Nationalism, the Double-Edged Sword of Serbia’s Student Movement

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić, who has been in power since 2012, is widely regarded by both Western and Eastern allies as a stabilitocrat. Rather than aligning exclusively with one geopolitical bloc, the Vučić regime attempts to maintain balanced and cooperative relations with multiple global powers. To this end, Vučić has portrayed the student-led protests sparked by the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy on November 1, 2024, as either Western-backed or Russian-influenced, depending on his audience. In her article, Gresa Hasa explains that such distortions and delegitimations veil domestic dissent while fueling division, hatred, and a deeply nationalist mindset that not even the movement against Vučić’s regime has addressed or overcome.

*

What began as a student-led movement in Serbia, sparked by the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy on November 1st, 2024, soon grew into a nationwide wave of mobilization that surpassed even the protests that toppled Slobodan Milošević in 2000. A year later, demonstrations and resistance opposing the regime of Aleksandar Vučić persist. Until now the Serbian government has responded with repressive measures against student activists and engaged citizens, including physical violence, rape threats, and massive arrests.

The students have generally demonstrated remarkable political maturity, both in their internal organizing and in their ability to sustain momentum and broaden the movement over the course of the year. From university blockades to street protests, and from marching across cities to reaching EU capitals such as Brussels and Strasbourg, one of the most compelling aspects of the resistance has been its internal practice of direct democracy. The so-called student assemblies eventually evolved into citizens’ assemblies – public forums where students, and later ordinary citizens, have been organizing within their faculties or neighborhoods, making decisions collectively through majority vote to guide the continuation of the protests and address other pressing community issues.

While the initial demands of the protests focused on transparency and accountability surrounding the Novi Sad tragedy, the movement has gradually adopted a broader and more critical stance toward the entire political system. Protesters have been calling for a society grounded in democracy and the rule of law, and throughout the summer, they have demanded snap elections and the formation of a transitional government. They require structural change, not mere symbolic improvements within the existing framework.

Situating nationalism in the push for fundamental change

The movement has brought together individuals from all segments of society, including groups often seen as contradictory or even problematic – such as members of the Special Operations Unit (the ‘Red Berets’) and the Serb Volunteer Guard (founded and led by Željko Ražnatović otherwise known as ‘Arkan’ or ‘Arkan Tigers’), paramilitary structures from the 1990s, responsible for war crimes during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. In a striking phenomenon, Serbia’s radical left has found itself marching alongside the extreme right. Both parties, each for their own reasons, oppose Vučić’s ruling which shows that discontent with the regime is far more widespread than expected.

Although the early phase of the protests did not feature nationalism as a defining characteristic, ultranationalist banners and symbols such as maps of Kosovo overlaid with the Serbian flag and the words ‘No Surrender’ were present from the beginning. However, these displays were widely regarded as isolated incidents and not representative of the movement as a whole. As the movement grew, nationalism in its ranks proved to be more than just a mere incident.

While earlier protests – such as that on March 15 – featured the visible presence of 1990s war veterans and individuals glorifying Nazi collaborators from World War II, such as Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović, these elements still did not represent the majority. However, their presence was neither openly criticized nor distanced from by organizers or participants. Instead, it was merely justified or dismissed as unrepresentative of the broader movement. The failure to confront right-wing extremist elements set the stage for a more visible display of nationalist themes during the protest on June 28, which marked an explicit turning point.

The decision to mobilize on St. Vitus Day was highly symbolic. Marking the 1389 Battle of Kosovo – when Serbian forces clashed with the Ottomans – this date carries deep nationalist significance and has played a central role in the mythologization of national identity in Serbia. St. Vitus Day is not merely a historical marker; it has been instrumentalized in the past to stir nationalist sentiment, most notably by Slobodan Milošević during his infamous 1989 Gazimestan speech, which paved the way for the Yugoslav wars that followed. Aligning the current student protests in Serbia with such a highly charged date raises concerns on the movement’s stance on ethnonationalism and the revivalism of the same narrative that once dragged the region into war.

