By: Sara Kovač (nova24tv.si)
In cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the European Platform of Remembrance and Conscience, the Institute of Dr Jože Pučnik hosted the 14th Pučnik’s Symposium in Slovenska Bistrica. The central theme of the symposium was cultural Marxism – this has a lot in common with the old but has changed the rhetoric. It turned the class struggle into a cultural one, and it still strives for the extreme mental transformation of man. This new culture war is a threat to our civilisation. Speakers see a more terrifying potential in the emergence of cultural Marxism than in classical Marxism.
The 14th Pučnik’s Symposium was already held in the Knight’s Hall of the castle in Slovenska Bistrica. The main topic touched on values, which are the danger of cultural Marxism, an ideology that uses new approaches to create a global communist state. These new approaches lead from classical Marxism, which understood capitalism as the temporary peak of human society, to the complete negation of Western civilisation.
Among the participants in the conversation was SDS president Janez Janša, who said that today’s clash of values within Western civilisation is something different than it used to be. “It is necessary to call things by their right names. It is about the clash of civilisation against barbarism, it is about dismantling the very foundations to return to the time when we were in the cave. A good symbol of this return to barbarism is Fotobub. In this affair, we find the same leftists who say how these values should be dismantled,” he said. In the light of the situation in Slovenia, he was the harshest towards the Levica party, which, according to Janša, determines the key measures of the current government coalition despite the small number of MPs. Among them, he mentioned the abolition of the Office for Demography and the abolition of the Museum of Slovenian Independence while erecting a monument to the so-called Erased, and he called the latter one of the biggest lies in modern Slovenian history. “Everything else is talking about reforms that will be presented on April 1st, if not then, then on June 1st, and so on. The key reform in Slovenia is thus the postponement of the dates when some form is supposed to start,” said Janša.
Publicists Žiga Turk, Dimitrij Rupel, and Matevž Tomšič also took part in the conversation, as well as legal expert in the field of state theory, constitutional and international law, and international relations Andrej Fink.
“The ideological war has been intensifying in recent years,” said Tomšič and also warned of a big deception, because the new left has nothing to do with labour, it is a new class, a new elite. “Who were those who cycled in Ljubljana every Friday in the previous government? These were not representatives of the working class, but representatives from the middle class, descendants of the red bourgeoisie,” he said. He also thinks that it will be necessary to find thoughtful approaches to tackle cultural Marxism, which is currently so widely spread, especially in politics, education, science, and the media, that it is difficult to overcome it in one fell swoop. According to him, it is not only the right that can oppose this, but all those who are committed to the heritage of European civilisation should do so.
Janša also said that it is an eating away at the national substance, which must be fought against primarily by noticing such dangers, recognising them and not being afraid to name them for the sake of some political correctness. “Sometimes that is enough. To expose someone who claims to be a non-governmental organisation, that it is not, but that its founder is a government minister and that the purpose is mainly non-transparent management and financing of various campaigns,” he said. The European institutions are also a great ally of this non-transparency, because for them, non-governmental organisations are the essence of democracy, even though it is one of the biggest detours and tools for the dismantling of democratic institutions. “It is about the rule of the unelected. Ten almonds cycle through the squares and announce themselves as the voice of the people. They are not. The voice of the people is the MP who received 5,000 votes and is therefore the voice of his voters”.
According to Rupel, the front against cultural Marxism is already present in Slovenia at this moment, so they should not relent in presenting their views and should respond to those things that they think are wrong. “In 2007, during the first Janša’s government, there were 571 petitions, in 2012 there were uprisings, between 2020 and 2022 there were cyclists. These people repeat old platitudes or formulas, you could say they are repeating a class.”
Antonio Gramsci is considered the father of the idea of cultural Marxism. But he did not understand why such a good Marxist established himself in the most backward country of Europe at the time. “Proceeding from the fact that his idea was realised in the most backward country in Europe, in Russia. Marx did not develop this for Russia, but for Germany, England,” said Dr Andrej Fink. And so Cultural Marxism was born. The idea of destroying the values on which Western civilisation rests. “How to change a value, you must first devalue it,” he said, adding that the most important values of NOB cannot be under the auspices of the Communist Party, although he respects the boys who went to the liberation movement with the best of intentions, but according to him, cultural Marxism wants values put upside down.
Cultural Marxism is a heresy of Christianity, said Žiga Turk. He says that it is necessary to defend what has been achieved, but at the same time not to stand rigidly on the trenches, that absolutely nothing should change.
At the symposium, Pučnik’s plaque was also awarded, which was received by academician Dr Janko Kos. The president of the Assembly for the Republic Franc Cukjati accepted the award on his behalf.