You are blaming you – guilty (c) and we – personal attitudes

It concerns those, unaware of the facts, as well as those statistics, or part of the traveling circus and a paid audience, if the loser, wants to be the winner – and who, like the infantile, winning Mladic, tries to all imposed his will, waving his hands under the advice of a public performance expert.

It concerns all of us who love this country, because one of the most fragile reversions of the facts, replacing theses, media spining and construction of derogatory narratives in recent Serbian political history.

This process aims to discredit youth, knowledge and expertise, to abolish institutions, and impose self-government, awe-government and unlimited power and cartels in power – by pushing society into open dictatorship.

Let’s call things by the right name: This process was launched to cover up with all corrupt actions and affairs related to the rule of Aleksandar Vučić, which culminates the collection of the canopy at the Nova Sad, and the deaths of sixteenth innocent people.

For the irony to be larger, and the paradox is more complete – the guilty is now not looking for among those who have been involved in all this in all this, nor is it talking about accepting any responsibility on their part.

On the contrary, guilt is transferred to the academic community and those who smoked forces and courage to say loud and clearly, « Something rotten in the state of Serbia. »

They are guilty, therefore, students.

They are guilty of professors.

They are guilty of teachers.

They are guilty of teachers.

The guilty is a rector.

The guilty is a university.

Guilty (C) and we are.

The word is, everyone who can decipher and reveal manipulative testimonies, about the media construct – a communication narrative that relies on rhetorical mechanisms of manipulation and propaganda, using specific convincing techniques.

This was told by Filip Breton in the Book of Manipulated word (La slogles manipulée), differential and cognitive manipulation and ways used as a means of deception in political and media discourse. Breton reminds us that argument and manipulation can use the same procedures, but with different goals – first to encourage dialogue and opinion, others to prevent opinions.

When President Vučić and its satellites and epigones, in its performances, weigh the image of the world that looks real, it is actually based on unfounded causal consequential connections. By applying the technique of manipulatory « framing » and redistribution of facts, the reality consciously distorts, and the truth is masked.

In these speices, we recognize what Andreas Froynd calls « words-traps » – expressions that, although seemingly neutral, have a strong ideological charge and direct the opinion. Terms like: so-called protests, colored revolution, alleged students, blocks of normal life, collection of constitutional order, political abuse of the university, without target – look descriptively, but are actually normative.

They lead listeners to a predefined conclusion, without essential debate, blur realistic problems and set moral dichotomy: « We » which protect the order, and « they » that crash the system.

In addition to Demagogy and the so-called Thought tracks, mentioned actors use and « reassurance lever » – concepts that function like Pavlov’s conditional reflex. Clyde Miller called them poison leverages (Poison Virgin) and Virtue Lever (Virtue Virde).

Thus expressions such as: haters, terrorists, educational genocide, blockaders, Soroševci, anarchists, criminals, children of tycoons, non-workers – serve automatic delegitimization and demonization of opponents. Contrary to them, there are also expressions that function as « Virtual levers »: Students who want to learn, patriots, states, legalists – concepts that should endow values ​​such as freedom, justice, fatherland, democracy, solidarity.

This short stylistic-rhetorical analysis of speech and manipulative narratives that are flooding media space these days, reinforcing, thinking about the wider sense of language and power in modern society. When a speech becomes a tool to twist reality, and a political narrative means of suppressing responsibilities and history, then or institutions do not remain spared their destructive forces.

Announcements of creating a « new National University » in the area, as well as attempts to launch a new political movement under the company of folkwe, which is due to years of collapsing institutions, abuse and avoiding responsibilities.

The fall of the canopy in Novi Sad and the tragic deaths of innocent people are not isolated incidents, but a symbolic peak of the system collapse, which has been built on lies, running from responsibility and ignoring warnings. Affair for an affair, without resolution – only a feeling of collective guilt remains: guilty (c) and we are all, because as society allowed such deviations to be strengthened.

Despite everything, education remains one of the last resistance bastions. Attempts to bear the system to the market, external influences and ideological matrices come across a decisive resistance of the academic community and civil society. In that fight – not only for the university, but also for the truth, responsibility and future will not be determined by propaganda, but to the awareness of the people who remembers and elections will be pushed into the shadow of history that no one wants to remember.

The author is a university professor

The author’s attitudes in the dialogue not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Danas.