As we have seen in recent days, corporations in Slovenia are increasingly afraid to wish their customers a merry Christmas, as the loudest voices of the “civil society” and politicians have convinced them that Slovenians are militant atheists who hate any mention of Christian symbolism even more than the fighters of the Islamic State. De-Christianisation is in full swing. The Minister of Foreign Affairs – formerly a radical European politician – has traditionally wished Slovenians happy holidays for years now, only to wish the Serbs a “happy Orthodox Christmas” two weeks later. Senior government officials have been quick to take note of this, and now they, too, wish Slovenians happy holidays. We are no longer talking about religious freedom and respect for different faiths in Slovenia but about the fact that the authorities – drunk on their electoral victory – behave as if any mention of the original religion of the Slovenian people, which has developed over thousands of years along with the culture and traditions of those who live here, should be completely eradicated. It is very telling that the first record in the Slovenian language (and the first Slavic record written in Roman script) is imbued with a purely Christian theme. Christianity is in the very bones of all Slovenians. Just like the Arabs have Islam. It is not just a belief in an event. It is a way of life and a system of values. It is tradition. A community. Something that connects us.
And that is exactly what bothers the representatives of Slovenian authorities so much. Christianity threatens them – Christianity as a cultural-traditional movement, not necessarily as a specific Abrahamic religion. It is something that existed before the immortal bloody revolution and will exist after it, too. Something that is greater than the idols of Bolshevik ideology that still permeate this country today, in the aftermath of a perverted worldview. In the European context, Christianity is more than just a religion. Atheists are also “believers” because they are bound together, knowingly or unknowingly, by a community that has grown from Christian roots. They never think about it, but somewhere at a subconscious level, they know that they are part of a larger spiritual zeitgeist which, together with their cultural and linguistic identity, has swum the turbulent oceans of history.
Meanwhile, Slovenian left-wing politicians are hobby atheists who have only become militant because of political opportunism. They like to go to the Bolshevik Pope and preach with esoteric, instant-karma, and New Age catchwords like “God is love”. They want to tell the people that they are spiritual, too! But they hate the Church – because that is the duty of every revolutionary. In Slovenia, a false dichotomy must always be present: the righteous (socialists), the unrighteous, the greedy, the hypocritical (Christians). Left-wing politics does not renounce religion – it renounces Christianity. In Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, they will happily put on their hijabs and taqiyahs and give ISIS the finger in front of mosques. The false dichotomy of good (revolution)-evil (Christianity) is a key mosaic of the Potemkin village, where we think we live in paradise on Earth while being robbed by the “righteous” red barons. Nataša Pirc Musar knew exactly what she was doing when she advocated taxing the church in a pre-election debate, even though her position as President of the Republic has nothing to do with this question. Anti-Christianity in Slovenia is like anti-Jewishness in Hamas and the Antifa. It is a basic prerequisite for being accepted into a community of enlightened people who hate the same thing.
But let’s return for a moment to New Age esotericism. Speaker of the National Assembly Urška Klakočar Zupančič, who, in recent days, like all the current rulers, wished everyone happy holidays, referred to God as love. Yes, the left is also looking for god, but they reduce god to a hit of cocaine in the morning. God is what makes us feel good. They see that life without a spiritual component is hopeless, aimless and that it is not enough when scientists preach that we must create our own values and meaning in life. God’s absence creates a hole that they want to fill with New Age one-liners. In doing so, they forget an important component that is universally shared by almost all religions. They forget that God is not only “love”, but also sacrifice, a path to personal growth, and hard work. In a spiritual kitchen, they only want to eat steak, but they do not want to slaughter animals and learn how to cook meat. But herein lies the basic misunderstanding of the socialists when it comes to spiritual life, which is also reflected in the way they perceive the world that surrounds them.
Socialism is an ideology of impossible promises. In return for giving all our personal freedoms to the state, we receive prosperity for the rest of our days – at least in theory. The Abrahamic religions, and many Eastern religions, seem to promise similar things if we understand them superficially. But in reality, that is not all there is to it – at the heart of each of these religions is the journey. A journey in which we human beings have free will and the platform of the world around us – if we want to get “to the final destination” (whether we call it enlightenment, ascension, nirvana or paradise), we have to face the greatest enemy we have. Ourselves. Our own laziness, hypocrisy, greed, jealousy, indulgence… And it takes a lot of sacrifice, self-reflection and suffering to win this fight. That is to say, it takes a lot of hard work. And that is the real antithesis of socialist ideology. Socialist ideology has invented its own god, but it is hollow. It hides no inner insights into our spiritual world and how to develop our own potentials.
When they refuse to wish us a merry Christmas, when they attack the nativity scene, and when they mock the faithful in the most primitive ways, it is, on a rational level, a matter of the tradition of the October Revolution. On the other hand, in the lizard part of the brain, it is about something deeper. It is about the fear of learning about our true nature. Socialists don’t hate Christmas – they hate themselves.
Mitja Iršič
