By: Sara Kovač (Nova24tv.si)
They say that the one who calls for civil war is the one who condemned the government’s cancellation of Memorial Day, not the one who made the barbaric decision. Let’s remember that many of them also claimed last February that Ukraine attacked Russia and not the other way around. Today, it is perfectly clear to everyone that the government’s cancellation of the day of remembrance for the victims of communist violence has openly returned the sinister spirit of the civil war to Slovenia. Nothing like this has ever been done by any government of any country. However, the cold breeze is not from yesterday, Janez Janša wrote in a long post on Twitter.
Ever since 2012, we have been threatened with death publicly, massively and with exceptional media support. The ringleaders of these, who threatened with death even during the epidemic and at the same time threatened the lives and health of weak fellow citizens, burned effigies of politicians, and kicked replicas of their heads around the square in front of the parliament, are even being paid back the fines. At the same time, they accuse us of hate speech, says Janez Janša.
The leader of the terrorist and criminal Udba is buried with military honours, the establishment of the totalitarian communist party is celebrated, the statues of the dictator are returned to protocol facilities and at the same time the museum of Slovenian independence is abolished. If someone publicly condemns this, they are accused of going back to the past. And impatience.
They glorify the bloody revolution and the fratricidal war, they call the time of one-party dictatorship the time of progress, they erase from historical memory the great Slovenian names who publicly stood up for democracy and a democratic and independent Slovenia in the last century. But look. If anyone publicly opposes this, he is accused of authoritarianism.
Week after week they parade with weapons, in uniforms with totalitarian symbols, sing songs about blood and revenge and send us to Argentina and the shooting range. Without a single reaction from the prosecution or the judiciary, Janša says in the record.
This has already happened
When a thinking individual realises that this has happened before and calls for defence, he is immediately accused of calling for violence. This has also been seen before. Before Kardelj and Kidrič ordered the physical liquidation of the Slovenian elite in the spring of 1942, they even forbade any armed resistance against the occupier outside the Liberation Front under the threat of the death penalty. Then their troikas and hordes under the leadership of Zdenka Kidrič and Ivan Maček murdered almost 1,000 Slovenes and Roma in the Ljubljana region in just a few months, while only a few Italian occupiers fell at the same time. At a time when there were no village guards or home guards, says Janša.
In the last year, the government coalition has piled up a series of moves that represent a resurgence of ideological conflict and cultural struggle. Some of them were upgraded with a large dose of current revanchism. None of these moves were proposed or initiated by the opposition or civil society. Some of the government’s moves are fundamentally at odds with the constitutional values of the Slovenian state.
The government has done very little good for Slovenia, but a lot of damage
At the same time, the government coalition failed to solve the everyday hardships of the people and even more so in its reform promises. It even carried out two anti-reforms. It halved the increase in the net wages of all employees and stopped the implementation of the law on long-term care for the sick and the elderly. It is removing the construction of roads, kindergartens, schools, and sports halls from the development programmes and at the same time increases the financing of those who have received death threats in recent years. It completely let the pensioners down, the attitude towards farmers and entrepreneurs is belittling, even insulting in some places. In a year, Golob’s government did very little good for Slovenia, and it did significantly more damage than any government so far. The obviousness of the disaster, the narcissism of the key actors and the complete control of the government by the uncles from the background are simultaneously breaking the relations in the government coalition itself, writes Janša.
Such conditions create additional space for the penetration of the totalitarian concept of the most radical elements of the government coalition and the deep state into its actions. They also get support because of the expectation that the noise they create will drown out the sirens of the sinking government Titanic.
They will not make it
They will not. Just as Putin did not manage to blame them for the aggression against Ukraine through his loudspeakers, Kučan will not succeed in blaming those who, at the mourning ceremony before Memorial Day at the time of its abolition, simply asked for the revival of the spirit of the civil war, for death certificates, decent burial of victims, and the right to truth and memory, Janša is convinced.
Nothing could more clearly reveal the neo-communist essence of Golob’s government
When we first celebrated Memorial Day last year, no one in Europe specifically reported on it. Everyone took this for granted. With the shocking cancellation of this day by the current government of the Republic of Slovenia, this barbaric move resonated widely, and astonished questions are still coming. Nothing could more clearly reveal the neo-communist, proto-totalitarian essence of the current rulers than an act that is in complete contradiction to a series of declarations and conventions of European institutions. Even in the completely left-wing circles of the EU, there is no support whatsoever for actions that deny the right to a grave and a memorial. Left-wing propagandists also fail to explain how the murdered Roma children from Iška could be collaborators of the occupier. As Zoran Janković described them. And as they do when justifying some other crimes, writes Janša indignantly.
At the same time, I also meet many individuals in Slovenia who missed Memorial Day last year due to the media silence. They found out that it existed only when it was discontinued. At the same time, many people are shocked to ask whether it is true that famous partisans, people from the tomb of national heroes, murdered entire families with children and pregnant women in cold blood in May 1942. And is it true that the mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, does not allow their remains to be buried in the cemetery in Žale? With its barbaric decision, Golob’s government paradoxically increased the behaviour of the domestic and foreign public about the hitherto hidden dark sides of the so-called NOB.
The barbaric decision of Svoboda, SD, and Levica, probably suggested by Milan Kučan at that famous conversation at the Ljubljana Castle, was thus not only a deeply anti-civilisational act, but also a big shot in the foot.
Neither the concrete barrier in Huda jama, nor the mined mass of rocks above the karst chasms of Roga stopped the truth. Despite the fact that they stopped it with an immense amount of repression and ordered silence. Despite the fact that today they are struggling with an immense amount of lies and repeated threats of repression.
The force of memory will overcome the force of forgetting and the culture of life will always be stronger than the culture of death. Therefore, May 17th will remain as the Memorial Day for the Victims of Communist Violence. Next year, it will certainly be one of the most celebrated memorial days in the country, concluded Janša.