Serb Prez Laments West’s ‘Liberal-Marxist’ Culture Where Instagram Dog Pics Get More ‘Likes’ Than Kids

A dog sits in a baby carriage as people protest against the government's austerity me
Getty Images
Oliver JJ Lane

The West is being subjected to “liberal-political Marxism” theories which threaten its very survival on the most fundamental level because ever greater numbers of people have been successfully convinced to stop having children, the Serbian president warned at the biennial Demographic Summit.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made the remarks at the Budapest-hosted conference — the fourth of its kind — alongside other key pro-family politicians and influencers from around the world, including former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and French pro-life conservative Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. President Vučić said his country was already putting in place financial measures to help families, which, he said, was in emulation of the already successful policies in Hungary.

The new pro-family moves by a handful of nations aside, however, Vučić warned the West faced a serious challenge in “politics, mindsets, and different opinions” which had rendered women having children unfashionable, and made speaking favourably about families improper or even outright impolite.

Illustrating the massive cultural shift presently underway, Vučić challenged his audience to try an experiment, to see which of two images shared on social media could reliably get more “likes”.

He said: “In today’s world, if you put on Twitter or Instagram — or some other social network — if you put a nice photo of a beautiful dog we have [in our home], and I love animals, I adore them, you are always going to get more likes than if you put a beautiful photo of your kids.

“I am saying something that is almost forbidden to be said and I know I am going to be criticised by everyone. Please, check this for yourself and see whether I was right.

“Today, it is impolite if you speak about children, if you speak about your kids, if you speak about family values, because you can hurt someone. But you are very much polite if you speak about how you are going to do a new haircut for your pet. You can laugh at me. I am not laughing. I regret this fact.”

This development, Vučić said, was being pushed by “a sort of liberal-political Marxism” which was working to change Western ways of life. The changes were so profound, he said, Western nations could “lose the possibility for our own survival”.

Part of this, the Serbian president claimed, was being forced through green environmentalist dogma. While he acknowledged it was a duty for all nations, from China and the U.S. right down to small countries like Serbia, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, Vučić said green politics were being waged as a war, a kind of “jihad against the disobedient” who do not accept left-wing values. Green politics are not more important than the end of the family in European nations, the president told the Budapest demographics conference, but to say so was not fashionable. 

Also to blame was the media culture, the Serb said. While world leaders had gathered to speak about the future of the family in Budapest, he predicted that the waiting journalists would swarm to ask those leaders questions about anything but, as the topics being discussed at the summit simply did not interest them. While no individuals controlled the media as such, Vučić observed, there were nevertheless those who influenced the narrative and who “are very good at creating a media environment from which we cannot escape”, leading him to suspect that very few ideas from the family conference would go on to percolate into the global establishment news. 

“We are entrapped in a way”, he said, musing “but we have to find solutions”. 

Wrapping his remarks, President Vučić noted: “In 30 years just one African country — Nigeria — will have more inhabitants than the entire European Union, the entire United States of America… I believe it is high time to act, and to react to our own hypocrisy and to take action which will lead us to a certain future, a future that will keep our nations alive.”

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.