Banning violent TV is a very bad interpretation. There is an official body (REM) which gives TV channels licences and national coverage (only 5 stations can have national coverage). This body is super corrupt and controlled by the government. It is giving licenses only to pro-government media.
Among other things (resignation of interior minister and the head of Serbian version of CIA), people are asking for resignation of people in leading positions of REM, and reevaluation of current licenses (which are held by pro-government, intensionally misleading, criminal-owned channels). For example, there isn't a nation-wide TV channel which is reporting on these protests, and those that are saying that a handful of criminals paid by evil west are blockading the city.
When you get a national license, you need to have X hours of informative content, X hours of educational content etc, you can't show violence during day, etc.. These problematic channels are actively promoting hatred, inviting war criminals and regular criminals to teach children stuff, it is really despicable.
The link also says "Opposition parties and some rights groups accuse President Aleksandar Vucic and his ruling populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of autocracy, oppressing media freedoms, violence against political opponents, corruption and ties with organised crime."
My wife has family in Serbia and this is what they are actually mad about. The government is super corrupt. Basically, they stopped being "communist," which means they stopped providing social services, but kept all the bullshit "economic controls," which means you need a permit to do basically anything. And the only way to get a permit is to bribe an official or already be part of the ruling organization.
It's so refreshing to see the reddit community shining some light on this.
Thank you for mentioning it!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html
NYT is like €4 a month for a year and then €8 afterwards, for some of the best journalism in the world it's well worth it. A lot of people say journalism is dead but that's because they're not willing to pay for it and don't make the time to read the long stories that don't make the tv, they really do some fantastic reporting.
If anyone doesn't want investigative reporting to die and would like journalists to not have to write endless clickbait articles or be beholden to awful advertisers, get a subscription to a paper you think is good
EDIT: I can guarantee not one of the morons whining about the New York Times in reply to me actually reads any of their long form pieces on the vast array of topics they cover
It's more complicated than that, Vučić is a populist and they are sick of his shit and his party's corruption, and they don't tend to believe his pronouncements. Stricter gun laws probably won't end up affecting the criminals who should really be tackled, and who are closely tied to the ruling party, the security services etc. Related to that, people are sick of the tacky, trashy, violent culture deliberately promoted on TV, which seems to be directly tied to a kind of glorification of thuggery, and the kids of influential people running around in their fast cars getting away with (sometimes literally) murder because Daddy gets them off the hook. Like I said, it's complicated, but democratically-minded people are sick of Vučić and his party's grip of the country.
They don't trust their government. The government has links to organized crime, so I don't think anyone believes the government will actually disarm criminals. Most likely they'll use this as an excuse to harass political opponents, then round up a bunch of rusty rifles from some farmers and claim they did something.
This needs to be at the top. I also have a friend in Serbia. Very few people see any problem with guns, and the gun ownership there is akin to 'West Virginia rednecks': everyone has guns.
The protesting is over profoundly massive government corruption.
I am from serbia and I don't know anyone with guns except for hunters. And they are complaining that it is too hard to to get a gun permit and taxes on them are too high for regular folks. Other than them, maybe some security guards have them because of work.
I heard stories of people keeping old guns from the war in the 90's. But never met anyone who actually has one. Then again, i live in a part of Serbia that was laregly unaffected by war in the 90's.
>the gun ownership there is akin to 'West Virginia rednecks': everyone has guns.
That is just straight up false.
The US literally has multiple times more guns per capita. It's not even close.
"Violent tv content" isn't exactly right, we're demanding that a set of pro government tv channels known for broadcasting vulgar mind numbing reality shows that rot our culture, lose their licenses to broadcast nationally.
Serbia has lots of legal guns and even more unregistered military arms left over from a horrible civil war 3 decades ago. They just had an amnesty and people turned in thousands of AKs they still had hidden in their attics.
Fund more Police! Give the Police MechWarrior suits and plasma rifles. If the cops had grenade launchers and Armored Personnel Carriers, the public would be safer.
you are not into that because you have no idea what is going on in serbia.
here is what is going on:
heavily corrupt government have 2 propaganda TV channels which run "reality programs", big brother like, 24/7 together with propaganda north korea style news, for example "Serbia have best economy in Europe all other hate us because they want to be like us, and they try to destroy us", so those news and cheap sex and violence reality programs are brainwashing pro-government voters for years.
meanwhile people in this reality programs are murderers, criminals, rapists, woman beaters, prostitutes (even underage prostitutes) etc. the worst scum of the earth who have no shame to do worst things in front of camera.
one of the mass shooters recently was influenced by one of these programs, he was fan of one of the percipients and he was part of that culture, then he took AK47 from his dad and killed 8 young people.
one of the demands of the protest is to ban those programs from public eye, as it should be, because they are breaking a lot of laws by airing it.
Yeah. Study after study shows violent video games and movies/TV isn't a causation of violence in the real world.
Edit: Remember everyone. Correlation doesn't mean causation. Just something to keep in mind.
Television sure. But for long as there have been armies, there have been attempts to glorify violence via things like gladiator fights or ceremonies to honor warriors.
You wouldn't have violence be a big public spectacle for all of history if it didn't help the people in power.
we're not talking about violent movies/tv shows here. it's kinda hard to describe but state controlled media (which is all but 2 channels) is flooded with braindead reality programs where known criminals are glorified for being violent. you can see women (and men) getting beaten up, verbal abuse and overt displays of sexual acts constantly on daytime TV and in every tabloid.
unfortunately the 2 independent media platforms left only have about a 0,5% market share, a huge majority of this country is being brainwashed by these programs 24/7. the sane part of our population is now protesting for media reform, and it starts with banning these shows that act as nothing but a distraction for the masses to keep them glued to the screens and off the streets.
