“Eppur si muove,” or “And yet it moves,” is a well-known saying by the Italian astronomer Galileo, which applies not only to the rotation of the Earth but also to the operating of the national media outlet RTV Slovenia, which has recently been moving from the predominantly left-wing position towards the right – to a more central one. However, this seems to have hurt those who were accustomed to the television’s reporting always being in their favour all of these years. This time, the journalist Jože Možina upset the leftists by hosting an episode of the show Utrip (Pulse), in which he revealed the truth about the battle of Dražgoše, which would otherwise never have been acknowledged. Needless to say, the leftists attacked him and insulted him, despite the fact that they themselves claim to be the most ardent supporters of “journalistic freedom.”
The RTV show, which offers a weekly overview of events in Slovenia, called Utrip, was hosted by journalist and historian Dr Jože Možina this past week. At the very beginning, the latter presented a slightly different story than the one many like to present, about the infamous Dražgoše. “This is how the week began: with a big Mass in the village of the unfortunate war memory – in Dražgoše. Stories for children have been written about this village, which are sometimes still believed by some adults as well,” Možina pointed out.
He went on to ask what the real reason is for not celebrating the truly victorious battle of Cankar’s battalion, which happened a month before Dražgoše, in Rovt near Blegoš, where 45 occupiers fell, and no civilians were killed, and why, instead, people celebrate the tragedy, imposed by the fanatical communist commanders on the villagers of Dražgoše and their unfortunate comrades-in-arms 80 years ago. “We have still not gotten an answer to that. The old mantra is being repeated,” he said.
Možina then showed a clip of the speech of the last leader of the League of Communists of Slovenia, Milan Kučan, in which he talks about the battle itself. “It provoked everything that is most precious in a person, but also everything that is the worst in him. The struggle and resistance of the fighters of Cankar’s battalion, which was highly ethically justified by the nation’s right to defend its freedom and existence, was followed by a terrible crime. The revenge for the defeat suffered for the first time on the soil of the Third Reich by the German Army was terrible,” Kučan said.
The partisans withdrew from Dražgoše
However, as Možina explained, the German Army was not defeated in Dražgoše. “After the partisans withdrew, the villagers were left to be killed by the occupier. The ideological language we are used to, cools down when those who experienced this tragedy and suffered through it get a chance to speak,” he said, adding that some of the testimonies of the locals tell a different story than the one some people are trying to “sell” to us about there being no partisans in the village when the Germans arrived. “Men from another part of the village were burned alive, everyone else was chased away, and the village was razed to the ground,” he said.
The monument, to which the leftists pay homage, still says that a great victory was won in Dražgoše. “They lied about 2,500 attackers falling, even though it has been decades since historian Tone Ferenc had proved that in reality, it was only 26 occupiers and nine partisans that had fallen. And the Germans then killed another 41 innocent locals,” Možina added. Some locals even believe that had the partisans not come to the village, this might not have happened at all. However, another witness believes that it was a purely political idea to sacrifice this village in order to be able to say, “Look what the Germans did.” “And besides, I believe the partisans are to blame for what we had to endure,” another one of the witnesses said.
Možina then used the event in Dražgoše to also point out how Kučan sees modern fascism today. “Today’s images of fascism are not the same as those we remember from recent history. But the starting points are the same. We need to talk about where the disintegration of the constitutional order, the attempts to rule by decrees, the circumvention of laws, interventions in the principle of separation of power, the attacks on the judiciary and judges, the independence of prosecutors, the police and the supervisory institutions, attacks on freedom of the press and human rights and dignity lead, where the use and promotion of hate speech and vulgarity, disrespect for the separation of church and state, their attitudes towards refugees, abuse of historiography, and equating patriotism with the demand for support of the current government and the largest government party lead,”Kučan said.
After the German occupiers, Communism was responsible for the most deaths
According to Možina, the word “fascism” slips out of Kučan’s mouth just as easily as a curse word would. “This is so insulting to those who actually suffered under this regime, and so indecent, especially when it is said by a former leading official of communism, a fascism-like totalitarianism, oppressor of democracy and human rights, which killed, persecuted, looted, and made tens of thousands of Slovenians suffer,” Možina said and supported his statement with a graph showing that almost 25 thousand people lost their lives on Slovenian soil during and after the war due to communism. The number of victims of communism was thus the highest after those of the German occupier, who caused 32 thousand deaths.
In addition to Dražgoše, Možina also talked about why Alenka Bratušek and Tanja Fajon did not attend the celebration there, but Luka Mesec did. “Could it be that the godfathers of the left will let go of the quarrelsome sparrows and instead grab Golob (the name Golob means “pigeon” in Slovenian), who is currently on top of the charts in Slovenian politics?” he wondered and then presented the new face of the left-wing politics, Robert Golob, and his event in Maribor.
In the overview of the week, Možina also talked about the acquittal of the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković and his two sons, the press conference of the Institute of the 8th of March, and other important events.
Those who say journalists are being pressured are the same people who are attacking them
An exhaustive, slightly different and open episode of the show caused quite a stir among the leftists, who continue to defend criminals. While various commissions from the EU are being invited to Slovenia, under the pretext that journalists are being pressured in Slovenia, it is actually them who are pressuring journalists and endangering the autonomy of RTV Slovenia. “The public service equals the government service at RTV Slovenia. Shameful! Both Možina and his team. There is no excuse for an editorial policy that no longer works in the interest of the public,” the President of the Social Democrats party, Tanja Fajon, attacked the creators of the show Utrip.
However, unlike their boss from the background (Kučan), the Institute of the 8th of March says they are not interested in the past in their campaign. “We are not interested in your interpretation of history. We will not explain ours. We want the future,” they said. They pointed out that they do not want to hear about the half-past history on television, they do not want to hear about political fights. Those who wrote this are apparently not aware of the fact that the people who keep organising events like the one in Dražgoše are actually the ones who are going back in history, while the journalist’s task was only to report on this return to history.
“Saturday’s episode of the show Utrip, which was hosted for the first time in several years the politically orthodox Jože Možina, who is obviously being pushed by the Areh-Rebernik alliance to the position of the first journalist of the public radio and television, is in the full sense of the word a bad piece of politicised journalism; a product created in order to serve the current political regime, and a scandalous one, according to all journalistic standards,” the magazine Mladina wrote, for which it has long been clear that they are actually working for a certain political regime, which is exactly what they are accusing Možina of doing.
Sara Rančigaj
