Serbia’s regime tries to wrestle back control of public space from the mass protest movement that has dominated political life and public space for a year and a half. Its methods are crude, and reach even small towns.

„There is one for you, also“, an important looking man in a white SNS jacket says to me on the corner of Jevrejska Street and Bulevar Mihajla Pupina in Novi Sad and hands me a small plastic bag with campaign gimmicks. Pens, lighters, and two notebooks with a portrait of Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić.

Fellow SNS activists gift these bags to car drivers waiting at the stop light of this street corner. Not many drivers seem to open the windows to accept them.

Across the street, in front of Novi Sad’s National Theater, SNS activists hold up a large banner saying „Serbia will win“. This has become SNS‘ new slogan in an apparent campaign that hitherto has no apparent aim. Other than showing the public that SNS still exists.

In Novi Sad, this is no small feat.

The Catastrophe That Triggered The Protests

On November 1st 2024, the canopy of Novi Sad’s train station collapsed. Its debris killed 16 people.

The train station had been freshly renovated, and been publicly reopened twice in the months before the catastrophe.

Construction work, while under the auspices of a general contractor from China, had been carried out by local companies. Many of them have close ties with Aleksandar Vučić and his party, the Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS or short. They have run the country for a decade and a half, extending their control over not just the public sector but also the country’s media system, and large parts of the private sector.

The catastrophe of Nov. 1st triggered nationwide mass protests, led by the country’s college and university students, against obvious corruption and incompetence. One of their key demands is that those responsible for the deaths of 16 people be held legally accountable.

A year and a half after this catastrophe, not a single suspect has spent a single day on trial.

A Miserable Looking Affair

Across the party banner on the square in front of the National Theater, the local SNS office has set up a small info stand. It is mainly surrounded by people donning white jackets or vests in one form or another. They are clearly party activsts.

I observe this scene, playing out in early May, from the terrace of a nearby cafe. During the approximately 45 minutes I am sitting there, I see three people approach the info stand who are not obviously party members or sympathizers. They are all elderly.

My observations are of course potentially inaccurate. There are quite a few distractions around. Such as a small group of bikers driving around the city center, their leader holding a gigantic Serbian flag.

In front of the National Theater they stop and approach the info stand and the banner, shaking hands, taking photos or having photos taken of them.

It’s not rocket science to conclude that they are part of this political manoeuver.

This detail is in itself highly symbolic.

For a year and a half now, thousands of Serbia’s bikers have protected student led mass protests alongside military veterans against police attacks and particularly against assaults by regime sponsored football hooligans.

That SNS manages to mobilize a few bikers themselves obviously tries to mimick the protest movement.

As does the profilation of pro-regime stickers in Novi Sad.

The Election That Will Come. Or Not.

„Serbia will win“ is just one of their slogans. „Shut up thieves“ is another, and perhaps somewhat unfortunate from a regime perspective.

It clearly tries to portray the remainders of Serbia’s Democratic Party and its splinter groups as the masterminds behind the mass protests. They were voted out of office a decade and a half ago, following corruption scandals that are dwarved by what their successors, SNS, are being thought responsible for now.

Here, in Novi Sad, the regime’s tactics are heavily contested. The mass protests have many sympathizers, and the frequently stick their own stickers over the pro regime ones. Their slogans: „The students will win“.

„This is testing the waters“, a policital analyst tells me. Aleksandar Vučić announced he would call for early general elections either in summer or October this year, in order to resolve the country’s deep and apparent political crisis. With one exception, every observer I talk to expects them to be held.

No election date has been set so far.

„Vučić is not going to have elections unless he thinks he can win“, an analyst tells me. The very apparent campaign such as in Novi Sad is supposed to test the degree of popular support the regime still has.

What I observe on this day in Novi Sad does not necessarily suggest Novi Saders are all that enthusiastic about either Vučić or SNS.

„I think they will be voted out of office, just like in Hungary“, a friend in Novi Sad tells me. „The students will back a new protest party, and they are well prepared“. Just a year ago, he had been rather pessimistic about the outlook of what one can call the Serbian Revolution.

For SNS, This Is Stepping Out of The Dark

Underwhelming though the start of the campaign may have been from SNS‘ perspective here, it is a success they could hold it at all. A year ago, angry citizens and protest activists would have surrounded their small info stand in minutes.

In other towns, particularly here in Vojvodina, mayors from SNS or even goverment officials walking to SNS events were peppered with eggs.

To be able to hold even this miserable looking small rally without mass police protection must seem to SNS activists to be stepping out of the dark.

Verbal Violence Against The Protest Movement

During the week I get to spent in Beograd, Serbia’s capital is preparing for another mass rally against apparent corruption. This also goes for SNS activists and pro regime thugs.

The city center is full of graffiti attacking the protest movement.

Typical of how SNS has handled the protests from the beginning, some of their slogans are nothing short of verbally violent.

„Blokaderi Ustaše“ is one that is often used all over the city.

Ustaše were Croat Fascists in WW II. Allied with the Nazis, they ruled a puppet state comprising inland Croatia, Bosnia and parts of Vojvodina in Serbia. Their very own genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma claimed between 300- and 6 or 700.000 victims, according to estimates by most serious historians.

Blokaderi – or blockaders – is a derogatory term for the students who have led the mass protests for the past year and a half. In late 2024, Serbia’s students started to collectively boycott lectures, seminars and tests in the country’s universities – a process which they called blokada or blockade.

Key figures in SNS and prominent SNS supportes have frequently called students and protesters Ustaše since the start of the mass protests.