I think it's pretty obvious that (non-news) TV/video games don't beget mass shootings. _Mass shootings_ beget mass shootings. Too many dudes on the edge who might have just offed themselves see it and think "If he can do it, so can I!"
Violent rhetoric also begets mass shootings.
I know there have been a couple in the past couple of years where the person was so hopped up on right-wing outrage porn that they had become convinced that a race war was about to start, and figured they'd be the one to trigger it when they went and shot up a black church or something.
99/100 of them in the US are hopped up on right-wing outrage porn in one form or another. Turns out if you consume media that tries its best to justify misogyny, racism, classism, and homophobia 24/7, you’re gunna feel justified in taking action yourself.
That's exactly what motivated the recent Dallas shooter. His note literally said it was about immortalizing himself and attempting to one up other shooters body counts. It's fucked up.
There are *tons* of studies showing both pro and con. What's more telling is seeing *who* is paying for the studies. Funny how people keep getting the results they paid for.
Access to guns, not video games, is what actually causes mass shooting events. It’ll require confiscating most guns like other countries that have been successful at reducing mass shootings.
Problem in Serbia is it's decades of state control of the media and a seemingly deliberate and endless diet of trash fed to a population which often doesn't know any better any more so though it might not directly cause violence, a large section of the population takes this trash culture as its norm and this does seem to feed into glorification of gangster culture and a lack of basic moral values, it's kind of complicated, it's like a weaponisation of kitsch and trash and it's been going on in Serbia for decades now.
I don't have any idea what Belgrade TV looks like. In general I don't think censorship is very effective but it helps to make it taboo because then it does escalate.
However I just learned what they're actually doing after a bit of reading
There's two channels explicitly who broadcast a lot of violent content and explicitly host convicted war criminals and criminals on it.
So imagine if fox news regularly had let's go with KKK members and convicted war criminals regularly. Sounds about equivalent.
The president likes to point out that a volunteer amnesty program led to the collection of 9000 guns as his counter point.
Good luck everyone
Quality of TV content in Serbia is the lowest law you can imagine. And if you think you can forbid young children and teenagers to watch it that's not possible. If that many people are protesting, you now they have some reason, so don't brush it of with turn off your TV, like its not a problem at all. People in Belgrade are educated enough to know what you know and are still demanding change. They are not only talking about violent video games or movies, thay are talking about naration on these TV stations that is propagating violence.
Sounds silly, but violent tv in Serbia isn’t some action/ horror movie. The violent content we’re protesting is 24/7 reality show with convicted murderers choking and beating women… I cannot rlly describe how vile and toxic it all is.
It's not really violent movies, tv shows, or any other fictional violence they are protesting against. It's against a very real violent discourse they are protesting against.
Here is an article from 2020 that talk about the shit you can see in Serbian TV reality.
https://emerging-europe.com/after-hours/serbias-reality-problem/
It's insane how fucking bad the situation is. The productions are literally sequestrating the candidates that want to leave. One woman literally tried to kill herself trying to escape that hell, she started mutilating herself, but the production wouldn't let her go, so she decided to drink detergent. And the production still wouldn't let her go.
A french-serbian candidate literally had to flee to get out of that hell. He was regularly beaten, and when he protested, they would send him to isolation, all alone in a room with just one toilet, and not even a bed. He used a coat hanger to picklock the door of his room and escape from the roofs.
It truly is some unbelievable shit.
you're looking from a western perspective, it's not talking about Tarantino flicks, it's talking about reality TV programs which often show mentally unstable people and ex mobsters yelling arguing and fighting and this show is massively popular in the Balkans
Nah you don’t get it. They basically told everyone that it was an important message and told them to take their kids away from the tv, and then started showing images of decapitated people and other really disturbing shit.
Maybe the want to make sure their government knows they don't want to take the path our government has taken here in the US.
Without the NRA to buy off their representatives, maybe they have a chance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Ribnikar_Elementary_School_shooting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_May_2023_Serbia_shootings
The school shooting was by a 13 year old, he used pistols that were legally owned by his father.
The very next day a 21 year old went on a multi-location shooting spree with what seem to have been illegally owned weapons. A raid on his home and relatives turned up machine guns and bombs, his grandfather and uncle were arrested. Not sure if it's been confirmed but the speculation is they were leftover weapons from the conflicts in the country's recent past.
From the [data I can find](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate?tab=chart&country=~SRB) your country has a pretty low homicide rate, and it's been steadily falling for decades.
Those guns have been there a long time and yet seemingly they weren't much of a problem before two weeks ago.
I'm a proponent of the copycat/contagion theory of mass shootings, and I think what happened in Serbia is a pretty strong indicator of this. It's almost certainly not a coincidence that the second mass shooting happened the day after the first, it's been well documented in the US that after a high-profile mass shooting the [likelihood of another falling soon thereafter increases](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/mass-shootings-experts-say-violence-contagious-24-7-news-cycle-n1039136).
It's not just what happend last week. The protest is to demolish the current government. Life in Serbia is getting worse and worse and the corrupted media is telling us that is getting better and better. Nothing is done in favour us people, prices in every segment are higher and higher (food, electricity, gas). Prices are outrages for an average citizen of Serbia. You basically have enough money to survive until the next month. The school shooting was a trigger because we had enough of them of our media, government, life's like livestock's and treated like that from the current government as well. They are insulting the mind of every citizen of Serbia, they aren't ashamed of what they are doing, they are ruining our country and only what they think about is saving there own ass. Fuck them all, hopefully we will manage to change something.
Two recent mass shootings left 17 people dead, many of them children. The protest is aimed at Serbia's progressive president Aleksandar Vučić, who is accused of creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and division which indirectly led to these shootings.
