Who is Svetlana Slapšak, a grey-haired lady with the appearance of a good-natured grandmother petting her cat in front of the fireplace? I wouldn’t have dealt with her if she hadn’t dealt with me, which she did in a file published in the CSP DSP’s online newsletter called Vrabec anarchist, with a title stolen from Ivan Cankar. This newsletter is abundantly funded by the Ministry of Culture, and as a thank you, some members of the Central Committee of the DSP, along with other “cultural workers”, occasionally mess around in front of the headquarters of this ministry. And they publish pamphlets of such minds as Mrs. Slapšak.
The mentioned lady, a university professor, found in her pamphlet many frightening things about my littleness, but her crowning accusation is that I am a xenophobe. The lady is obviously familiar with xenophobia, even though she does not have a homeland, she had declared the country in which she has lived peacefully and comfortably for many years, as a home of all ugly, from the aforementioned xenophobia to nationalism and worse. The lady, who feels threatened all the time by “terrible” Slovenes, calmly publishes her articles, mostly in the Styrian local newspaper, but also, as in my case, in the aforementioned online newspaper of the Central Committee of the DSP. And why did the lady take up my triviality more angrily than what I wrote in the Requiem for Ljubljana? She obviously does not convey the truth about the Balkanization of once Central European Ljubljana. And she cannot bear to have someone talk about it directly, without euphemisms. If you are a xenophobe, then you make it clear which nation or nations you hate. In my Requiem for Ljubljana, I did not mention any nation, not because I would be cunning, as Mrs. Slapšakova describes me, but because I focused on something I call “Balkanoidness”, the Balkan mentality and what has been oppressesing Slovenes since 1918 onwards; in 1991, we naively thought for a short time that the roots of this Balkanoidness were forever torn, but we soon realized that it was getting worse day by day. Balkanoidism is not a matter of this or that nation, it is a mentality and behaviour encouraged by this mentality. I was well fed up with Balkanoidism in the year when I was forced to serve in the so-called “Yugoslav People’s Army”, where Balkanoidism was the modus operandi of officer life. I will not repeat myself, I have written quite a few memoirs about it, the images from those days are still alive: moustaches, red-faced, garlic- and bad brandy-smelling “socializing officers” who cursed us, cursed us from mothers to house numbers. They tortured us mentally and physically, even their compatriots, if they showed that they are disgusted by such a way, Balkanoidism does not stop at anything, even the one advocated by Professor Slapšak. I add: I did not expect so much and so concentrated primitivism even in my dreams, although, with xenophobic intentions, I walked a lot in other parts of the failed country, made many friendships, which mostly died after 1991, as my friends, writers and scientists, were either banished abroad, or they died of grief, some were also forced into silence. I translated novels, short stories and poetry xenophobically, I wrote about literary books, especially by those authors who were not particularly appreciated or persecuted by the local authorities, I published information about authors and their works in Slovenian periodicals, I wrote for many magazines and newspapers from other parts of this unfortunate country. I received my doctorate in Novi Sad, albeit from the Slovene Jože Pogačnik, but I formed a strong friendship with one of the members of the commission, Professor Ivančević, and with another member, Professor Marija Mitrović, we had known and cooperated before. I also had many friends at Matica Srpska, the result of which is a book about a Slovenian essay published by their publishing house. Anyone who wants to know the details of my xenophobic cultural mediation should check it out at Cobiss and Sicris! During the aggression on unfortuante Sarajevo, which cost the life of my dear interlocutor, Professor Juraj Martinović, I helped a young assistant at the Sarajevo Drama Academy to get a doctorate in Ljubljana (from Meša Selimović). Today she is a respected professor at the University of Vancouver. I enabled my Macedonian colleague to obtain a master’s degree from AGRFT in Ljubljana; she later reimbursed me abundantly by being in the striking trio that took care of my forced retirement, of course all “legally,” according to the infamous Zujf.
