After decades, Slovenia’s dark family secret is finally on the European Parliament’s agenda. After years of effort by the Member of the European Parliament and Vice-President of the European People’s Party (EPP), Romana Tomc, the time has finally come when the Slovenian and partly European left will have to face the truth and the baggage of their political ancestors, who are still idealised today. Namely, on Tuesday, the European Parliament voted in favour of a resolution calling on the Slovenian government to honour the memory of the tens of thousands of people murdered by the Yugoslav communist regime after the Second World War.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament approved a resolution on preserving the memory of the victims of the post-war communist period in Slovenia, at its plenary session in Strasbourg. Before that, MEPs rejected by a narrow majority a proposal by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) political group to postpone the vote. 357 votes in favour, 266 against, while 16 abstained. The resolution stresses the importance of preserving the memory of all victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Europe, highlighting the crimes committed by the Yugoslav communist regime in Slovenia after the Second World War, the issue of post-war killings and mass graves.
The Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) has already responded to the European Parliament’s decision, writing on their website: “Today, at its plenary session, the European Parliament adopted an important resolution on the preservation of the memory of the victims of the post-war communist period in Slovenia. This is a historic recognition of the suffering of more than 100,000 Slovenians who were victims of the repression of the Yugoslav communist regime after the Second World War – extrajudicial killings, violations of fundamental human rights, the concealment of mass graves and systematic silence. The European Parliament has: – condemned all acts of communist repression, including the extrajudicial killings of civilians and prisoners of war; – called for a dignified burial for all victims and for the continued discovery of hidden graves; – criticised the abolition of the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Communist Violence by the Golob government as a retrograde step; – stressed the importance of truthful historical memory and the inclusion of these facts in educational programmes; – called for a comprehensive review of the archives of secret services such as the UDBA and KOS. This resolution is an important affirmation of our long-standing commitment to truth, justice and dignity for all those who have been silenced, forgotten or ignored.
The SDS party will continue to be a voice for all who believe in democratic values, historical truth and justice for the victims.”
“This vote is about truth and dignity – not only for the victims of Slovenia, but for all those who suffered under communism. No family, no nation should have to wait generations to bury their loved ones,” said MEP Romana Tomc, who led the initiative on behalf of the EPP Group, before the vote. Tuesday’s vote, she added, will be a test of who in the European Parliament stands with the victims of communist terror and who is still feigning ignorance.
This was a vote that has stripped the Slovenian left of the mask of normality under which it hides, and exposed it for what it really is: an apologist for the communist regime who will do anything to relativise the crimes of its political forebears. Until now, the un-Marxist growth of communism has been successfully hidden from the international public. This will now finally be over.
The left-wing Slovenian MEPs Irena Joveva, Marjan Šarec, Matjaž Nemec and Vladimir Prebilič have distanced themselves from the resolution on preserving the memory of the victims of the post-war communist period in Slovenia by issuing a joint statement, saying that extrajudicial killings are a crime committed by individuals, who should be held accountable, and that the shadow of doubt should not be cast over all the members of the anti-fascist and anti-Nazi coalition.
Leaving aside the fact that Stalin‘s (and Tito‘s) communists were only part of the Western alliance because Hitler betrayed them, otherwise, national and international socialists would have fought together against the common capitalist Western enemy. Let us focus only on the part of the statement where the Members argued that the crimes were caused by individuals, not by the authorities.
This is a horrible statement, which we are already used to in Slovenia because of the shameless apologetics of the communist regime, but it is certainly something new in European politics. Until now, Slovenian left-wing politicians have successfully posed as liberals and social democrats. Since the resolution, however, this game is definitely over.
Can you imagine German MEPs claiming that the Nazis had nothing to do with their psychopathic regime, but that their actions were instead the acts of individuals, and that, for this reason, all National Socialist movements linked to the Nazis should not be lumped together? They would probably not be Members of the European Parliament much longer if they did that, and the question is whether such people would even be able to hold any office in their homeland, other than somewhere hidden behind the frying pans and grills of a McDonald’s kitchen.
Slovenians, of course, understand the plight of the left. The Slovenian left draws its legitimacy from the former totalitarian regime – let’s just think back to the case of Marko Koprivec, a member of the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), who called his party “the proud successor of the Communist Party”, saying for the first time out loud what the Slovenian left has been thinking since independence: both the United List of Social Democrats – ZLSD (later the SD) and the liberal agglomerate of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia – LDS (today known by several new-fangled names) understand themselves as quasi-democratic outgrowths of the Central Committee of the Union of Communists.
