COLUMN, KOVAČEVIĆ: How the Campaign Against One Actor Turned into the Best Marketing for a Dictator

In a country of peasants, on the hilly Balkans, a land desperately yearning for freedom, one man—an actor who considers himself a peasant—found himself in the crosshairs of a mass of fighters for that very freedom. This happened simply because he freely expressed his view, or perhaps the lack thereof, his doubt, his internal struggle… whatever it may be.

I am, of course, talking about Nenad Jezdić and the infamous scene from the theatre play “Šopalović Travelling Theatre,” in which 17 of his colleagues raise their hands in support of the students at the end of the show, while Jezdić alone, for reasons known only to him, bows to the audience empty-handed.

Since I see the turmoil is not calming down, here are a few words from me…

The first impression…

I am sickened by the multitude of various online influencers, operating under pseudonyms and nicknames, who quickly interpreted this non-gesture of a man with a name and surname as a gesture and a reliable sign that Jezda supports the Vučić regime, even though he never publicly did so, nor was he on that famous list of 2,000 public figures, full of surprises, who once stood with the SNS.

Then there were those, again without names and surnames, who “reliably” knew that Jezdić received massive loans from the regime for his orchards and distilleries, and following the same logic, it is no wonder that his best man is Željko Joksimović, to whom the same clique practically gave Tanjug and a building in the centre of Belgrade. They also pointed out how he failed to react to the beating of students in his hometown of Valjevo, how he took photos with Miša Vacić, and so on.

As if none of us has ever taken a picture with some idiot, and God knows, become a best man with similar ones.

I recently read something about the Cuban revolution, not Castro’s communist one, but the one before it, and while following this witch hunt, the words of the legendary José Martí, the man most responsible for Cuba’s liberation from Spanish colonizers, came to my mind. That gentleman, otherwise a lanky, thin man with a moustache, stood before a furious crowd bent on lynching the remaining Spaniards who hadn’t managed to flee the island, and in a historic speech, he said, among other things:

“The first duty of a man in a democratic society is to think with his own head, and the first obligation of a democratic society is to ensure that he does not suffer for it.”

And all those who would like to turn Serbia into a democratic country—which we, unfortunately, fail to achieve even 25 years after the “democratic changes”—must know that this democracy, after Vučić, will soon turn into a new dictatorship if they are unable to accept those who think differently, or simply dignifiedly keep their opinion to themselves, as in Jezdić’s case.

I understand that people are furious, embittered, and desperate in the face of injustice that lasts too long, that they have reached their breaking point, and that someone’s silence in this situation sounds like treason, and non-alignment like a crime. But it’s not all so black and white, my dears, even though it’s easier for us to think it is, because then we can more carelessly spit and bash others…

Personally, I am wholeheartedly with the students and against Vučić’s criminal partocracy…

But as someone who has lived life as an individual and always felt strange and uncomfortable having to share an opinion and accept the cheers of the crowd as his own—in the newsroom, a pub, or a rally—I can understand Jezdić, who did not want to be part of a collective act that is neither a play nor a film, not the art to which he, along with the village, rakija, and agriculture, vowed his loyalty.

Perhaps his support for Vučić truly stands behind it, who knows, but in that regard, I highly doubt that a man in cahoots with the authorities would so openly criticize the lithium mines and the destruction of the ecosystem in Jadar, which Jezdić, you see, did.

It seems more likely to me that the actor who, as I said, likes to call himself a peasant, is actually the image and likeness of today’s Serbia, the one that is hesitant between two extremes, and the one that doubts everything after all it has been through and seen.

Maybe to you who are aligned on one side or the other, his position seems unimaginable, but believe me (or look at some uncensored public opinion research), it is the position of the majority of Serbs with the right to vote, who will ultimately decide the winner of the elections and the future of this country.

And how that Serbia thinks is best reflected in the words from the latest interview of that very Nenad Jezdić:

“There is an authoritative regime, and suddenly we have the other side that, guided by identical principles, demands our support, and suddenly we are all forced to declare ourselves, and they compel us to adopt some kind of referendum concept ‘for or against,’ or ‘whoever thinks differently is not ours.’ Well, go to hell, both of you,” Jezdić recently stated.

One of the three greatest, and perhaps the greatest crime of the Vučić regime, is the suppression of freedom.

Fighting for that denied freedom while denying someone the right to think with their own head, even if mistakenly, brings us back to the same darkness from which we are trying to escape.

I also understand that in the fight for that freedom, every support is precious, especially the support of public figures, whose word carries more weight and travels further.

That is why the statements of actors, artists, and athletes (rare ones, admittedly) mean so much to us; that is why we shed tears and our hearts were full when Novak Đoković aligned himself with the students…

And we didn’t like it when the regime machinery harnessed its media, bots, and Jelena Karleuša(!) to lash out at Novak, slandering a national hero for the sake of one dictator’s interests. But in fact, we should have been glad about their stupidity, because with such a campaign, they only further lowered Vučić’s rating. Which they eventually realized, so they stopped the insane project to “discredit Đoković.”

And after all this, instead of serving as a lesson, individuals—and there are many of them—are today leading almost a carbon copy campaign against one of the best Serbian actors, a man who has not indebted us with anything ugly. On the contrary, with his roles, he glorified the most principled, somewhat forgotten, rural characteristics of this nation. If you don’t believe it, go to the theatre and watch “Milutin’s Book”…

But well, it’s not all that strange, because it is mostly the same individuals who have been trying in every way for months to divide and incite citizens who want change, stratifying them into left and right, national and civil, giving lectures to students, and bringing confusion and doubt among those who sincerely and truly desire change.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if one fine day, when all this passes and the truth from secret service files surfaces, we discover that some from that circle of public noisemakers were handsomely paid by the very regime they are supposedly fighting against to lead various campaigns, including this one that targeted Nenad Jezdić, and from which, it is clear to a walrus, only one man and one regime benefit, not to mention their names.

But let’s leave the snitches, double-dealers, sell-out souls, and their masters in the shadows aside for a moment and return to the topic and the essence.

And the essence, as I see it, sounds like this…

It is not possible to simultaneously fight for a better world and obliterate its colours and nuances, reducing it to a black-and-white version of reality where you must be for us or against us, otherwise you do not exist and are not worthy of respect.

If we don’t realize this, then we are no better than those we are fighting against.

And if we don’t realize this immediately and now, we will never defeat those we are fighting against…