Deep Dives Research Challenge #7 (Wikileaks) - Exit Festival

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For this edition of the deep dives research challenge, we will be looking into the Exit Festival and its foundational roots. This multiple award winning festival, is considered to be one of the premier music festivals on the world stage, and has been awarded the 'Best Major European festival' at the EU Festival Awards on four occasions since its inception in the year of 2000. It has also been awarded with various other International Awards, including the UK Festival Awards. This Internationally acclaimed festival is held at the Petrovaradin Fortress, located on the right bank of the river Danube in Novi Sad, in Serbia. The inaugural edition of this festival, also coincided with the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević the then President of the Federal Republic of Serbia from his reign of power, which we will touch on later in this article.

Here is a summary from Wikipedia on the Exit Festival and its founding:

The festival was founded in 2000 in the University park as a student movement, fighting for democracy and freedom in Serbia and the Balkans. After the Yugoslavian general election in 2000, Exit moved to the Petrovaradin fortress in 2001. Nonetheless, social responsibility is still key aspect of the festival activities.

Exit has won the 'Best Overseas Festival' award at the UK Festival Awards in 2007, 'Best Major Festival Award' in 2013 and 2017 and was ranked one of the 10 best major festivals at European Festivals Awards 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and one of the 10 Best Overseas Festival at UK Festival Awards 2013.

Exit has gained international media attention over the years. The International edition of CNN, CNN World Fiesta, featured an article on music festivals in the beginning of June 2011, which included Exit on the list of nine best festivals in the world. The Guardian declared Exit as the best festival in the world in 2006 and the best tourist destination in 2008. The Sun British daily newspaper, included Exit on the list of eight best festival destinations in 2012. In Euronews May 2013 article on the world's leading festival destinations, Exit was included in the ten best European festivals in 2013. BBC included Exit on the list of seven world's greatest festivals in 2018.

As we can see from the Wikipedia entry, the Exit Festival has roots in a student political movement, designed to protest against the then sitting government of Slobodan Milošević and create political propaganda targeted towards student youths for ‘change’. It is therefore no accident that it has been deliberately and carefully transformed from a minority movement at its founding, and into a globally renowned festival with slick marketing campaigns full of political and social change connotations. It also has major support in the form of promotions and advertising from some of the largest western news agencies and magazines, high profile musical artists, as well as the formation of a ‘global’ foundation under the name of Exit International.

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As we can see from the promotional poster above, it has also expanded into several offshoots from the original festival and has filtered outside of Serbia’s borders, conveniently encroaching into other Balkan nations as part of an overall EU integration agenda, with a global voice. Whilst the overall message may sound nice and fluffy and full of ‘hippie love’ to some, this movement has been carefully manufactured to promote EU integration, without the general consent of the countries populations (as we have seen in many other European nations). Of course the majority of people who attend these festivals, are only there to have a genuinely good time to enjoy the musical experience, and are oblivious to the propaganda being foisted upon them or the overall agenda at play!

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Here is the mission statement and Exit’s core values as stated on their website:

Our MISSION is to spark positive social changes and speed up the evolution of human consciousness by using creative industries, top global artistic, educational and charity events as a means to spread the message of love and freedom to the whole planet; all this with a goal to make our VISION come to life – Humanity and Earth in harmony on all levels; local, regional and global.

Started as a student social movement in the year 2000, Exit has been the only world festival that was created from a wish for progress and freedom. The festival’s well-known identity developed through its unique eclectic music program, creating numerous socially responsible campaigns, as well as an active support to charity, ecologic and cultural movements and organizations. Exit is not only a festival, it is a movement, a symbol of progress and a motor of change in the society, but also the leading platform for creative industries not only in Serbia, but in the Balkan region as well - the region that has been torn apart by a decade of bloody wars, where young people still grow up full of hatred towards peoples of neighbouring countries. We have accepted the challenge to change this reality, to make Balkan a symbol of unity and progress.

