On Polarizations That Should Not Be “Overcome”

Quarreling really isn’t nice. And when someone quarrels as much as we Slovenians do, it’s no wonder many are fed up with us and calls are coming from all sides for us to stop arguing and dividing. Unity and dialogue are noble virtues that I support wholeheartedly. Almost always. But there are questions on which I would advise caution and reflection even to those most eager for harmony and dialogue. Some divisions should not simply be overcome, even with the best of intentions, and still less should coexistence and reconciliation be sought somewhere at the geometric midpoint. These are divisions and disputes over the fundamental democratic values we have protected in the Constitution. The European democratic and civilizational model rests on these values, and it was in their name that we won and built an independent state.

Unfortunately, the most dominant polarization in Slovenia today is precisely over these fundamental principles. Whatever labels we use for ourselves and our political opponents, Slovenia has for a long time not been divided so much into left and right, social democrats, leftists, liberals, conservatives, Christian democrats or right-wingers. The main ideological battle is between those who believe in and defend the values of liberal democracy, whether left, right or center, and illiberal, authoritarian and populist politics with a cribbed handbook and discourse from foreign parts, from Florida to the Kremlin. DeSantis and Trump are trying their hardest, but in the end no one is more anti-woke than Putin and his cronies.

I have also followed these changes in the Slovenian political space through my writing in recent years. From the very beginning I avoided commenting on day-to-day politics, and even more so taking a position on this or that party. When Večer’s editor-in-chief Matija Stepišnik offered me the chance to contribute, he suggested I write about European topics, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Nothing controversial, then, since we were all for them, weren’t we? Not that I have no party preferences, but I express them through my vote at elections, not through columns. In my columns I advocate a political and social system that is democratic and pluralist and in which different democratic political options have equal opportunities. If anything, I would not want to live in a system in which everyone had to think the same as I do on every social question. Paradoxically, however, over the years my uncontroversial writing about generally accepted values has slowly come to resemble commentary on day-to-day politics more and more. Not because I changed the content of my columns, but because day-to-day politics began to split and divide over the values I write about.

How far things have gone in the inability to distinguish between decency and pathology is also reflected in the reaction to my previous column, in which I condemned a blatantly antisemitic post by my former professor, constitutional judge and judge at the European Court of Human Rights. The gentleman couldn’t care less, as he wrote, because in my text I criticized him ad hominem rather than ad rem. In other words, he reproaches me for calling him an antisemite because of his antisemitic post, instead of debating with him whether antisemitism is justified or not. Because, you know, nothing is black and white and there are always two sides. Perhaps he expected that in the end we would overcome our differences and mutual polarization and, through dialogue, meet somewhere halfway. Agree that the Nazis were legitimately “addressing” a real threat, but got a little carried away in their response?

Deeply worrying statements have been swarming lately. Among them, certainly, is the dangerous and extremely irresponsible saber-rattling about civil war, as well as the completely deranged calls to arms by a certain guy who sends dog whistles, as the Americans call them, to the homeland from his London armchair. And sells himself as a victim and dissident to boot. Whatever we think about the events and decisions that triggered these outbursts, from the hasty abolition of a hastily introduced holiday to the latest decision of the Constitutional Court, this cannot and must not be an excuse for such irresponsible playing with fire and inflaming passions that can lead to violence. The same goes for the drivel about “cultural Marxism,” a discourse of very questionable historical provenance that stokes and manipulates accumulated social discontent through attacks on social minorities. Or historical revisionism, which abuses the legitimate and noble idea of reconciliation and reverence for the dead to discredit anti-fascism, the foundation of Europe’s postwar order. It is particularly dangerous when such ideas are spread by people who listen only to themselves and have no one beside them who could and would dare demand that they rein in their horses before it is too late. Playing with fire at some point acquires its own dynamic, which in the end not even the one who first lit the torch can stop.

When we founded our own state, we adopted a Constitution that clearly sets out the value framework of democratic pluralism in our society. It ranges from the provision that Slovenia is a social state that protects human rights and political freedoms to the articles protecting private property and free economic initiative. Within this framework we can and must think differently, and we can divide and quarrel to our hearts’ content. The competition of ideas and programs, with the mandate they receive from voters and under the oversight exercised by the institutions of the rule of law, an independent judiciary, the media and civil society, is the driving force that guarantees a democratic society peace, stability, security, justice, freedom and development. But when someone deliberately steps outside this framework and begins to undermine the constitutional foundations of Slovenian statehood and democracy—when they even begin to rattle sabers—the response simply cannot be mere whining about polarization and calls to overcome differences. If racism, authoritarianism, antisemitism, nationalism, hatred of social minorities and the denial of human dignity lie in wait on the other side of the divide, we need a firm and united response from the public and from all democratic political forces, regardless of their other political and ideological differences and squabbles. Not least so that in the future, too, we will live in a society in which we can go on thinking differently.