Thank you for this urgent and beautifully observed post. The clarity with which you frame youth-led resistance, not as chaos, but as a demand for lawful governance is exactly what needs amplifying.
As a professor of behavioral economics and applied cognitive theory, I see this not just as political action, but as a case study in incentive design. When corruption is normalized and accountability is absent, desperation becomes the only rational motivator. These students are responding to broken systems with coordinated, high-risk creativity…and that’s not just admirable, it’s instructive.
We talk a lot about democratic decline in the abstract. But what you’ve captured here is lived experience; the kind of clarity we rarely get from theory alone.
So the question becomes:
What kinds of institutional structures and intergenerational alliances actually reward truth, protect dissent, and make lawful governance more attractive than repression?
Nice: ". . . respect for people who are acting from their own generational perspective."
Respect, of course, can grow if we seek sight of whatever perspectives may pertain.
We all have blind spots. And to the extents that we belong to teams, groups, tribes, sects, demographics, and other packaging, we may also carry with us language that anesthetizes, that keeps us rather confined.
Imagine valuing schools that grow literacy, grow skills to get outside of ourselves, to welcome complications, and to see by more perspectives, see others by their perspectives.
An ice cold stab to the heart. So glad you wrote this.
Good for the Serbian younger people, who have taken their own action to protect the only framework that gives us all a chance, when a handful of rich or powerful politicians try to take over and make obedient slaves of the rest of us.
We in The United States of America, long famous for saying "It can't happen here!" need to wake up and act. Before the already-happening COUP in our country tips over into full blown repression: with Zero rule of law. Zero protection from being dragged from our beds in the middle of the night and disappeared by ICE armies who report to the Dictator. Zero means to fight back with our vote.
Why is WOKE considered a bad word? It seems to me it is exactly what is needed. Both in Serbia and in America. And everywhere else. We all need to wake up. There are more of us than there are of Dictators. We need to ROAR our unwillingness to become slaves of Tyrants.
I try again and again to imagine, but fail, what kind of American it takes, to put on a bullet proof vest over unmarked combat uniform, pull a balaclava over one's face, remove any name tags, if there were any before, grab lethal weapons and then disappear people into black vans. Are they family men going to barbecues on weekends, taking their kids fishing or to ball games? Or are they foreign mercenaries? Not a single American during my service in the Air Force, -- though low ranked I worked directly for Generals and Colonels in a highly classified environment -- would have thought this is okay. It seems soooo against everything this Republic claimed to have stood for. Throwing it all away to soothe rather unspecific and to me unsubstantiated and dubious grievances and stoked resentments. What a turn of history.
Your comment is right on the mark. Your Air Force experience was the real thing. Unlike these ICE thugs. These thugs in balaclavas are acting out their fantasies or doing it for the money (the Trump regime is paying well for recruits, I hear).
Yes. I believe most of us do agree in principle. But most of us, including our own Government officials, do not know what to do.
The tools for making the right things happen are hard to figure out, it seems to me, because the lawless and unprincipled power-grabbers, backed by billions and billions of dollars, have been plotting this coup since the early 1980s.
(Anyone who hasn't actually taken a good look at Project 2025, or at least a synopsis of it -- (the original is also on line, at over 900 pages) may want to take a look at Project 2025, which spells out in meticulous detail the plot for taking over the US Government and destroying Democracy forever.
Russell Vought wrote most of it; and teamed up with and the excremental Stephen Miller (a true Nazi in his mindset, in my view). These two are the principle brains behind the gaudy disruptive mr Trump, whose job is to distract us from noticing the evil machinations being quietly led, unnoticed by most of the American public, by Vought and Miller, and others of the Heritage Foundation.
We US Citizens are in an infuriating situation, with unprincipled rich men on one side, enacting their plan at lightning speed, plus a lot of semi-informed unaware "voters" being misled by them with empty promises and lies.
And on the other side, law-makers who are playing by the rule of law, only to have that law trampled and ignored brazenly by people I consider real thugs. Mafia-like, and willing to create chaos or worse, and who will I think stop at nothing to get what they want. Unless we can stop them.
