Our Expert on Human Rights and the Jewish Question

“Since 1850, when they obtained all political rights in the German Reich, the Jews managed to control about fifty percent of the media and seventy percent of all judges, so that they had a strong influence on films, theaters and literature. They were absolutely overrepresented, just as they are today in England, France and the USA.” This thought is the introduction to a short piece on the Jewish question entitled “What Did the Jews Do to Germany?”, posted on Twitter on Sunday, May 14, 2023, by the user @AlesValant, better known as Boštjan M. Zupančič, Harvard doctor, former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and of the Slovenian Constitutional Court, professor of law and international legal consultant, as the gentleman proudly presents himself on his profile.

The thesis is certainly bold, but not entirely original. Let us look, for example, at what Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, declared in September 1933 at a press conference in the grand salon of the Hotel Carlton in Geneva: “The Jews have occupied leading positions in the German media, literature, theater, film, in the medical and legal professions and on the stock exchange. They have parliament and the political parties under their control.” You may feel that a comparison between the two doctors is inappropriate and exaggerated, since our doctor obviously cannot be held responsible for the crimes against Jews committed by the Nazi regime. True, but this argument cuts both ways. Dr. Goebbels reassured journalists who were worried by his words about the Jews having supposedly hijacked the state by assuring them “that the concentration camps are intended only for re-educating antisocial leaders into useful citizens.” “We will deal with this excessive Jewish influence in a humane way,” the Herr Reichsminister good-naturedly concluded his address to the assembled representatives of the fourth estate. And here is the difference. While Dr. Goebbels could theoretically still wriggle out by claiming that in 1933 he did not know what was in preparation, our doctor repeated—and updated—the words about the Jews and the hijacked state knowing full well what this “humane” rescue of the “hijacked” German state led to.

But let us return to the post by our former constitutional judge. It continues as follows: “The Jews were responsible for numerous catastrophic bank crashes in Germany between 1870 and 1920. This is not Nazi or antisemitic or Arab propaganda, but is documented and even published in books written by Jewish Germans. Millions of German fathers lost their incomes, wealth and savings because of these Jewish banking gangsters and speculators.” In this part, the author of the post addresses the evergreen theme of blaming particular social groups, ethnic or religious minorities, for all the hardships experienced in times of economic crisis by honest, hard-working, white Christian men, or, in the above version, “millions of German fathers.” Even though the search for scapegoats in Europe has a long and bloody historical beard, it is losing none of its popularity among part of the political elite even today. Vigilance is certainly called for. Let us remember: according to the person our country sent to the European Court of Human Rights, “the Jews in England, France and the USA are today absolutely overrepresented.”

That’s not all. As the man who was for many years a professor at the Ljubljana Faculty of Law warns us in his post, where there are Jews, there are also homosexuals, decadence and perversion. And vice versa. You know, birds of a feather. This is, of course, the phenomenon that Dr. Goebbels and his boss called “Kulturbolschewismus,” which many today translate as “cultural Marxism” and enthusiastically use as a sledgehammer in nationalist populism’s culture war against the values of liberal democracy. The concluding thought of the text posted by our legal giant goes like this: “The Jews brought moral decadence into German art and culture, theater and film. The first homosexual theater plays were staged in Berlin in the 1920s, and the first adulterous plays in the 1880s and 1890s by Jewish authors. Adultery, sexual perversions of all kinds, sadism, masochism, a great deal of homosexuality and decadent art, art that is completely ridiculous, so-called modern art, all this was pushed by Jewish intellectuals. And this caused great resistance among the German people. They also wrote mocking books and made fun of Jesus and Christianity.”

Here we are, my dear fellow citizens. Deep down and sinking ever lower. Some may wave away my writing, saying we must not give such characters attention because it only encourages them. This is a doctrine based on the belief that intolerance and hatred disappear by themselves if we ignore them thoroughly enough. I am of a different opinion. Spreading antisemitic hatred like this would deserve not only sharp condemnation but probably also the attention of prosecutors, regardless of who was behind it. And Boštjan M. Zupančič is not just anyone. And this is not his first antisemitic rodeo. Our “top human rights expert” rampages on social media every day like an eighteen-year-old skinhead who can’t hold his drink. And nothing. From nowhere and from no one. Indifference and silence which, with every slip, normalize evil and hatred among us. In light of the tragic events we recently witnessed in Serbia, too, we should be worried about what can happen in a society that banalizes hatred and calls to violence. Today some here are urging people to arm themselves; supposedly we are threatened by civil war.

Why no one looks at this man’s antisemitic fingers on the keyboard of hatred, let alone raps him on the knuckles, everyone will have to answer for themselves. Some probably because he is evidently still useful to them. When the Council for Combating Hate Speech was recently established, many opponents of the government’s decision enthusiastically quoted him as Slovenia’s greatest expert in the field of hate speech. Which in a certain sense he certainly is. As is evident from his posts. Others are probably embarrassed. Let us not forget that only a few years ago the guy was a hero of the Slovenian liberal center. A legal big shot and a provocative intellectual stallion kicking up dust behind him. This, for example, is what a journalist of the Ljubljana daily Dnevnik wrote on his departure from Strasbourg seven years ago: “Professor Boštjan M. Zupančič is often hard to understand, as he is inclined to go beyond conventional frameworks … Some object to this, others revere him. But no one has ever said he is a bad judge. He is one of the best Slovenian legal experts. Boštjan M. Zupančič leaves Strasbourg as a great legal authority.”

Let us not forget that Miro Cerar’s government nominated this man as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. We avoided great embarrassment only because, before the procedure was concluded, he went off the rails and published on Facebook, and then in letters to the editor of The Guardian, a post in which, on the occasion of her death, he disgustingly attacked Simone Veil, former President of the European Parliament and the minister responsible for liberalizing abortion in France. Despite the affair, a few months later his professional colleagues chose him as one of the ten most influential lawyers in Slovenia. I do not, of course, think that the people who supported and revered this man share responsibility for his behavior in recent years, but their support in the past does now oblige them to react and condemn.

This applies even more to Slovenian politics and the state. A man we sent to the highest office in the European human rights system is today behaving in a way that threatens Slovenia’s reputation. He did not march into the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia of his own accord; the National Assembly elected him there. At the time when he lashed out at Simone Veil, he was receiving a salary from the Ministry of Justice. The Slovenian state sent him to the European Court of Human Rights. It cannot now behave as if the antisemitic rampaging of a man who served as a judge on behalf of Slovenia during some very important cases before the Strasbourg court has nothing to do with it. We will not solve the predicament with silence and by pretending it does not exist. Our “great legal authority” is like Prince Andrew posting photos from Epstein’s parties every day. If we cannot and will not condemn such blatant antisemitism by someone to whom we only recently entrusted the highest judicial offices in Slovenia and in Europe, we become co-responsible both for the hatred and for its possible consequences. In the words of a former President of the Republic whose concern is otherwise very selective, this is behavior that takes us backward. By about ninety years, into the grand salon of the Hotel Carlton in Geneva.