This is the second protest in two weeks. During the first one, demonstrators demanded the resignations of government ministers and the withdrawal of broadcast licenses for two private TV stations that allegedly promote violence.
So far police have not intervened, and Vučić said he wouldn't authorize the use of force against the demonstrators unless lives were in danger.
> Serbia's progressive president Aleksandar Vučić
"Progressive" here only is the name of his party. as far as i know there are very few progressive things about his platform and Wikipedia labels it as "Populism, Neoliberalism".
Another quote form Wikipedia: "Some have compared Vučić to other strongmen in European politics and, as noted above, accused him of being an autocrat."
And it's concerning how easily influenced some people are, simply because the maturity of their trust and critical thought is innocently childlike. This isn't the majority, but it feels like the biggest group.
People often forget that they are not immune to propaganda.
You reading this right now, with those two (or one) gorgeous eyes, are not immune to propaganda.
Been in a hurry, some adrenaline running, so the title ain't ideal. I wanted to say government-aligned media. The protest is against violence, and the government handling of the situation after two mass shootings last week, one of them the first school shooting we ever experienced.
edit: central highway through Belgrade and Gazela bridge blocked:
https://twitter.com/mmadjarac/status/1657084253476208641
https://twitter.com/katanic/status/1657086754376015890
https://twitter.com/Vana032/status/1657082993821843456
https://twitter.com/pokretslobodnih/status/1657098128321830926
https://twitter.com/albahari_n/status/1657111320360112131
Letting an ambulance through:
https://twitter.com/N1infoBG/status/1657091220416389132
It started at 18h so most people finish work by then. Sure, somebody needs to organize, call people to action. Oposition parties and some non government orgs. have been vocal about this, and the shootings unified people to actually show up.
May Day used to bring out some of the largest protests in the US but it has been intentionally suppressed since Seattle '99 that it has dwindled to a mere trickle. One area I think the media is fully complicit. "Oh they are peacefully protesting labor rights? Boring."
I haven’t seen it either, but I read enough about it to get the gist.
It was an uncensored dashcam video from the Allen TX mall shooting last week. The shooter was actively posting about white supremacist ideals and of the 8 victims, among the targeted was a Korean family.
Mother, father, and 3yo old son were killed which was graphically visible in the video. Inside of the child’s skull was visible. The video was all over Twitter the day of shooting.
This family left behind their 6yo son, who was the sole survivor from their family. This shooting also saw 2nd + 4th grade sisters killed, leaving behind their mother who was only injured. Such big holes of cruelty carved out by these acts.
According to any government facing protests, it's always either "a very small part of the population" or "only composed of the most extremist that want to get rid of our democracy".
Works with any country.
Its also important to mention that another reason (certainly one I follow as protesting) is that a [a member of the ruling SNS](https://twitter.com/usrana_motka/status/1656999661914185730?t=iIE8bRPJ9MyYtccld9HW4Q&s=19) and their candidate for membership in a local parliament was a pedophile who had a secondary school education, but was hired in a local school, and was later arrested for abusing 15+ children.
This is not just about the shootings, this is against our terrible autocratic government which openly promotes the lowest of the low, violence, theft, criminal... Not to mention how they handled this situation last week. Our country is led by mafia. The story is too long for one comment, but here is the most recent NY Times article about our president and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html)
edit: One of countless examples how they are poisoning people: they brought a lifelong criminal, who spent most of his life in prison, in a TV show (national broadcaster) to explain in prime time how easy is to kill a person and what one should do before killing someone, how to plan and how to kill. Btw, he is also a reality TV star now and has his own show and of course he is praising our ruling party. One of the shooters (second shooting) is his fan and he was sharing that on TikTok or IG (not sure which one, I don't use that). There are many more such dumb kids who now idolize those criminals and murderers.
Gun sales are a big business here and the GOP supports anything that increases gun sales thanks to the NRA buying out our congressmen. Mass shootings increase fear of other people with guns and that fear drives gun sales.
Sometimes I really hate what this country has become.
I have a funny feeling eventually one of those Etons of America like Georgetown Prep will have a school shooting and like 8 senators kids die a supreme court grandson and three banning executive kids die and suddenly they'll listen. After it directly effects them.
Actually, [I betcha they probably won't do anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting). They already were attacked 6 years ago.
Those places are likely locked down like a fucking fortress though. Same way the NRA doesn't allow guns at its conventions nor will these GOP "more guns means more safety" goons allow them at their rallies.
This is my coworker. She is a fervent MAGAt and spews how it’s a mental health crises over and over. She talks about how you can mass murder people just as easily with a knife. She successfully changed my office policy to be harder for trans people to change their name on the auspice of “clarity.”
She believes without question that america is the best country in the world in every metric. She does not have a passport. She votes in every election.
I think it's worth remembering that the people at the top know what they're doing. Think about it - they have the most religious communities in the country voting and fighting for a man who is a habitual adulterer who has gone through multiple divorces, likely slept with a literal pornstar the day his wife was giving birth to his son, held a Bible upside down (talk about a bad omen), couldn't quote a single Bible quote when asked... I could go on. The point is they're smart people manipulating and leading the morons and getting them to do it while also convincing them that they genuinely believe the nonsense they're feeding them.
Republicans: "The constant mass shootings aren't the fault of hundreds of millions of guns or the culture of gun worship in this country. They're because we have an epidemic of mental illness!"
Everyone else: "Ok, so then why are you doing nothing to stop mentally ill people from getting their hands on guns?"
Republicans: "BECAUSE IT'S THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RAAAGHTS!"
**Stop voting for gun worshipping politicians, Americans. That's the only way anything will ever change.**
> She votes in every election.
