By: Andrej Žitnik (Nova24tv.si)
The left-wing non-governmental organisation the 8th of March Institute – Inštitut 8. marec (for which insiders say it is neither a research organisation nor an institute) recently tweeted that a documentary will soon be broadcast on the left-wing TV channel CNN, which includes a segment where they introduce themselves. Funnily enough, they even asked former Prime Minister Janez Janša some questions. The film is sponsored by the foundation of one of the richest men on earth, Bill Gates.
“We have already mentioned that a short documentary about our work will be published on CNN in the coming days. In the upcoming days, the news of the “Right to Replay” film will also be sent to the former Prime Minister. We know the pattern already. We expect more attacks and insults in the coming days. But we are used to this. And we are heading into the weekend ahead with a smile,” tweeted the official profile of the “research institute”.
However, they already made a mistake in writing the title of the documentary. Namely, the actual title will be “Right to reply”, not “Right to replay”, as the “researchers” wrote. It is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which means that the documentary is backed by the capital of one of the richest men on earth.
We were able to guess in advance what the topic of the documentary would be, and this was confirmed when we read the tweet by the leader of the opposition and former Prime Minister, Janez Janša. The producers of the documentary have sent him questions that sound an awful lot like the Slovenian politically-cycling far-left propaganda.
Janša even responded to the Institute’s tweet, by writing: “Yes, this is what your people from the #SorosPuppet network sent me. Unfortunately, you gave them the wrong coordinates, sprinkled with some thick lies.”
The questions Janša got from CNN are quite predictable:
– Have you ever spread hateful messages via Twitter or other platforms? If so, why?
– How do you respond to allegations that you and your supporters have spread hateful messages online?
– What is your response to allegations that your tweets cast Nika Kovač in a negative light?
– Why have you posted a Tweet mentioning that activists like Nika Kovač and others should be burnt?
Of course, the CNN journalists did not come up with such questions on their own. They were helped by their “colleague” Nika and the recently “freed” national media outlet RTV and its journalists. The former Prime Minister should have asked where they got the information that he was tweeting that Nika Kovač should be burned, since whoever said such a thing was not only spreading hate speech, but had committed a fully defined offence under Article 297 of the Criminal Code. It seems, however, that they sent the questions to several addresses as a copy, and then, when the addressees told them that they were not the right address for the questions, they replied that they were going to put them on the BCC (blind carbon copy) list, where the addressee was not visible, and they called the recipient “Janez Fakin Janša”? What is this all about? Were CNN’s naive journalists sending unsubstantiated lies about Janša to random Slovenian users? They must have caused enormous personal damage to the former Prime Minister by doing that.
In any case, from the tone of the questions, we can quickly see what the documentary is going to be about: it will, of course, talk about the favourite pre-election topic of RTV and POP TV. About who tweeted what and who was offended by it. And then they will continue with the phantom links between Janša and Putin, with Viktor Orbán in between.
This is not the first time something like this has happened
It is not the first time that Nika has made such a fool of naive Westerners. Namely, former US President Barack Obama told a story on The Daily Show about how a referendum on domestic violence was held in Slovenia. Allegedly, this even happened twice. It was, of course, organised by his scholarship holder, Nika Kovač. “Unbelievable, even Barack Obama was fooled,” commented former Prime Minister Janša, explaining that the referendum on the Water Act was apparently presented to him as a referendum on domestic violence.
Well, on the other hand, the “research institute” did at least tell the OpenDemocracy blog that they were fighting for water. But not just any water – they were fighting for DRINKING water at the referendum. In a referendum on a law that regulated building next to bodies of water that have nothing to do with drinking water.
What such cases really show is that foreign “investigative journalists” and eminent politicians alike show no will to investigate the claims of their political friends in Eastern and Central Europe. They take them at their word, whatever the fabrications are, and no matter how bizarre. Let us also remind you that the New York Times published a claim by Marko Milosavljević that Pop TV was sending articles to its owners in Prague “for verification” so as not to offend the then-Prime Minister, Janša.