By: Mitja Iršič
The election is over, the left part of the electorate is patting itself on the shoulders and pointing its finger at the urogenital system of the new president, saying between the lines: “Did you see how progressive we are? We elected another woman!” Of course, in his enthusiasm for egalitarianism, he is not aware that this latently portrays women as second-class. Otherwise, similar to the first round of presidential elections, the second one also brings a whole bunch of lessons from which we can learn for the future. Let’s see what we learned, or where we renewed knowledge.
- First of all, the restoration of the knowledge we already know: Slovenia again proved that it is cemented on political ratios (from 65:35 to 55:45 for the left), which first became clear in 1990, when the penultimate boss of the totalitarian regime – who was close to the top of the republic even when the secret services were killing innocent civilians abroad – defeated a political dissident who was exiled by the same totalitarianism abroad, where he made a successful career out of nothing – it is like Nelson Mandela being defeated in a free election by an apartheid’s chief ideologue B.W Botha. This is, of course, a world unique, which, as a national pathology, followed all subsequent free elections as a ghost.
- The reason for the uniqueness of political relations is a matter for historians, psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists. Certainly, an important part of the left-wing equation is the ‘Khmerisation’ of the country after 1945, when the missing part of the right was killed, exiled, or indoctrinated into an egalitarian cult through 5 decades.
- Since the relationships are set in concrete, we must learn to live with them and work within their limits, at least for another generation or two (you certainly do not want young people to come to the polling stations in greater numbers, whom the modern comrades in school teach, that capitalism is the reason for all the woes of the world). From this point of view, the collective electorate needs to be treated as a kind of mental patient who needs to be shown the way out of delusions as a long-term project – which can only be done through compassion, communication and focusing on issues that matter to people. How? More on that a little later.
- It is very bad for such a young post-communist country that we have returned to the period before 1991, when all power was completely concentrated in the heirs of the bloody revolution. There is no longer a lever of the state that would at least be in favour of professionalism and objectivity, all branches of the state apparatus are a single ideologically homogeneous party, which the new president has cemented even more. In the last two years, the Levica party has occupied all branches of government, institutions, academia, education in a completely Putin-style manner, and even before that journalism was an industry “consciously committed to the principles of Marxism and Leninism”.
- The elections were more important than some people think – we must not forget that the Belarusians did not know in 1994 that they had tied the fatal noose of totalitarianism around their necks when the “anti-corruption fighter” Alexander Lukashenko came to save them, as did the Russians in 2000 with Vladimir Putin, not know that they had taken the first steps back to the Soviet Union. Usually, we are only aware of the fateful elections in historical hindsight, and at that moment it is not clear to us how important they were. It is true that the function of the president is a protocol one, but on the other hand, it is still the commander of the Slovenian army and the person who nominates constitutional judges and prime ministers; these are not trivial matters. Of course, the Constitutional Court is already filled with left-wing activists, but the new president could castrate it even more and make it an ideological outpost of the left. But let’s remember, for example, the efforts that Danilo Türk made in 2013 when he wanted to prevent Janša from being given the mandate to form the government; he even proposed Marko Voljč.
- So, what can we expect from the new president? Undoubtedly hard-left rhetoric wrapped in the cellophane of progressive liberalism. Lots of lines about hate speech on the right, and hearing calls to “Kill Janša!” Lots of political schemes against potential right-wing candidates for the mandate and helping the left. Many roundtables on the topic “How to break the patriarchal society of white men”, sponsored by a white Aleš Musar in a Maserati with German plates. In other words, we can expect a mandate politically at the Kučan-Türk level, and rhetorically at the Klakočar Zupančič–Kovač–Jarc level.
- What about the electoral conflict itself? Anže Logar was the best candidate for president of the republic that the right has at the moment: calm, politically moderate, almost militantly centrist, compared to him Nataša Pirc Musar is a neurotic and aggressive far-left activist anarcho-feminist; in the name of reconciliation and dialogue, he never told her that her anecdotes about how there is more hate speech on the right are far-fetched and that it was not right when she lied in Brussels to the European Parliament’s DRMFG committee that Janša’s government was restricting journalists’ access to press conferences (in fact, because of the corona, access was made possible via the Internet, a similar arrangement was also known by the European institutions at the time)
- On the other hand, Nataša Pirc Musar was both ideologically and in terms of reputation the worst spitzenkandidat that the left can offer: a lawyer who prosecuted trade unions and anti-corruption fighters, a financial optimiser who paid herself a minor salary and got the rest through dividends (this would be according to the usual Slovenian mentality, a mortal sin), the wife of a man who opened companies abroad with fiduciary accounts and was directly connected to PID tycoon Darko Horvat, who refined the Russian oligarchic model to the smallest detail in the 1990s. Instead of accepting this role, she disguised herself throughout the election, and also got into a comical mess (I know nothing about these deals, I am just the owner, but yes, they are certainly legal, even though I know nothing about them…). She distanced herself from Darko Horvat, even though a video appeared in the public where she praised him as a financial genius (thank God we do not have many such “geniuses”, otherwise we would be like the Russian Federation!) and said that we have to accept that there are also rich people here. It is true, we have to – but we do not. We put up with the rich Petričs, Petans, Odlazeks, Musars, Zidars, Jankovićs, but not the Akrapovićs, Štrancars, and Boscarolis – in other words, people who wrote a fairy tale from scratch. Musar clearly pointed out in front of all of Slovenia that she will be the president of the “financial geniuses” and the elite who stand behind them, but not on the side of ordinary working people (Akrapović, Štrancar and Boscarol are one of us, but Kučan, Jankovič, Horvat are not).
