In Orwell’s 1984, interrogator O’Brian explained to Winston Smith, a “thought criminal”, that a sane member of the party must unreservedly believe everything the party says.
Sometimes, two and two is four. However, if the party says, it can also be three or five or all at once. If the party says that the Earth revolves around the Sun or the Sun revolves around the Earth or both, then a sane party member believes in that without reservation. Even the proud successors of the Slovene Communist Party are increasingly returning to this Orwellian ideal under a temporary leader. One day, the Bolsheviks declared that they opposed wearing protective masks in schools because it was fascism or something like that. A healthy-minded activist teacher at one of Ljubljana’s primary schools followed the party’s directive. Consequently, she passed the infection on to a few dozen children entrusted to her. The activist and about 170 children are now quarantined and the party declared that they do not oppose the wearing of masks in schools anymore, except when they do oppose it. Clever? Clever! A few days later, the Bolsheviks declared that the Slovene children were starving, which was the fault of the government.
On the same day, it was published that Slovene children were overweight, which once again was the fault of the government. In other words, Janša’s government is starving the unfortunate children to obesity. This makes perfect sense to a sane Communist Party supporter, although it is somewhat less understandable to others. We also witnessed a similar Orwellian thinking at the last interpellation of the Interior minister Hojs. The interpellators accused him of abusing his position because he allegedly tried to influence subordinate bodies. On the other hand, they accused him of not interfering in or influencing the actions of subordinate bodies on which they spend seventeen hours and were indignant in the end because the interpellation fell. There is certainly a slight relief that there is not (yet) a sane majority in parliament that would accept that two and two can also be three or five if the party directive says so…