By Sara Bertoncelj (Nova24tv)
For a year now, we have been hearing how the current government does not communicate properly, that they are constantly attacking, insulting and intimidating. The same is said to apply to its sympathisers. However, it often turns out that opponents of the Janez Janša government mainly describe their characteristics and mirror them to the opposite side. “For every national holiday, a hundred Janša supporters should be hanged, a hundred shot, a hundred drowned, a thousand deported, and ten thousand castrated. I would start with your friend Stefan,” wrote a user of a social network, for whom we cannot claim that he chose the right words. However, we can say with full certainty to which political pole he belongs to – definitely not to the right.
Simon Pušnik wrote on a social network: “Slavko Červ, for every national holiday, a hundred Janša supporters should be hanged, a hundred shot, a hundred drowned, a thousand deported, and ten thousand castrated. I would start with your friend Stefan.” So are such threats a common part of leftist discourse? Is it only wrong when someone on the right opens their mouth? On the right, comments that merely describe the conduct of a third party are already considered an attack. Why are not sympathisers of the left opposition treated in the same way? Not long ago, the editor of Demokracija, Jože Biščak, also received threats in the mail. When reporting to the police, he pointed out that it was clear from the letters that the sender was “disturbed” by the conservative worldview, our negative attitude towards progressivism. “Therefore, this was an act of a psychopath, ideologically pumped by an increasingly radical left. Violence is becoming a legitimate means of dealing with all those who have a different view of the world and the events around them,” he said, recalling a tragic event in France – the headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo received threats that no one took too serious. In the end, a massacre ensued in which 12 people were killed. Will something tragic have to happen to us in order for the leftist threats to finally start to be taken seriously?
The editor-in-chief of Nova24TV, Aleksander Rant, wrote under Pušnik’s impatient comment: “The government of Janez Janša is impatient, they say. It divides the nation, they say. We are humanitarians, they say. We do not threaten a person, they say.” He also added the hashtag #disgusting, which actually summarises everything written. Unfortunately, it has been shown too many times that double standards obviously apply in Slovenia – a very clear example of this was the identical threat sent to the Minister of the Interior Aleš Hojs and the Member of the European Parliament Tanja Fajon. The writer, who deliberately transcribed the threats, that were originally intended for Hojs and the prosecution rejected the prosecution of that threat, received an invitation to the police in Fajon’s case. Given that they we supposed to be the same before the law, it is not surprising that many people are upset by this rather different reaction – no one wants such criteria to apply to “ours” and different criteria to “yours”. So, in this case, will the law enforcement authorities
at least try to find out who is hiding behind the name Simon Pušnik and what are his intentions? Perhaps, in our country, the police operate relatively successfully and autonomously, cases often fall only when they come to the prosecutor’s office and the court – this was pointed out in a recent conversation by dr. Boštjan M. Zupančič, former judge of the Court of Human Rights and constitutional judge.