- Despite all the crossfires of Pirc Musar, despite her natural antipathy, due to which even some leftists said that they will not go to the elections, and despite all the connectivity, rhetorical skill and politeness of Logar, the minimal distance, around 10 percent, remained, which clearly tells us, that we will not have a right-wing president or a completely right-wing coalition for quite some time, and that these cemented relations are the imprint of some other brutal times, which, because of their horror, spill over into the present. That being said, it is a mistake to think that 100,000 people stayed at home; 100,000 people left their homes and never returned, now resting in concreted mineshafts. And we are not talking about home guards – we are talking about industrialists, peasant families, entrepreneurs, bourgeois intelligentsia, craftsmen, inventors, engineers. We will not get these back. We have to come to terms with this and tell ourselves that when life gives you lemons, you need to make a good homemade lemonade seasoned with gin and mint to top it off. So, what are we to do?
- Young people are a tabula rasa. The average teenager eats at McDonald’s, uploads photos to Instagram, buys used Audis from Germany, travels around Europe on Ryanair Boeings for the price of a slightly better lunch, dresses in Primark, and shops in Lidl. The average Slovenian youth is therefore immersed in the ocean of capitalism, the fruits of which he enjoys and lives better than Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Austria-Hungary. But they do not connect their abundance with the real reasons for it – with business freedom and also with conservative Calvinist values that made the Western world the only empire in the world that “conquers” with cheap hamburgers and computers instead of German Messerschmitts, Russian tanks, or Mongolian bows; Their partisan-loving parents and grandfathers, who worship brotherhood and unity and workers’ self-management, yesterday, by inertia, confirmed a candidate for president in a Maserati, who sits on millions of euros in assets and “tax optimises” her income both at home and in foreign offshore centres. They confirmed the capital’s candidate, because she “tricked” them, that she was “theirs”. Just like all the other “Nazi” rich people who tolerate them are theirs: Janković, Petrič, Petan, Odlazek… they also tolerated Tito’s Pulman 600, private yachts and priceless jewellery in Swiss banks. It is simply impossible to explain the dichotomy of poor people who support socialists with Rolexes to them. But young people can be – and we must work on young people. Yes, the media is theirs, but the media is what radio was in 1960, and the Internet is what television was in 1960. New media, new opportunities. Why do you think the left wants to control the internet so much? Because on the Internet the logical inconsistency of their ideas is revealed to the point and because in detailed debates, they have no chance to cover it with skilful socialist rhetoric (Mesec, Pirc Musar, Fajon are masters of this skill). We will reach young people through new Internet channels – with humour, but also with knowledge. By exposing left-wing hypocrisy, but also with solutions. Young people must begin to understand that socialists are the cornerstone of their development. That they are capable enough to develop the country themselves, if only the country would allow them more business freedom. Only the right can provide them with this. Not building social real estate. Less tax on wages, which will leave more in the wallet and they will build houses and renovate apartments from savings. The right offers this, the left just the opposite. In the end, we humans look at everything through the lens of our own wallet. Even modern socialists are like this: if Slovenian Rupert Murdoch came and injected as much money into the system as the Slovenian left has (even though the left injects our taxpayers’ money), the proletarians of all countries would also tattoo the image of Milton Friedman on their left buttocks, and on the right Mića Mrkaić, if a funnel of capital poured in there. Now it just pours into the funnel of the red star. But of course, this is also an opportunity. Young people, despite the idiot-socialist cry of various “research institutes”, love the turbo-capitalist Wolt – because it offers good earnings and flexible working hours. Let’s take advantage of this. Let’s introduce them to a world where all of Slovenia can be Wolt; a land of business, capital, and plenty, instead of socialist rations. Let neoliberal beacons like Poland, Estonia and Singapore be our example. These are the foundations. Only after we raise the first such generation can we talk about sovereign victories.