SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF SLOVENIA – A JOURNEY FROM A PROMISING EU UPSTART TO A NATION OF AMERICAN-FLAG BURNING EXTREMISTS

I remember that summer of 1999 when our country had a special privilege of hosting The President of the United States. What an honour for a tiny nation of two millions, which was still overwhelmingly pro-European and more importantly pro-western during that period.  As President Clinton greeted an awe inspired American flag waving crowd, reactions were telling. People cheered and you could hear thirty-something women screaming: “Billy!”, as if he came to personally liberate them from decades worth of oppression. I am sure these same women would deny it today.

What a difference a decade makes. I was not at all shocked the other day, while reading an article in the Time which placed Slovenia among 9 nations which hate America the most - joining such esteemed company as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. I was not shocked because I have become accustomed to it for the last several years. One American immigrant who lives in Slovenia commented on his blog how listening to Slovenes discussing foreign politics is like witnessing a lecture in an extremist Islamic madrasa.

First of all let me stipulate that this “hate” has nothing to do with USA per se. It goes without saying that Americans did a lot of geopolitically naïve and uncalled for things in subsequent years from that faithful visit by president Clinton. The costly and unpopular invasion of Iraq and NSA spying scandals come to immediate attention. Yet those things paradoxically have no connection to Slovenia’s “hate” of America. Slovenian hate is actually much broader; we hate everything connected to western values, including but not limited to EU, capitalism, free trade markets, foreign ownership, NATO…. Yes it does read like a political manifesto of Hamas.

What happened one might ask? How on earth did this liberal, democratic nation on the sunny side of the Alps, which has always been a role model of a successful emerging free trade economy turn into a country where words “liberal” and “capitalism” spark same reactions as “communism” would in the USA during McCarthy times. Moreover how did this remarkable metamorphosis of worldview happen in just a few short years?

It is actually quite a simple series of events which somewhat predictively culminated in the advent of the financial crisis of 2007, with seeds for our current mindset planted back in 1991 – or in 1941 as some would argue.

Our emergence from being one of the Federal Communist Republics of Yugoslavia to an independent nation happened smoothly – one might say almost too smoothly. So smooth in fact that the communist party never really left, but instead morphed into a new leftist political option, which began to dominate the political, economic and social sphere of Slovene public life for the next decade and a half. Unlike Czechs or Poles we never had our own Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa – a genuine liberal with free-trade world-views who would not be marred by communist past. Instead what we got was Milan Kučan, a prominent communist during the times of socialist Yugoslavian Federation,  representative for the Slovene Communists in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia's Central Committee in Belgrade became the  President of the Republic – albeit with much less constitutional power than a US president. Moreover the political arena was dominated by the Liberal Party of Slovenia (LDS) lead by what seemed to be at one point PM-for-life – Janez Drnovšek, one of the last Presidents of the Presidency of socialist Yugoslavia (1989–1990). Kučan especially was instrumental in gathering all the leverages of economic influence around him during that time – from former political dignitaries, which kept their influence in the newly formed country to powerful CEOs of former state-owned companies, which were privatized in shady managerial buy-outs. As such he positioned himself as an incognito leader of the country – a role he never quite let go to this day, since he is still a hugely influential figure in Slovene politics, despite being officially retired. In the meantime Drnovšek who was more pragmatic of the two lead several uneasy coalitions while always remaining in firm control of the country all in accordance with powers of political continuity that never really changed from the communist era. As such, even though Slovenia was a success story on the surface, the underpinnings were rotten to the core, marred by chronic nepotism in public administration, systemic corruption and government owned monopolies in telecommunications, postal services and banking which never showed any will to be privatized, since they were a fruitful feeding ground for the political elite.  All this did not seem to matter for quite a long time for as long as there was plenty of cheap money around to spend. The illusion of a progressive free-trade friendly European country was seemingly accentuated by our acceptance into the EU, NATO and eventually the European monetary union.

As mentioned at the beginning Slovenia never had its proper transition from totalitarianism to  political pluralism.  Slovene communist tradition was a homegrown affair – unlike the one in other former communist states of the EU, where communism was maintained “peacefully” with Russian tanks. At first it informally followed Stalin’s Bolshevik revolution, but later took a more independent approach. Our red ideology was concocted and executed by a group of opportunists, which sensed the right time to join the winning side and consequently overthrow the Serbian monarch that reigned here before the world war. These opportunists were of Serbian, Croatian, but also Slovene ethnicities – in fact Tito was of mixed Slovene and Croatian origins.  As such we never associated communism with Soviet oppression and since the government propaganda was constantly in full swing, as it is the case in most totalitarian regimes, we were convinced there is no better or more abundant place on earth than Yugoslavia – even in the 1970s when we were restricted from driving due to oil shortages or in the 1980s when supplies of basic goods began to run out and country was drowning in Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation.

We temporarily turned away from it in the beginning of the 1990s, after our brief war for independence, as we started to connect it with Serbian nationalism. The thing that re-spawned the seed leading us down this infamous path of anti-western sentiment once more was a huge resistance to privatization in the early 2000. All of a sudden connected elites which held all control of our economy had to compete with foreign capital which threatened to buy state-owned companies. This was unacceptable and represented the first tipping point where media started pushing the agenda that everything foreign is bad and harmful for our national interest. As 2008 rolled in and first real life effects of the financial crisis started to be seen, they went into overdrive, 2007 as skeletons finally started falling out of the closet. The stage was set for us to join our middle eastern brothers and sisters in our eternal plight against the western devils.

