The Premeditated Dumbing-Down of the State

Say what you like, but in my view our retroactively never-convicted Speaker of the National Assembly deserves a doctorate. OK, an honorary one, so that there won’t be trouble with paying for it again. If not at the Faculty of Arts, then at least the Faculty of Social Sciences should give him credit for having produced, with the slogan “Power to the people” under which his party is storming Slovenia’s political space, the most concise definition of populism. Top political scientists write books about it, explain it and dissect it down to the bone, yet Stevanović manages to say it all in four words. Power to the people.

Why is this a definition of populism? Because the populist is always the one who claims the right to be the sole representative of the will and interests of the people. Who, in the populist paradigm, are a homogeneous, amorphous mass that thinks and feels as one. The populist leader is the only one who knows what this amorphous people wants and needs. And only he knows how, is able and has the right to impose the will of the people. Power to the people. Whatever Stevanović does or commits is in the interest of the nation. The second platitude on which populism builds its paradigm of power is the deep state. Populism always builds on creating the impression that it is fighting the elites. And who makes up this famous deep state? Everyone who criticizes Stevanović. Everyone who is his political opponent. The media doing their job. Civil society fighting populism. All those working against the people. Taking their power away.

This of course does not mean that among the political opponents of populists like Stevanović there are no people and groups who could be reproached for a great deal. But populism does not bother with details. It does not build its criticism on specific accusations, with the exception of superficial whataboutism. Populism does not build on substance but on tribal polarization. The people against the deep state. Us against them.

Stevanović must also be given credit for having cleansed populism of any attempt at pretense, and of any rhetoric that would at least try to give the impression that some framework of minimal political reason, dignity, logic and facts is still accepted. He doesn’t answer accusations and criticism with counter-facts and arguments, but simply sits down in his official car and records a little video for social media along the lines of …they’re accusing me of something again. All lies. A deep-state conspiracy. We’ll turn off their little taps. They’re scared. Mater jih jebemo v glavo…

In Slovenia we are witnessing the premeditated dumbing-down of the political and social space. This is post-rational and post-values political scheming in its most primitive form. Logic, facts and consistency are elitist concepts with which the deep state fights the little man. This of course does not mean that I consider Mr. Stevanović a dimwit. God forbid. After all, we are talking about an almost never convicted almost-doctor with an almost paid-for doctorate, who almost immediately expelled a party colleague and almost sent to a European institution a man, almost an engineer, who almost never paid his workers. And today he is almost the first man in the state. So much for the saying that “almost” never caught a hare. No, Mr. Stevanović is not stupid, just crooked.

If there is one thing in which Mr. Stevanović nevertheless departs from the usual profile of a Slovenian populist, it is that he is not a nationalist. At least not a Slovenian one. And let us be clear: his cosying up to and sympathy for Serbian nationalists and authoritarians is not an ethnic problem, but an ethical one. This year’s address on the Republic of Slovenia’s Sovereignty Day was given by a man who somehow cannot bring himself to acknowledge that genocide took place in Srebrenica. Who receives, on the premises of the National Assembly, a politician from Republika Srpska with a very questionable past. A Speaker of the National Assembly who flirts with cockades like the ones worn on their fur hats by the characters who, on 1 December 1989, wanted to stage a “rally of Resni.ca” in Ljubljana—sorry, a “rally of truth”. In front of this same National Assembly that is today presided over by, well, you know who. The jokes write themselves. But they are not very funny.

How did we get to this situation?

First, there are the voters who support the “politics” of Zoran Stevanović not just despite everything described above, but precisely because of it. I don’t consider them dimwits either. On the one hand, it is understandable that many people are fed up to the back teeth with the kind of politics they have watched and experienced over more than three decades of Slovenia’s experience with democracy. Once again it turns out that populism is extremely skilled at exploiting the often justified anger at the incompetence, inconsistency, greed, corruption, narcissism and, yes, the elitism of politicians of all colors, whose mouths are otherwise full of democratic values, high-flying promises and solemn vows of their own integrity. They are far from all being the same, but it is true that so far there have been far too few who were not.

In part I can understand the anger, that emotional need of the humiliated and insulted to show the middle finger, but I would nevertheless suggest to these people that, alongside their emotions, they also start using their reason. Not “common sense”, which has become a label for every piece of nastiness and prejudice, but critical thinking, which begins with a critical attitude toward one’s own views and the information on which they rest. Don’t do it for my sake, do it for your own. Many voters in America who until yesterday fervently supported President Trump are today learning in a very painful way that the main problem in their lives was not which toilet transsexuals would pee in, but a populist elite that, by inciting them against particular social groups, diverted their attention from its own doings, corruption and incompetence. The same will happen in Slovenia. The sooner we start thinking critically, the less painful the consequences will be.

Stevanović’s success in Slovenian politics was, however, also made possible by a second group of people, for whom I have considerably less understanding. First of all, his political partners, the current coalition, which, in order to vault into power and stay there, was evidently prepared to team up with anyone at all. The political parties and individuals who walked into this trap and are now forced to defend and justify every new affair and little affair that our gallant Speaker of the National Assembly produces so freely and so regularly must be aware of the role they are playing in the disintegration and humiliation of Slovenian democracy. These are not things that will be forgotten overnight. Sooner or later the bill will come.

And lest we lash out only at the ruling coalition: however outraged the opposition is today at the conduct of the Speaker of the National Assembly, it is impossible to escape entirely the suspicion that at least some of them were themselves prepared to cooperate with him after the elections. If it turns out that they avoided this historic disgrace not because of their own ethical reservations, but because Stevanović saved them from it himself by opting for a better offer, then they too bear part of the responsibility for the dumbing-down of the Slovenian state and of Slovenian politics.

I believe in Slovenian democracy, which is why I remain a very worried optimist. But time is not on our side. Some things can leave lasting consequences. It is high time for politicians who consider themselves responsible, whether on the right or on the left, to start behaving responsibly too. An important step in that direction would be the realization that in the long run it is also far better and safer for them to sacrifice power in the name of democracy than the other way round.