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I think, based on my interviews with a number of
you know more than 30 Optor activists, not only in Belgrade
but in [city name] as well. Based on these interviews
many activists told that they avoided attacking security forces,
you know, by the use of humor, or by ridicule.
The idea is this: by attacking authority forces,
you created more enemies.
So, you sort of pushed these people back to ally with the regime or Milosevic.
So, that's the basic idea. But how they could implement this idea on the ground was even more interesting.
Because they had this, um, organizational structure
in which you would have Belgrade as the central, um, the headquarters
of the whole organization. But then, the role of - the manner of the Belgrade
was only to provide activists - local activists - with trainings.
So, the main content of the training was to, um, prohibit activists
to use, uh, mockery against authorities.
So, and they explained about the rationale behind
why this prohibition was crucial. And, the activists themselves
there were so-called coordinators of branch, and these coordinators would try
to implement these recollections of not mocking security forces.
But the attack would be either Milosevic or his wife or, you know, some figures in the government.
Who sometimes acted very absurdly,
so that's how they sort of framed the whole approach to their use of humor in their nonviolent campaigns.