Slovenia Affected By Revanchist Communist Politicians – OpEd

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With an attractive monetary policy regime and promising economic outlook, the Republic of Slovenia, under the leadership of Prime Minister Janez Janša, is preparing for the Presidency of the Council of the EU effective on July 1, 2021.  

For Prime Minister Janša, whose impressive vision has enabled his country to surf smoothly and subsequently maintain stable economic policies while significantly alleviating the adversities from Covid – 19 pandemics; “Slovenia is determined to achieve a greater EU resilience so that a similar crisis [deriving from a myriad of factors] would be less calamitous for the European Union.”

Aside from Prime Minister Janez Janša’s preparations and effective performance in national public policies and foreign policy execution; Slovenia is faced with an expanding leftist – communist propaganda machine orchestrated by domestically grown trollers encouraged by leftist journalists and neo-communist political parties in opposition who use social media fake accounts and bad bots to carry out verbal attacks, illegitimate tasks to insult their country’s government and maim Slovenia’s image abroad. Leftist propagandists and self-proclaimed journalists are sprinkling disinformation across Europe and are causing irreparable damage to the nation of Slovenia within the transatlantic cooperation initiatives and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.   

On Saturday, May 29th, 2021, Prime Minister Janez Janša and his wife Urška Bačovnik Janša attended a ceremony organized by the Republic of Croatia on the occasion of Statehood Day at the invitation of Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. This event was announced by the government on its Facebook profile and below the news release, everyone can read a long list of hate speech statements, made by various bogus profiles. They even attacked the wife of Prime Minister  Janez Janša,  Mrs. Urška Bačovnik Janša.  Despite all the attacks taking place over the last six months, issued with a significant growth of frequency over the last weeks, Facebook and Twitter have not taken any actions to eliminate the slur and spam statements made by so-called communists who have not even lived a single day in Communism.  On the same vein, Slovenia’s self declared communists growing up in Yugoslavia indeed have not experienced at all what communism is about. The brutal communist regimes in the Balkans, from Albania all the way to North Korea, were class struggle, five year economic plans, political purges and collectivisation have torn apart families and communities. 

As an illustration example, a recent report from Slovenia in the evening hours of Germany’s First Tv channel, ARD, had completely distorted and misrepresented the reality in the ground; it was prepared by an austrian journalist Nikolaus Neumaier who also vigorously twitted about his show. 

Based on the gross inaccuracies reflected in this TV report, Mr. Franci Kindlhofer, an avid scholar of Slovenian studies and journalist had written the following as a response to what he saw in Neumaier’s documentary: “Dear Mr. Neumaier, I have discovered many irregularities in your report on Slovenia. It looks like you have adopted the language of the communist opposition: I know that it is very difficult to report objectively on Slovenia if the rapporteur does not know its history at least since 1941, or if he only knows the communist version of history. As an expert on the political situation in Slovenia, I will have to contact your employer in Munich due to inaccurate reporting. However, if You want to know more about Slovenia yourself, I am of course happy to be at Your disposal.”

Neumaier’s shocking response to Franci Kindlhofer (vice-president of the Association of Political Prisoners and Other Victims of Communist Violence); would certainly offend all those who have enormously suffered from Communism in the Balkans such as Albania’s Lek Pervizi, and humiliate the memories and suffering of at least 4000 Slovenian civilians murdered and over 25 thousand people who have suffered from Yugoslavia’s Communist repression after WWII.

On April 4th, Neumaier writes the following: 

“Thanks for your email. I do not know why you want to get in touch with me if you have already decided to complain about my work? I assume you just wanted to tell me that. Other than that, I do not know what to do with terms like communist, or non-communist. To me, it is just a matter of freedom of the press, and European values. This is true for me, regardless of worldview. With kind regards, Nikolaus Neumaier”

It is clear that  Neumaier was strongly influenced by Slovenia’s local communists, in his journalistic work. Indeed not all Western journalists of the younger generation see communism as a dictatorship of the same quality as fascism and Nazism.  To the best of his conscience, Kindlhofer replied as follows:

“Dear Mr. Neumaier, thank you very much for your reply. I prefer direct communication with You. With Your last sentence, the problem of communication with German journalists became clearer to me. You evaluate communism differently than, for example, National Socialism. Practiced communism is not just a worldview, but above all a brutal dictatorship, just like in fascism and National Socialism. In some details it is even worse.”

Today’s situation in Slovenia is very linked to communism. The political opposition is comprised of staunch successors of communism. The opposition party SD is the direct successor of the League of Communists, i.e. the KPS. Its members of parliament also say this quite openly. The party’s president, Tanja Fajon, pays public tribute to communist criminals, such as Boris Kidrič, who was one of the main leaders responsible for the massacre during the communist revolution. In 1945, when Western Europe was liberated from both fascist dictatorships, Stalin’s revolutionary J. B. Tito introduced a communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia, and thus also in Slovenia, which then lasted another 45 years. Now comes something very important: the existing public media, such as DELO and especially RTVS, are still relics of the old dictatorship. The current directorate also had connections with the communist UDBA, (read GESTAPO). Your way of thinking that all events in Slovenia have nothing to do with communism is fundamentally wrong. We did not have a Nuremberg trial to convict and punish communist criminals.”  There are many cases of European Journalists being used as a pawn by today’s Slovenian communists and communist propaganda. Such an endemic disease is increasingly encouraging political and civil turmoil in Slovenia and certainly throughout the Balkans; meanwhile European Union leaders are sitting tight with their hands crossed and do not recognize the sense of urgency in thwarting the radiation of communist fulcrums in Slovenia across Europe; it is a fact that communism is a serious threat to EU’s Magna Carta. 

In the second half of 2021, Slovenia will hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU for the second time and Ljubljana must be supported so that Communist residues can only be a nightmare in Slovenia’s history textbooks. The Janša Government has already started the preparations for this very demanding project and is ensuring in a timely manner that all security, technical and logistical requirements for the organization of meetings in Slovenia are fulfilled, along with designing activities for the promotion of his gorgeous country, Slovenia.

Peter Tase

Peter Tase is a freelance writer and journalist of International Relations, Latin American and Southern Caucasus current affairs. He is the author of America's first book published on the historical and archeological treasures of the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan (Republic of Azerbaijan); has authored and published four books on the Foreign Policy and current economic – political events of the Government of Azerbaijan. Tase has written about International Relations for Eurasia Review Journal since June 2012.

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