Display of nationalist rhetoric and iconography

Particularly, as the June 28 protest was marked by an overt display of nationalist rhetoric and iconography, including demands to defend Serbia’s territorial integrity, explicit calls to maintain dominion over Kosovo, and the invocation of far-right ideological figures such as Nikolaj Velimirović – a controversial cleric and theologian whose writings from the early twentieth century have been embraced by Serbia’s contemporary ultra-nationalist and clerical-fascist circles. These elements coexisted with speeches demanding state accountability, the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental change.

In April, during the student-led occupation of Serbia’s state television (RTS), the presence of a war veteran who had served in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 went viral on Serbian social media. Goran Samardžić, a former member of the ‘Arkan Tigers,’ was widely praised as a rare symbol of reconciliation after declaring at the RTS protest that “the war was wrong” and that there is no longer any distinction between ethnic Bosniak and Serbian children – referring specifically to students from Novi Pazar, a town in the Sandžak region of southwestern Serbia, predominantly inhabited by ethnic Bosniaks. In a recent interview with the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Samardžić denied the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and justified his role in it.

However, many within Serbia, including those affiliated with left-wing circles, hailed Samardžić’s intervention at the RTS protest as a moment of national healing and an indication of change: a former fighter acknowledging past atrocities, denouncing the propaganda of the Milošević era, and drawing parallels with the manipulation of media under Vučić. Yet for many observers outside Serbia, the viral praise of a former volunteer fighter who served in Bosnia at the height of the genocide alongside one of the most notorious paramilitary groups – Arkan – raised unsettling questions: Why was a man potentially complicit in war crimes given a platform at the heart of a supposedly progressive student movement? Samardžić claims he is innocent but has he ever been investigated or prosecuted for atrocities committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Did he kill, rape, or terrorize civilians during the Yugoslav wars? These are not abstract questions – they represent a critical reckoning for the movement.

Genocide denialism and narratives of Serbian victimhood

Nonetheless, this reckoning remains absent. Serbia continues to deny the Srebrenica genocide; it downplays the massacres in Kosovo, and rejects Kosovo’s independence and statehood. Genocide denialism and narratives of Serbian victimhood are not isolated views – they are rooted in historical legacy, are actively propagated by the ruling regime and deeply entrenched in public discourse. In this context, the veteran’s arguable gesture of remorse, however well-intentioned, cannot substitute for collective responsibility, legal accountability, and historical truth. Without a clear break from these legacies, the movement risks reproducing the very structures of silence and impunity it claims to oppose.

Following clashes in August between security forces and regime supporters on one side and student protesters on the other, some of Vučić’s opponents in the streets reacted to the violence by calling policemen or hooligans “šiptar”, the ethnic slur for Albanians, thus, again, revealing a profound lack of political consciousness and an inability, or refusal, to situate present systemic violence within its proper context.

Change for whom? And to what end?

Vladimir Simović, political activist and Labour Rights Program Coordinator at the Belgrade-based Center for the Politics of Emancipation, argues in this article that “the [student] movement has notably reclaimed the Serbian flag from the ruling party.” What does it truly mean to reclaim a flag so heavily burdened with the legacy of genocide and ultranationalist aggression? A symbol cannot be reclaimed merely by placing it in a new context – especially if that context still echoes the very rhetoric and ideology that once weaponized it.

How can a flag be reclaimed when the movement refuses to decisively condemn the nationalist narratives that fueled war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo? When potential war criminals are tolerated and even endorsed, and calls for ‘no surrender’ over Kosovo persist without challenge, such gestures risk reinforcing instead of dismantling the ideological foundations of past atrocities. Without a radical rejection of the nationalist mindset that has accompanied Serbia’s national symbols like the flag, its so-called reclamation is nothing more than symbolic laundering – an act that sanitizes the past rather than confronts it.

