For one year now, we have been hearing how the current government does not communicate properly, that they are constantly attacking, insulting and intimidating. The same is said to apply to the people who support it. However, it often turns out that the opponents of the Janez Janša government are mainly describing their own characteristics and mirroring them to the opposite side. “For every national holiday, a hundred Janša supporters should be hanged, a hundred shot, a hundred drowned, a thousand deported, and ten thousand castrated. I would start with your friend Stefan,” one user of a social network wrote, for whom we cannot say that he chose the right words. However, we can tell you with full certainty to which political pole he belongs – and it is definitely not the right.
Simon Pušnik wrote the following on a social network: “Slavko Červ, for every national holiday, a hundred Janša supporters should be hanged, a hundred shot, a hundred drowned, a thousand deported, and ten thousand castrated. I would start with your friend Stefan.” So, are such threats a common part of the leftists’ discourse? Is it only wrong when someone on the right opens their mouth? Namely, even the comments that merely describe the conduct of a third party are already considered an attack when they come from the right. Why are the supporters of the left-wing opposition not being treated in the same way?
Not long ago, the editor-in-chief of Demokracija, Jože Biščak, also received threats in the mail. When reporting the matter to the police, he pointed out that it was clear from the letters that the sender was “bothered” by the conservative worldview and our negative attitude towards progressivism. “Therefore, this was an act of a psychopath, ideologically encouraged by the increasingly radical left. To them, violence is becoming a legitimate means of dealing with all those who have a different view of the world and the events around them,” he said, recalling a tragic event in France – the headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo received threats that nobody took seriously. In the end, a massacre ensued, in which 12 people were killed. Will something tragic also have to happen to us in order for the leftists’ threats to finally start to be taken seriously?
The editor-in-chief of Nova24TV, Aleksander Rant, responded to Puškin’s threatening comment, writing: “The government of Janez Janša is impatient, they say. It divides the nation, they say. We are humanitarians, they say. We do not threaten people, they say.” He also added the hashtag #disgusting, which basically sums up everything that has been written. Unfortunately, it has been proven too many times already that double standards apply in Slovenia – a very clear example of this were the identical threats that were sent to both the Minister of the Interior Aleš Hojs, as well as the president of the SD party, Tanja Fajon. In the latter case, the author deliberately transcribed the threats that were originally sent to Hojs, and despite the fact that the prosecution rejected any further prosecution of threats against Hojs, Fajon received an invitation to the police – for the same threats. Given that we are all supposed to be the same before the law, it is not surprising that many people are upset by this rather different reaction – no one wants to live in a country where a certain criterion applies to “our people,” and a different criterion applies to “your people.”
So, in the case in question, will the law enforcement authorities at least try to find the person who is hiding behind the name Simon Pušnik and figure out what his intentions are? Perhaps, as in our country, the police operate relatively successfully and autonomously, and cases often fall only when they come to the prosecutor’s office or before the court – as pointed out by dr. Boštjan M. Zupančič, a former judge of the Court of Human Rights and judge of the Constitutional Court, in a recent interview.
Sara Bertoncelj
