Our Compatriot from Arizona

On May 24 this year, in the small Texas town of Uvalde, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos first shot his grandmother at home and then went to the school he had once attended and shot 19 children aged ten and eleven, and their teachers. The American public was once again, as so many times before, shocked, appalled and helpless. Many once again, as so many times before, took refuge in thoughts and prayers. And once again, as so many times before, warnings were heard that the tragedy must not be politicized. “Politicizing a tragedy” is an expression the American gun lobby and politicians use to prevent debate about why there have already been more than 230 mass shootings in the United States this year, and about why any 18-year-old can buy an assault rifle at the local store, without any check on whether he intends to shoot empty cans, grandmothers or ten-year-old children.

And then, once again, as so many times before, Paul Gosar, a congressman from Arizona, chimed in, describing the killer as a “transsexual leftist illegal alien,” so the left-wing rabble should keep quiet, since he was one of theirs. Gosar simply made this up. Ramos, like most of his victims, was a Spanish-speaking American citizen. But the message is clear: why restrict real, white Americans’ access to guns if the “beaners” are shooting each other?

Paul Gosar is not an unknown name in Slovenia. Three years ago, this gentleman received the Golden Order of the Republic of Slovenia for services in the international diplomatic field from President of the Republic Borut Pahor. In the President’s opinion, Paul Gosar deserved the highest state decoration for his “contribution and cooperation in strengthening relations between the Republic of Slovenia and the United States of America, for strengthening Slovenian-American friendship and further closer partnership between the two countries,” as the President’s office wrote on its website.

Paul Gosar. Congressman and former dentist from Arizona. Gosar, who is “sincerely proud of his Slovenian roots,” but who did not even wait for the blood of 21 victims to dry before exploiting the tragedy for yet another hateful outburst against people of different roots, political beliefs and sexual orientation.

Gosar, who “strives to preserve the memory of his Slovenian origin and mentions it in official appearances,” but whom even his own family has disowned because of his “racism, corruption, ignorance and hatred.” In the 2018 election, six of his nine siblings appeared in a campaign ad for Paul’s opponent, imploring voters for God’s sake not to vote for their extremist and racist brother. Incidentally, dear Mr. President, Paul’s siblings are also of Slovenian descent. If anyone in that family deserves the highest Slovenian state decoration, it is they, for their courage and determination in rejecting intolerance and standing up for values that, as you never fail to mention, you yourself swear by.

Paul Gosar, who, in the President’s opinion, “participated with particular commitment in the establishment of the friendship group in the US House of Representatives,” took part with similar particular commitment, last year and this year, in white nationalist gatherings organized by Nick Fuentes, a veteran of the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Whether our compatriot from Arizona appeared before the assembled flower of American neo-Nazism, amid loud chanting in support of Hitler and Putin, decked out with the regalia of the Slovenian Golden Order for services on the international diplomatic stage, the American media did not report. We are lucky that they evidently aren’t much interested in either President Pahor or his Golden Order.

Paul Gosar, our man in the US Congress, who is now being investigated by that same Congress over his alleged involvement in preparing the violent protests and the attack on the house of American democracy on January 6, 2021. Our pride from Arizona was in contact several times in the days before the attack with the extremists, to whom he openly promised a pardon on Twitter in advance.

Paul Gosar, vice-chair of the Slovenia friendship group in the US House of Representatives, whom even the leadership of his own party disowned after his latest appearance at Fuentes’s neo-Nazi gathering. “There is no place in the Republican Party for white supremacists or antisemitism,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell snapped at our honoree. Being so extreme that you manage to derail the leadership of a Republican Party sunk in Trump’s cesspool is an achievement of a special kind.

Paul Gosar, who offered to replace John McCain in the US Senate just hours after McCain announced that he had an incurable brain tumor.

I don’t know what the foreign-policy strategy for the future development of Slovenia’s relations with the US is, but my advice would be not to rely too much on the friendship group in Congress. If the image of our country in the US Congress is shaped by what decent members of Congress think of Paul Gosar, we can be seriously worried. So what! our President might retort; most of the misdeeds mentioned above date from after April 19, 2019, when Gosar received the highest Slovenian state decoration. But, Mr. President, Paul Gosar was not born yesterday. Paul Gosar is a veteran of racism, extremism and hatred. Paul Gosar did not wake up one morning with the highest Slovenian decoration on his pajamas and say to himself, OK, I’ve got this now, from now on I can hate and behave like a pig to my heart’s content. Our President invited, hosted and honored a man whom no other politician with any self-respect would touch with a bargepole, let alone decorate.

Perhaps he didn’t know who he was. Perhaps. But even if it was a slip and the President simply ran out of time to Google whom he was decorating, that does not explain why Paul Gosar, after all the racist, extremist, indecent and anti-democratic outbursts of the last three years, still wears the highest Slovenian decoration today. Thoughtlessly decorating a notorious racist might still be counted as a mistake; persisting in that decision raises the suspicion of a deliberate act. The first is embarrassing; the second is dangerous. Dangerous because it continues the process of normalizing and legitimizing the most extreme forms of right-wing culture war in Slovenian politics, which, under the pretext of respecting absolutely all opinions, including the most despicable, imports American alt-right ideology to us, sometimes translated from Hungarian, sometimes directly from Arizona or Palm Beach. The fight against all social minorities, homophobia, hatred of difference, hatred of migrants, manipulation and exploitation of fear and insecurity, trampling on democratic values and the rule of law, denial of the right to abortion, the fight against gender equality. That is the discourse of our compatriot Paul and his extremist cronies, including Slovenia’s son-in-law, who of course holds Gosar in high esteem.

But Paul Gosar is not appreciated only by former President Trump and evidently still by President Pahor. He is also esteemed by part of Slovenian politics. His lie about the massacre in Texas, which Gosar later deleted out of fear of the appalled reactions of the American public, was immediately retweeted by one of the members of the National Assembly, otherwise a known fighter against the danger of “cultural Marxism,” which is of course a staple in the discourse of white supremacists, racists and neo-Nazis. For the uninitiated, “cultural Marxism” is a far-right conspiracy theory with antisemitic undertones, which the American far right began reviving a decade or two ago from the ashes of Nazi slogans about “cultural Bolshevism.” Elsewhere in the world, the fight against “cultural Marxism” is talked and written about by characters like Breivik and Tarrant, who used it to justify their mass murders; here, it is babbled about in parliament.

Dear Mr. President, the joke wore thin long ago. Awarding a decoration to a blatant racist and bigot is, of course, not the only cause of the moral mess we have got ourselves into, partly by tolerating and justifying the undermining of basic civilizational and humanist values in Slovenian society, but it is certainly one of its symptoms. You have a few months left to correct this disgrace and strip the gentleman of the Golden Order for services. We know you promised not to be a moral authority, and you have kept that promise consistently, but you don’t even need moral authority in this case. A little elementary decency would be enough for a minimum of hygiene. It won’t solve all our problems overnight, but it can help the state, its citizens, and you too, dear Mr. President, to look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning with a little less embarrassment.