By Marko Manevski
Here is a hypothesis that warms my heart, and so I have to test it immediately. Given what I have written about myths, I would feel uncomfortable swallowing it just because it sounds good.
The hypothesis goes like this: footage from March 15—the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Belgrade, students walking across Serbia, cyclists riding to Strasbourg—spread across the internet and awakened young people around the world. France, Italy, Albania, Greece, Argentina. Serbia as patient zero of a European revolt.
A beautiful story. Let’s see what the facts say.
What is actually happening elsewhere
France. High school students have been occupying schools for more than three weeks. They are demanding more funding for schools they say have been abandoned by teachers and left to crumble, especially in poorer neighbourhoods. Unions joined them, and the demands broadened to include the cost of living and public services. Hundreds of thousands marched peacefully, before weekend unrest brought around 2,400 arrests and looting in several cities.
Italy. “Italia in Piazza” is drawing thousands into the streets over jobs, healthcare, education, housing and wages, while inflation stood at 4.2 percent in September. The “October 17 Movement” has also emerged, announcing ongoing mobilization every Saturday at three in the afternoon. Saturday at three: even a revolution needs an appointment—and at least there’s still time for lunch.
Albania. The “Flamingo Revolution” began in May as an environmental protest against a luxury resort threatening the protected coastline around Zvërnec and Sazan Island. The developer is a company linked to Jared Kushner. In recent weeks, students have joined in, angry over tuition fees, dormitories and the quality of teaching. Prime Minister Edi Rama called them “ideologized and radicalized.” Translation: young people who have read the budget. At least 167 people have been arrested, including minors. Analysts say the movement has no single structure or leader; people coordinate through WhatsApp, Telegram and TikTok.
Greece. As I write this, thousands of students and teachers are marching through Athens. They are demanding greater investment in education, fewer students per class and housing students can afford. Greece spends 3.3 percent of GDP on education, compared with the EU average of 4.7 percent. They are chanting: “From Greece to France, we want free public education.” So, if you ask who they are looking to, the answer is written on the banner. It says France.
Argentina. Students took to the streets last week over Milei’s cuts to university funding. Congress overrode his veto and passed a university funding law, but the government refuses to implement it. You know the old saying: the law applies, but only to you.
And Spain, where tents have sprung up at Puerta del Sol over housing that costs more than anyone can earn.
Honestly, there is little evidence that “Serbia inspired” them
The chain of cause and effect—Belgrade inspires Paris—has no solid foundation. As far as I could find, the claim comes from a few unnamed sources quoted by Belgrade’s Danas, without evidence, and from one student in Tirana who says they are in constant contact with students in Serbia and exchange organizing methods. That is real, that is specific, and it is an exchange of tactics—not proof that Serbia set Europe alight. Major reports, from Fortune to Al Jazeera, mention Serbia only briefly or not at all. The Greeks name their source openly, and it is not Serbia.
So I will not claim that we set the world in motion. If for no other reason, then at least to let some air out of the worm-ridden brains of those who are forever going on about Soros, colour revolutions, fifth columnists and conspiracy theories—about how young people have been brainwashed. If nothing else, these protests prove the opposite.
But perhaps the more honest answer is even better
What these protests have in common is not Serbia. They share the same bill. Rent higher than your salary, a school falling apart, a hospital where you wait, work that either does not exist or does not pay—and a political class, left or right, it makes no difference, that young people feel speaks neither their language nor for them. The Albanian analyst put it precisely: they feel unrepresented by the entire political class. Change the flags in the photographs from Paris, Athens and Tirana, and the banners could be swapped around, with a little local slang.
That is exactly what Serbian students have been saying for nearly two years, ever since the station canopy collapse in Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, killed sixteen people: no more “that’s just how things are,” no more “he managed to get by,” no more false comfort in “at least it could be worse.” Serbia did not invent that anger. The Greeks found their question after the 2023 Tempe train disaster; we found ours after Novi Sad. The question is the same: what is the cost when no one is held accountable?
So, as the resident Grump, I cannot tell you that Serbia inspired the world. But I can tell you something that may be worth more: Serbia is proof that this can last. We do not hold a patent on anger; everyone has it. What we have shown is endurance: two years, without a leader, without one face on a poster that someone can buy, blackmail or arrest. Plenums instead of committees. Students who said: “We don’t need a saviour. We need answers.” And perhaps Albanians, with their horizontal, leaderless movement, adopted that form. Or perhaps they arrived at it independently, because when no political party feels like yours, in the end all you have is what you can do with your own phones and group chats.
The same old song about “foreign hands”
And one more thing that reminded me of my previous piece about myths. Rama said that “foreign hands” were behind the protests. We have heard that line here too, in various forms, from “colour revolutions” to “Western-paid mercenaries.” Same repertoire, same factory. The myth says that young people cannot get angry on their own; someone must have pushed them, someone must be paying them. Because we cannot believe that anyone might sincerely care about a classroom, a home or the air without some hidden interest. That myth has just one purpose: to stop you from thinking that perhaps you really have had enough.
And yes, this is my reading of it, not just the facts. In these demands, I see a generation that does not want to be enslaved by what is on offer: to become cheap labour for someone else’s billions; to see air, water and food reduced to line items in someone else’s growth report; to have their future become a profit for some fund that does not care who pays the price, or where. I am not saying that is what their banners say. They say “housing,” “schools,” “wages,” “corruption.” But behind each of those words, I see the same question: what is the system for, if it does not serve us?
Sunday
This Sunday, October 25, Serbia votes. That is the difference between us and the others: while they are still arguing with the street, we have turned the street into a ballot. The Student List emerged from demands for elections that have been heard for two years. Now it has a chance to show at the ballot box what it has been counting in steps and kilometres. I will not guess the outcome. I know only that young people across Europe, from Paris to Tirana, are watching to see where this awakened people will end up.
Maybe we did not inspire them. But we can show them what happens when anger is not spent in the streets, but makes its way to the ballot box.
All that remains is for everyone who has kept quiet for twenty years, and everyone who has kept quiet for seventy, to raise their heads for one more day.
Sources:
Al Jazeera: “Horizontal revolt”: Why Albania’s young protesters want PM Rama to go
AP: Inspired by France, Greek students protest as rising costs put education out of reach
Al Jazeera: Argentine students protest on campus over Milei’s austerity
Al Jazeera: Serbia’s snap election: Can Vučić outmanoeuvre the student revolt?
Specially for CIVIL MEDIA | All rights reserved.
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