A leaderless revolution can only be a color revolution, even if it didn’t start that way.

if there are no leaders, who did they elect?

Actual analysis instead of snark. I’m really struggling to understand this movement politically, and I don’t think this author is being a naive lib about it. He seems legit:

With the economy dependent on foreign direct investment after the destruction of Yugoslavia, the political leadership formed close ties with foreign-owned corporations. Vučić’s name was often intertwined with the activities of multinationals such as Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant that sought to extract the country’s lithium.

In this context I received death threats following the publication of a critical scientific paper on the contested lithium issue; many of my colleagues faced similar intimidation. But the mistreatment of Serbian citizens who challenged large-scale investment projects also began to shape public consciousness in Serbia. Vučić’s party was accused of standing by and even participating, while opposition parties offered only lacklustre responses.

That section links to another piece about the death threats he received for identifying this as a necolonial scheme to subordinate Serbia to European capitalists. He finishes up with a pretty good warning that I think illustrates why this movement is so hard to read:

On the other hand, one should not idealise the situation. The list comprises ideologically opposed blocs, from rightwing adherents to leftwingers and liberals. Most of those elected have never before held political office, and the parliamentary system will require them to nominate a prime minister and, in future presidential elections, a presidential candidate. Will the Student List bring the same energy to the national assembly without jeopardising the very method that made it so strong? Moreover, for Vučić, losing the election does not necessarily mean losing the system. On the contrary, his concession of defeat may also have been a strategic move, allowing him to keep the party apparatus intact for a comeback.

The Student List is the result of a real, passionate, dedicated popular movement, but its lack of leadership and ideological cohesion has meant that who ended up elected is an absolute mess of contrary positions that will absolutely fail to govern. Those are all the ingredients for a color revolution in the CIA’s interest. The best-case-scenario read of this is the Serbian electoral equivalent of the February Revolution; aka, I don’t think there’s a better option for this new government than a short, chaotic life to be replaced by the cohesion born from its failures.

This Breakthrough News piece offers some more useful political analysis for our purposes. The article is short and worth reading in its entirety. It relies mostly on analysis from the Party of the Radical Left, a relatively new party in Serbia that gave ‘critical support’ to the Student List. They identify the problems of technocracy and heterogeneity in the SL while recognizing the movement itself as a powerful and significant evolution of popular democracy in connection with trade unions. They emphasize the anti-zionist elements that were strong throughout the movement.

Europe is on the brink, and social unrest across the peninsular subcontinent is only going to grow. I don’t think the situation with the Student List is anywhere near final. The Student List government, without a program or party, seems doomed to fail, but that failure could easily be perfect soil for the next, more cohesive stage of the mass movement that brought it to power. Two years of sustained street action is a gargantuan achievement that can’t be discounted just because we’re skeptical of the stability of their first governing coalition.

I have a thesis that the era of hyperimperialism (where all imperialist competition is subordinated under US control and there is no anti-imperialist power able to counter is) has made revolution impossible since the fall of the Soviet Union, but that is now coming to an end as the empire retracts in the face of Chinese growth. Every single region of the world has a complex relationship with this changing dynamic. Europe’s is defined by a ruling class who willingly kneels to the US for a big slice of the imperialist pie while the spoils of imperialism can no longer trickle down to the European masses. The lack of material abundance from imperialism is forcing a rift between the the ruling class and working class of Europe that had previously been papered over with concessions won by labor and spoils won by imperialism. Those are both gone, and that means a rise in class conflict is a historical inevitability, and it will follow the same channels it always has. Europe, I think, is moving rapidly towards a genuinely revolutionary scenario that will hinge on a reorientation of its relationship to Russia (for energy) and China (for everything else), which is very clearly in the interest of the European masses. If they can recognize that and act in a unified fashion towards it, they could be one locus of a new wave of global revolution that’s 1) extremely well-developed in Asia, 2) has a strong starting point in Africa, and 3) ready to explode in Latin America.

There is no such thing.

If you don’t pick your leaders they will pick themselves.

Okay… so leaderless in the sense of “there isn’t a single public figurehead.” Not actually a movement without leaders.

I’m not an expert at all nor do I have extensive knowledge or experience with the country or the political situation going on in Serbia so Im open to having my mind/understanding changed. Take anything I say with a grain of salt.

This is the student movement whose electoral arm is directly funded by the US state department through multiple different American and German organizations and NGOs such as the NED and USAID as well as a couple US embassies to boot? Yeaaahhh… I think this movement definitely has its leaders. I don’t think it started as a color revolution but now the stated goals of the movement are to move closer to the west because the standing leaders of the country have refused to sanction Russia and fall into IMF restructuring traps. It’s now definitely not as organic as people are making it out to be.

Here’s a video going over the country’s historical ties with Yugoslavia and the Serbian student movement’s US and western European backing. https://youtu.be/BaOTHMqYSkw

Without an actual theory of change to underwrite your movement, the capitalists will just give you their theory of “stability”