I never thought a Government take-over could actually happen here. (I just completed Harvard's on-line course titled "American Government: Constitutional Foundations", taught by the legendary Thomas Patterson.
And years ago I worked in the US Government for the great Constitutional Lawyer, Samuel J Ervin, Jr., d, NC on the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of the Committee on the Judiciary on the Senate Hearings up to Watergate Hearings, in which Senator Ervin prosecuted Richard Nixon.
Until today, our US Government seemed balanced, ordered, strong. Now ALL the rules seem to have been thrown out, and no one seems to know what to do.
We MUST have RULE OF LAW. We MUST have RIGHT to VOTE. Without these two rocks of United States Government, here comes the full blown evil.
Thank you for sharing your observations and insights of the Serbian youth movement.
Have you observed anything similar in the US? Young people who have been victims of gun violence in the US have organized but have not seemed to gain significant traction in the US. David Hogg and Leaders We Deserve come to mind. The students suing the government over environmental harm are also top of my mind.
I wonder how you contrast the college campus protests on behalf of Palestine with the your protests in Serbia? Did the Serbian government take action against the protestors and those who support the movements? I think it is implied in your article but you did not speak directly about the repercussions the protestors faced.
Do you have bandwidth or resources to communicate directly with the youth movements in the US and share your insights from Serbia as a means of encouraging and inspiring the youth in the US with the creative, strategic, and tactical approaches of the Serbian youth? If not, what would that kind of help look like? Do you see a way your audience here can help?
Serbia is a small country and the US is vast by comparison. I keep wondering how the many, many organizations large and small in the US protesting to champion democracy, rule of law, freedom from tyranny, and systemic change for the well being of all can be unified under one umbrella with flexibility to act specifically for their particular central cause while demonstrating, with unity that can not be ignored or broken down by lawless government repercussions.
I am wishing everyone here a recovery weekend that restores and fortifies our souls to keep standing up for global peace, equity, enduring justice, and joy.
Thanks! I live in Germany and have been following these courageous demonstrations on the nightly TV news. This is more information about the youth of the demonstrators and more background than I had yet seen.
At the moment I am in Germany and was encouraged to find old and young joined in protest against fossil fuels in Duisburg. Before Covid there were plenty of climate justice protests in the US, involving both young and old but now it's a rarity.
I grew up (in Australia) watching the students and young people of [South] Korea and Taiwan confronting ruthless dictators. They too were described as anti-government, and in the media their cause seemed incoherent and futile.
But what happened?
Societies that knew only quasi-feudalism, autocracy, militarism, crony capitalism, etc, found their way, in a generation or two, to some of the most impressive -- and prosperous -- societies anywhere, with, relatively speaking, free elections, independent courts, free press, vigorous civil society, flourishing artistic communities, world class universities, and innovative global industries. Underpinning it all, the rule of law.
Hong Kong launched down this path, but HK was still a colony, unable to determine its own future.
Surely Serbia will determine its own future, and enrich the world as a result.
Thanks for explaining this important and critical struggle.
inspiring, thank you, professor. what can we do to encourage such enterprise and courage among our younger folks? I don't doubt they're capable of rising to the challenge since they appear to be as anxious as their counterparts you talk of in the post about their dubious future unless things change, but hope the many forces arrayed to keep them disorganized, demoralized, and despairing because they're not getting the crucial support they need to stand up for their future can be overcome. I'm old as dirt and want to offer them all the encouragement I can. it ain't much but it comes from the heart.
Many thanks for this essay, Prof. Snyder. Serbia was actually my first love in history, going back to grad school in historical musicology when I took a course in the music of the Balkan Peninsula. It was here that I was introduced to "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord (Prof. of Slavic literature at Harvard), including the "Song of Bagdad" [sic], which he recorded in Novi Pazar by different singers on Nov. 22, 1934, July 24, 1934, and Nov. 24, 1934. It was this course in which I developed a keen interest in Serbia that has never left me; I've been following the protests in Serbia closely, for months.
Thank you, Professor Snyder. This article serves as a reminder of the importance of being aware of the actions of other countries. Apathy should not be part of a healthy, clear-eyed, uncorrupted leadership in this country or others!