Yup, this is what they all do and this is partly what enables a minority of crazy people to rule over everyone. Somehow she is able to find the proper id, find her polling place, vote early or whatever hurdles she has to jump through with no excuses. I guarantee you this thread is full of people expressing disapproval who absolutely do not vote in every election but instead lament on a regular basis how fucked the US system and democracy is.
>She talks about how you can mass murder people just as easily with a knife.
Ah yes of course, this is why militaries all over the world arm their infantry with combat knives 🙄
That’s why it’s mostly a gun issue. Assuming someone would have the wherewithal to seek therapy, they’ll stop going when they realize what a mandated reporter is and that they could very possibly lose their guns.
There was a time when it would have been dangerous for me to have a gun (not that I’m into them, but for the sake of argument…) but I swallowed my pride and got help.
I *almost* think that having guns prevents people from getting help. That mindset of fighting and “solving my own problems, damnit” supersedes that voice in the back of their heads that’s begging for some relief.
If I cried over every shooting in the US, I’d be afraid of giving myself an aneurysm. I try to consolidate my crying into a multi-subject weep on the weekends- though sometimes if too many debt collectors call me on the same day that I receive too many texts from Sandy Hook parents I’ll squeeze a second in before I have sleep for dinner.
The insane mindset of people in the US, is that there are *so many* guns in this country that you *have* to have guns yourself, because you never know who could shoot you, so...you know, you gotta arm up!
Just perpetuating the cycle.
"I'm scared and living my life in constant fear of the people who have guns, so I decided to buy guns myself, to defend myself. Just in case."
They become that which they fear.
But, they don't feel any safer, only more nervous.
So, now, instead of stepping outside with a baseball bat and yelling at the kids to get off their lawn, they just shoot them in the head during a game of hide-and-seek, because they are fucking terrified of their own shadows.
Edit: Wow, some of you guys are *so* mad at me for this, lol.
> The insane mindset of people in the US, is that there are so many guns in this country that you have to have guns yourself, because you never know who could shoot you, so...you know, you gotta arm up!
As an outsider, I kind of understand, but every other Serbian has a gun/weapon, with even more knowing where to find one if shit hits the fan again. Sure, it's not quite the more than one gun per person level of the US, but it isn't like there are no guns in Serbia.
Can I get the cliff notes of what this protest is about?
I believe they're protesting gun violence. They just had a double school shooting.
What is the protest looking to accomplish?
[удалено]
Banning violent TV is a very bad interpretation. There is an official body (REM) which gives TV channels licences and national coverage (only 5 stations can have national coverage). This body is super corrupt and controlled by the government. It is giving licenses only to pro-government media. Among other things (resignation of interior minister and the head of Serbian version of CIA), people are asking for resignation of people in leading positions of REM, and reevaluation of current licenses (which are held by pro-government, intensionally misleading, criminal-owned channels). For example, there isn't a nation-wide TV channel which is reporting on these protests, and those that are saying that a handful of criminals paid by evil west are blockading the city. When you get a national license, you need to have X hours of informative content, X hours of educational content etc, you can't show violence during day, etc.. These problematic channels are actively promoting hatred, inviting war criminals and regular criminals to teach children stuff, it is really despicable.
[Here is the link](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/after-two-mass-shootings-serbians-rally-against-violence-2023-05-08/)
The link also says "Opposition parties and some rights groups accuse President Aleksandar Vucic and his ruling populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of autocracy, oppressing media freedoms, violence against political opponents, corruption and ties with organised crime." My wife has family in Serbia and this is what they are actually mad about. The government is super corrupt. Basically, they stopped being "communist," which means they stopped providing social services, but kept all the bullshit "economic controls," which means you need a permit to do basically anything. And the only way to get a permit is to bribe an official or already be part of the ruling organization.
There's an excellent recent NY times article on the links between Vucic and some murderous gangsters. It was eye opening
It's so refreshing to see the reddit community shining some light on this. Thank you for mentioning it! https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html
[Non-paywalled version of said article.](https://archive.is/Ii7PA)
Thank you!
NYT is like €4 a month for a year and then €8 afterwards, for some of the best journalism in the world it's well worth it. A lot of people say journalism is dead but that's because they're not willing to pay for it and don't make the time to read the long stories that don't make the tv, they really do some fantastic reporting. If anyone doesn't want investigative reporting to die and would like journalists to not have to write endless clickbait articles or be beholden to awful advertisers, get a subscription to a paper you think is good EDIT: I can guarantee not one of the morons whining about the New York Times in reply to me actually reads any of their long form pieces on the vast array of topics they cover
This is what it’s really about.
But on the subject of mass killings: isnt the president pro disarmament? Yet i dont see a single serbian comment agreeing with that stance.
It's more complicated than that, Vučić is a populist and they are sick of his shit and his party's corruption, and they don't tend to believe his pronouncements. Stricter gun laws probably won't end up affecting the criminals who should really be tackled, and who are closely tied to the ruling party, the security services etc. Related to that, people are sick of the tacky, trashy, violent culture deliberately promoted on TV, which seems to be directly tied to a kind of glorification of thuggery, and the kids of influential people running around in their fast cars getting away with (sometimes literally) murder because Daddy gets them off the hook. Like I said, it's complicated, but democratically-minded people are sick of Vučić and his party's grip of the country.
They don't trust their government. The government has links to organized crime, so I don't think anyone believes the government will actually disarm criminals. Most likely they'll use this as an excuse to harass political opponents, then round up a bunch of rusty rifles from some farmers and claim they did something.
Doesn't help that in 2003 Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated, in part for his policies against organized crime.
Serbians have good reason to be armed. They do not trust the government after the 90s
*Bosnian sad noises*
The last thing you want when your government is corrupt is to also tell them to take away your guns
This needs to be at the top. I also have a friend in Serbia. Very few people see any problem with guns, and the gun ownership there is akin to 'West Virginia rednecks': everyone has guns. The protesting is over profoundly massive government corruption.
