By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
How many times have you heard the quasi-argument that reads: if you didn’t protest during the DPS robbery, why are you protesting now?
The “argument” is obviously particular, designed to try to make senseless the protest against this government. At the same time, it is clearly extremely unintelligent: it seems like the cry of a desperate person who cannot say anything in his/her defense, and he/she is left to challenge the ethical credibility of the protestants.
To understand how meaningless this “argument” is, let’s try to make it universal.
If you didn’t protest during 30 years of DPS theft, why did you attend religious processions? One could answer this: because the church is more important to us than corruption. But isn’t it obvious and self-evident that 12 murdered people are more important to someone than corruption?
If you did not protest against the occupation in 1918, why did you rise up against it in 1941?
If they endured centuries of imperial oppression, why did the Russians rise up in the October Revolution?
If the Serbs suffered centuries of Turkish oppression, why did they raise the First Serbian Uprising?
Imagine Marie Antoinette asking herself: if these people have suffered all this far, why did they rebel against my cakes?
Or imagine the medieval European feudal lords who react to the Peasant Uprisings with a retort: these people were silent about all our crimes against them – what right do they have to rebel now?
If the Roman slaves obediently slaved, why did they follow Spartacus one day?
Finally – if you didn’t protest against Christ’s crucifixion, why do you have the nerve to protest at any time in history?
So: if the “argument” against rebellion against this government was universal, not a single rebellion would ever have been raised in history. Human history would consist solely of suffering, without a single wild flame of rebellion.
What can you do: people don’t protest, and then they do. That’s what they are. The rulers of this world have countless cynical arguments against rebellion. We find some of them in the form of so-called “folk wisdom”, among which there is a dead race in stupidity. Let’s say: “Patience is rewarded”. Or: “Be patient, honey, for God’s sake.”
The ruler who, before the rebellion, hangs on the thin thread of the quasi-argument “you have suffered – continue to suffer”, as a rule, soon hangs on something thicker, with greater weight.
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