All these xenophobic acts, right respected professor at the famous University of Knafle’s Passage, where I helped with the doctorates of two of your “foster children”, all for free, and you couldn’t even say thank you. Probably in the good manner of Balkan folklore, which you master better than anything else. But I no longer intend to deal with what the grey-haired unfortunate lady writes about me, what I will add to this essay will be the facts about her evil, vine-twisted and vile insinuations. For in this work, as far as I have had the opportunity to read her shameful writings at the expense of certain Slovenes and the nation in general, the lady has really been carried out and she should be congratulated for her mental bravado, perverted conclusions and insults. On the other hand, the content of the professor’s shameful writings is so empty that it is really not worth losing words about, their intellectual level is similar to that of Stalinist or Nazi propaganda. Everything could also be described as a concentrate of bitter hatred and mental fulfilment. However, these writings remain in memory mainly due to poor and grammatically shaky Slovene language, which cannot be put in order (don’t they know how, or they don’t want to?) even by proofreading. Anyone who could listen to her live, for example at Friday’s famous “protests”, can be convinced that the lady is ignorant of Slovene; however, she could have learned it in all these years if she had not been convinced that Herrenwalk did not need to know the language of the subalpine desolate villagers, for which those drunken and frustrated fellow officers who ruled us (me) for a year already had us. The professor, in her “scientific” manner, only repeats their patterns of thinking and behaving. And I quietly ask myself: who really is a xenophobe? Perhaps it is possible to find answers to Sigmund Freud’s writings in at least some of the questions from which Ms. Slapšak is confused.
Now to the point: to be able to be critical of the Balkanoid changes that are destroying my hometown, the criticality of my own compatriots and their actions allows me. If Professor Slapšakova knew my essays, collected in quite a few books, where I am critical of the actions of those who, regardless of worldview, shape the fate of the last thirty years, from politicians and tycoons to false cultural figures and breadwinners’ academics, she probably would not write such nonsense. However, due to her ignorant unawareness, the lady also urges me to be a mercenary (!!!) of the right-wing forces, her crowning “proof” is that I no longer know which medium that does not glow in the blood-red light has summarized my file. Ms. Slapšak, an expert on everything human, as she is supposed to be an anthropologist, it should be clear that virtually everything on the internet is everyone’s property and that everyone can copy everything unless you lock your works one way or another. And a portal Who? Is opened, anyone can take from it what he likes or what agitate him. Not only that, according to the respected professor of anthropology, I am also responsible for all the anonymous comments of more or less frustrated readers. Just a few things about this insinuation of hers: first, how does the lady know that these are the ones I “made” for such writing and not the people who use anonymity for various purposes, including which there are personal hardships and torments that cannot be resolved by either leftists or rightists. And I ask the respected professor of anthropology, why didn’t she publish another “left” one in addition to (according to her) “right” comments? She probably read them with pleasure and indulgence, but if she did not, I tell her that in primitivism and groundedness they do not lag behind those supposedly written by “right” anonymous people.
I think this was enough dealing with the left-handed, feeble pamphleteering of Mrs. Professor Slapšak. For the end, an anecdote. The other day I visited my deceased resting in an idyllic village cemetery. I was approached by the construction supervisor, who is renovating the ancient cemetery chapel. I do not know the gentleman, he did not introduce himself to me, but he congratulated me on the Requiem and said that a lot of people share my opinion. Then he paused and continued to admire my courage. I did not answer him, but in the car I asked myself: what courage, for God’s sake? Are we already so far gone that we are not allowed to call a spade a spade in our own house?
That we will silently observe the brutal Balkanisation and criminalisation not only of Ljubljana, but of Slovenia? That we will soon be foreigners in our homeland, a disenfranchised minority, a paradise allowed to work and pay taxes, from which all political options in turn fatly pay the smoky idlers? Will our culture, despite the believe of the professor and her adherents that it is alpine-commanding, primitively rural, and backward as the “progressive” young Slovenian “artists” claim, will be replaced by the culture of throwing plates and glasses into the wall or on the floor, crying hop, monotonous music, drunken heroism and juicy cursing. That we will quietly and calmly watch criminals from the drug cartel shout that Ljubljana is “their city”? No, dear Mrs. Slapšak, we will not be silent! We will be louder and louder, and I will, to the best of my ability, expose you and your supporters and supporters of the groundwork. I will expose your ill-concealed xenophobic hatred of Slovenes and the nationality, and unfoundedly base of your Balkan belief in the superiority and selectivity of the “heavenly nation” to which you belong.
Original text HERE.