Of course you have used the word unpredictability in a positive sense too related to the freedom to choose one’s path, study, place to live and much more.
I guess the way the students show their creativity and diversity of ways to protest is a form of unpredictability which helps to them be known - but the effectiveness is changed if they are thrown into fear for being arrested. Thank you for sharing. I had seen a program on Arte about their movement.
The rail station collapse is an example of what happens in a corrupt regime where contracts are based on contacts, and all 'deals' are transactional. We also see what happens when the rule of law is ignored, when some place themselves above the law. Two sentences stand out for me: "Resistance requires an openness to learning from others. And it also requires cooperation among generations." Learning from others requires a humility and willingness to admit that we do not know everything, both lacking in the current U.S. administration. Cooperation (and collaboration) require recognition of the talents, know-how, and solutions that others offer to complement what we bring to the table. The critical thing is that the table be large enough to encompass the diverse gifts that can be brought to bear on the problems we also face.
I watched the protests against Milosevic that led to his ouster -- and the increasing grip on Serbian citizens he had held for 13 years through fear and whipped up nationalism. After losing the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo the grip tightened. Repression and sanctions squeezed Serbs and Slobo's cronies profited hugely from the black market. The widely popular youth movement Otpor led a non violent rebellion that turned into a daily street party in Belgrade. Ordinary people taunted the security forces with jokes and pranks that defied tear gas and batons. His final ouster exploded into a city-wide celebration. It's sad to see how democracy broke down after those hopeful "never again" times. My friends saw it coming, and left the country.
I agree with much of your analysis, but you don't mention a vital piece of history that applies neither to the US nor to the UK, and that is the Balkan war. Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, and to a lesser extent Montenegro and Albania carry massive societal divisions from the war. Religion, as ever, plays a significant part. Serbia remains undecided whether it wishes to ally itself west or east. No doubt the Kremlin is exploiting this, whilst EU membership remains a long way off.
Thank you for this urgent and beautifully observed post. The clarity with which you frame youth-led resistance, not as chaos, but as a demand for lawful governance is exactly what needs amplifying.
As a professor of behavioral economics and applied cognitive theory, I see this not just as political action, but as a case study in incentive design. When corruption is normalized and accountability is absent, desperation becomes the only rational motivator. These students are responding to broken systems with coordinated, high-risk creativity…and that’s not just admirable, it’s instructive.
We talk a lot about democratic decline in the abstract. But what you’ve captured here is lived experience; the kind of clarity we rarely get from theory alone.
So the question becomes:
What kinds of institutional structures and intergenerational alliances actually reward truth, protect dissent, and make lawful governance more attractive than repression?
— Johan
Nice: ". . . respect for people who are acting from their own generational perspective."
Respect, of course, can grow if we seek sight of whatever perspectives may pertain.
We all have blind spots. And to the extents that we belong to teams, groups, tribes, sects, demographics, and other packaging, we may also carry with us language that anesthetizes, that keeps us rather confined.
Imagine valuing schools that grow literacy, grow skills to get outside of ourselves, to welcome complications, and to see by more perspectives, see others by their perspectives.
An ice cold stab to the heart. So glad you wrote this.
Good for the Serbian younger people, who have taken their own action to protect the only framework that gives us all a chance, when a handful of rich or powerful politicians try to take over and make obedient slaves of the rest of us.
We in The United States of America, long famous for saying "It can't happen here!" need to wake up and act. Before the already-happening COUP in our country tips over into full blown repression: with Zero rule of law. Zero protection from being dragged from our beds in the middle of the night and disappeared by ICE armies who report to the Dictator. Zero means to fight back with our vote.
Why is WOKE considered a bad word? It seems to me it is exactly what is needed. Both in Serbia and in America. And everywhere else. We all need to wake up. There are more of us than there are of Dictators. We need to ROAR our unwillingness to become slaves of Tyrants.