SNS tries to paint the proliferation of anti protest graffiti and stickers as eruption of public outrage against the protest movement.

This Could Not Have Happened Without Official Support

Seeing how their official slogan has been sprayed on a highway bridge, freely mingling with nastier ones on the same location, does not make this claim overly convincing. As does the fact that this „Serbia will win“ graffito could have hardly gotten there without police looking the other way while it was sprayed.

This is not uncontested. Student activists and members of local zborovi use whatever they have to keep SNS and its activists from dominating public space in Serbia’s capital. Their stickers and graffiti are still all over the place, though not nearly as ubiquitous as a year ago.

It is true that the protest movement has slowed down compared to its heyday around March last year. Then, there were weekly protests even in the smallest of towns, daily ones in most larger towns, and a mass rally drew 300.000 people to Beograd. That is in itself five per cent of the country’s population.

The latest protest on May 23rd this year still mobilized between 180.000 to 190.000 people in Beograd.

SNS had tried to counter these protests with their own mass rallies. They never came close, in spite of Vučić‘ claims that he had staged the greatest event ever in Serbian history.

Vučić is not generally regarded to be the most modest of men. Nor do all his frequent public statements necessarily survive even rudimentary fact checking.

How SNS Tries to Reclaim Its Strongholds

It is safe to say that he and SNS have a much easier time in Ub in Central Serbia.

Local activists have put up literally hundreds of pro regime and anti protest stickers all over the place. Bridge railings, traffing signs, advertising columns, trash cans, house walls, street signs.

It dwarves anything I have seen last year in Novi Sad, where then half a year of student led mass protests had left very visible traces all over the city. Still it feels far less organic and far more artificial.

I would not be surprised to find out that there is at least one sticker per one of the 6.000 inhabitants this small town has.

On my stroll through the city center, I find one sticker supporting the students.

And one pro regime sticker that apparently has been torn down.

As crude a show of force this is, it also tells a lot about how deep and complex Serbia’s political crisis is.

Small towns and the countryside had always been the backbone of SNS‘ popular support. That protests against SNS‘ corrupt regime erupted even there last year, was a serious blow to their image of all dominance and their own self esteem.

That the party feels the need to assert its dominance over public space in a town of 6.000 people speaks volumes.

Also, that SNS is throwing huge amounts of material propaganda all over the place conflicts with their narrative that the mass protests are a color revolution, financed with billions of dollars and controlled by outside powers – while they themselves are just the humble servants of the people, largely deprived of any material means to defend Serbia against this outisde threat, and hence have to rely on and mobilize the good will and support of ordinary Serbians.

It is quite obvious which side has control over large material means, and which does not.

This massive amount of stickers does not post itself, and it does not post itself over night. There must be considerable man hours behind that effort.

Intimidation and Media Control

How effective this is, remains to be seen. It certainly discourages people who sympathize with the protests to speak out too openly in public.

Perhaps, this is the real goal of this campaign, at least here in Ub.

It isn’t as though SNS and Vučić have been all too shy about using sometimes less than subtle means of controlling public speech.

Media are largely under control of SNS friendly entrepreneurs. Those outlets that are not are largely deprived of advertising money from the large public sector in Serbia. Moreover, businessmen in the private sector with ties to SNS do not advertise in critical outlets. And there is a lot of these.

Just a few days ago, N1 was announced to be sold. N1 is the country’s largest independent and critical TV channel, and had recently been integrated into the Adria News Network ANN owned by United Group. United Group said it would sell ANN to Alpac Capital.

Alpac Capital owns the Euronews network. Their local outlet in Serbia has turned to be fairly regime friendly over the past years.

Two other critical outlets, the daily paper Danas and the tabloid Nova, are also part of ANN and will be sold alongside N1.

Criiical journalists in all these outlets now fear for their jobs.

This transaction will certainly not diminish SNS‘ control over Serbia’s media, and may likely at least dampen the few critical voices that are left.

As happy as Vučić and SNS may be about this transaction and their apparent all-dominance in Ub, not all is well even in other areas previously considered their strongholds.

Crumbling Bastions

The town of Mali Zvornik borders Bosnia on the Drina river.

One of the first things one sees in what can count for a town center is a banner with the portrait of Aleksandar Vučić across the main street.

Sure enough, SNS activists have posted dozens of stickers.

A graffiti on a pathway alongside Drina calls for the arrest of Vladan Đokić.

„Đokić is the rector of the University of Beograd“, researcher Zoran Erić from the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Beograd tells me. „When the students started boycotting their faculties in the early stages of the protests, he refused to have them disciplined, and supported them“, Zoran tells me. „This made him a target for people who sympathize with SNS.“

Direct and brutal verbal attacks against people thought to be in opposition to Serbia’s regime are an important part of SNS‘ tactics of controlling public discourse. They are meant to be intimidating.

Regime friendly media frequently echo these attacks.

„Recently, we had media attack even foreign diplomats in Serbia who had been talking to what government supporters consider to be the wrong people“, an employee of a European embassy tells me in a private conversation.

Such an attack in form a of a graffiti is in itself so commonplace it would not be worth mentioning, were it not for the fact that Mali Zvornik only has around 4.000 inhabitants. Here, this seems to be severely over the top.

But even Mali Zvornik seems to have its organized dissidents.

They push back against SNS‘ attempt to reclaim public space in their town. I count dozens of stickers with slogans supporting the protest movement.

And one graffiti over a particularly visible array of „Serbia will win“ posters on a concrete wall along the main road.

It reads: „FCK SNS“.

Read more about the mass protests in Serbia and their background here.

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