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Predrag Koraksic’s cartoons are again targeted by authorities because they expose lies and fraud, say Danas interlocutors
The fact that Vladanka Malović said that I am a “slave of great evil” is a classic Freudian error. I am a slave, like all of us.
Photo: Stanislav MilojkovićThe citizens of Serbia are slaves of the great evil, and that is Aleksandar Vučić’s regime, says cartoonist Predrag Koraksić Koraks on the occasion of the barrage of criticism that government representatives threw at him for one of the current cartoons.
The insults of Vladanka Malović, head of the SNS information service, and later of prominent representatives of the ruling structure, on the occasion of the illustration of Koraks in the Danas newspaper, are nothing more than a habitual form of communication of the ruling regime.
– Progressives cannot do without insults, now it is a salvo against me and will last until they find another topic. Tomorrow, your target may be Marinika again or someone else. They must be in that fire all the time, Koraks believes.
The member of the SNS Presidency, Vladanka Malović, attacked Koraksić, published in our newspaper on Tuesday, illustrating the brutal beating in front of the betting shop in Novi Sad. The reason for the criticism is that the drawing shows the president of the state, Aleksandar Vučić, “drinking” the blood of a young man beaten with a straw. Koraks’ explanation is that it is a metaphor: that Vučić feeds on violence.
Cartoonist Dusan Petricic, who is often targeted by the authorities, points out that political cartoons are always and only comments on what politicians do and that cartoonists have never been responsible for the crimes, beatings, crimes, misfortunes and sufferings of the people.
– The question that has been waiting for eight years is the answer of how long this government, personified in the character of Aleksandar Vučić, will behave as seen with kindness and precision in our cartoons, even in this latest Koraks cartoon. Will we remember once again that all these incomprehensible robberies that we have witnessed for eight years, all the lies, fraud, beatings of people, almost daily explosions of expensive cars on the streets of our cities, crimes of all kinds, including the largest sale of land, rendering parliament meaningless, the destruction of education and justice or the terrified flight of educated young professionals were not committed by cartoonists. It is the work of Aleksandar Vučić and his mafia, Petričić is explicit.
He adds that the only question is whether it is a political cartoon, because “the characters and actors in our cartoons cannot be called political by any logic.” They are simply and simply gangsters ”, he concludes.
He said that cartoonists will never stop revealing the government’s disobedience.
The journalist Vukasin Obradovic points out that the attitude towards caricature is a measure of tolerance of every government.
– We live in a society of pathological mythologization of the ruler and that is why there is so much sensitivity to caricature. On the other hand, Koraks is always a convenient target because his cartoons better recognize Serbia for which there is no place in the illusion of reality that the government offers us. This creates serious problems for progressives because they cannot draw. In their Serbia, they created their own media, their own analysts, columnists, experts, non-governmental organizations, their own “opposition”, everything that is needed for the functioning of a parallel reality. The only thing they failed to find was an adequate response to Koraks, Petričić, Somborac Ob, Obradović points out for Danas.
Bodybuilder Ratko Božović explains that the cartoon has the power to absorb many words, it is easier to reveal the lies and deceptions imposed by the government, and that is why it attracts so much attention and criticism.
– The cartoon is never a literal image but an allegory, it reveals what is hidden under the illusion of reality. And government leaders do not tolerate any reading of reality other than what they impose and establish pragmatically. They have established “fraud” as the dominant dimension, and what will the aphorist deal with if not with the detection of these fraud and lies? Here, irony mocks our reality, and the problem is not that the cartoonist focuses on that irony, but that someone made that reality, says Božović. He also emphasizes that we had no such attacks on the freedom of caricature even in the time of Tito and Milosevic.
This is not the first case that representatives of the highest authorities of Serbia and the current Aleksandar Vučić regime have harshly criticized Danas and the cartoonist Koraks for illustrations depicting politicians and scandals in which they participated satirically. In fact, the Vučić regime had more criticism of the cartoons in Danas than any previous government from the Milošević era to the present day.
Prior to this, authorities were upset by a cartoon from May this year, in which government leaders were presented with a banner “for fascism” and they themselves wore representatives of the Hitler regime.
Perhaps the biggest convictions and threats were experienced by the Danas and Koraks newspaper for the drawing in which Vučić is illustrated holding the target while the sniper aims at him. This November 2019 cartoon was an allusion to the NIN cover on the issue of arms sales in “Krušik”.
The authorities did not like it when Koraksa drew Hitler and Goebbels with SNS deputies Aleksandar Martinović and Vladimir Orlić in his arms in November 2018, as the cartoonist’s reaction to the insults that these two sent to the Danas newspaper account from the National Assembly. Some then recognized Aleksandar Vučić in the character of Hitler, although Koraks himself explained that he had no such associations.
Progressives also reacted harshly to the cartoon published in June 2016, in which Vučić is shown as a stripper removing a ghost, alluding to the ghost demolition in Savamala. Vučić was then bothered by the fact that he was depicted as a “prostitute”, and his associates defended him by criticizing Danas and Koraks.
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