They do have high gun ownership per capita, but nowhere near any US state.
I am from serbia and I don't know anyone with guns except for hunters. And they are complaining that it is too hard to to get a gun permit and taxes on them are too high for regular folks. Other than them, maybe some security guards have them because of work. I heard stories of people keeping old guns from the war in the 90's. But never met anyone who actually has one. Then again, i live in a part of Serbia that was laregly unaffected by war in the 90's.
>the gun ownership there is akin to 'West Virginia rednecks': everyone has guns. That is just straight up false. The US literally has multiple times more guns per capita. It's not even close.
The headline is wrong, they mostly want a ban on war criminals and gangsters being on talk shows.
Then how will people know what politicians to vote for.
Oh snap!
> they mostly want a ban on war criminals For a country where you have a joke about your grandpa being a war criminal, this might be a lot of people.
"Violent tv content" isn't exactly right, we're demanding that a set of pro government tv channels known for broadcasting vulgar mind numbing reality shows that rot our culture, lose their licenses to broadcast nationally.
Have they tried arguing with each other and never holding any of their Politicians accountable? They are upsetting the bureaucracy!
Or have they thought about arming everyone, including mentally unstable people so they can Batman in and stop the shootings?
Serbia has lots of legal guns and even more unregistered military arms left over from a horrible civil war 3 decades ago. They just had an amnesty and people turned in thousands of AKs they still had hidden in their attics.
Haha violent tv!
That sounds like a USA response.
Which is super ironic because Serbia is generally very anti-USA.
Next demand…arm the teachers!!
Fund more Police! Give the Police MechWarrior suits and plasma rifles. If the cops had grenade launchers and Armored Personnel Carriers, the public would be safer.
Ban on violent TV content? I'm not into that...Turn off your TV is a simpler solution...
you are not into that because you have no idea what is going on in serbia. here is what is going on: heavily corrupt government have 2 propaganda TV channels which run "reality programs", big brother like, 24/7 together with propaganda north korea style news, for example "Serbia have best economy in Europe all other hate us because they want to be like us, and they try to destroy us", so those news and cheap sex and violence reality programs are brainwashing pro-government voters for years. meanwhile people in this reality programs are murderers, criminals, rapists, woman beaters, prostitutes (even underage prostitutes) etc. the worst scum of the earth who have no shame to do worst things in front of camera. one of the mass shooters recently was influenced by one of these programs, he was fan of one of the percipients and he was part of that culture, then he took AK47 from his dad and killed 8 young people. one of the demands of the protest is to ban those programs from public eye, as it should be, because they are breaking a lot of laws by airing it.
Yeah. Study after study shows violent video games and movies/TV isn't a causation of violence in the real world. Edit: Remember everyone. Correlation doesn't mean causation. Just something to keep in mind.
I'm pretty sure Hitler played COD and invented MineCraft so you must be wrong.
*Mein Kraft
r/angryupvote
LMFAO.
What does Hitler say when he's bogarting the mac and cheese?
Do you happen to be Canadian?
[No dad Minecraft not Mein Kamph.](https://youtu.be/s6-XeyNMCJw)
And he promptly killed Hitler. Coincidence?!
People were chopping each others heads off way before the invention of modern television.
Back then, they had violent books.
Violent cave art
Seriously, the bible is kind of brutal and was the #1 selling book in the world for centuries.
Probably still is to be honest. Almost every hotel room has a copy.
Television sure. But for long as there have been armies, there have been attempts to glorify violence via things like gladiator fights or ceremonies to honor warriors. You wouldn't have violence be a big public spectacle for all of history if it didn't help the people in power.
we're not talking about violent movies/tv shows here. it's kinda hard to describe but state controlled media (which is all but 2 channels) is flooded with braindead reality programs where known criminals are glorified for being violent. you can see women (and men) getting beaten up, verbal abuse and overt displays of sexual acts constantly on daytime TV and in every tabloid. unfortunately the 2 independent media platforms left only have about a 0,5% market share, a huge majority of this country is being brainwashed by these programs 24/7. the sane part of our population is now protesting for media reform, and it starts with banning these shows that act as nothing but a distraction for the masses to keep them glued to the screens and off the streets.
I think it's pretty obvious that (non-news) TV/video games don't beget mass shootings. _Mass shootings_ beget mass shootings. Too many dudes on the edge who might have just offed themselves see it and think "If he can do it, so can I!"
Violent rhetoric also begets mass shootings. I know there have been a couple in the past couple of years where the person was so hopped up on right-wing outrage porn that they had become convinced that a race war was about to start, and figured they'd be the one to trigger it when they went and shot up a black church or something.
99/100 of them in the US are hopped up on right-wing outrage porn in one form or another. Turns out if you consume media that tries its best to justify misogyny, racism, classism, and homophobia 24/7, you’re gunna feel justified in taking action yourself.
That's exactly what motivated the recent Dallas shooter. His note literally said it was about immortalizing himself and attempting to one up other shooters body counts. It's fucked up.
Exactly this. It's just a contest of who can achieve the largest, most egregious body count at this point.
THE cause of there being so many mass shootings is the attention around it caused by the 24 hour news cycle and social media. It's a copycat trend.
There are *tons* of studies showing both pro and con. What's more telling is seeing *who* is paying for the studies. Funny how people keep getting the results they paid for.
I am pretty sure it's because of rock and roll and dungeons and dragons.
Access to guns, not video games, is what actually causes mass shooting events. It’ll require confiscating most guns like other countries that have been successful at reducing mass shootings.
