The Economist reports that Slovenia’s slide towards autocracy has stopped, and the economy is now roaring, which it attributes to the new government. The once reputable economic newspaper has apparently completely lost itself in political activism and also wants to change the basic laws of economics in the name of promoting its political allies. “The only question that this article – which is so obviously commissioned from Slovenia and written here as well – brings up is, who is paying for this ridiculous PR: Golob’s government itself or even its patron, Soroš? Or perhaps even both?” warned SDS MP Branko Grims.
It is clear that the business newspaper The Economist has been taken over by woke ideologues since the beginning of the last century, who, rather than talk about finance and the economy, want to make sure that their articles are in line with left-wing ideology. It is also clear that their journalists are extremely naïve in accepting and processing the information they receive from Slovenian activists. It should also be pointed out that The Economist wrote in April of 2021 that Janša’s government “does not want to approve the budget for the national media outlet RTV Slovenia,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
They obviously did not even bother to check how our public media is financed before recycling the agitprop exported from Slovenia. They only wrote something good about Slovenia once – when they had to present empirical data from countries that were the most successful in surviving the coronavirus pandemic. The numbers don’t lie.
The end of sliding towards autocracy and economic recovery?!
This time, they once again had the opportunity to write an article ordered from Slovenia, namely, about the Orban-like government of Janez Janša and its enlightened successor, Robert Golob. The Economist claims that the economy in Slovenia is on the rise, which is true, because – as they figured out in one of their own previous articles – the government of Janez Janša did an excellent job during the pandemic. But instead of acknowledging the good work of the previous government, this time, they have decided to try and sell the fantasy that the government of Robert Golob, which has been in power for about three weeks before the publication of the article, is responsible for the economic rise.
Such understanding of economic cycles is comparable only to the statements of our former Prime Minister, Alenka Bratušek, who boasted about the growth of the economy during her government’s term after only being in power for two months. Even a high school economy student can understand that economic cycles are long-term and that the first real effects of a government only become evident after a year, and for the long-term effects to become apparent, you sometimes have to wait decades.
In addition to the miraculous rising economy, The Economist also claims that the slide into autocracy that marked the term of Janša’s government has finally stopped. This is, of course, the very typical rhetoric of Slovenian activists, which is then exported in a slightly repackaged form to foreign journalistic partners. The well-known English media outlet probably does not even know that during the worst parts of the pandemic in Slovenia, people were able to protest on the roads and even on motorways, despite the ban on gatherings. They do not know that the protests were organised by a synergy of left-wing political parties, non-governmental organisations, the media and media tycoons who feared that the government would break their hegemonic monopolies.
But they are surely aware of the fact that the police in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium – that is, in core Europe, brutally beat protesters who refused to abide by the anti-corona measures. Or that New Zealand and Australian soldiers guarded the hotels where people were quarantined in order to prevent any infected person from escaping. And despite all of this, they apparently believe that Slovenia is the country which slipped into authoritarianism.
The journalists know nothing about the authoritarianism of the new government
On the other hand, of course, no one told them that it is actually Robert Golob’s government that is currently experiencing its authoritarian moment, drunk from its victory in the elections. The journalists of The Economist know nothing about the lists of personnel to be replaced or about how in a very short period of time, almost all representatives of important institutions have been replaced, and those who have not been replaced yet, are being harassed. They also do not know that Robert Golob wants to take over the public service broadcaster RTV Slovenia in a quick procedure, as, of course, no one told them about any of that.
Interestingly, in the same article we have mentioned before, from April 2021, they reported that RTV Slovenia journalists were afraid for their jobs, referring to an anonymous senior journalist, who said: “There are very few of us left who are critical, and they want to silence us.” They wrote that in April 2021, when RTV journalists were shamelessly attacking the Janša government every day with their lies and deceptions, and even by inciting the anti-corona protesters. But today, when politics is directly threatening individual journalists (Pirkovič, Rebernik, the editorial board of the show Panorama), The Economist claims that the slide towards authoritarianism has stopped.
Such articles show how negligent the foreign media has become, especially when it comes to smaller, peripheral countries like ours, which are being thrown into the same pile by inertia as Poland, Hungary, and indirectly, through Viktor Orban, even Russia, despite the fact that our relations with Western allies, especially the USA, have historically been at the highest level during the government of Janez Janša, while the American diplomats rightly wondered during the terms of previous governments whether we belong to the sphere of Russian or Western interest.
With a new government full of overt Russophile players, foreign allies will likely begin to wonder once again where we actually belong. But The Economist will never notice this, looking at us through its black-and-white glasses of obedient and disobedient EU countries.
Andrej Žitnik
