By: Dr Matevž Tomšič
Dark forces are on the march in our land. There is even a promise that with the possible victory of Anže Logar in the second round of the presidential elections, they will rise to power again. And then the “reign of terror” from the last two years of Janša’s reign will return. At least this is how Prime Minister Robert Golob can be understood. And we can be sure that this point of view will be repeated throughout the continuation of the presidential campaign by his political supporters and many media “mockingbirds”.
Labelling political opponents with “dark forces” is not a slip by the Prime Minister, nor a mistake. This is an integral part of his discourse, which is very reminiscent of what we can hear from the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus. In a similar way, he demonises both internal and external enemies, be it domestic opponents, Ukrainians, Europeans, Americans, the West as a whole. All of them are portrayed as the “epitome of evil” by the Russian dictator Putin and his lackeys. It is they (and not the parasitic ruling elite) who are to blame for the fact that “Mother Russia” does not have the authority it should have; that its people do not live as well as they should. That is why it is necessary to suppress the domestic opposition, conquer unruly neighbours, threaten the world with nuclear annihilation.
Our subalpine Putinists, of course, do not have such resources at their disposal as the Kremlin ruler has. Fortunately, Slovenia is a member of the European Union, so local authorities cannot afford everything. But they can harass those rare media – such as the one you are reading – that report critically on the government, the largest government party, and its leader; what Golob’s media political commissar Mojca Šetinc Pašek is doing with her inquisitorial parliamentary investigative commission. They can carry out personnel purges in all positions that the government’s tentacles can reach (this is happening with an intensity that we have not yet witnessed in independent Slovenia). They can also abolish institutions that they do not control in terms of personnel and that are not on their ideological line. The latter happened with the Museum of Slovenian Independence. Independence is pretty low on the list of values for the rulers anyway, and the aforementioned museum might pay too much attention to the “wrong” individuals and their ideas.
The Prime Minister’s statement that “we will not allow the SDS candidate to enter the presidential palace” is particularly worrying. Excuse me? Is this not decided by the voters? What if they support Logar in the majority anyway? Can we expect the election to be annulled? But maybe they will stage something earlier and thus change the election result. Such “freedom” can really scare us.
The one who actually embodies the “dark forces” in Slovenia in the sense of relics of the undemocratic past, when people’s freedom was systematically restricted, is Robert Golob together with his camarilla. It is not just that he has no morals and manners, that he is terribly shallow in his intolerable arrogance and pretentiousness, that his statements and performances are cheap and intellectually shallow. It is not just that he behaves like a typical scion of the red oligarchy, who thinks that everything always has to be the way he wants it to be; but if it is not, he starts screaming and acting hysterically like a spoiled child. The main problem is that he is essentially an autocrat with a way of thinking that was typical of the party members of the former regime. He does not recognise pluralism; he does not recognise the legitimacy of those who think differently from him. As such, he represents a threat to an open and democratic society. He publicly proclaims that he brings people freedom, but in fact he aims to introduce a new one-mindedness, when everything will be under the control of “ours”, that is, those who consider themselves advanced and enlightened, and every critical voice will be silenced.