be the inevitable “I have to work with that person for how long!?” And the fiefdoms will be set up, and the back stabbing will begin.
That’s before we even consider the effect of the unelected bureaucracy and the power of the lobby groups and foreign interests.
Pardon, i may be naive, but shouldn't a stable democratic parliament be somewhat a representation of the citizens who elected them? Do more than half of all serbians have a Ph.D.? I fear this "revolution" isn't what you think it is..
I hope they are confident enough to reach out to people who can help them in matters where not smarts but experience is needed.
F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988).
vs electing lawyers as done in other countries.
Yes, very STEM oriented indeed.
I came here to say that it's not "just academics", as many of the comments here seem to imply.
It is clear from populist approaches that conducting business-as-usual without any foundational knowledge is dangerous and leads to corruption and regulatory capture, and it is equally true that purely rationalist efforts neglect the messy nature of political governance and social complexity, leading to an overly narrow idea that ends up not serving the people it claims to support.
I expect that this government will rise or fall based on its ability to remain internally cohesive while also trying to resist (and hopefully influence) the many pressures that will be put on it by the regional and global vested interests.
... checking notes ...
Ah yes. China used to have 100% technocrats in their leadership 30 years ago. No one with a law degree in sight. Nowadays it is less, but they still have quite a few.
It can work.
What will happen here will strongly depend on how good these people are at actually playing the game of politics. I don't have any particular reason to be more or less optimistic than any regular slate of politicians.
It's entirly possible that the experiment fails because of politics, but it's also possible that the amount of politics is simply lower because people are simply more reasonable.
The last part will come down to vested interest and ideologues.
In a muddled political system(democratic or otherwise) today its about power and how is it balanced. When Nandan Nilekani was creating India's UIDAI(the national aadhar system), he insisted that he would only do the project if he was given a cabinet level post[1]. His is one of the few technology examples to succeed in India when most large government run projects are a disaster. ISRO is probably another decent example of success. I think Nilekani succeeded because he had a clear moral compass and a defined goal.
But there is a problem with kings, soon they have an asshole child. Metaphorically speaking at least. UIDAI is being used stupidly enough like an SSN now and in ways it was never meant to be.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/the-i-d-man
Edit: which makes sense, because technocracy leans heavily on trust (in the experts).
> but I didn't realise it was so strong on corruption.
That's literally a core part of the brand, isn't it?
they grew up on communist rhetoric, got support from communist countries - so their main ideology had already failed in the real world. so accumulating degrees without practical experience is a recipe for failure as seen in most african countries.
Actually, not. They had a few left-over from when Germany had a functioning state, but the Nazis were overall fairly incompetent at actually running the country.
But he was extremely successful as manager then. Just like the ex-NAZI NASA leader then a bit later.
That was the golden time of German management.
Lots of governments just end up with career lawyers and politicians.
They can choose their advisors and their advice.
The more varied experts you can get into parliament, the more likely you have an on the record disagreement from an expert preventing a politician from choosing the incorrect advice that suits them better.
Thats not to say they are going to be any better for corruption, but in todays world there are so many deep silos that governments just completely step over and disregard.
Hardly. But it depends on who is on board.
Corruption exists everywhere. Do you think that Vukic was less corrupt? I am pretty certain you will find many people in Serbia who want to fix the country. Other Europeans would ask: why let only poor countries join? They drain money from richer countries. Switzerland and Norway will never join and they know why. Hint: there is a reason they are rich. Second hint: they got rich without the EU.
Which country got rich with the EU? I don't know of a single one. Germany was already wealthy before the EU was founded. France is now in debt crisis from which it can not escape, so it will drag the whole EU down.
https://www.euronews.com/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-pays-the-m...
Switzerland is the opposite of a state being "without the EU".
Poland? >250 billion Euros received in subsidies since joining the EU; almost any construction you walk by has the "Funded by EU" poster next to it.
I think the massive service and outsourcing industry would also not have been possible (at the current scale) without EU membership.
There's no modern historical indication that more degrees results in better governance.
All this while said Researchers offload the real work the students are paying for... to TAs.
So non career politicians.
This is essentially a technocratic government that is left leaning. Just because they are academics, researchers, doctors, engineers and sociologists does not mean they cannot go corrupt themselves (it will). The EU itself is heavily corrupt as well.
We have also seen how corrupt a technocratic right government can get in the US. It will be no different to a left leaning one once money and promises are involved.
To give an analogy of what this is, this is like electing effective altruists from Anthropic with the difference being that they are using your money (taxes) instead of theirs and giving lots of promises for your vote.
If they are serious, they need to pass the world toughest anti-corruption laws while also significantly growing their own economy or borrowing economic policies from the least corrupt nations in the world such as Singapore and to exceed them.
> Student List has promised to fight corruption and establish meritocracy, accountability, and the rule of law.
While these are good promises, the problem is that this is the first lie that they have already made.
They better do all four of them without angering the electorate otherwise they can’t be trusted.
Hungary has this problem by the way - people thought Péter Magyar will fix, and change, Hungary. Recently Hungary signed a "we are ultra-right servants of Trump" in the USA (see https://telex.hu/english/2026/10/30/hungarian-fm-and-rubio-s...), thus validating all those who pointed out that Peter is just a younger face but the same Orban 2.0 in the end.
Corruption runs very, very deep. I am also certain the Epstein network is not only much bigger than known, but has different actors and beneficiaries. To this day the US court system can not explain why only Maxwell is in prison. That makes logically - and logistically - no sense at all.
And I also don’t think you can compare Magyar pre- and post election to the new Serbian elected government at all. But I do agree actually producing enough noticeable change until the next election will be hard for both. It just takes time to unfuck countries.
