Sistem te laže

I like this song by Beogradski sindikat for two main reasons:
  1. Dichotomy between song itself and the fanbase (as manifested in yt comments)
  2. It shows how democracy and dictatorship are essentially the same in how they function
     


 Let's first cover the second point, since the first one follows from it. Both dictatorships and democracies are based on relationship between the ruled and the rulers (between the people and the autocrat or representative [or some abstract majority in direct democracies), which is largely shaped by wealth of information posseded by the ruled. This information shapes individual (and thus collective) perception of the reality, since this perception is based on it (this perception is also called ideology by Žižek and his ilk). So, in short, these systems function according to relationship between the people and their ruler, which is shaped by the ideology.

Now, the crucial part is that this ideology isn't shaped by both parts equaly, but is largely in the control of the rulers, for example through state media (but also through commercial media, since capitalists are rulers in their own right). This song shows, that the situation in Yugoslavia, where ideology was shaped by mainly state channels, is pretty much the same as today, where ideology is shaped by commercial media, since they both impact ideology in favour of the rulers (which are now both the state and the capital).

We can see now that the functioning of both systems is one and the same, based on distributing (neccesarily) biased information to the people. And from this mechanism of ideology follows the first point, the one of dichotonomy.

Here we see an example yt comment for this video:

Translation: The World would be a better place without Croatians, Albanians, Montenegroans and Turks, and especially without NATO.

 Isn't it ironic that even though the song is explicitly about the impact of the system on the ideology, about its bias, most of the comments are in complete and utter accord with the system's bias? Their opinions match the (Serbian) media completely and at the same time they express that they like the song.

So, some food for thought: Think a bit about how your perception of the world is manufactured by the system, about how things you see as completely natural are its fabrications.

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