Janšism

The term Janšism is commonly used to describe the politics of Janez Janša, his party and their allies. Although the term has been in use for decades, it became more prominent during the 2020 anti-government protests, when protesters carried banners with the slogan

“Death to Janšism, freedom to the nation!”. Since then, many journalists, prominent authors and thinkers have endeavoured to describe and define Janšism. Critic Rok Plavčak, in his seven theses on Janšism describes that Janšism is not Janša.¹⁶³ Rather, the term refers to ‘the entire sphere of the ideological and material activity of the SDS and the supporting social formations, the propaganda branches, the members, deputies, sympathisers, writers and

163 Rok Plavčak, “Sedem Tez o Janšizmu,” Mladina, December 22, 2020,

https://www.mladina.si/203797/sedem-tez-o-jansizmu/?fbclid=IwAR3E2XKDlXrMRMFbbehWdkGWVrQb_wA2k8qgluYzWuQjsPs3xsYZXLUjCOc.

collaborators, the institutions under their control, the social imaginary that binds together the adherents and supporters of Janšism’.¹⁶⁴ As my aim is not to describe the life of a particular individual, but rather, to describe the transformations of a politician and his party as they endeavour to attain power in a transitioning country, as well as the shifts in the public’s relationship with the figure of this politician, I will avoid focusing on Janez Janša, the person, and I will instead turn to the term Janšism. The section below will address some of the

characteristics of Janšism.

In his youth, Janša was a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (ZSMS). During the late eighties, Janša wrote critical commentaries and articles on

democracy and national sovereignty which were published in the main ZSMS newsletter Mladina.¹⁶⁵ At this time, he was also politically involved in the emerging peace and ecological movements.¹⁶⁶ After the JBTZ affair and his release from prison, he became editor-in-chief of the opposition weekly Demokracija (Democracy), which he edited until May 1990.¹⁶⁷ Demokracija became the unofficial newsletter of the then united opposition Demos.¹⁶⁸ In 1989, he participated in the founding of the political opposition organisation the Slovenian Democratic Union (SDZ), was elected as its vice-president and then chairman of the party council and elected as a Member of Parliament in 1990.¹⁶⁹ In 1990, he took on the position of minister of defence and was in charge of the formation of the first Slovenian Armed Forces, which together with the Slovenian police defended Slovenia against the

164 Ibid.

165 “Predsednik SDS Janez Janša,” SDS, n.d., https://www.sds.si/o-stranki/predsednik-janez-jansa.

166 Ibid.

167 Ibid.

168 Ibid.

169 Ibid.

aggression of the Yugoslav army in June of 1991 and made independence possible.¹⁷⁰ In an interview for Mladina, public intellectual and philosopher Spomenka Hribar recalled that her and Janša ‘parted ways politically before the 1991 congress of the Slovenian Democratic Alliance, when Janša wrote a draft of a new party programme, which included the sentence that “the whole of Slovenian society must tilt to the right”’.¹⁷¹ She commented that such an aim presupposes a certain methodology of politics, a totalitarian attitude and totalitarian methods.¹⁷²

Janša served his first term as prime minister from 2004 and 2008, and saw Slovenia join both NATO and the EU.¹⁷³ The first Janša government abolished the welfare state and played a decisive role in introducing radical neoliberalism to the country.¹⁷⁴ Močnik

describes that Janša and his allies initiated a neoliberal ideological campaign, cut taxes for the wealthy, created a permanent deficit in the state budget, and started borrowing from private banks abroad.¹⁷⁵ This then led to the country becoming ‘increasingly indebted abroad, leading to the capitulation of subsequent governments to the organisations of transnational financial capital’.¹⁷⁶ Močnik describes that Janšism is marked by an authoritarian neoliberalism, stating that ‘its neoliberalism, while not different in principle from the politics of other bourgeois parties, requires authoritarian approaches, personal dependence of public servants, demagogy

170 Ibid.

171 Marcel Štefančič, Jr., “Doktrina Koronašoka,” Mladina, May 15, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/198376/doktrina-koronasoka.

172 Ibid.

173 “Predsednik SDS Janez Janša.”

174 Rastko Močnik, “Kaj Je Janšizem?,” Mladina, June 5, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/198887/kaj-je-jansizem/.

175 Ibid.

176 Ibid.

and increasing brutality in dealing with the public’.¹⁷⁷ In 2008, Janša was accused of bribery

‘from Finnish defence contractor Patria in exchange for a 278 million EUR purchase of armed personnel carriers a transaction agreed in 2006’.¹⁷⁸ Janšism is, therefore, also characterised by abuse of power.