Proper up to the point. No way he is giving up built in advantages right wing has in Hungary - like rural voters votes having way more power then city voters.
He clearly redirected the railway station maintenance budget to his friends instead, because he assumed the public were suckers who'd vote him back in no matter how badly he fucked up. Then the station canopy collapsed and killed people. Entirely avoidable.
When your leaders are nakedly corrupt, and through sheer luck you still have free and fair elections, you vote those fuckers out. Otherwise they'll fiddle while your country burns.
It looks like the public want someone else in charge, they'll give them a fair shake. Maybe the new lot will direct the treasure more appropriately.
Which is a double edged sword since then it's hard to get rid of the incompetent and corrupt people when they are deeply entrenched.
People appointed for their closeness to a party are not too likely to be competent and incorruptible
The essential factor in whether a state is good or bad for the people at large is arguably whether you can draw a clear line around which sorts of favoritism are permitted and which are outlawed as corrupt, and actually achieve enforcement when people in power inevitably break these rules. A cardiologist, bioarchaeologist and a physicist are going to know nothing about all of this. Their job is to work with the incumbent bureaucrats and elites who hold the real power in that society and those people will almost certainly run circles around them. Fantasyland Reddit politics consists of making aggressive, principled statements. Real world politics is about recognizing you have to deal with a ton of people who are quite frequently awful but because they've managed to cling to one lever of influence or another you can't ignore them. They are moving things in a the direction you don't want them to go every day so what do you do about them? Jail them? Kill them? Buy them off? Cut a deal with them? Make them see reason even though it's against their personal interest because you're just that smart? (lol!) You can't ignore them. It's nothing like the deterministic systems all these people have studied. I wish them luck but I think I know how this is gonna end.
I'm not saying they will succeed, but they have been explicitly voted to fight the corruption you speak of.
Healthy democracies do not rely on student-led protests to overthrow the government. Someone was behind it and they got what they paid for.
https://www.amazon.com/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommun...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300051
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5lwZU7Q5U0
US government-funded pro-opposition outlet BIRN through its Media Ownership Monitor Serbia project admits the central Student List media channels - N1 and Nova S - were created by former US director of the CIA David Petraeus via KKR and former US Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter;
The parent United Group was acquired and the media platforms built up from 2013-2014 onward as the center of opposition media in Serbia opposing Serbia’s existing leadership and institutions, and playing a central role in both “student protests” last year and the “Student List” movement this year;
United Group was only recently (earlier this year) acquired by Alpac Capital, but KKR still maintains an undisclosed amount of shares When “leaderless” and “decentralized” protests are praised in the Western media, scroll down in the article where they eventually admit who the leaders and organizations are behind them, perform a simple internet search to identify the key people and investments making them possible to determine whether a movement is indigenous or the product of foreign interference;"leaderless" is propaganda framing, you have been brainwashed
and there is follow up video
Or are you simply reproducing a regime’s narrative on here?
It is doubtful he is pro-Russian, but he is surely anti-US.
Brian Berletic - an American industrial designer based in Bangkok, Thailand who has written under the pen name Tony Cartalucci
It was my fellow countrymen, and their long held Eurosceptic views, that fucked us. Russia posting divisive pish in 2016 has nothing on our decades of native politicians and newspapers blaming Brussels for everything bad (often its their own policies being policywashed) and pretending everything good came from them.
Do you wonder why there even was a referendum?
Compare 1997: Sir Jammy Fishpaste hates Europe, spends millions of his own money promoting his Referendum Party, gets nowhere. Because it's "cool Britannia" and the common man is doing well for himself. People think he's a nutter and all he achieves is keeping 4-11 Tories out of power by sapping their votes
But the 2008 crash wrecks the country. UKIP builds a voter base over years, and gets an enormous share of the vote. That's a warning shot for the Tories, whose voters UKIP are sapping. They only just squeaked through a hung parliament with a Libdem coalition. Hence Gambling Dave offers a referendum to bring Europe haters back to his party so he can remain in power.
Those percentage points were already in place before Russia even got going.
Farage was basically a Putin asset, for years; I don't doubt that a lot of the sentiment was there before any influence, but to my recollection the influence was obvious and very heavy
Worth remembering... Anti-globalization and anti-liberalization were slogans and policies of the socialist left in the late 90s and 2000s. Battle of Seattle, Occupy, etc. Voices marginalized and mocked by the neo-liberal centrist "left" (not left) in the Democratic party, Labour party, mainstream European govt's, Canadian Liberal party, etc. Manufacturing jobs were dumped overseas, union membership declined, middle class incomes plummeted, 2008 drained people's financial well being, while housing prices skyrocketed etc. And same "moderate" forces also went to war in the middle east, etc. etc.
Obama ran on left populist slogans but actually governed from the neo-liberal centrist right.
Actual socialist left voices and formerly moderate social democratic policies generally had no voice or power in government anywhere, Corbyn was run out of the room, Bernie isolated, etc.
So it's no surprise that the right and far right saw the vacancy and exploited it. The rise of Trump, of UK Reform, etc. ties directly into this sense of hopelessness and anger people had.
Now the "conservative" right -- which was formerly pushing liberalization the strongest -- talks in angry tones about "globalism" instead of "globalization", and it's caught up with anti-Semitic dog whistles, national chauvinism, etc. etc. That shit sells.
Conspiracy would be saying that the US orchestrated the existence of the Student's list and created protests from thin air. Realism is that the US is very happy about any political destabilization that could favor their interest and will provide unofficial support wherever it's convenient for them.