-- Kate Delano-Condax Decker
I try again and again to imagine, but fail, what kind of American it takes, to put on a bullet proof vest over unmarked combat uniform, pull a balaclava over one's face, remove any name tags, if there were any before, grab lethal weapons and then disappear people into black vans. Are they family men going to barbecues on weekends, taking their kids fishing or to ball games? Or are they foreign mercenaries? Not a single American during my service in the Air Force, -- though low ranked I worked directly for Generals and Colonels in a highly classified environment -- would have thought this is okay. It seems soooo against everything this Republic claimed to have stood for. Throwing it all away to soothe rather unspecific and to me unsubstantiated and dubious grievances and stoked resentments. What a turn of history.
Your comment is right on the mark. Your Air Force experience was the real thing. Unlike these ICE thugs. These thugs in balaclavas are acting out their fantasies or doing it for the money (the Trump regime is paying well for recruits, I hear).
Agreed👍
Thank you for the reply.
Yes. I believe most of us do agree in principle. But most of us, including our own Government officials, do not know what to do.
The tools for making the right things happen are hard to figure out, it seems to me, because the lawless and unprincipled power-grabbers, backed by billions and billions of dollars, have been plotting this coup since the early 1980s.
(Anyone who hasn't actually taken a good look at Project 2025, or at least a synopsis of it -- (the original is also on line, at over 900 pages) may want to take a look at Project 2025, which spells out in meticulous detail the plot for taking over the US Government and destroying Democracy forever.
Russell Vought wrote most of it; and teamed up with and the excremental Stephen Miller (a true Nazi in his mindset, in my view). These two are the principle brains behind the gaudy disruptive mr Trump, whose job is to distract us from noticing the evil machinations being quietly led, unnoticed by most of the American public, by Vought and Miller, and others of the Heritage Foundation.
We US Citizens are in an infuriating situation, with unprincipled rich men on one side, enacting their plan at lightning speed, plus a lot of semi-informed unaware "voters" being misled by them with empty promises and lies.
And on the other side, law-makers who are playing by the rule of law, only to have that law trampled and ignored brazenly by people I consider real thugs. Mafia-like, and willing to create chaos or worse, and who will I think stop at nothing to get what they want. Unless we can stop them.
I never thought a Government take-over could actually happen here. (I just completed Harvard's on-line course titled "American Government: Constitutional Foundations", taught by the legendary Thomas Patterson.
And years ago I worked in the US Government for the great Constitutional Lawyer, Samuel J Ervin, Jr., d, NC on the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of the Committee on the Judiciary on the Senate Hearings up to Watergate Hearings, in which Senator Ervin prosecuted Richard Nixon.
Until today, our US Government seemed balanced, ordered, strong. Now ALL the rules seem to have been thrown out, and no one seems to know what to do.
We MUST have RULE OF LAW. We MUST have RIGHT to VOTE. Without these two rocks of United States Government, here comes the full blown evil.
-- Kate Delano-Condax Decker
Your last paragraph reflects accurately the feeling so many of us have in the US: Quiet desperation says it all.
Hello,
Thank you for sharing your observations and insights of the Serbian youth movement.
Have you observed anything similar in the US? Young people who have been victims of gun violence in the US have organized but have not seemed to gain significant traction in the US. David Hogg and Leaders We Deserve come to mind. The students suing the government over environmental harm are also top of my mind.
I wonder how you contrast the college campus protests on behalf of Palestine with the your protests in Serbia? Did the Serbian government take action against the protestors and those who support the movements? I think it is implied in your article but you did not speak directly about the repercussions the protestors faced.
Do you have bandwidth or resources to communicate directly with the youth movements in the US and share your insights from Serbia as a means of encouraging and inspiring the youth in the US with the creative, strategic, and tactical approaches of the Serbian youth? If not, what would that kind of help look like? Do you see a way your audience here can help?
Serbia is a small country and the US is vast by comparison. I keep wondering how the many, many organizations large and small in the US protesting to champion democracy, rule of law, freedom from tyranny, and systemic change for the well being of all can be unified under one umbrella with flexibility to act specifically for their particular central cause while demonstrating, with unity that can not be ignored or broken down by lawless government repercussions.
I am wishing everyone here a recovery weekend that restores and fortifies our souls to keep standing up for global peace, equity, enduring justice, and joy.
Thanks! I live in Germany and have been following these courageous demonstrations on the nightly TV news. This is more information about the youth of the demonstrators and more background than I had yet seen.
