It really isn't smart to do this kind of thing.
Once an organization actually attacks you, it's very easy to decide that any legitimacy they view themselves as having is irrelevant and to come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns.
Once an organization actually attacks you, it's very easy to decide that any legitimacy they view themselves as having is irrelevant and to come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
It was now a revolt against произвол, an idea of arbitrariness tinged with tyranny, helplessness in the face of power, the feeling that the powers that be can do whatever they want to you, and you are helpless, that you are being treated as a plaything, as a thing and not as a human being, as an object and not as a subject, and the Maidan became a revolt against произвол, it became an insistence on being treated as a person and not as a thing, as a subject not as an object, and they began to call themselves on the Maidan the revolution of dignity.
It seems that Yanukovych (Ukraine's corrupt Russian puppet leader) was counted on the fact that if you shock people this way (brutally beating up protestors), not enough to kill people, but enough to terrify them, the parents will freak out and they will pull their kids off the streets... (after many people's children were beaten) Suddenly you have parents joining their children on the streets, and that is the moment that creates the revolution...
At the risk of inflammation: sounds like Black Lives Matter.
Once it gets to that point, there's no reason not to immediately organize a military response.
And yet history shows many (dozens?) of instance where that's exactly what most people thought.
The way to defeat a dictator is not by painting yourself as a defenseless victim. (That is only useful as the first step to gain support.) The way is to show him you have a greater potential for violence than him and if he doesn't flee, he will be punished (usually killed, sometimes tortured first).
They had huge numbers and if at least some police were on their side they were on the right track to escalating the threat of violence. At some point the dictator would have either broken or the violence would have materialized. But that requires the good people to keep their weapons and use them.
Basically, I'm saying that if one is attacked, the one can do as one likes, but if one is not attacked, then one can leave things to democracy; and it is difficult to know whether ones position, in the absence of an election, has popular support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
Where the heck are they going to get those in Serbia? Weren't they rounded up after the war, especially mortars?
Also that sort of thing tends not to last very long against the regular army, who have a much larger supply of materiel and are better trained. It only really works if the army flips politically against the regime (think Ceaucescu, or less violently the Carnation Revolution).
I've personally been to weddings in both Serbia and Montenegro, in the early-mid 2000s, where they fired full auto weapons with live rounds into the air. AK variants and such. I remember us kids collecting shell casings and stripper clips.
I'd say that it's mostly handguns and hand grenades, some AK and SKS variants, obsolete 40s-50s SMGs given out to territorial defense decades ago, some bolt action rifles and some Zoljas (anti tank rocket) and AP mines from the war.
I remember a guy in Podgorica, Montenegro (local football hooligan and drug dealer) firing a Zolja at a department store at night. He had obtained it for 200 euros in Belgrade, Serbia and "had to try it out". [1]
I also remember them catching a 15 year old with an AK in 2017 in Podgorica, Montenegro. [2]
I loved frequenting the local flea market and you could regularly see stuff like helmets for sale, also some magazines (I remember seeing one for an MP40 or similar SMG). I also witnessed a transaction, a guy buying a small pistol from another guy at the flea market. The gun quickly changed hands and dissapeared in his jacket, but I saw it beyond doubt.
Anything else I could write would just bring into question my credibility, so I'll keep these stories for us who lived through it. It recently happened to me that I started quesioning my childhood memories (age 8 or so), like "did that really happen or did I imagine it", so I asked people I remembered were there with me, and yep it sure as hell did. I even forgot some details and people involved. But I'd have a hard time beleiving it if I heard it.
Also bear in mind that a lot of the people who have these weapons actually support the government and loved Vučić's old party from the 90s. For example, one of the people firing an AK at his son's wedding was a policeman, and his grandson is now a policeman and Vučić sympathiser in Belgrade.
[1] https://www.b92.net/o/info/vesti/index?nav_id=211841
[2] https://volimpodgoricu.me/novosti/podgorica-uhapsen-petnaest...
I'm pretty sure that's not actually how power or legitimacy work anyway.
The solution is then always an organized military response. This applies whether it's your government or somebody else's.
In actual history, not always, and not that often.
Case in point, for example, the Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people died and 400–700 were injured when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
The immediate effect of Peterloo was a crackdown on reform. The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication of the Manchester Observer.
For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, [..], and the discovery and foiling of [..] conspiracy to blow up the cabinet that winter.
By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the Six Acts, to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo.
Events such as [ ..these.. ] all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time.
Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met. Following the Great Reform Act 1832 [ ... ]The US has some stuff of this sort too, presumably at least partially inherited from British tradition.
Here in Sweden though, when we have attacked the government we have generally been successful and have obtained useful recompense. Violence, when you're organized and sensible, really works. It's terrifying to see properly organized people attack, because you know that even if you're willing to siege it out, level your own city, it's going to be like the Siege of Mariupol. If people know how to fight and have guns and mortars, there's no police force that can do anything useful, and no military force that can do anything useful without it being actual war, on your own territory.
You quote someone famously deposed by rebellion and died in prison as an example of uniquely British repression preventing revolution?
It's absurd and toxic to claim the sentiments of Richard II are uniquely British. European monarchies are better understood as an interconnected transnational class. Richard II aka Richard of Bordeaux, born in the presence of the kings of Castile, Navarre and Portugal, married the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor and then the daughter of King of France...
> Here in Sweden though, when we have attacked the government we have generally been successful
Oh? Möre uprising, Västbo peasant uprising, Värmland rebellion, Böda Uprising, Morning Star rebellion... etc. all suppressed and leaders executed.
aggressive crowd control measures have been used very often and they almost never result in an armed rebellion. that's just nonsense. There are many MANY levels of escalation left for both sides - as well as the real expectation of behind the scenes diplomacy and within-the-system politics.
like really, are you just fantasizing about a balkan civil war because it's exciting? or are you trying to get more people to think that civil disagreement may as well be considered warfare? just what are you on about, mate?