With the glaring exception of the United States, a mass shooting normally sparks a national crisis — one that begins with some desperate, top-down soul-searching before an immediate clampdown on gun ownership. In Canada in 1989, Australia and the UK in 1996, and Norway in 2011, it took a single massacre for politicians to agree, almost universally, to tighten controls: heightened background checks for gun purchasers, a ban on military-style assault weapons, databases of those disbarred due to mental illness.
Despite having one of the world’s highest per-capita rates of gun ownership, Serbia had never witnessed a mass shooting until last month, when a 13-year-old boy killed nine fellow students and a security guard at his elementary school in Belgrade. It was the deadliest school shooting in Europe in 15 years – and it was followed by another spree, just one day later and a few miles away, when a 21-year-old man armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire as he drove through three villages south of Belgrade, killing eight.
Although a number of American gun-control activists have praised the seemingly swift response by President Aleksander Vučić, the shootings have prompted the largest protests seen in Serbia since the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000. While Vučić hastily announced stricter measures, his authoritarian government’s deployment of 1,200 police officers to schools — as well as its threat to bring back the death penalty — were seen by many locals as both insufficient and heavy-handed. A Serbian minister’s claim the school shooting was caused by the spread of “Western values” further infuriated protestors, who accused him of instrumentalising the tragedy in line with a pro-Putin agenda.
In this way, the present crisis illustrates the failures of the authoritarian Vučić government — and, by extension, also of Western intervention in the region. But it also shows the grim success of a particularly American brand of individualistic, sexist rage.
Certainly, the immediate response by both the government and opposition has been a world away from the endless debate in America, which had seen nearly 200 mass shootings in 2023 by the time of the Belgrade massacre. But as Biljana Djordjevic, an opposition MP in a green coalition, tells me, the crisis occasioned by her country’s dual massacres is “bigger than these two tragedies” alone, and represents a potential “moment for this country to change”. Mass demonstrations at the shootings have prompted demands for resignations at the top of government and reforms of the government-controlled media ecosystem. The largest protests since Vučić came to power bespeak a deeper anger with his highly centralised rule, corrupt and inadequate service provision, and lack of democratic norms.
In Belgrade, few doubt that the powerful interests focused around Vučić are trying to prevent any such change from taking place. Last weekend, the president brought his supporters onto the city’s rain-swept streets. Memes on Serbian social media mocked the buses shuttling Right-wing nationalists into the capital, and the provision of free drinks and snacks as an inducement to attendees. (Vučić-branded cereal bars were freely available, with packets of Smoki, the delicious and insanely popular corn puffs, handed out only on request.)
While addressing a rain-drenched crowd, Vučić resigned the leadership of his dominant Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). He made it clear he will remain president while launching a new, centralised political force with which he intends to cleanse Serbia of what he called “severe diseases”. Prominent among those “diseases” will be the “vultures” and “hyenas” the president has condemned as attempting to politicise the shootings.
Demonstrators parroted government lines – that this was a “gathering”, not a protest; that the event had nothing to do with the recent shootings; and nor was it a rearguard action following the ongoing anti-government protests, which brought tens of thousands of people to the same streets. “This is not related to the shooting,” insisted Ilya, 32, one of a group of muscular, shaven-headed men lined up in front of the stage where Vučić was set to speak. “We just want to show we support our president. If he calls us, we will come.”
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe