By: Gašper Blažič
Thirty years have passed since the time when skinheads appeared on the TV show Tednik as central figures. They were – of course, anonymously – willing to talk about many things, about their lives, about “čefurji” – pejorative expression denoting the inhabitants of Slovenia that are of Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian ethnic origin – and “čapci” – pejorative expression denoting the inhabitants born in Slovenia that are of Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian ethnic origin, even about violent incidents. Journalist Bojan Krajnc asked them numerous questions, one of which was: “Where is the cause of the violence? In alcohol or ideology?” The answer from an anonymous skinhead was brief: “In the heart.”
Does this answer not remind us of the fragility of democracy, for which the English long ago wrote that it is indeed a flawed system, but a better one has not been invented yet? After Francis Fukuyama and his allies celebrated the “end of history” in the early nineties, our almost Nobel laureate Drago Jančar loudly warned of the “new totalitarianism”. Almost thirty years later, Igor Bavčar had to (implicitly) agree. Better late than never.
In this context, we cannot overlook the upcoming anniversary, marking 75 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This central ethical code of the developed world has become the foundation for many modern constitutions of democratic states, including Slovenia. At the adoption of this declaration in the UN on December 10th, 1948, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union, among others, abstained (it was not cosmic rain disrupting electronic voting devices). This was somewhat logical, as the declaration, with a distinctly bourgeois tone, disturbed the communist world, where the dignity of a person as an individual meant nothing (as it does not mean anything today in Gaza), but only the person’s allegiance to some greater whole (class).
I remember the marking of the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the mentioned declaration in 1998, when I had just started my student life. That year, the focus was on education, religious education in the public school system, and the reform of the education system. The aforementioned “pioneers” led by Slavko Gaber, with strong public support, defined the education system in their own way, and from then on, no minister from any right-wing government dared to touch this sacred cow. The example of the education system showed that any declaration of human rights can be just a beautiful façade. After all, paper can withstand everything except fire and acid. In that same year, the then constitutional judge Lovro Šturm listed seven main sins of modern society in his speech at the St. Stanislaus Institute, not without reason.
That declarations and even constitutions can be worthless paper is something we experience especially in times when the newly elected “freedom-oriented” ruling team is going through a swan song and, in doing so, increasingly boldly tramples on the constitution and laws. However, the main problem is not so much the government and the coalition, this degenerate tandem of two wounded beasts, but the public that is willing to tolerate such events without much resistance. The fact that a self-centred and intolerant NGO member can convince the inspection to seize cows in the style of partisan requisitions and that an average citizen of Slovenia just shrugs his shoulders at this is indeed a defeat of common sense, not just a failure to uphold human rights and the rule of law. However, it cannot be otherwise if, in a crowd of students (there were about 50 of them) in a lecture hall – as Boris Tomašič recently expressed his experience – perhaps only two of them, when asked who the Prime Minister of Slovenia is, shyly answered that it might (!) be Robert Golob. I bet that a much larger percentage of these students cast their votes for Golob’s party, but they probably forgot what they actually did for their country after just five minutes. Why? Because even social life has been trivialised.
The problem is not only in our minds and ideology but also in our hearts! If the majority of the public behaves in the style of a two-decade-old statement by Slavoj Žižek, that five minutes of a good film mean more to him than the fate of Slovenia, we cannot expect to see any new faces in power anytime soon. Well, we have been disappointed many times by these experiments, but now… Now it will really happen!
And that is why every declaration, no matter how resounding its name, is just worthless paper – as long as hearts remain as hard as stone.
