By: Nova24tv.si
If last year’s triple elections showed the worst picture of Slovenia, the floods brought out the best picture of Slovenia from our nation. People grabbed shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows and selflessly helped their fellow citizens. Even before the government took action, they donated their time, vacations, clothes, and a lot of money. The enthusiasm was so strong that there were even too many volunteers. Some accused politicians of exploiting the situation for political gain, but this time it must be said that politicians were actually working in the field, and they were not the ones taking pictures, but grateful locals were capturing them. However, we missed a popular activist who had been jumping from every TV screen for the past three years, surrounded by microphones from RTV and 24ur, waiting for her before she even appeared. We are, of course, talking about the infamous Nika Kovač. What was she doing during the century floods that hit Slovenia?
For quite some time, there has been suspicion that Nika and her activists were not in a hurry to join spontaneous solidarity work actions for clean water, birds, and workers’ rights, as their social media would have been filled with ‘photo ops’ of young girls in sewage ditches with shovels in their hands in some flooded house, conveniently featuring a graffiti saying, ‘death to fascism’. Such pictures were absent and are still absent. We read tweets about how they were helping, but we never saw a single picture, which is a significant departure from their usual workflow, where they first take photos and only then say something.
March 8th Institute helps, but does not get photographed
The March 8th Institute had previously posted everything; even shortly before the floods, they shared a photo of them going on vacation. Their recent posts show that they have not returned from vacation yet. How is it possible that not a single solitary photo of Nika Kovač or any of them ‘selflessly’ holding a shovel can be found online? On their website, you can only see posts from other media and chatter about volunteering at various locations across Slovenia. Slovenia is not that big that no one has seen them at so many locations, and that no one on social media has posted at least one photo about it. A week ago, they announced ‘good news’ that 250 of their supporters would be going to the field (where were they until now?!). Recently, they reported that only 40 were on the field. Twitter users encouraged them to show some pictures as soon as possible. However, once again, Nika was not among the ‘volunteers’.
Where is Nika?
We did see Nika once before, giving a moralising interview to a German media outlet, claiming that “the entire EU is to blame for the Slovenian floods” (interestingly, it is the EU that is blamed – even if we consider environmental catastrophism (although there is no empirical evidence that Slovenian floods were directly caused by environmental changes), the biggest polluters are likely China, India, Russia, Brazil, not the environmentally almost hysterically activist EU.
However, we once again noticed Nika in another location unrelated to Slovenian floods. Where is Nika? In Oslo, “fighting” for your rights.
As she announced, “in Oslo, she is planning new projects with Bjorn, who has his organisation Gliterpill, which deals with preventing hatred”. Interestingly, an organisation that is so important that the leader of the Slovenian (governmental!) council met with it cannot even be found on the internet. More well-known is the Khalifa Ihler Institute, founded in 2016 by Asma Khalifa and Bjørn Ihler.
The Institute boasts of being among the leading international organisations shaping global policy and discussions in the fight for peace, freedom, and equality – a quick look at their website will quickly tell you that it is a typical leftist “research institute” fighting against the phantom fascism on the right and white supremacism, while completely ignoring left-wing extremism. So, it is kind of an international version of various Slovenian “research institutes”.
It is easier to be an activist than to pick up a shovel
Nika did not say whether she discussed Janša’s tweets with the bearded gentleman, but for a representative of the government’s “strategic council for preventing hate speech”, the topic of limiting freedom of speech is certainly closer than shovelling in Črna or Mežica. It is much simpler to take photos and moralise than to actually help or confront the fact that the water law would not prevent floods, but it would at least alleviate them (even if only by 5%, that is hundreds of millions assets saved in comparison to the current situation).