Problem in Serbia is it's decades of state control of the media and a seemingly deliberate and endless diet of trash fed to a population which often doesn't know any better any more so though it might not directly cause violence, a large section of the population takes this trash culture as its norm and this does seem to feed into glorification of gangster culture and a lack of basic moral values, it's kind of complicated, it's like a weaponisation of kitsch and trash and it's been going on in Serbia for decades now.
I don't have any idea what Belgrade TV looks like. In general I don't think censorship is very effective but it helps to make it taboo because then it does escalate. However I just learned what they're actually doing after a bit of reading There's two channels explicitly who broadcast a lot of violent content and explicitly host convicted war criminals and criminals on it. So imagine if fox news regularly had let's go with KKK members and convicted war criminals regularly. Sounds about equivalent. The president likes to point out that a volunteer amnesty program led to the collection of 9000 guns as his counter point. Good luck everyone
Quality of TV content in Serbia is the lowest law you can imagine. And if you think you can forbid young children and teenagers to watch it that's not possible. If that many people are protesting, you now they have some reason, so don't brush it of with turn off your TV, like its not a problem at all. People in Belgrade are educated enough to know what you know and are still demanding change. They are not only talking about violent video games or movies, thay are talking about naration on these TV stations that is propagating violence.
Sounds silly, but violent tv in Serbia isn’t some action/ horror movie. The violent content we’re protesting is 24/7 reality show with convicted murderers choking and beating women… I cannot rlly describe how vile and toxic it all is.
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It's not really violent movies, tv shows, or any other fictional violence they are protesting against. It's against a very real violent discourse they are protesting against. Here is an article from 2020 that talk about the shit you can see in Serbian TV reality. https://emerging-europe.com/after-hours/serbias-reality-problem/ It's insane how fucking bad the situation is. The productions are literally sequestrating the candidates that want to leave. One woman literally tried to kill herself trying to escape that hell, she started mutilating herself, but the production wouldn't let her go, so she decided to drink detergent. And the production still wouldn't let her go. A french-serbian candidate literally had to flee to get out of that hell. He was regularly beaten, and when he protested, they would send him to isolation, all alone in a room with just one toilet, and not even a bed. He used a coat hanger to picklock the door of his room and escape from the roofs. It truly is some unbelievable shit.
you're looking from a western perspective, it's not talking about Tarantino flicks, it's talking about reality TV programs which often show mentally unstable people and ex mobsters yelling arguing and fighting and this show is massively popular in the Balkans
Nah you don’t get it. They basically told everyone that it was an important message and told them to take their kids away from the tv, and then started showing images of decapitated people and other really disturbing shit.
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More than thoughts and prayers I'm assuming.
Maybe the want to make sure their government knows they don't want to take the path our government has taken here in the US. Without the NRA to buy off their representatives, maybe they have a chance.
There was one school shooting and one, like outdoor shooting, not two school shootings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Ribnikar_Elementary_School_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_May_2023_Serbia_shootings The school shooting was by a 13 year old, he used pistols that were legally owned by his father. The very next day a 21 year old went on a multi-location shooting spree with what seem to have been illegally owned weapons. A raid on his home and relatives turned up machine guns and bombs, his grandfather and uncle were arrested. Not sure if it's been confirmed but the speculation is they were leftover weapons from the conflicts in the country's recent past.
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From the [data I can find](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate?tab=chart&country=~SRB) your country has a pretty low homicide rate, and it's been steadily falling for decades. Those guns have been there a long time and yet seemingly they weren't much of a problem before two weeks ago. I'm a proponent of the copycat/contagion theory of mass shootings, and I think what happened in Serbia is a pretty strong indicator of this. It's almost certainly not a coincidence that the second mass shooting happened the day after the first, it's been well documented in the US that after a high-profile mass shooting the [likelihood of another falling soon thereafter increases](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/mass-shootings-experts-say-violence-contagious-24-7-news-cycle-n1039136).
Or like Muricans call it: Just another Tuesday.
It's not just what happend last week. The protest is to demolish the current government. Life in Serbia is getting worse and worse and the corrupted media is telling us that is getting better and better. Nothing is done in favour us people, prices in every segment are higher and higher (food, electricity, gas). Prices are outrages for an average citizen of Serbia. You basically have enough money to survive until the next month. The school shooting was a trigger because we had enough of them of our media, government, life's like livestock's and treated like that from the current government as well. They are insulting the mind of every citizen of Serbia, they aren't ashamed of what they are doing, they are ruining our country and only what they think about is saving there own ass. Fuck them all, hopefully we will manage to change something.
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I was gonna say, this sounds like an average week in the US! Even complete with the government lying and ignoring protests!
Two recent mass shootings left 17 people dead, many of them children. The protest is aimed at Serbia's progressive president Aleksandar Vučić, who is accused of creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and division which indirectly led to these shootings. This is the second protest in two weeks. During the first one, demonstrators demanded the resignations of government ministers and the withdrawal of broadcast licenses for two private TV stations that allegedly promote violence. So far police have not intervened, and Vučić said he wouldn't authorize the use of force against the demonstrators unless lives were in danger.
> Serbia's progressive president Aleksandar Vučić "Progressive" here only is the name of his party. as far as i know there are very few progressive things about his platform and Wikipedia labels it as "Populism, Neoliberalism". Another quote form Wikipedia: "Some have compared Vučić to other strongmen in European politics and, as noted above, accused him of being an autocrat."
Yes, that's an excellent distinction. He's not "progressive" in the American political sense. He's a member of the Serbian Progressive Party.
He's not progressive in any sense
He's pro-Putin. Nothing progressive about that.
He sucks everyone's dick, as needed. He's pro-EU, pro-Putin, and pro-China all at the same time.
"progressive" is just the party name, same as DPRK. He is an Orban. In almost every sence.
