This is an opinionated article by Engjellushe Morina, Senior Policy Fellow, and Angelica Vascotto, pan-European Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
This winter has seen Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic skating on dangerously thin ice. Mass student-led anticorruption protests have led to the resignation of the prime minister, Milos Vucevic, as well as several other members of his government. Last week, the president hinted that the turmoil could lead to a snap parliamentary election come spring.
But public anger and Vucic’s collapsing government are far from his only problems. Even before the protests, the president’s longstanding “à la carte” approach to foreign policy of hedging Serbia between the West and Russia (with a side order of China) seemed to be in trouble. Both the European Union and Russia have been pressing Belgrade to choose a side. Now, Vucic has found himself with very little international sympathy for his domestic woes—and very little room for manoeuvre.
This gives Europeans a key opportunity to help steer events towards stability and democratic progress while minimising the risk of regional spillover. To prevent prolonged instability and bring Serbia back on track, the EU should support civil society, address regional tensions, and reinforce Serbia’s European trajectory.
[…]
@poVoq
I really wish you from the bottom of my heart that you will never be in a situation having to “choose” stability over democracy.
(In a personal note, you may read rule 4 of this community, “dehumanization.”)
Sorry, but how is that “dehumanisation”? Quite the contrary. You are the one not willing to accept that humans can have different opinions on various topics.
This is not about different views, what you are doing is extending tolerance and freedom of opinion to a narrative that comes from regimes which deny exactly this. History has shown where this leads.
No, this view doesn’t come from such regimes. It has been weaponized to some extend by such regimes, and I agree that it can be problematic, but by shutting down a view many people have you are exactly playing into the hands of such regimes.
@poVoq@slrpnk.net
This is nitpicking. What @bundalowtill and others are doing is spreading propaganda. I don’t see how you ‘play into the hands of such regimes’ if you take this down. If you don’t take this down, they spread further.
The weaponisation works like this: someone promotes what many people consider a “balanced” opinion and then waits for someone like you to show up and throw a fit and demand a removal of this “vile propaganda”. If it actually gets removed that’s a win, because then they can appear as the reasonable victims of censorship in the view of their target audience. The next step is then to promote their own propaganda platform without this “vile censorship” where they can fully control the narrative towards the then captured audience.
This is a strange justification imo, because so you can never remove anything as they can always celebrated it as a win in the view of their target audience. If you argue that way, you may never remove anything. The bottom line is that @europe@feddit.org is supporting dictatorial propaganda, even if users like the one in question is openly threatening people in a way that perfectly echos Russian narratives.
@poVoq@slrpnk.net @federalreverse@feddit.org
No, outright hate speech and clear misinformation should be of course removed.
But topics that sound like common sense to a lot of people need to be countered with arguments (and some tollerance for differing opinions) not removal, as otherwise it is way too easy for the people on the other side to appear as the reasonable side that isn’t suppressing differing opinions.
Have you been living under a rock the last couple of years? That’s been basically the playbook of the populist right and the main reason for their recent success. They play that game of pretending to be victims very well.
First, I think your explanation for the rise of the far right is hopelessly oversimplified to a degree that’s its wrong. But whatever the truth is, there is no reason for being offensive.
@poVoq@slrpnk.net
That’s a weird question, especially for a moderator and the obvious fact that I seem to be not the only one who ‘has been living under a rock’ …
@poVoq
A message from me, if I may express my view again: Not deleting someone’s comment because they could feel as victims of censorship. Hm. At least you appear to be recognizing it as propaganda (if you got you right now), although I don’t understand this argumentation. Because in that case you’d never delete a message, no matter what.
@bungalowtill is very active in the propaganda work. Their sometimes pseudo-intellectual tone makes it almost feel satirical, but it’s Russian and Chinese propaganda and it worsens the debate culture.
[Edit typo.]
No, this is not about “feeling”, this is how it appears to other uninvolved onlookers of the conversation.
Some of these may do that for their 50 cents, but many have lost touch with the world. I consider it a mistake not to delete such comments as this has nothing to do with free speech (bungalowtill’s initial comment is a clear threat to Serbian people), but I’m not the mod here.
You understood if you (have) lived in a country where someone else tells you what you ‘prefer’. You never did, that is evident from your comments. And as I said, I wish you from the bottom of my heart that you’ll never have to make such an experience.
I have lived under such circumstances and still I don’t see how that is in any way relevant to some random person expressing their opinion in a comment on a website.