Comment by Ivaylo Noyzi Tsvetkov:
Okay, wonderful: this was a protest that seemed to take us back to more innocent times, and which saddened the veterans of 1997/2013/2020, because they looked around and saw that the notorious Gen Zs predominated in the same square with approximately the same demands.
Will anything change?
The official media stitched them up as "economic", i.e. against the draft budget, but this is simply not true. There is almost no young person between 20 and 35 who has gone to protest against the dividend tax, the increased social security threshold or the shameless financial tolerance of the bureaucracy. No, the protest has an almost specific addressee, similar to the one from the summer of 2013, which, however, let me remind you, returned Borisov to power, albeit in a first "assembly" with the democratic forces, then supposedly united as the "Reformer Bloc".
Now questions arise: is there a way to harness this Gen Z energy for a decisive change in the status quo? My answer is "rather not". I firmly believe that until the working poor in the countryside get decidedly angry, it is unlikely that anything will change. And by "decidedly" I understand that they are taking the whips - I'm talking about the semi-serfs and the civil servants - which also seems incredible to me, because, as we know from the April Uprising, it is almost impossible to abandon your semi-settled life, which literally depends on the government, let alone go out to the square to push the same government that feeds you.
Of course, I also saw positives - especially in terms of the fact that the protest is now completely on smartphones, I even thought of calling it "iProtest". For the first time, it seemed that all types of colors of the nation protested. Here the second, seemingly Parmenidean question arises - against what, against what, against whom? The easiest thing to say is that it is specifically against Delyan Peevski, but that would be a simplification. The problem is the system itself, which allows a group of oligarchs to wrest power from Boyko Borisov.
Who will win from the protest - PP-DB or Radev?
However, if the protest becomes really important, continues and succeeds, it will topple this government dominated by Borisov and Peevski. And here comes the most important caveat: let it not happen that the pure energy of Gen Z pushes the pro-Soviet Rumen Radev to power. The leaders of PP-DB have already shown that they are unlikely to raise their support just because of the big protest. That is why I said that until they incite and raise the people from the masses in the places, they will remain half-grown.
Just imagine a person in a small town or village, especially if he is young, defeated by GERB, and now by "New Beginning", how he identifies with Asen Vassilev, Mirchev and General Atanasov. It is clear that with these leaders it will not work. They are far from the height of the task that the protesters set for them. As long as this is the case, it will be difficult for them to exceed 15%. The point of the PP-DB is not to give this protest to Radev, with whom they are in a special and supposedly oppositional concubine.
And maybe something else: to stop this budget, which is like the revenge of the well-fed (at the expense of the hungry); take advantage of the complete collapse of social norms online. But also note the notorious young people who will knock you down relatively soon while shouting "6-7".
Let's not "spend" this generation either
For a philosophical finale: I thought I would tell you about great thinkers like David Hume and Arthur Schopenhauer, who in another context reflected on the culture of protest. However, it seemed to me that my eternal epistemology in this case did not work.
I see something new and Pythagorean in this protest and I think and worry that we will not "spend" this new generation, brilliant in its lack of fear of all "fat". This is not Andreshko's dream to overthrow the power, this looks beautiful and brings the necessary youthful energy. Plus the online ghettos, which contain protest. Right in the nines, if you allow me to make you laugh.