Barbie and Klaus

Barbie, Mattel: a children’s toy, originally a blonde, white-skinned doll, of which more than a billion have been made since 1959. Barbie is today one of the world’s most successful brands and is also often used as a nickname for airheaded people who are not to be taken seriously.

Barbie, Klaus, also known as the Butcher of Lyon: the wartime Gestapo chief in that French city. At his trial in 1987 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for his personal responsibility for the torture and murder of hundreds of members of the French Resistance and French Jews, among them the 44 children of the Izieu children’s home, who, together with seven of their teachers, were arrested in April 1944 on Barbie’s orders and deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where all of them were murdered.

Getting kicks from racism and antisemitism is surely one of the most disgusting forms of clickbaiting. As long as it is done by frustrated anonymous basement-dwellers online, it is nasty but less dangerous than when it becomes editorial policy. Recently, the television channel TV3 hit a new low in this respect with the program Faktor, which Ms. Norma Brščič took over as presenter this January. For Norma, of course, this is not her first rodeo, as the Americans would say. She became known to the Slovenian public for breaking taboos, including some that she had set for herself and others. Many believe her musings should simply be ignored, since by reacting we create unnecessary attention and give them a weight they don’t deserve. Perhaps, but we should not forget that Ms. Norma did not whisper her racist and antisemitic messages to her husband across the pillow; this was public speech. Whatever we think of the content it broadcasts, TV3, on which Norma “breaks taboos,” is still part of our media landscape, with a program, owners, editors, companies that advertise on it, and probably viewers too. In the fight against hate speech, silence is not part of the solution but part of the problem.

On the program, Norma Brščič mused about the Jewish question, stupid and lazy Negroes, and the injustices suffered by people who believe the Earth is flat. She was later surprised by the outraged reaction of part of the public, since in her view the theme of the program was merely the defense of freedom of speech. “I did not say, nor do I think, that any violence should be done to Black people, for example. I just listed a few facts.” Facts, let us recall, that in the Slovenian public sphere there is no room for free thinking about stinking negroid faggots and the role of the Jews in world institutions, in politics, in the pornography industry, in the film industry and in the media. Incidentally, Joseph Goebbels mused about the “Jewish question” in a very similar way before Norma, complaining as early as 1933 that Jews had taken over the leading positions in the German media, literature, theater, film, the medical and legal professions and the stock exchange. “They control parliament and the political parties,” he lamented at a press conference in the Hotel Carlton in Geneva, while at the same time, like Norma, firmly denying any suggestion that violence of any kind would be used in solving the “Jewish question,” and promising that “this excessive Jewish influence will be dealt with in a just and humane manner.”

Because of her squeaky voice, blonde hair, doll-like looks and indignation at a society unjust to racists, antisemites and people who believe the Earth is flat, many do not take Norma seriously. Perhaps, because she is a woman, they judge her mainly by her looks. That is sexist and a risky underestimation. Even if someone reminds you of Barbie, don’t forget Klaus.

TV3’s editors scheduled the talk show about breaking taboos on the “Jewish question” just a few days before the anniversary of the day, 76 years ago, when soldiers of the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, one of the largest killing sites of the Second World War, where, besides the children of Izieu, almost a sixth of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were murdered, along with thousands of other victims of Nazi violence, including Slovenians. Holocaust Remembrance Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2005. Like every anniversary, it has its significance but also its weaknesses. The anniversary is important because remembrance is a moral imperative. It is a debt we owe to the victims, to their relatives and to the people who survived but were forever marked by an experience of indescribable suffering and evil. On the other hand, like every anniversary, Holocaust Remembrance Day also carries the risk that the memory of the victims becomes ritualized and loses its meaning. A short ceremony, a statement on the official website, a tweet or two, and that banal, hollowed-out and endlessly repeated “never again.” A ceremony as an opportunity for indulgences, for everything that responsible politics should be doing, but doesn’t, in the time before the ceremonies and after them. Until the next ceremony, the next wreath, the next photo opportunity and another “never again.” That is not enough. Remembering the victims of the Holocaust is not only an act of reverence towards millions of people killed by their fellow human beings; it should also be the foundation of a common and determined fight against the ideas, words and deeds that led to the crime and are returning today, helped by the indecision, opportunism and cowardice that prevent us from firmly standing up to them. The fight against the rehabilitation and return of evil cannot begin and end on the same day of the year, with a funeral wreath and a few phrases for the occasion. Instead of “never again,” I would suggest that politicians use the words of Primo Levi, the Italian writer of Jewish origin who survived the hell of the concentration camp: “It happened, therefore it can happen again.”

On this year’s remembrance day, President Pahor also published his message. “All of us—especially those of us with a public voice—must refrain from any word and any action that anyone might understand as offensive, as hateful or even as incitement to violence,” he said, pointing to our shared moral and human duty to strive to preserve tolerance, coexistence and free-mindedness, where everyone can express their views in a way that preserves the dignity of their fellow human beings.

I welcome the fact that this statement contains an echo of the realization that, today too, there are words and actions reminiscent of those that, eight or more decades ago, paved the way to crime. But given how much intolerance, hatred, relativizing of evil, stigmatizing and dehumanizing of certain groups there is in today’s world—and in today’s Slovenia—the president could and should have been clearer and more determined in his words. We are confronted with ideas and words that are understood as “offensive, as hateful or even as incitement to violence” not only by “some”; everyone should understand and condemn them as such. You may feel that I repeat myself in my writing, pointing out the same problems again and again. I promise to do the same in future. As long as it is necessary. Every time the “Jewish question” is discussed in the name of free-mindedness, every time people are compared to parasites that must be exterminated, every time a doctor publicly calls for the ethnic purity of Europe, every time a politician spreads racist messages, every time the Holocaust is denied or relativized, every time, every single time this happens, it is spitting on the memory of the victims and paving the way for a repetition of hell. It is not a defense of free-mindedness but an attack on freedom. And as long as we as a society cannot, dare not or will not respond to it, we are all jointly responsible for this spitting and paving. What is threatened in today’s Slovenia is not so much “free-mindedness,” which in the president’s statement was tacked onto tolerance and coexistence, but the civilizational foundations of post-war Europe, threatened by those who understand “free-mindedness” as a license for hatred, and abetted by those who lack the principle and courage to condemn this hatred—which is evidently becoming our new normal—clearly and firmly, every time, without dithering and shuffling.