The Muppet Show

I don’t know if I’m the only one, but the gatherings and pontifications of the Assembly for the Republic often remind me of those two grumpy old men on the balcony of the Muppet Show—with the difference, of course, that the Assembly for the Republic has a bigger balcony and less sense of humor. That was also my first impression of their recent press conference. “I see mobilization, a revival of revolutionary socialist traditions, hatred of capitalism and hatred of the Church,” complained the first man.

“The new government will operate under the baton of the Yugo-nostalgic left,” snapped the second angrily, adding that everyone “who does not accept the post-communist interpretation of recent history” is regarded as an internal enemy.

“There are demands for censorship of those who question the mythology about the time of the Second World War and after,” fumed the third.

“These are open or covert attempts to deny the Slovenian holocaust,” concluded the last man grimly, not forgetting to add that “in some democratic countries, Holocaust denial is even a criminal offense.”

Colorful, certainly, though, as I said, not very funny. Not much of a Muppet Show, really. The sleight-of-hand manipulation of facts and history is more reminiscent of the men on the street who move a ball between three cups at lightning speed and invite passers-by to guess where it is hidden. They are helped by a seemingly unconnected accomplice, a neat and polished gentleman in a suit and tie, who, with feigned impartiality, assures the audience of the honesty and credibility of the whole business and invites them to reconcile. Pardon, to bet.

But joking aside, the question is what the participants actually wanted to achieve with the press conference. The purpose was certainly not to inform the Slovenian public that crimes against unarmed people took place in the post-war period. That is a generally accepted truth that no one denies. Nor was the aim a political condemnation. The post-war events have been condemned from all sides, except perhaps by a few ideological hotheads who would really do better to keep quiet. Such condemnation is also the only acceptable and decent response. Any attempt to justify the post-war killings is grist to the mill of those who want to use these tragic events to turn history on its head.

Nor is it about a desire to remember the victims with respect. No one disputes that either.

Least of all, despite all the efforts of the neat and polished gentleman, is it about a sincere desire for reconciliation. That reconciliation actually happened twenty-eight years ago, thanks to the president and the archbishop of the time. If you like, it was also cemented in marble, thanks to the current head of state. But this reconciliation does not interest the members of the Assembly for the Republic, and it interests their choirmaster even less. Even the moral equidistance between anti-fascism and collaboration that the reconciliation process, in its marble version, implies does not satisfy their ambitions to reinterpret history.

So what is it about? First, an attempt to discredit political competitors and deny them legitimacy, based on far-fetched accusations and imaginary links between their political opponents and all sorts of things, including the post-war events. You can think what you like about Marjan Šarec, Alenka Bratušek, Miro Cerar, Dejan Židan, Karl Erjavec and Luka Mesec, but claims that these people are in any way connected to, or bear responsibility for, the post-war killings are really too idiotic to deserve a serious answer. But we live in strange times, and idiotic lies have ever longer legs. As the participants stressed in their introduction, without a trace of irony, “the political environment is turning into fertile ground for the flourishing of ideological intolerance.”

The second aim of invoking the post-war events, and in my view the main one, is an attempt to recast the losers of history as winners. That is the light in which their indifference to the reconciliation process should be understood. They are not interested in indulgences and the relativization of responsibility; they expect and demand a moral victory over anti-fascism. In the discourse and logic of the Assembly for the Republic and its sympathizers, the post-war killings—which here, as in some other countries, unfortunately prevailed over court trials as the only proper way of sanctioning collaboration with the Nazis and crimes against one’s own people—become a moment of absolution from responsibility for taking part in a criminal enterprise that caused the deaths of twenty million people in Europe. Among them were six million Jews who died as victims of the Holocaust. The statement by the president of the Assembly for the Republic calling the post-war events—that is, the killing of people who supported or collaborated with the executioners of the concentration camps—a “Slovenian holocaust” is, to put it mildly, indecent and offensive to the victims of Nazi crimes. That in this context he also mentions that Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in some countries is cynicism without equal. I do not recall the president speaking out on this subject when, some time ago, a prominent member of the assembly he chairs publicly belittled and denied the Holocaust.

The manipulation of historical facts is above all a springboard for an attempt to gain political dominance in the present and to reshape the future in the spirit of ideas that have already caused Europe so much grief once. Under the increasingly thin cover of anti-communist clamor and the fight against phantom enemies and totalitarian regimes that no longer exist, the real ambitions of revising historical truths are becoming ever clearer. They are about undermining the civilizational achievements of European society, based on liberal democracy, humanism, solidarity, human rights, social justice, the democratic rule of law and, above all, anti-fascism. In other words, the society that democratic Europe established after the Second World War precisely so that the ideas and forces defeated in that war would never again come to power. Never again.