IN THE LAND OF ASTERIX AND OBELIX: Serbs as Gauls, Vučić as Vitalstatistix

Recently, Serbia seems a bit disoriented, it is not very clear where it is headed and what foreign policy course it is on. Officially, it is on the European path, but this is not really visible to the naked eye, and since the war in Ukraine began, Serbia increasingly gives the impression of a submissive Russian vassal in the Balkans. Fortunately, the president and master of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, is here to resolve all dilemmas.

In a New Year's interview on TV Prva, Vučić explained for an hour what the magnificent victory that Serbia won in the last Kosovo battle at the barricades was, since it was not clear even to his most loyal supporters. At a bad time, the presenter asked the president to comment on the statements of Edvard Joseph, a lecturer at Washington University "Johns Hopkins" and former deputy head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo. Józef says that the tensions in the north of Kosovo have not been overcome, that the crisis can flare up again when Vučić wants it, that he needs leverage in Kosovo, and that the USA and the EU are subject to the manipulations of the Serbian president.

Serbs, Balkan Gauls

Vučić was visibly annoyed by these statements, as anyone who sees through his wise manipulative technique, which is as transparent as a window, annoys him. The president turned on the professor and accused him of being a mercenary of the Kosovo authorities, Kurti's bot, but it also served as an excellent slogan to explain Serbia's position in international relations.

"Here, a small leader was born in the land of Asterix and Obelix, there is a small tribe of Gauls in Europe that decided to be free and libertarian and that does not cut two per cent of either Edward Joseph or 'Standard'," said the President of Serbia, trying to keep a serious expression.

Vučić did not accidentally mention the famous comic strip by Uderzo and Goscinny. At the end of March, the Serbian Progressive Party held a pre-election meeting in Požarevac, where the president of the ruling party, Serbia and all Serbs, living and dead, gave an appropriate speech. On that occasion, the president spoke some wise words about Serbia's international position and our foreign policy.

"I'm happy that, like in the comics about Asterix and Obelix, there is a small tribe of Gauls that keeps and protects its freedom on the territory of Europe. And I am proud that this small tribe are citizens of Serbia, and of our country, which conducts its politics independently", said Vučić to the many gathered supporters for whom coming to such gatherings is a work obligation.

So, the president of Serbia forms the country's foreign policy on the basis of serious economic, political and geostrategic analyzes that he found in comics. Yes, "Asterix" is a brilliant, popular, famous, and adored comic, but its authors hardly had the ambition that this work of the seventh art would serve some administration as a guide for orientation in complicated international circumstances.

Vitalstatistix on Andrićev Venac

Vučić sees Serbs as a Gallic tribe from the comics, and Serbia as a Gallic village that the Romans failed to conquer because the villagers have at their disposal a magical potion that gives them superhuman strength and makes them invincible. It could be said that Vučić sees himself as Vitalstatistix, a tribal elder whom several Gauls regularly carry on their shields, a hardened fighter who is not afraid of anything, except that the sky will fall on his head. Admittedly, the question is whether Vučić has a reason for such fear. The last time the sky fell on our heads in the form of NATO bombs, it did not cause any damage to the Minister of Information at the time, if anything the opposite.

While the mobilized young men gave their lives for the fatherland and war profiteers, the same fatherland gave Vučić an apartment of 117.5 square meters in New Belgrade, to repay him for all his services in stifling media freedom and censoring reporting on war events, with special emphasis on war crimes, mass expulsions of Albanians, cold stores and mass graves. This is not the only difference between the Serbian and the Gallic leader. Unlike Vučić, Vitalstatistix does not rob his Gals, humiliate them, terrorize them, and treat them like a bunch of idiots.

The comical Vitalstatistix enjoys the respect of his tribesmen, while even his grasshoppers do not respect Vučić, they only fear him, because he could take away all their privileges with one stroke and return them to political non-existence, from where he brought them out into the light of day. Only completely irrational and frantic members of this failed society have some positive emotions towards the president, but that already belongs to the realm of psychopathology.

Blasphemous parallels

It is not very clear who in Vučić's Gallic tribe in the hilly Balkans would play the role of Asterix, Obelix, Aspirinix, Tamburix, Automatix, and other heroes. Our heroes are Mladić, Karadžić and other mass murderers, all who killed the unarmed, the weak, and the powerless. Asterix and Obelix never committed genocide, they always fought against a superior enemy and invader, and the Roman legionnaires and centurions were mostly beaten, it is difficult to find a counterpart in Vučić's Gallo-Serbian tribe.

A parallel to the village blacksmith Automatix, who forges swords with his bare hands, could perhaps be found in the weapons factories that privileged Vučić's associates' milk and bring to ruin, getting enormously rich along the way, but that would be an insult to this comic book hero, just as the entire Vučić metaphor is insulting. The role of the Aspirinix druid who makes the magic potion could possibly be played by guys like Željko Mitrović, Dragan J. Vučićević and other regime media editors.

In their media cauldrons, they make a magic potion of hatred, chauvinism and warmongering that they deliver to their tribesmen, and after consuming the liquid, they get the feeling that they could defeat the whole world when the decisive battle to overthrow the new world order finally begins. Uh, this is really heavy blasphemy, Aspirinix really didn't deserve it, and I apologize to all the fans, including myself. That's what kind of crazy thoughts a person comes to if he follows and develops the twisted logic of Aleksandar Vučić, a comic character who, unfortunately, exists in reality, not in comics.

Land of appearances

The President of Serbia tries in every possible way to defend the indefensible, so in that impossible mission, he uses everything he can get his hands on, abusing the masterful humorous and satirical comics about Asterix, Obelix and the unruly Gauls. Vučić put the country he leads on the side of the Russian executioners, on the side of Vladimir Putin, who has been brutally destroying Ukraine for more than ten months and killing innocent people en masse. The government, a large part of the opposition, the regime media and a huge part of the public peacefully support the killing of civilians, mass graves, rape, looting, and the destruction of religious and cultural monuments. And they enthusiastically support the criminal Russian army, hoping that Russia will win the war of aggression. Such a civilizational, moral, human backsliding into a bottomless abyss cannot be justified by anything.

Vučić's reaching for Asterix and Obelix is infantile, frivolous and just plain stupid. But from the former football hooligan who never got out of adolescence, from the runner Vojislav Šešelj who, to his own surprise, made it to the absolute master of a sad country, nothing else can be expected. Not only Vučić and faceless people like him gave New Year's interviews, the editor of the newspaper "Danas", Aleksandar Roknić, talked to Srđan Valjarević. He also asked him if he reads the tabloids, saying that he asks that question because "the tabloids are announcing war in Kosovo and it's almost as if we are at war and as if we are going to defeat NATO again." To that, Valjarević replied: "I don't read. Everything is a tabloid, every day you are in a tabloid. There is nothing serious".

A precise diagnosis, because there is really nothing serious here, which is eloquently evidenced by the aforementioned statements of the first man of the state. This is not the land of Asterix and Obelix, as the president claims, but the land of illusions and misrepresentation, the land of manipulation and humiliation, the land of hanging government violence and voluntary slavery of the population. Serbia is not a country of disobedient and justice-loving citizens, if it were like that, it wouldn't be ruled every now and then by some autocrat, dictator, war criminal, pathological liar, robber of his own people or maniac. Serbia is not a libertarian Gallic village that resists the empire, but a vassal of a criminal state that wants to become a great empire again. By Toutatis! If I lie, may the sky fall on my head.

(zurnal.info)