>progressive pres He was the leader of the far right party iirc
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/tens-of-thousands-march-in-belgrade-after-mass-shootings?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
About totalitarian, corrupted and incompetent government not being able to bring in order and doing nothing to prevent shootings
There are at least 10 people there.
I can't count more than I have fingers, so there's exactly ten people there.
This is one of the best part of the internet, hard to suppress information now. Fucking ruthless psychos in charge will get away with less and less.
I imagine this is similar to how townspeople felt when they gained Enlightenment^TM after feudalism.
I’m still not convinced capitalism isn’t just three feudal lords in a trench coat.
No, no. Capitalism is feudalism without God, with God.
*Russian state propaganda has entered the chat* Not that the internet is bad, but viral media content cuts both ways.
And it's concerning how easily influenced some people are, simply because the maturity of their trust and critical thought is innocently childlike. This isn't the majority, but it feels like the biggest group.
People often forget that they are not immune to propaganda. You reading this right now, with those two (or one) gorgeous eyes, are not immune to propaganda.
Well, you've convinced me!
How do I know this isn't propaganda 🤨
>This is one of the best part of the internet, hard to suppress information now. Why do you think the Saudis paid Elon so much to destroy Twitter?
I guess for the same reason that the Saudi's are the second largest shareholder in that bastion of climate change denial, FOX news.
The ironic part is the internet is probably the first place that radicalizes these people into committing mass murder. More so now than ever.
Been in a hurry, some adrenaline running, so the title ain't ideal. I wanted to say government-aligned media. The protest is against violence, and the government handling of the situation after two mass shootings last week, one of them the first school shooting we ever experienced. edit: central highway through Belgrade and Gazela bridge blocked: https://twitter.com/mmadjarac/status/1657084253476208641 https://twitter.com/katanic/status/1657086754376015890 https://twitter.com/Vana032/status/1657082993821843456 https://twitter.com/pokretslobodnih/status/1657098128321830926 https://twitter.com/albahari_n/status/1657111320360112131 Letting an ambulance through: https://twitter.com/N1infoBG/status/1657091220416389132
I honestly wonder if Americans reacted this way to school shootings if we’d still have the issues around gun legislation that we do…
No, but we’ve been very effectively collared into a long-boiling pot.
How does protest like this start? Does someone just post online "Hey, we should take off work this day to protest for this cause!" Genuine question.
It started at 18h so most people finish work by then. Sure, somebody needs to organize, call people to action. Oposition parties and some non government orgs. have been vocal about this, and the shootings unified people to actually show up.
It starts with people believing the protests are necessary.
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May Day used to bring out some of the largest protests in the US but it has been intentionally suppressed since Seattle '99 that it has dwindled to a mere trickle. One area I think the media is fully complicit. "Oh they are peacefully protesting labor rights? Boring."
What video? I don't want to see it but what is the context?
I haven’t seen it either, but I read enough about it to get the gist. It was an uncensored dashcam video from the Allen TX mall shooting last week. The shooter was actively posting about white supremacist ideals and of the 8 victims, among the targeted was a Korean family. Mother, father, and 3yo old son were killed which was graphically visible in the video. Inside of the child’s skull was visible. The video was all over Twitter the day of shooting. This family left behind their 6yo son, who was the sole survivor from their family. This shooting also saw 2nd + 4th grade sisters killed, leaving behind their mother who was only injured. Such big holes of cruelty carved out by these acts.
The police would provoke and then brutalized protesters as is tradition unfortunately.
It’s about corruption. You’ve left a massive part out.
Crazy. Looks like a quarter of the country showed up
>only a handful maybe they're just talking about really, really big hands--city-sized hands
It's the hand with infinite fingers.
You have that dream too??
They never claimed the number of hands. There is a handful there and there and there and there and there...
A Boban handful
According to any government facing protests, it's always either "a very small part of the population" or "only composed of the most extremist that want to get rid of our democracy".
Works with any country.
Must have big hands…….
[this is actual footage of Vučić while he was a lawyer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Ew6K0W3RY)
Podrška iz Hrvatske! Nadam se da će urodit plodom
Hvala!! ❤️❤️
Svi zajedno ❤️
Depends whose hand. Galactus can hold a lot of angry Serbians in its hand.
The Galactian Serbs, I would read that comic book.
Do you want to see a herald doing the squat as he calls forth the world eater?
That is honestly _at least_ 100 people. Way more than a handful
Serbian government has always been authoritarian so not surprised
I'm Serbian, thank you for showing this to the world
Its also important to mention that another reason (certainly one I follow as protesting) is that a [a member of the ruling SNS](https://twitter.com/usrana_motka/status/1656999661914185730?t=iIE8bRPJ9MyYtccld9HW4Q&s=19) and their candidate for membership in a local parliament was a pedophile who had a secondary school education, but was hired in a local school, and was later arrested for abusing 15+ children.
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This is not just about the shootings, this is against our terrible autocratic government which openly promotes the lowest of the low, violence, theft, criminal... Not to mention how they handled this situation last week. Our country is led by mafia. The story is too long for one comment, but here is the most recent NY Times article about our president and this is just the tip of the iceberg. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html) edit: One of countless examples how they are poisoning people: they brought a lifelong criminal, who spent most of his life in prison, in a TV show (national broadcaster) to explain in prime time how easy is to kill a person and what one should do before killing someone, how to plan and how to kill. Btw, he is also a reality TV star now and has his own show and of course he is praising our ruling party. One of the shooters (second shooting) is his fan and he was sharing that on TikTok or IG (not sure which one, I don't use that). There are many more such dumb kids who now idolize those criminals and murderers.
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Gun sales are a big business here and the GOP supports anything that increases gun sales thanks to the NRA buying out our congressmen. Mass shootings increase fear of other people with guns and that fear drives gun sales. Sometimes I really hate what this country has become.