At the moment I am in Germany and was encouraged to find old and young joined in protest against fossil fuels in Duisburg. Before Covid there were plenty of climate justice protests in the US, involving both young and old but now it's a rarity.
Wonderful and wise.
I grew up (in Australia) watching the students and young people of [South] Korea and Taiwan confronting ruthless dictators. They too were described as anti-government, and in the media their cause seemed incoherent and futile.
But what happened?
Societies that knew only quasi-feudalism, autocracy, militarism, crony capitalism, etc, found their way, in a generation or two, to some of the most impressive -- and prosperous -- societies anywhere, with, relatively speaking, free elections, independent courts, free press, vigorous civil society, flourishing artistic communities, world class universities, and innovative global industries. Underpinning it all, the rule of law.
Hong Kong launched down this path, but HK was still a colony, unable to determine its own future.
Surely Serbia will determine its own future, and enrich the world as a result.
Thanks for explaining this important and critical struggle.
Thank you for reporting on the Serbian students fight for freedom. We all have a lot to learn from each other.
inspiring, thank you, professor. what can we do to encourage such enterprise and courage among our younger folks? I don't doubt they're capable of rising to the challenge since they appear to be as anxious as their counterparts you talk of in the post about their dubious future unless things change, but hope the many forces arrayed to keep them disorganized, demoralized, and despairing because they're not getting the crucial support they need to stand up for their future can be overcome. I'm old as dirt and want to offer them all the encouragement I can. it ain't much but it comes from the heart.
Many thanks for this essay, Prof. Snyder. Serbia was actually my first love in history, going back to grad school in historical musicology when I took a course in the music of the Balkan Peninsula. It was here that I was introduced to "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord (Prof. of Slavic literature at Harvard), including the "Song of Bagdad" [sic], which he recorded in Novi Pazar by different singers on Nov. 22, 1934, July 24, 1934, and Nov. 24, 1934. It was this course in which I developed a keen interest in Serbia that has never left me; I've been following the protests in Serbia closely, for months.
Thank you so very much, this is vital to know about.
Thank you, Professor Snyder. This article serves as a reminder of the importance of being aware of the actions of other countries. Apathy should not be part of a healthy, clear-eyed, uncorrupted leadership in this country or others!
Of course you have used the word unpredictability in a positive sense too related to the freedom to choose one’s path, study, place to live and much more.
I guess the way the students show their creativity and diversity of ways to protest is a form of unpredictability which helps to them be known - but the effectiveness is changed if they are thrown into fear for being arrested. Thank you for sharing. I had seen a program on Arte about their movement.
The rail station collapse is an example of what happens in a corrupt regime where contracts are based on contacts, and all 'deals' are transactional. We also see what happens when the rule of law is ignored, when some place themselves above the law. Two sentences stand out for me: "Resistance requires an openness to learning from others. And it also requires cooperation among generations." Learning from others requires a humility and willingness to admit that we do not know everything, both lacking in the current U.S. administration. Cooperation (and collaboration) require recognition of the talents, know-how, and solutions that others offer to complement what we bring to the table. The critical thing is that the table be large enough to encompass the diverse gifts that can be brought to bear on the problems we also face.
I watched the protests against Milosevic that led to his ouster -- and the increasing grip on Serbian citizens he had held for 13 years through fear and whipped up nationalism. After losing the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo the grip tightened. Repression and sanctions squeezed Serbs and Slobo's cronies profited hugely from the black market. The widely popular youth movement Otpor led a non violent rebellion that turned into a daily street party in Belgrade. Ordinary people taunted the security forces with jokes and pranks that defied tear gas and batons. His final ouster exploded into a city-wide celebration. It's sad to see how democracy broke down after those hopeful "never again" times. My friends saw it coming, and left the country.
I agree with much of your analysis, but you don't mention a vital piece of history that applies neither to the US nor to the UK, and that is the Balkan war. Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, and to a lesser extent Montenegro and Albania carry massive societal divisions from the war. Religion, as ever, plays a significant part. Serbia remains undecided whether it wishes to ally itself west or east. No doubt the Kremlin is exploiting this, whilst EU membership remains a long way off.