Tycoonization which ran rampant during joint leadership of Kučan and Drnovšek was finally becoming a problem as tycoons  - which had political connections stemming right back to times of former Yugoslavia - ran out of money while trying to buy out once state-owned companies with loans  secured by capital of the companies which they were buying out. Consequently state-owned banks – long fortresses of elitist groups that got thousands of no-questions-asked bogus loans – suddenly found themselves in dire straits as toxic loans pilled up until taxpayers had to bail them out several times. The consequent predominately leftist governments which all belonged to the same political continuity of former Yugoslavia found answers in tax raises and increased public spending, while throwing superficially appealing candy at the tax payers. The old socialist-inspired ideals of free health care – even if it was completely inadequate and not up to modern standards. Free education – even if most universities are on levels of Somalia or Zimbabwe. No significant salary cuts for our needlessly huge machine of public administration workers, inherited from old Yugoslavia, while the private sector had to make enormous cutbacks in spending just to remain competitive and survive.

Something had to give and as usual in such cases it all came tumbling down on the taxpayer. Quality of life fell drastically since 2007 and with every real wage decrease came more pressure on leading structures that had a cozy status quo in all spheres of political, economic and social engagement since 1991. As unease grew the media, which has been traditionally controlled by leftist political structures since the end of 2^nd world war went into action, while looking for a convenient scape goat for the situation we found ourselves in. We found one in no time!

All of a sudden newspaper columns, television shows and opinion pieces throughout the country started spewing out articles filled with anti-western propaganda, either directed at EU, USA or capitalism in general. All of a sudden America went from fighting an impossible battle with Middle Eastern Islamic extremists to an evil empire slaughtering defenseless women and children all for the sake of oil. EU instead of our natural historic home became a foreign dungeon master which tries to take away our financial independence and sovereignty – a lot of mainstream political parties built their programs on such ideas. Liberal capital ideals of free trade and limited government intervention became scorned upon and labeled as “neo-liberal”, which in context of our country meant something that is equivalent to exploitative capitalism of the late 19^th century, before the advent of unions and workers rights. Yugo-nostalgia was rampant throughout the country, feeding on that old familiar trick our brain does, when it tends to forget all the bad things about the past and keep the pleasant ones. The same trick that made those summer stays at grandmas place so magical for all of us. The more unhappy people got the more they started concocting absurd alternate realities where Yugoslavia was some Shangri-La when everybody had jobs, went on vacation and spent lots of time with their families, rather than remembering it for what it really was – a ruthless bound-to-fail authoritarian state with unsustainable planned economy, where you had to go to Austria if you wanted “luxurious” goods like coffee or chocolate.

This Yugo-nostalgic feeling was well exploited by parties in power since they were all successors of the communist regime. They started playing on people’s nationalist strings, promoting protectionism and government intervention to protect us from being “owned” by foreign masters as we have been so many times in the past.  The current government coalition lead by a party of Kučan’s loyalists never shied away from blatant nationalism, euroskepticism, overwhelming tendency towards protectionism and accentuating connections to its communist origins. No one considered it at all bizarre when the current Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek proudly sang Bandiera Rossa (Italian for Red Flag) the famous communist propaganda song during an official event.

It culminated in absolute absurd levels very recently, where our publically funded national broadcaster alongside other mainstream media took an extremely biased view when it came to reporting on the Ukrainian crisis, with correspondents from Moscow reporting about the “western conspiracy in Maidan” trying to topple a legally elected government. All this while trying zealously to promote the pipe dream of modern socialism, though headline interviews with Venezuelan dignitaries, explaining to Slovene people in great detail how Chavez lead them out of poverty and US subservience. Or extended guest spots with prominent members of extreme European left like the Siriza member Aleksis Tsipras, a social demagog who is not shy of comparing Germany and IMF with the 3^rd Reich.

Of course people followed suit and turned it up a notch as only commoners can. It is pretty much “common knowledge” on the street of an average Slovene city these days that 9/11 was an inside job, that Americans, NATO (or both, depending on the conspiracy theory in question) are polluting our skies with chemtrails, that the world and all its intricate international goings-on are somehow connected to some American-Zionist conspiracy of choice, most probably connected to Illuminati or Bilderbergs or both. In short the whole country together with the media and government coalition turned into a crowd of Occupy-Wallstreet anarchic youth.

Finding external enemies we can demonize and blame for all our problems has always been our national forte. In modern times USA, EU, IMF, and other bourgeois enemies of our happy socialist brotherhood are a convenient target once more. The former communist regime was also a renowned seeker of external enemies, as makeshift distractions against domestic problems. In his long Fidel Castro inspired speeches Josip Broz Tito our local "dear leader" at the time - made references to people, who were out to "destroy our brotherhood and unity from the outside". He said all those things while never being shy of taking money from people he accused of such transgressions. Being true to its heritage, our current government despite its skepticism of the west has no trouble at all lending money from it, to temporarily patch up a ballooning public debt.

So here we are. A europskeptic american-hating nation in the heart of Europe, with crippling financial problems and a bunch of people who think the Jews, Americans and European landlords (not necessarily in that order) are all out to get them. All this happened to us in just a span of short few years. It was a scary transformation to witness. It is amazing just how quickly one can lead people astray. Public opinion is generated by the media – that is a very painful lesson Joseph Goebbels contributed to the history books. When dealing with a playground of two million closely connected people, an ethos of communist continuation, a failed transition and almost complete dominance of state-controlled media it is that much easier to do. Putin had to work way harder and be much more oppressive in his native Russia to achieve a similar effect. Slovenia as a failed state should be a lesson and a warning to the rest of the world. Yes it is that easy to drive people towards an absurd outlook on life.