You have probably noticed that we have recently started to use the phrases “left fascism”, “left fascists” and the like a bit more. And of course, loud protests immediately followed in the comments below the articles and on social media that it is an oxymoron because fascism is (and was) a right wing ideology. Of course, I am aware that no explanation will help here – not even that Benito Mussolini, who is considered a personified fascism, was a socialist in his origins. The same is true of Adolf Hitler, whose party he led was National Socialist and even “workers”. The inscription, which adorned many concentration and extermination camps, namely “Work Liberates!” [Arbeit macht frei], only shed additional light on the political substance of the ideology of the forces of the twentieth century.
Of course, many people will remember that the phrase “left fascism” was mentioned by the then and current Prime Minister Janez Janša via a video address to the participants of the Assembly for the Republic on February 8th, 2013. It does not matter at all who first invented the phrase, but the fact is that it is also cited by Wikipedia. Who does it actually represent? Above all, the extreme left, which has its own features in Slovenia because it does not represent a struggle for the establishment of justice (although it is celebrated in this way), but represents a defender of old revolutionary privileges and their extension into a new time. At the same time, of course, all those who do not blow into the same horn are “fascists”. Regardless of the fact that this extreme option has long since introduced the typical fascist segregation into “party heavens” and “party hell”. Precisely because of the system of preserving and developing revolutionary traditions, the extreme left, of which party called the Levica represents only the core, is not at all a marginal phenomenon of the Slovene space. On the contrary: because the National Liberation War still represents a kind of mainstream political substance of Slovenia, left wing radicals or left fascists can sell their ideas to the public as something normal. Therefore, it is not uncommon for the infamous SD MP Matjaž Nemec to be able to sell platitudes about the far-right and its connections with the largest government party to the public until recently, without any of the media experts blinking their eyes.
And speak of the devil: as soon as the ink on the paper, where the views of Nemec and his associates on the alleged neo-Nazis in Slovenia were written, dried up, a series of protests against government measures took place. Protests on Wednesdays have joined the now traditional gathering of Friday’s cycling revolters. However, this time the organisers were from an option that could otherwise be recognised as the “far right” – regardless of the fact that the leader of one of the non-parliamentary parties organising these protests is a descendant of the first or second generation of immigrants. His threats of a state blockade and even a coup d’état are in themselves eloquent enough, as is the behaviour of the protesters led by Ladislav Troha, as well as his political agenda and, ultimately, the intrusion into the RTV Slovenia building. But TV people are still looking for political extremists where there are none.
To understand the current situation, it is worth looking back a bit, about 30 years ago, when political pluralism was just returning to Slovene soil and the first beginnings of the Slovene Spring parties were emerging. At that time, there were no major populist outgrowths, if we do not take into account the relatively populist Ivan Kramberger. His violent death – the motive for this assassination was probably because he was too unmanageable for the para-state – (along with the disintegration of Demos) made room for Jelinčič’s nationalists, who at the time of late autumn 1992 as quite fresh “new faces” swung among the strongest parliamentary parties (12 seats), however, the parliamentary group later fell apart, some of its members joined the extra-parliamentary Slovenian National Right. Later, some other marginal parties appeared (the National Social Union under the leadership of Matjaž Gerlanc, Štorman’s Republicans, etc.), but none of them seriously interfered in politics. At the end of the 1990s, Jelinčič adopted the rhetoric now used by Miha Kordiš, but abandoned it a few years later. Therefore, during the turbulent period of the emergence of Slovenian parliamentary (semi)democracy, no clear far-right option could develop. In general, the core of the problems has always been somewhere in the political centre, where one of the spring parties almost always cooperated with the other side in a “Kocbek” way. To make the pain even greater, Ciril Pucko also drove his stake in the Demos reconstruction project after the 1992 elections. The spring party has somehow come to terms with the sociological category of “right”, although its policy is not typically “right” – on the one hand it is mostly socially oriented, on the other hand it is in favour of change in contrast to socialist conservatives who defend the so-called commune feudalism.