As such, they would actually be attacking their political legitimacy if they were to admit that their political and ideological forebears came to power by methods similar to those used today by the Russians in the occupied parts of Ukraine. With horrific massacres, torture, rape, evictions and confiscation of property – just as the Russians persecuted the phantom Nazis in Ukraine, the Slovenian partisans persecuted the phantom fascists in Slovenia. Of course, some of those killed did collaborate with the Nazis, but certainly not all or even most: the Communists needed a legitimate excuse to seize the property of the rich and the able. Some managed to escape. Others are still buried in countless caves and mine shafts all over Slovenia.
After the beginning of the democratic processes in Slovenia, the representatives of the former communist authorities were forced to admit that, after the war, there were not only depraved individuals, but a well-organised killing industry, which was known to or received orders from all prominent members of both the Slovenian and Yugoslav Communist Parties. A similar thing happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world learned about the Katyn massacre, about the Nazi-Communist ‘marriage’ in 1939 and about Stalin’s pogroms. Three decades later, both countries are in the same place: both have been taken over by structures that originated in the Communist nomenklatura, and both are experiencing the rehabilitation of the Communist monsters and the atrocities that they committed.
Historian Mitja Ferenc estimates that tens of thousands of people were inhumanely murdered by the Communists after the end of the Second World War. This was not a case of crazed teenagers with guns hunting down local “kulaks” in villages, but an organised, well-oiled machine, where people were first rounded up in camps and then taken by truck, under strict military control, to hidden killing grounds where things happened that make people’s blood run cold: witnesses spoke of how prisoners were skinned and left to die in the sun, alive and in agony. Women had their unborn children cut from their wombs. Men had their testicles and genitals butchered and then forced into their eye sockets, after having their eyes taken out with spoons and knives. These were well-organised murder orgies, even more horrific than the Nazi industrial killings – perhaps similar horrors were still taking place three decades later in the killing fields of Cambodia under the dictatorship of the communist Khmer Rouge.
There is no doubt among serious historians that the torture and systematic massacres took place because the Yugoslav Communist Party and its cell in Slovenia ordered it, and that this made the communist regime an illegitimate entity until its inglorious end, more akin to a criminal gang than a serious state – very much like the modern Russian Federation and its Soviet predecessor. The expert consensus is that these were deliberate acts. The version of history presented by left-wing MEPs, that it was a single group of savages acting in defiance of the Party’s orders, is so bizarre that it could be compared with Putin’s modern thesis that the USA is independent of the English monarchy because of the help of Russia at the time.
We can thank MEP Romana Tomc and historian Ferenc not only for the fact that the civilised part of the European Union has finally stood up for a dignified burial for the victims of communist violence, but also, as I said, for the fact that the Slovenian left will finally be forced to show its true colours in front of the international public.
Some will dismiss these claims and say that these are far-left politicians wading in their own far-left political pool, but beware: these are not MEPs sent to the EU by the Left party (Levica). Irena Joveva and Marjan Šarec are members of the liberal Renew group. The latter was even Prime Minister! Matjaž Nemec is a member of the Socialists and Democrats, but at home, he is a member of the coalition party, the Social Democrats. Vladimir Prebilič, who officially belongs to the European far-left group the Greens, has ambitions to become the future Prime Minister of our country. He is not, therefore, a marginal nobody on the level of Vladislav Troha, but the official voice of Slovenian politics: the same politics that abolished the day of commemoration of the victims of communism, thereby shocking the whole of Europe.
So, Europe has finally seen the light: there is nothing normal about Slovenian left-wing politics. This can be seen in its attitude towards successful entrepreneurs. This is evident in its attitude towards Gaza and Israel. It is seen in its attitude towards Iran and the Russian Federation. Most of all, it is seen in its attitude towards post-war history. The EU will force the Slovenian left to take off its mask of normality. Then everyone will finally see the totalitarian nature of the collectivist ideology it espouses.
If we want to make Slovenia great again, we must first show communism in all its psychopathic light. We need to return to normality, where Asta Vrečko will be ashamed to pose in front of a statue of the serial killer Josip Broz – Tito, just as modern German politicians would be ashamed to pose in front of a statue of Adolf Eichmann, Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels.
Mitja Iršič
