By: Bogdan Sajovic
Once I sat in one of the Liverpool pubs, killing time with a pint before catching the ferry.
Beer, naturally, fosters international brotherhood, and thus I engaged in conversation with the fellow next to me at the bar. He boasted of owning a glassblowing trade and making around eighty thousand pounds a year. In the then Yugoslav currency, that would be a quarter of a million German marks. Although his success was largely aided by the liberal economic and tax policies of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his hatred for “Maggie” was almost fanatical. But when I asked him what she had done to him, he spewed out some clichés, the most important being that she did not yield to the miners’ strike and that she disliked unions.
Now, my interlocutor had no connection whatsoever to either unions or miners. In the end, it turned out that he did not really know why he hated the Prime Minister, except that in his neighbourhood, where they traditionally vote left, you are supposed to hate her, because otherwise your neighbours, acquaintances, and colleagues ostracise you, and you become an enemy too. So, the wilder and more irrational your hatred, the more you belong. And, of course, safer too. I come to similar conclusions when I talk to my, admittedly rare, leftist acquaintances. They all fiercely hate Janez Janša, but when I ask them what he has done to deserve such hatred, I never get a concrete answer, just some rehearsed clichés; one of the most common being that “Janša divides the nation”.
THE LEFT’S MODUS OPERANDI IS PRACTICALLY THE SAME IN ALL COUNTRIES, IN ALL SOCIAL SYSTEMS, AND IN ALL PERIODS.
Well, Slovenia has been divided since the autumn of 1941, since the infamous Kidrič proclamation that “whoever is not with us is against us”, which led to genocide, around seven hundred mass graves in Slovenia, and a crippled society. So, if we draw parallels with the Liverpool glassblower, we see that the left’s modus operandi is practically the same in all countries, in all social systems, and in all periods. And that is creating an environment based on irrational hatred, unconditional obedience, and the rule of fear…