Major changes in this camp took place only after 2015 with a large wave of migrants to Europe. While the classical-liberal option has never been well organised in our country (with the exception of Virant’s Citizens’ List, which quickly went down in history) and could at most offer a correction to overly socialist programmes in the existing spring parties (and yes, the only remnant of such a party Prstan is only one of the left wing propaganda branches on Twitter today), those who thought that the then right wing opposition did not care enough about identity and the problem of migration began to organise, namely that it is too pragmatic and not in favour of defending national interests on these issues, especially in European political structures. To this end, the Homeland League was created, which was technically conceived in a similar way as the Citizens’ List, but was actually buried by its main protagonists at the very beginning, first because they chose the SDS as their main opponent (which was still in opposition at the time!), and then with mutual quarrels. Of course, this does not mean that the said party has already been written off, as it can still run in the elections next year. Some hope is given to it by the success of the Alternative for Germany, which achieved great success in the recent federal elections in Germany and probably took many votes from the ruling CDU/CSU. For now, there are no clear indications that the Homeland League could become a very serious political actor, but by the spring of next year, much more can happen.
But what I want to say is the background of strengthening a so-called alt-right (alternative right), which has supposedly emerged as a kind of correction of the established and already somewhat too pragmatic European conservative option, which alternatives often call “Vaseline-right”. This alternative option, which is also quite diverse internally, has recently been strengthened not only by developments in European politics on the Brussels-Visegrad route, but also by a common point that unites all those who otherwise like to succumb to populism: love of conspiracy theories and in some cases also an anti-Jewish reflex, which is supposed to be an echo of the recently trend-based neo-leftist conglomerate of ideologies with the common name “woke”. In the age of the covid19 pandemic, the masses needed instant answers to questions about the reasons for the pandemic, so many quickly fell into a denial phase: the virus does not exist, the epidemic does not exist, everything is just a psychological loop of globalists to introduce new totalitarianism, where each individual will be controlled by a chip, which he will receive through a vaccine against the supposedly fictional disease covid19. Such presentiment was also shown in Slovenia, where part of the SDS electorate also refused to obey the party precisely because of its own hypersensitivity to conspiracy theories. Thus a new front was drawn, which no longer runs on the dividing line between the left and the right, between the Catholic Church and the anti-Church. As we have seen, a new unprincipled coalition has formed in the anti-vaccination protests, in which we find a very colourful number of people: traditional Catholics (Scutum Fidei), among them some others who feed on private revelations (and thus counter the Pope and bishops), Balkan immigrants, and many far-leftists, but also those who belong to the alternative right sector. Such events suggest that if the situation regarding the pandemic does not clear up by the next parliamentary elections, it may happen that extremists will celebrate in the elections (no matter what colour), which will be a disaster for Slovenia. This is one of the reasons why it is understandable that the government is in a hurry to call for vaccination so that Slovenia can reach a large enough critical mass of vaccinated people by the beginning of winter, so that the measures will be slowly released. Of course, it is also worth mentioning the fact that the current government actually has a very weak majority and that at the moment it cannot fulfil some pre-election commitments without risking its own downfall.
What do I mean? Above all, the far left and the far right are actually two faces of the same Janus’ head. They have much more in common than we are otherwise willing to admit. However, it is true that there is no symmetry between them in Slovenia. Those who express their loyalty to the radical left consider themselves normal, everything that is different from them is already “far right”, and this is primarily the SDS. Those for whom the SDS is not radical enough (and even I myself am occasionally critical of some approaches that are more pragmatic than would be necessary) are not even that problematic for left fascists. Perhaps also because in an age of unprincipled coalitions, they can act together against a common enemy. As we could see, the KUL members, who had quarrelled with each other at the time of the fall of Šarec’s government last year, also agreed to act together again. But that key point that unites them is only one: the class enemy J. J. When the latter is not enough, the constitutional arc will also burst (again).
Gašper Blažič is a journalist for Demokracija, the editor of its daily board and the editor of the Blagovest.si portal.
