Are you as mystified as everyone else as to why a group masked thugs was sent to beat and throw explosives at a group of protesting students in Novi Sad? Most authoritarian regimes can tolerate losing some small prizes, like the student parliament at a university. The fact that the Serbian regime can’t tells us something about the character of the system of rule: it relies on informal networks of trust and exchange, and on people depending on these networks. This kind of system can’t afford to have too many holes in it.
Here is video taken by a student in which she encounters the thugs, who attack: https://www.021.rs/story/Novi-Sad/Vesti/388324/VIDEO-Novi-Sad-2024-godina-huligani-bacaju-topovski-udar-zbog-izbora-za-Studentski-parlament.html
And a news report of the incident: https://n1info.rs/vesti/napadnuti-student-oko-30-u-crno-obucenih-mladica-udarali-nas-i-policajca-bacili-sok-bombu-kolegama-pod-noge/
Long story short, if you look at when a regime decides to use violence and what kind of violence it uses, this tells you something about what kind of regime it is.
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