The sense and roots of our being lay in a strong wish to evolve and progress, as well as positive changes by which we create means to spread the message of freedom to as many people as possible. This spark cannot go out, on the contrary, the vision toward which we are headed has never been clearer – to become and endure as a generator of a strong positive energy that unites people, further inspiring them and making them believe that harmony and miracles are created by us ourselves. Our missions is to, through festivals, creative industries and social activism, continue creating positive social changes and constantly improve ourselves on every step of the way, together with the people around us and society in general. Exit as an exit and support on the path of personal development and true happiness.

On face value, this may read as something very positive with a strong sense of community/unity. The problem lies within the lies, of how we got to this point of needing the social change and freedom from the same top down international organisations, promoted as grass roots movements in the form of foundations and NGO’s. The same influencers who create the friction, then empower themselves to guide the direction of change for you, and show us as a collective what freedom looks like according to their own values and agenda! All of this promoted as leading with ‘activism’.

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Also in the name of activism, we find the UNWTO, interweaved with the Exit Festival.

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

As the leading international organization in the field of tourism, UNWTO promotes tourism as a driver of economic growth, inclusive development and environmental sustainability and offers leadership and support to the sector in advancing knowledge and tourism policies worldwide.

UNWTO encourages the implementation of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, to maximize tourism’s socio-economic contribution while minimizing its possible negative impacts, and is committed to promoting tourism as an instrument in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), geared towards reducing poverty and fostering sustainable development worldwide.

Once again we see the global tentacles embedded within these ‘local’ and ‘grass roots’ efforts, under the guise of ‘socially responsible tourism’.

As was briefly mentioned in the introduction, this Festival directly coincided with the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević that same year…coincidence? Let’s have a look at an article published in The New York Times, which shows what process was taking place just a few short years beforehand.

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This article shows direct admissions of funding groups and organisations in a rinse repeat cycle of similar tactics that we see playing out today, in areas such as the Middle East. I an article published on the CBS website in September 29, 2000 and titled “Anti-Milosevic Protests Launched”, it outlines the direct organisational funding of student protests, and involvement of the US and its NATO allies. The student protests even drew praise from the U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen. Another article published in the The Washington Post under the headline “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition” (after the overthrow took place), it also explains how the main driving force of opposition was achieved through external forces, using local and grass roots efforts to obscure the external influences of material and economic support.

This may seem like a diversion from the original intent of this article, being that of the Exit Festival. However these details are extremely important in showing how these movements are fostered and guided as tools of influencing a population and in this specific instance, the youth of a nation. Arts and culture, are an integral ingredient of any society and can play a key role in the overall plan of sowing the seed of discontent, to overthrow a ‘seemingly’ unpopular leader.

This brings us to the Wikileaks archive, where after searching for documents on the Exit Festival, I came across a classified leaked cable titled “ROLLING OUT THE SERBIAN BENEFITS PACKAGE”.

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Even though this document does not directly relate to the Exit festival itself, once again it illustrates very clearly, the direct link between local efforts and external support from globally influential establishment organisations, and how they are being used to directly influence local populations based on the self-interest of those external forces themselves!

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The second Wikileaks leaked and archived document, shows a direct relationship between the aforementioned programs and the Exit Festival itself, in the form of the GOTV (Get Out The Vote) Campaign. This really is the main intention of a festival such as this one. To get the media on board with the promotion of a programme that includes local grass roots organisation (funded externally), popular culture celebrities and general themes generated to push a certain agenda or message to local residents and in particular the youth in attendance. Of course it is also geared towards electing the ‘preferred candidate’ of the same external forces that fund these campaigns.

The final document is from the leaked trove of Stratfor emails, which includes a mention of members from Stratfor and friends attending the Exit Festival. Any specific reason why Stratfor members would be attending a festival such as this?

The Wikileaks documents and emails are quite amazing indeed and connect the entire organisational structure and influence from a factual perspective. It really does show how the real factor in a lot of these movements and intentions are not what they seem on face value. These documents outline a carefully constructed propaganda narrative that generally promotes peace and freedom, while in reality it is entirely funded by the Military Industrial Complex and their partners!

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As always, have a great day and PEACE