“Certainly, the current dominant public opinion in Slovenia that expects intellectuals and artists to be lined up in a masquerade-uniform manner in battle positions against the current government if they do not want to be labelled either far right, fascist or idiots, and that for the same reason, they must also have a uniform opinion on foreign policy developments, is completely foreign to me,” wrote a poet Miklavž Komelj, commenting on the current political climate in Slovenia, which is marked by the mainstream media.
It seems that, in addition to the second wave of the epidemic, the media and opposition’s persecution against the current government of Janez Janša has erupted and flared up. One-mindedness was persistently established in the media space, in addition to an atmosphere of hatred and overt and slightly less overt attacks on the government, which was systematically created over the past months. Lately, they have been particularly highlighting Prime Minister’s tweets as if they were the country’s main problems. At the same time, they are ignoring the real problems as they, unfortunately, prefer a political struggle.
This led to an outbreak of violence, which we witnessed last Thursday, when violent hooligans raged around Ljubljana. On the same evening, Minister of the Interior, Aleš Hojs, reminded the media that they themselves bear part of the blame for the need to use water cannon again in Ljubljana after many years. From the spring onwards, the mainstream media gave the impression that the protests were desirable, and also devoted their media space to various influencers and representatives of the opposition, who denied the effectiveness of the measures and slandered the coalition regularly.
The media is guided by the belief that a certain political option should not come to power
“I am afraid that the leaders of all this media and public persecution are most infuriated by the fact that the current Slovenian government, despite certain things worth criticizing, is functioning quite normally. This is the most difficult to forgive, because the starting point of all this persecution is not a reaction to the actions of the government, but an a priori belief that a certain political option should not come to power,” admitted a poet and art historian dr. Miklavž Komelj. He added that the whole thing could even be fun if it were not becoming increasingly blocking and overtly violent. “The protests against this government had started before it was even formed,” he recalled.
“I’m not fetishizing democracy, but its essence is certainly in accepting that a different option can come to power,” Komelj explained, noting that the mentality of 1945 is being re-established in Slovenia. “Sometimes I get a bad feeling when I ask myself whether I unknowingly contributed a little to the establishment of this climate with my book on partisans, which people, as I have observed, generally read very simplified. Then I realise this is not the case, because in their need to simplify, people forgot even about my book and they label me as an extreme right-winger, if not a fascist,” he said disappointedly and admitted that the whole thing could still be fun, if the atmosphere of lynching had not intensified in this country. “Certainly, everything has come to an unbearable point, when Slovenian society needs a kind of catharsis, a way out of these destructively simplifying mental schemes,” the art historian emphasized.
RTV does not want to share its opinion with the independence activists of Slovenia
“Firstly, there is the united list, which assumes that it would win this election. With whom, with what, with what people, with what program, I don’t know… they don’t know how to offer any program in the future. Elections are not won by history, but by program and progress. And what do they offer? Nothing, just hatred and lies,” commented historian dr. Stane Granda on Friday’s bike rallies and with them related political option.
Today, we can claim exactly the same thing, the only difference is that we can now name the association with a new, more KUL (translation cool) name. Namely, the representatives of the four opposition parties envisioned a coalition of the constitutional arc, and appointed Jože P. Damijan as the formateur. Well, it is clear that they lack quite a few votes for this feat, but this does not prevent the media from presenting him as the future Prime Minister and devoting minutes to KUL during prime-time. “RTV has positioned itself in the role of an independent political party, which is creating its own opinion, yet we all have to pay for this television,” Granda condemned the operation of the national television, reminding how inadmissible it was that RTV Slovenia recently distanced itself from the broadcast of the show on the Demos deputies who gathered in Poljče thirty years ago and presented the plebiscite proposal for independence. Namely, the show was equipped with the following inscription: “The show was produced by VSO and does not express the opinion of RTV Slovenia.”
We have not yet been able to find out what the opinion, which RTV does not express, is. Moreover, we did not find answers why the national RTV even has opinions at all. Granda pointed out an interesting fact – RTV Slovenia never distances itself from Božo Repet or the Association of Fighters for the Values of the National Liberation War, which constantly falsify content. However, RTV Slovenia obviously does not want to share an opinion with the Slovenian independence activists. A similar thing happened yesterday, when Tednik hosted a person closely associated with the violent protests. RTV Slovenia did not announce it does not agree with him or that it wants to distance itself from his opinion. Therefore, it is clear that this was only a priori opposition to the government, at all costs and in all possible ways.
“It is a matter of manipulation of public service broadcasting, disproportion and outright double standards, with clear goals of harming the new government at the behest of the left-wing ideology and reducing the reputation, influence and ultimately success in the fight against the epidemic,” Granda said in the spring. He was upset that some in the name of the left are abusing television for their endless hate speech and unprecedented primitivism. He also pointed out at the time that it was only a matter of time before we would have twenty or thirty deaths a day, and wondered who would take responsibility at that time. His predictions came true, we have twenty or as many as thirty dead a day. And who took responsibility for that? Not the media nor the opposition. Influencers fled to more “friendly” places and disinfected their hands. However, the media continue to deal with Janez Janša’s tweets and KUL continues to claim that the government has not prepared well for the second wave of the epidemic and that the measures only increase public resistance. According to them, one should listen to the profession and not follow restrictive government measures. Well, it will be interesting to hear what they say to the assessment of the profession, which says that the government’s measures are too lenient and should be tightened. In any case, we did not ask Granda what he predicts for the possible third wave of the epidemic and what the spring political-media scene is going to look like, because his predictions might come true once again.