Simović argues that “the movement stands in opposition to a regime saturated with nationalist figures, rhetoric, and practices.” He states that “[i]t is the ruling elite that provides the most explicit and sustained expression of nationalism – and the institutional power to act on it.” Whereas it is true that the ruling elite in Serbia holds the institutional power to enforce a nationalist agenda, opposition to that regime does not necessarily guarantee an anti-nationalist stance. In fact, nationalism often operates across various political structures, not only in official state policy, but also in grassroots movements.

This tension becomes especially evident in Simović’s own example: the rise of students in Novi Pazar. While it is important that ethnic Bosniak students from a historically marginalized and predominantly Muslim city suddenly felt “placed on the map” of Serbia through their participation in the protests, this inclusion too deserves critical examination. Especially, as the framework in which it operates suggests that the peripheral regions of Serbia are allowed to be legitimized only if they align with the symbolic goals of the center. If inclusion is granted only on the condition of conforming to the dominant idea of what it means to be Serbian or who qualifies as belonging to Serbia – without acknowledging and critically confronting Serbia’s history of violence in the region and its persistent territorial fantasies – then this is not genuine inclusion, but a form of assimilation through cultural and historical erasure.

Challenging tunnel vision in the Balkans

Serbia has a nationalism problem. This is not news. In fact, it could be an understatement. The Vučić regime for the past decade has further fueled division, hatred, and a deeply nationalist mindset. Serbia has not resolved its past but it looks like it’s trying to resolve its present.

Simović argues that “focus on nationalism [alone] obscures what may in fact be a shift to the left.” While it is true that the student movement in Serbia must not be reduced solely to its nationalist dimensions because doing so would overlook the movement’s complexity, its unprecedented scale, its direct challenge to Vučić’s authoritarianism, and its instructive example of grassroots democratic organizing – this does not mean nationalism can be dismissed as incidental or harmless, particularly in a regional context where the past remains unresolved.

The presence of nationalism not only distorts the movement’s priorities but it also overshadows its progressive potential and presents ideological contradictions that must be confronted. Invoking anti-authoritarian resistance while simultaneously embracing the very rhetoric and symbols long used to justify violence, exclusion, and repression undermines the movement’s democratic credibility. From an economic perspective, the movement might contain the seeds of a leftward turn as Simović claims but socially and politically, its tolerance to nationalism and right-wing extremism threatens to drain out its emancipatory claims and reduce it to an instrument for right-wing populism in progressive clothing. To treat nationalism as a peripheral issue is to risk becoming complicit in reproducing the very structures the movement claims to resist.

Confronting ideological inconsistencies?

The rationale behind the absence of public condemnation of extreme nationalist elements is understandable, especially in the early stages of the protests, when organizers may have prioritized broad-based unity against Vučić. In a politically fragile context, it is possible that the protest organizers likely feared that addressing internal tensions could fracture the movement and provide space for the regime to delegitimize it. Maintaining a unified front may have seemed more urgent than confronting ideological inconsistencies.

Likewise, the lack of control over who joins must be acknowledged. Given the scale and spontaneity of the protests, it is almost impossible to police every participant. The movement has drawn individuals from across the political spectrum, many of whom are united less by a shared commitment to democratic values than by a common opposition to the regime. However, as the protests enter their second year and students demand snap elections, especially after nationalism became central to the mass mobilization on June 28, it is crucial for the movement to articulate a clear, principled ideological stance.

While it would be unrealistic to expect Serbia to overcome its nationalist legacy in a matter of weeks or months, it is essential that this issue be addressed alongside praise for the student movement’s strategic organizing and democratic internal practices to date. The movement – and the broader political momentum it represents – deserves to be understood in its full complexity, without falling into either romanticization or outright condemnation. Critical engagement must account for its contradictions and the wider implications it holds for the future of democracy in Serbia and the region because true democracy cannot be built on selective justice.