Back Problems

When I was a child, we lived in Trieste. My parents enrolled me in a Slovenian Catholic kindergarten, where we were looked after by nuns. It left no major consequences, except that every day after coming home I shouted at my father and mother that we would end up in hell because we didn’t go to Mass. I think that is when I acquired the penchant for preaching that is still with me today. But what stuck in my memory most is that we three-year-olds spent most of the day sitting at our desks with our arms behind the backs of our chairs. “If you don’t sit up straight,” the sisters told us, “your back will hurt when you’re old.”

I remembered those words recently when photographs were published from the NATO meeting in Brussels showing the President of the European Commission staggering. Back pain is a nasty thing. From someone who was elected to his current post as the Spitzenkandidat of the Christian Democratic European People’s Party, I would have expected a much longer Catholic upbringing in his youth than mine. But perhaps he skipped class when they covered upright posture.

But let me be clear straight away: I do not agree with the wave of reproach and indignation that poured down on Juncker the moment the footage of his wobbly walk across the ceremonial stage was published. There are two possibilities, and in both cases the staggering Luxembourger deserves more sympathy than outrage. Perhaps it is true, as his spokespeople said, that he was struck by sciatica. Back pain is a serious matter and nothing to make fun of. If, however, his paso doble was the result of drinking before such an important meeting in full view of the world, that too is an illness that calls for treatment, not a reason for ridicule.

The President of the European Commission responded to reports of his alleged drunkenness by saying that he demanded respect. Here, despite all my sympathy, I have certain reservations. Respect is not something you get on demand; respect has to be earned. The best way to achieve it is an upright posture, which, incidentally, also helps against back pain. And it is precisely with an upright posture that many European politicians today have quite a few problems.

At a time when we advocates of liberal democracy compete in outrage at those who treat its values like a pig treats a bagpipe, we should not forget the responsibility of those who declaratively support the same values but whose conduct, inconsistency, duplicity, political calculation, unprincipled struggle for power, lack of integrity or simple incompetence have created the opportunity for a nationalist and populist comeback on the political scene in Europe and the world. The European People’s Party, to which the President of the European Commission also belongs, is an illustrative example of this trend in its attitude to populism within its own ranks. Anxious to get the best possible result in the coming European elections, and with it the largest possible slice of the power and financial pie, they are prepared to forget the values on which their predecessors built the European institutional, legal, social and economic model after the Second World War, as a defense against nationalism, populism and the politics of hatred and division. They are therefore prepared to keep everyone in their ranks, including those whose discourse and policies undermine the values of the very Europe that our worthy politicians are otherwise always talking about. This lack of consistency in defending their own values is skillfully exploited by politicians who build their political power on division and hatred in a growing number of European countries.

The normalization and legitimization of the unacceptable for the sake of short-term political gain is becoming a general trend with extremely dangerous long-term consequences. One of the latest examples here at home was the frightening absence of an appropriate political response to open flirting with neo-Nazism—not by anonymous internet trolls, but by an official candidate of one of the political parties in the recent parliamentary elections. It is truly incredible that those from whom one would expect immediate condemnation and distancing are still full of talk about building the state.

Given that we built our state on the support and participation of most Slovenians in the Allied struggle against fascism, and at the time of independence on values diametrically opposed to those the would-be MP sympathizes with, such appeals to state-building are, to put it mildly, not credible. If anything, they show the desperately low level of political culture, responsibility and decency in Slovenian politics. One or two unacceptable tweets can be seen as an isolated incident; the absence of an appropriate political response legitimizes that incident and turns it into the mainstream.

We live in the age of salonfähig populism, for which the Trumps, the Orbáns and our domestic imitators are not the only ones to blame; it is also, and above all, the fault of those who invited populists and nationalists into the living room and made every effort to make them feel at home. The way out of this mess cannot come from feigned ignorance and further relativization of the basic civilizational values on which Europe built its post-war stability and peace, but only from a strong ethical backbone and a responsible, determined and consistent insistence on those values, even at the expense of partial and short-term political interests.

So my advice to European and Slovenian politicians who, at least declaratively, defend democratic values, is above all to stand up straight. It is not only the best way to defend a Europe based on democracy, human rights and the democratic rule of law, but the only one. Besides, it also helps against sciatica. If they don’t look after their spine, all they will have left is a back aching from shame and despair.