Janša served his second term as prime minister from 2012. The second Janša government lowered environmental protection standards, and further privatised public services, health, and education.¹⁷⁹ The government collapsed in 2013 due to the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption's accusations about assets Janša was unable to account for.¹⁸⁰ In 2014, Janša was found guilty at the Patria trial and went to jail for several months, before being released due to a retrial, which never took place due to the expiry of the statute of limitations.¹⁸¹ Janša and his supporters maintain that the trial was politically orchestrated,

‘designed to destroy or severely weaken the SDS, and to exclude its president, Janez Janša, from political life’, and claim that this made him ‘the only political prisoner at the time within the European Union’.¹⁸²

Plavčak describes that ‘Janšism has the paranoid structure of fascism’, where ‘the belief system of the paranoid collective subject rests is the persistent and resistant conviction that it is in grave, even mortal danger of being persecuted, or more precisely, persecuted by others’.¹⁸³ This ideology then operates ‘according to the principle of “hostile” othering,

177 Ibid.

178 “Biography: Janez Janša - Independence Hero, Former Prisoner, Veteran Politician, Now Slovenia’s PM for 3rd Time,” Total Slovenia News, March 4, 2020, https://www.total-slovenia-news.com/politics/5763-biography-janez-jansa-independence-hero-former-prisoner-veteran-politician-now-slovenia-s-pm-for-3rd-time.

179 Močnik, “Kaj Je Janšizem?”

180 “Biography: Janez Janša - Independence Hero, Former Prisoner, Veteran Politician, Now Slovenia’s PM for 3rd Time.”

181 Ibid.

182 “Predsednik SDS Janez Janša.”

according to which it identifies the other as the enemy who embodies the irrevocable threat of the destruction of the collective subject, its culture, its way of life, its social order and the world as we know it’.¹⁸⁴ In this case, the enemy are the “communists” and the leftists.

Related to this paranoia is the promotion of conspiracy theories, such as that of “cultural Marxism”, which Plavčak explains is ‘a repetition of the old Nazi trope of the Jewish conspiracy of “cultural Bolshevism”’.¹⁸⁵ The columnist and rapper Miha Blažič or N'toko explains that these conspiracy theories are part of a wider cultural struggle, where the

smearing of the previous regime was an important tool in the Slovenian Right’s ‘conquest of state institutions’.¹⁸⁶ N’toko adds that in this process, the history of Yugoslavia’s communist project has been reduced to a simple equation of “communism = totalitarianism”, relativising both the Party’s outstanding achievements as well as its negative legacy.¹⁸⁷ Janšism is then also characterised by historical revisionism, particularly in relation to the Yugoslav anti-fascist struggle. The programme of the SDS party calls the ‘anti-anti-fascist struggle a “fratricidal revolution” and socialism a “totalitarian regime”’¹⁸⁸. As such, the Janšist brand of historical revisionism functions by ‘rewriting history retrospectively in order to distort the memory of the struggle for national liberation and forget the achievements of socialism’.¹⁸⁹

Although SDS won the popular vote at the 2018 parliamentary elections, it was unable to form a coalition. However, following Marjan Šarec’s resignation in early 2020, Janez Janša began his third term as prime minister. While attacks on journalists have been a

184 Ibid.

185 Ibid.

186 N’toko, “Ukradena Zgodovina,” Mladina, September 25, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/201448/ukradena-zgodovina/.

187 Ibid.

188 Močnik, “Kaj Je Janšizem?”

189 Ibid.

constant feature of Janša’s activities, this was further amplified during his third term.

Journalist Vasja Jager comments that ‘Janša has been fantasising, practically since

independence, about the red media monopolies that are supposed to be preventing his march to power’.¹⁹⁰ In May of 2020, Janša attacked an investigative journalist for his critique of the government’s preventative measures, and an ‘official government account retweeted a claim that the journalist was an “escaped psychiatric patient” and said he was suffering from

“Covid-Marx/Lenin”’.¹⁹¹ Jager argues that such tweets cannot be ‘classified as typical politicians' grumbling against the media’, as ‘in parallel with the public attacks on RTV, his government has been systematically dismantling the public broadcaster since its

inauguration’.¹⁹²

These attacks on the national broadcaster are noteworthy because Janša and SDS have been trying to change the media landscape for years. Janša and other members of the SDS, funded by Hungarian companies close to Orbán, set up its own media empire with a TV station, a weekly newspaper, and a network of more than ten regional internet portals.¹⁹³ Journalist Jure Trampuš argues that it is not difficult to see where Janša’s policy of

subjugating the national media house is leading, as Orbán secured a monopoly on information by taking over the media and replacing the staff of public media houses and in this way created a media environment that appears free but excludes critical voices.¹⁹⁴ In this context

190 Vasja Jager, “Najprej so Prišli Po Novinarje,” Mladina, March 27, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/197006/najprej-so-prisli-po-novinarje/.

