By: Gal Kovač / Nova24tv
Presidential candidates Anže Logar and Nataša Pirc Musar faced off for probably the last time before Sunday’s elections. They talked about many topics, from international politics to the work of their predecessors, the museum of Slovenian independence, but the debate about hate speech certainly caused the most stir. It is only a leitmotif of the left and an essential instrument of reckoning with the centre-right, which reacted to its accusations rather quickly.
During the confrontation, Nataša Pirc Musar used a good amount of offensive rhetoric, and especially with the tactic of labelling Anže Logar, with which she once again wanted to attribute to him that he is a participant in the rough political dialogue that is carried out in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia.
Anže Logar made it clear at the beginning of the confrontation that this is mainly an incorrect tactic, when he explained that this rough rhetoric, which can be detected in the political space, is equally distributed on both poles, so both sides should take a step back and show a greater degree of restraint before this kind of rhetoric spills over into physical confrontations on the street.
In the confrontation with Logar, Nataša Pirc Musar attacked… Janša… and Hojs!
But since Logar obviously answered the question too well and too clearly, the conversation between the two candidates for president of the republic had to be directed to a conversation about… Janez Janša and Aleš Hojs. The television host asked Pirc Musar about who she thinks is the biggest anti-hate speech inciter in Slovenia, and she started spewing a prepared text about the opposition leader’s communication skills. In doing so, she revealed a severe lack of self-reflection. The presidential candidate apparently forgot about the annual NOB orgies, where her political godfather and his political companions, for example Zoran Jankovič, swear by the values of the post-war massacres and explain to Slovenia that the massacres were insufficiently thorough.
Logar replied to the intellectually dishonest attack that it is not true that hate speech comes mainly from the right wing and cited the example of former state secretary Jernej Štomajer wishing Christians in Slovenia “Merry Christmas, dirty animals” and of course the statement of Danilo Türk, former country’s president, who, upon revealing the horrors of Hude Jama, declared that it was a second-rate topic. “It is a non plus ultra hateful statement that has affected many in Slovenia,” said Logar, who then turned the tide of the debate towards Pirc Musar and asked her clearly if she had condemned Türk’s statement about the second-rate topic. Pirc Musar did not answer this clearly. Truth be told, Pirc Musar did not condemn the statement because (we assume) she supports it intimately. Later, in a confrontation, she said that this statement marked the darkest part of his presidency.
Logar also recalled the online writings of campaign leader Nataša Pirc Musar’s husband, who called former prime minister Janez Janša a fascist online, which we wrote about extensively on our media.
“If someone writes on Twitter, you are little fascist, you have to say oops, but now you have gone a step too far.”
Logar: I do not understand why the government is making a fuss with this decision
The two candidates then also spoke about the recent decision of the government of Robert Golob to cancel the independent project of the Museum of Slovenian Independence and merge it with the Museum of Recent History. Nataša Pirc Musar said on this topic that she does not really care what happens with this project and that experts should decide on this issue. Logar presented a completely different point of view: “I do not understand why the government persists with this decision and actually makes a fuss about a fact that I think we can all agree on, that this is the brightest period in Slovenian history, we finally got a Slovenian state, let’s be proud of it, let’s be proud of our flag and our anthem,” said Logar.
Musar repeated Kučan’s theses about distributed guilt
When the debate turned to international politics, which will be one of the essential obligations of the future president of the republic, Nataša Pirc Musar repeated the ideas that Milan Kučan defended at that shameful “rally for peace”, where protesters protested against war in the most general sense, and practically begged the Ukrainians to surrender as soon as possible and hand over the conquered territory to the Russians. But even more than this morally wrong paradigm, the strategic considerations of Pirc Musar, who thinks that the USA is behind the struggle in Ukraine, are worrying. Such statements prove that she herself does not actually understand the causes of the war in Ukraine, and at the same time uncritically repeats the ideas of the Russian propaganda apparatus, which convinces the world that their war is just, through a mountain of Ukrainian (and its own) corpses.
Logar announced a big political project!
At the meeting, Logar also announced the establishment of two political projects or processes, namely the convention on the future of Slovenia and the establishment of the summit of Slovenian politics. In the first case, we would mainly talk about strategic topics on which a broad consensus must be reached, and which are essential for the development of Slovenia. One of the products of the convention would be an action plan, which would then be regularly coordinated with the top of Slovenian politics. One of the important topics that would be discussed at the convention would be hate speech and also the problem of the concentration of media ownership. The convention would take place in a broad format, in which parliamentary groups and also representatives of institutions would participate.
