By: Gašper Blažič
It was not necessary to follow the events surrounding the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II too closely to notice how aggressively the “proud successors” are stomping across our country. What is particularly evident is that they are building their identity for this “Victory Day” on hatred toward those who, at the time, stood on the anti-communist side. It has been 35 years since the formal fall of the regime, which undoubtedly allowed for the legal dissemination of literature that sheds light on the “dark side of the moon,” but the propaganda remains strong, and hearts remain hardened. That is why I argue that reconciliation can only happen on a personal level. We cannot expect acts of reconciliation from the ruling politics, because it needs conflict – a conflict it artificially maintains like a hamster wheel spinning endlessly. And for that, it needs fuel: intolerance, lies, and manipulation, as a continuation of the good old class struggle.
However, the ruling nomenclature is quietly aware that its deceptions and abuses cannot last forever. That is also why it constantly looks for new ways to turn some of its darlings from the world of show business into “victims of right-wing madness” – whether that be Tina Gaber or Denis Avdić. These are classic cases of public opinion manipulation, where some of the most loyal regime lackeys – who appear (superficially) to be outside politics – are exploited to provoke an outraged reaction from the other side. This Hegelian perpetuum mobile can then continue to spin endlessly. The goal of this propaganda is to limit the opposition’s reach to a relatively small number of informed “rural folks,” while keeping the majority of the population bogged down in celebrity trivia, which, when needed, takes on a political form to decisively support their masters. This phenomenon is not new; nearly 30 years ago, writer Drago Jančar described it (in Slovenske marginalije, part of the collection Sproščena Slovenija – obračun za prihodnost), but it seems to have grown even more widespread since then.
The pseudo-leftists have also found a new “market niche”: importing the Middle Eastern crisis into Slovenian domestic politics. They claim that Israel is a genocidal state systematically exterminating the Palestinian people (who, in fact, do not constitute a distinct nation but are rather Palestinian Arabs “between the river and the sea”). And of course, who else would support “genocidal” Israel but our right wing, supposedly revealing its inhumanity and backwardness. Here one must acknowledge the propaganda success of the global left, which broadcasts media reports of Israel’s daily bombardments of Gaza, showing the deaths of innocent civilians, not just from bombs, but also from lack of food, water, medicine, and healthcare. All this is blamed on the supposedly inhuman Israel. Of course, not a word is said about the millions of euros that the European Union, including Slovenia, allocates for Gaza, which actually disappear into Hamas’s purchase of weapons and ammunition. Not a word about how Hamas literally robs the people of Gaza, denying them access to aid while using civilians as human shields. Nothing new, such tactics are already known from Dražgoše in 1942, where the communists turned a local tragedy into a grotesque epic.
Based on such distortions and censorship of information, the “proud successors of the Communist Party of Slovenia” and their like-minded allies across Europe are creating a false image of what is happening in Gaza and the Middle East more broadly. Not because they feel compassion for Palestinians – far from it. It is because, in true communist fashion, they are using them as a tool for a new kind of class warfare. In this context, Palestinians are simply a means in a hybrid war to manipulate public opinion in Europe, framing the conservative right’s support for Israel as support for genocide. This propaganda relies heavily on emotional manipulation. And when someone dares to expose the shallowness of this propaganda and present the historical and political facts surrounding the Middle East after World War II, they are immediately met with vile attacks and discreditation. Because no one must learn the truth.