191 Shaun Walker, “Slovenia’s PM Janša Channels Orbán with Attacks on Media and Migrants,” May 4, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/janez-jansa-new-pm-slovenia-in-mould-of-orban.

192 Vasja Jager, “Desant Na Medije,” Mladina, July 10, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/199767/desant-na-medije/.

193 Borut Mekina, “Naslednja Tarča: RTV Slovenija,” Mladina, April 24, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/197876/naslednja-tarca-rtv-slovenija/.

194 Jure Trampuš, “Naskok Na RTV Slovenija,” Mladina, May 22, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/198540/naskok-na-rtv-slovenija.

then, these attacks are seen as a precursor of an elaborate annihilation of independent media and of free speech.

During Janša’s third term, the Janšist penchant for historical revisionism became even more prominent, particularly in relation to the Second World War. This could be seen in the attempts to rehabilitate the Home Guard, the Slovene anti-partisan and anti-communist collaborationist military organisation that was active during the period of the Second World War. Trampuš describes that the events of the war have become the objects of political manipulation, where ‘clear moral coordinates are disappearing in societies, the boundary between fascism and anti-fascism is disappearing, and there is a danger of a repetition of the crimes’.¹⁹⁵ This leads us to the next characteristic of Janšism, which is its links with fascist and Neo-Nazi groups. Journalist Borut Mekina describes that the links between these groups and SDS are well documented, and that racist and neo-Nazi groups have always had a presence in SDS, stating that ‘it has always been a natural coalition’.¹⁹⁶

Looking at the characteristics of Janšism therefore illuminates important aspects of Slovenia’s transition within the wider context of European politics. Janez Janša’s

transformation is not unique to Slovenia, and can be seen in many communist and post-socialist countries. In his article for Mladina, N’toko reflects on Janša’s evolution, describing that he was ‘a disciplined Marxist when the party was still firmly in the saddle, a liberal dissident when the regime began to crumble, a statesmanlike figure in the early days of left-right coalitions, and finally a left-right-wing cultural warrior’.¹⁹⁷ N’toko comments that Janša is not ‘some kind of ardent fascist ideologue who fought for 30 years for Aryan supremacy’,

195 Jure Trampuš, “Ubranimo Zgodovino,” Mladina, June 19, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/199252/ubranimo-zgodovino/.

196 Borut Mekina, “Nacifašiste, Skrite Za Rumenimi Jopiči, Je Spodbudila Vladajoča Poliitka,” Mladina, July 3, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/199592/nacifasiste-skrite-za-rumenimi-jopici-je-spodbudila-vladajoca-politika/.

197 N’toko, “Težki Časi Za Protifašizem,” Mladina, May 22, 2020, https://www.mladina.si/198504/tezki-casi-za-protifasizem/.

and instead describes him as ‘a brilliant political chameleon who has always been able to adapt to new historical situations’.¹⁹⁸ N’toko adds that if Janša has ‘chosen an Orbán-type post-fascism as his political model, it is not out of deep personal ideological conviction, but because he sees this as the future of European politics’.¹⁹⁹ Political philosopher Barbara J.

Falk in her text on the legacies of 1989 for dissent today, argues that Janšism and other increasingly illiberal and non-democratic ideologies in post-communist and post-socialist countries were enabled by the narrative of the post-communist transition and the ‘triumphalist reading of 1989’, which ‘equated political freedom with free markets’ and provided

‘ideological gloss and respectability to neoliberalism’.²⁰⁰ Janša’s transformation is thus symptomatic and paradigmatic of the narrative of the post-communist and post-socialist transition.

198 Ibid.

199 Ibid.

200 Barbara J. Falk, “Legacies of 1989 for Dissent Today,” Eurozine, October 31, 2019, 10, https://www.eurozine.com/legacies-of-1989-for-dissent-today/#.

4. 2020 Anti-government Movement

In document A Failed Transition? (pagina 43-51)