On Sunday afternoon, police officers visited Roman Vodeb to take his statement. “The police came to tell me ex officio that Urška Klakočar Zupančič is bothered by some of the things I have been saying.” Namely, the Speaker of the National Assembly filed a police report against Vodeb, and a report with the Agency for Communication Networks and Services of the Republic of Slovenia (AKOS) against the television station that broadcast the show “Faktor,” in which Vodeb spoke about her.
“I believe that the Speaker of the National Assembly’s tactic of intimidating those who think differently than her is not a good one, and I do not think it is right to do that. It is a scare tactic often used by lawyers. I gave up my PhD in order to be able to think freely. The Speaker of the National Assembly’s intimidation of those who think differently is absurd,” Roman Vodeb said in a video upon the arrival of the police.
In recent years, Vodeb has made a name for himself as a critical thinker and political commentator, but 20 years ago, he was denied a doctorate title by the feminist-gay lobby at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (IHS), and then Vodeb confronted this lobby and began to give psychoanalytic advice, “second opinions,” and even started offering psychotherapy.
Urška Klakočar Zupančič attacked Vodeb for commenting on one of her public appearances on the show “Faktor,” saying it was hate speech. “I don’t think I said anything on the show Faktor that wasn’t true or wasn’t legitimate – simply because of the logic of the unconscious, which is always sexual according to psychoanalytic logic. The fact that she is offended if she hears something about herself that she does not want to hear – perhaps even on the principle of ‘the truth hurts’ – should not be a reason to file a lawsuit against someone, to report them to the police or even activate the Agency for Communication Networks and Services,” Vodeb responded.
“It is my moral duty to think critically – I cannot betray a nation that expects me to say something critical and intelligent about this government,” Vodeb insisted, accusing Klakočar of interfering with freedom of speech. “The oppression of dissenting, i.e. critical, voices is absolutely politically unacceptable and anachronistic for the current socio-political moment.”
Even though Klakočar Zupančič claimed in an interview on Radio-Television Slovenia that she would not deal with charges and reporting people to the police, she has apparently changed her mind. We asked the host and editor of the show “Faktor,” Aljuš Pertinač, in early January, whether he felt the announcement of the report as pressure on his show or the media, and he said no – but he believes that the statement of the Speaker of the National Assembly is inaccurate. “She was not presented solely as a sex object. But it was said that subconsciously, she was behaving as if she wanted to be just that. Even at state ceremonies,” Pertinač explained.
Activating the police and state authorities to silence people
Vodeb pointed out that it is appalling that the Speaker of the National Assembly would like to silence dissenting voices – those who are critical of her and her Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) – through the use of repressive and legal means. “It is this totalitarian ideology of repression of critical thinkers that is clearly embedded in the whole paradigm of the Freedom Movement’s governance. Given that the judiciary is also “theirs,” and that they also want to subjugate the police, it may well be that, as a critical thinker, as a dissident, they will really silence me by putting me in jail. This is their tendency and their logic,” the psychoanalyst said. He also recalled that in the controversial episode of the show Faktor, he had virtually called for the Freedom Movement to have a kind of Council of Sages, a kind of advisory body to help spot blind spots and to protect key people from choleric recklessness. “This would be good for the country, the nation, the left-wing electorate, and – last but not least – for the Freedom Movement itself, especially Robert Golob and Urška Klakočar Zupančič – these two would be most in need of advice to avoid making hasty moves,” Vodeb concluded.
Sara Kovač