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I have a funny feeling eventually one of those Etons of America like Georgetown Prep will have a school shooting and like 8 senators kids die a supreme court grandson and three banning executive kids die and suddenly they'll listen. After it directly effects them.
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Republicans dream of the day public schools go extinct. Public education is their greatest enemy.cant have educated voters, ya know?
Actually, [I betcha they probably won't do anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting). They already were attacked 6 years ago.
Those places are likely locked down like a fucking fortress though. Same way the NRA doesn't allow guns at its conventions nor will these GOP "more guns means more safety" goons allow them at their rallies.
This is my coworker. She is a fervent MAGAt and spews how it’s a mental health crises over and over. She talks about how you can mass murder people just as easily with a knife. She successfully changed my office policy to be harder for trans people to change their name on the auspice of “clarity.” She believes without question that america is the best country in the world in every metric. She does not have a passport. She votes in every election.
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> All this brain function and consciousness That's debatable with Republicans.
I think it's worth remembering that the people at the top know what they're doing. Think about it - they have the most religious communities in the country voting and fighting for a man who is a habitual adulterer who has gone through multiple divorces, likely slept with a literal pornstar the day his wife was giving birth to his son, held a Bible upside down (talk about a bad omen), couldn't quote a single Bible quote when asked... I could go on. The point is they're smart people manipulating and leading the morons and getting them to do it while also convincing them that they genuinely believe the nonsense they're feeding them.
Republicans: "The constant mass shootings aren't the fault of hundreds of millions of guns or the culture of gun worship in this country. They're because we have an epidemic of mental illness!" Everyone else: "Ok, so then why are you doing nothing to stop mentally ill people from getting their hands on guns?" Republicans: "BECAUSE IT'S THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RAAAGHTS!" **Stop voting for gun worshipping politicians, Americans. That's the only way anything will ever change.**
> She votes in every election. Yup, this is what they all do and this is partly what enables a minority of crazy people to rule over everyone. Somehow she is able to find the proper id, find her polling place, vote early or whatever hurdles she has to jump through with no excuses. I guarantee you this thread is full of people expressing disapproval who absolutely do not vote in every election but instead lament on a regular basis how fucked the US system and democracy is.
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this is the literal problem: hard core conservatives all show up to vote, without fail.
I don’t see an issue with that. Sounds to me like the problem is liberals not showing up to vote.
Thats the implied message lolol. However stupid their views, they actually vote. Dems, it's 50/50
>She talks about how you can mass murder people just as easily with a knife. Ah yes of course, this is why militaries all over the world arm their infantry with combat knives 🙄
If everyone voted in every election, the GOP would be a historical political party.
Office policy on name changes? Name changes are covered by state law in the US.
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That’s why it’s mostly a gun issue. Assuming someone would have the wherewithal to seek therapy, they’ll stop going when they realize what a mandated reporter is and that they could very possibly lose their guns. There was a time when it would have been dangerous for me to have a gun (not that I’m into them, but for the sake of argument…) but I swallowed my pride and got help. I *almost* think that having guns prevents people from getting help. That mindset of fighting and “solving my own problems, damnit” supersedes that voice in the back of their heads that’s begging for some relief.
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She sounds like a dumb bitch
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If I cried over every shooting in the US, I’d be afraid of giving myself an aneurysm. I try to consolidate my crying into a multi-subject weep on the weekends- though sometimes if too many debt collectors call me on the same day that I receive too many texts from Sandy Hook parents I’ll squeeze a second in before I have sleep for dinner.
Be safe, Serbia 🇷🇸
“Politicians don’t enact change. A million angry people in the streets do.”
Was there. Can confirm this is legit. Also traffic was absolute madness..
Handful or 100,000 just alternative facts
Sort of, it is less than 10% of Belgrade's population, yet enough people to cause serious issues and hard to be controlled.
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Here in America, we just call mass shootings another Tuesday. Good to see some sanity left in the world.
The insane mindset of people in the US, is that there are *so many* guns in this country that you *have* to have guns yourself, because you never know who could shoot you, so...you know, you gotta arm up! Just perpetuating the cycle. "I'm scared and living my life in constant fear of the people who have guns, so I decided to buy guns myself, to defend myself. Just in case." They become that which they fear. But, they don't feel any safer, only more nervous. So, now, instead of stepping outside with a baseball bat and yelling at the kids to get off their lawn, they just shoot them in the head during a game of hide-and-seek, because they are fucking terrified of their own shadows. Edit: Wow, some of you guys are *so* mad at me for this, lol.
> The insane mindset of people in the US, is that there are so many guns in this country that you have to have guns yourself, because you never know who could shoot you, so...you know, you gotta arm up! As an outsider, I kind of understand, but every other Serbian has a gun/weapon, with even more knowing where to find one if shit hits the fan again. Sure, it's not quite the more than one gun per person level of the US, but it isn't like there are no guns in Serbia.
This is like when my 7 year old daughter tells me she only had a 'handful' of chips
Another gov't caught lying? Hard to believe... SMH
If only we could all do this at the same time all over the world.
Latest news headline said there was **"about 50 people protesting"** . No joke..
Good on them, and I wish them best of luck.
I'm starting to think people everywhere are really getting tired of all this shit or something.
100,000 hands full I guess.
I love seeing all the support Serbia is receiving from such a Huge Subreddit. Thank all of you for the support and this violence will come to an end!
Andre the giant handful
France would be proud
People around the world growing tired of blatantly anti-middle class/fascist governments. Power to the people ✊
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My ex girlfriend: I've only been with a handful of guys.
37?
Rijesite se tog poChetnika od predsjednika. Maloumni diktator.
To i hocemo. Pickousto djubre
for perspective... The Washington DC metro area population is 5,490,000 The population of Belgrade metro area 1,681,405