We’re Not Nearly Woke Enough

Recently, the Slovenian public was appalled to learn that one of the country’s formerly most influential and high-ranking judges, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, regularly posts antisemitic messages on social media. This realization only struck Slovenians after the UK’s The Jewish Chronicle, the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world, published an article about it.

I don’t bring up this story to dwell on the individual in question. If anything, I feel pity toward him—amazed at the aggressiveness of his reputational self-destruction. What compels me to write again is the lack of serious response to this and other social pathologies in Slovenia’s public discourse. What happened following the Chronicle article is telling for several reasons.

First, the outrage was fleeting. A few media pieces, a couple of reactions on social media—and then, oops, it happened, let’s move on.

Second, even that feeble response came only after we were alerted from abroad. For years prior, this gentleman had been “entertaining” the Slovenian public sphere with his increasingly questionable pronouncements, gradually morphing from misogyny and conspiracy theories into full-blown antisemitism. And all that time—until someone tapped us on the shoulder from outside—this man continued to enjoy public attention, immunity from serious criticism, and was even regularly invited to speak in the media, including public television, as a supposed expert on human rights.

Third, most commentary in Slovenian media focused primarily on how this was a major scandal and embarrassment for the European Court of Human Rights, where the individual served for years. But hardly anyone examined what this says about the country that nominated him—first electing him to its Constitutional Court, and later nearly appointing him to the UN Human Rights Committee, a move thwarted only by his own vile comments about the late Simone Veil, a former French minister and President of the European Parliament.

Insisting on political and societal condemnation is essential. Without such a response, antisemitism—alongside other pathological discourses that have proliferated in Slovenia’s public life—creeps ever closer to full normalization and legitimacy. The message that society and politics send through silence to every individual or group harboring and stoking such hatred is: “If he can do it, so can I.”

The antisemitism of “our top human rights and Jewish question expert” is not an isolated case. Former high-ranking government officials have denied the Holocaust, national security advisors have competed in racism and anti-migrant hatred, and prominent members of parliament have fearmongered about “the Great Replacement”—a white supremacist conspiracy theory. Not to mention babble about so-called “cultural Marxism,” a recycled version of the “cultural Bolshevism” Nazis raged against in the 1930s.

The longer these outbursts go unanswered, the more banal and acceptable everyday hate becomes. We are frogs slowly boiling in the ever-hotter swamp of indigenous antisemitism and racism.

A particularly telling example is the attacks on George Soros. The Jewish-Hungarian businessman and philanthropist has become a catch-all scapegoat—a dog whistle that unleashes the pack. And we’ve grown completely used to it, as if it’s entirely normal. It’s not.

The demonization of Soros rests on thinly veiled traditional antisemitic tropes about a sinister global Jewish cabal pulling the strings of the world to the detriment of honest, ordinary, white, non-Jewish people. Or, as Elon Musk put it a few months ago: “Soros hates humanity. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.” After that tweet, Musk’s social network was flooded with antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Putin and Trump attack Soros. So does the gentleman mentioned at the start of this piece, who, after receiving criticism from abroad, reportedly deleted his most blatant antisemitic posts—only to eagerly share a new one accusing Slovenia’s foreign minister of “destroying Slovenians and Slovenian identity on behalf of an international clique” because she met Soros’s son at a conference.

Apparently, bashing Soros has become a kind of methadone therapy for suppressed antisemites who can’t hate openly.

The second issue is that attacks on Soros are part of a broader effort to delegitimize and criminalize civil society—specifically the part that defends democratic values, fights racism and other forms of discrimination and hate, promotes equality and solidarity, and serves as a check on executive power. It’s no secret that through his Open Society Foundation, Soros has invested millions in support of such civil society—especially in Central and Eastern Europe.

What’s shocking is that in the span of just over three decades, he went from being an ally of every government striving for democratic transition to, in the eyes of many, becoming the ultimate villain. He’s now targeted by those who are leveraging the very abuses and failures of that transition (many of which they themselves caused) to justify authoritarian power grabs.

This dramatic reversal illustrates how much Europe—and the world—have changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Soros’s foundation funded essential democracy-building projects after the collapse of communism. It awarded thousands of scholarships to help new democracies cultivate experts in human rights and democratic governance. It supported programs for Roma integration—especially through education and culture. It founded a university that trained many of today’s top scholars and practitioners in democratic institutions.

That university no longer operates in Budapest. It was driven to Vienna by a former Soros scholarship recipient—now Prime Minister—who cements his power by demonizing his former patron.

Once, Soros was a hero for supporting democracy. Today, he’s a villain for supporting democracy. For years, we tiptoed in place, claiming to march toward a bright future grounded in shared democratic values. Now we’re marching confidently—in reverse. Some, even in jackboots.

Today, being a “Sorosist” is a slur against anyone who advocates for and defends liberal democratic values and human rights. The same goes for the term “woke,” now a universal smear against efforts toward equality, solidarity, social justice, and environmental responsibility.

“Cultural Marxism” is a made-up concept that ties it all together—a conspiracy theory with historical precedent. These labels are as vague as they are toxic. When American conservative commentator Bethany Mandel was asked in an interview to define the terrifying “woke indoctrination” she rails against in her book, she stammered, then fell silent.

This is the heart of it: indiscriminate name-calling. Accusations without evidence. Verdicts without appeal. A badge to mark someone as an “enemy of the people.” It’s a discourse that serves as a decoy and cover for political ideas so extreme and dangerous that even those decrying “wokeness” and “cultural Marxism” (for now) dare not say them aloud.

It’s camouflage—beneath which racism, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, chauvinism, and nationalism increasingly poke through. At its core: a hunger for unchecked power and greed. The main goal of all this shouting and finger-pointing is to dismantle decades of work toward a more open, compassionate, and democratic society.

Populist demagogues from Moscow to Florida, from Budapest to the increasingly murky swamps of Slovenian social media and politics, build political capital by sowing division and hate. In the name of fighting these so-called “threats,” they ban books, attack democratic values, undermine democratic institutions, rehabilitate slavery and colonialism, and stigmatize minorities. They ruthlessly exploit the hardship and fear of those whom neoliberalism has humiliated and pushed to the margins.

For the second time in less than a century, we are facing an explosive mix of social discontent, economic hardship, political distrust, fear of the future, and authoritarian ambitions of populist nationalists who build their path to power on division and hate.

In the end, it’s all about one thing: power. No matter the cost.

You know what? We’re not nearly woke enough. And when it’s too late, it won’t be enough to say “oops, let’s move on”—because there’ll be nowhere left to go. We’ll already be at the bottom. The very place we so often swore we’d never return to.