Abstract
Until recently Slovenia was viewed as liberal. But the appointment of a new prime minister this year cut from the same cloth as Viktor Orban is a cause for concern, writes
The Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) – and especially Janša, its leader – has long been flirting with neighbouring strongman Orban. Today, businessmen with ties to Orban own media that back the SDS. Minister of the interior Ales Hojs, who was installed in March, previously led Nova24TV.si, which is owned by Orban’s friends. Along with sister television station Nova24TV, it is among the main sources of disinformation in Slovenia.
Both Hojs and Janša regularly exhibit their disdain for media and journalists in Twitter attacks. Like Donald Trump, Janša uses the platform almost as an official government channel. For example, he used it to announce the second wave of the pandemic one Sunday evening in October. In November, he tweeted in agreement with Trump’s false claim that he had won re-election in the US presidential election.
Twitter is also where Janša called two female reporters of the public broadcaster “presstitutes”. It is where the SDS and its sympathisers have routinely labelled Slovenian journalists “communists” and “liars”.
Much like Orban, who started his career on the other side of the political spectrum, Janša was once a hopeful young communist. He diligently led a pilgrimage to Jajce, a town in Bosnia that has historical significance for anti-fascists. In the 1980s, he was a dissident journalist with the weekly Mladina, and it was whilst working there that he was imprisoned for exposing military secrets.
After more than 25 years at the helm of the SDS, Janša is one of the longest standing leaders of a political party in Slovenia. He seems to have lost all taste for media freedom, and for freedoms more generally. As prime minister, he presides over public officials and party sympathisers who routinely attack, smear and lie about journalists.
And, again like Orban, Janša’s political campaigns have been based on xenophobia, Islamophobia and hate speech.
Mere months after gaining power, the SDS has employed everything at its disposal to disrupt public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV SLO) and national press agency STA, while denouncing almost all other independent media. In July, the government proposed changes to laws which would financially cripple publicly run media and advance the interests of outlets that churn out news favourable to the government.
The relationship between the party and its propaganda machines – Nova24TV and Demokracija amongst others – is quite transparent. When the SDS wants to advance an agenda, the outlets run campaigns that are shared by party members and supporters on social media.
When Harlem Désir, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s representative on media freedom, warned Janša’s government against attacking RTV SLO (Janša has called reporters working there liars who are overpaid and who misinform the public about the pandemic), Demokracija hit back saying Désir was abusing his position for ideological reasons.
Hungary’s current leader Viktor Orban (right) and Slovenia’s new leader Janez Janša together at the European People’s Party Summit in 2011
CREDIT: Thierry DAUWE/European People’s Party/Flickr
This year, the SDS’s disregard for international norms was highlighted in an official reply sent to the Council of Europe by the Slovenian permanent representative – who ultimately answers to foreign minister Anze Logar of the SDS – regarding warnings about declining media freedom in Slovenia, which were posted on its platform by several media watchdog organisations (including Index). The reply was full of disinformation about media and attacks on journalists.
But the attacks on journalists spread beyond social media. As highlighted on the Index map chronicling press attacks due to Covid-19, investigative journalist Blaž Zgaga was subject to death threats and a smear campaign after submitting a request for information to the government about its management of the coronavirus crisis. The attacks led to a wave of hate mail and threats, and Zgaga said: “I have been under police protection before, I have been smeared before, but I have never experienced anything like this.”
The effort to control the narrative has been all-encompassing, and even the country’s national statistics office has become a target. The government abruptly dismissed the recently named director for no specific reason – a first in the history of that office.
Slovenian journalists are fighting back. In August, RTV SLO published a statement by the editor-in-chief of its news programmes, denouncing the attacks on its journalists. In October, editors of 22 of the largest Slovenian media outlets signed a public statement vowing that they would not bow under pressure.
But it didn’t make a big difference. On 5 November, violent anti-government protests erupted in the capital, and Hojs was quick to accuse the media of complicity.
Slovenia will hold the rotating EU presidency next year. Will Janša use it as an opportunity to team up with Poland and Hungary against the other member states when it comes to discussions on democracy and rule of law?
No one knows when, or even if, Janša and the SDS will see through the fog of fake news its friendly media outlets produce. We can only hope it will be soon. For six months the country has been struggling with an unprecedented social and health crisis, yet its key officials seem to have a lot of free time to tweet all kinds of abuse at journalists.
Good Guy Gone Bad
BENJAMIN LYNCH looks at Janša’s move from liberal to hardline
Janša became interested in politics and was heavily engaged in the League of Communists party as a young man, a far cry from the right-wing nationalist policies he pursues today.
He graduated from university in 1982 with a degree in defence studies, which would later serve him well as minister of defence during the war of independence.
The independence movement became more and more significant during the 1980s. Janša wrote extensively in the independent magazine Mladina and promoted freedom of speech. Notably, Janša pushed to publish minutes from a meeting of the Yugoslav Communist Party in which it discussed clamping down on the increasingly critical Mladina. The event pitted Janša and the magazine against the government, and he was eventually arrested in 1988 for “betraying military secrets”.
His arrest and subsequent imprisonment caused an outcry and mass protests. Janša was arrested alongside three others and the trial has since become known as the Trial of the Four.
The focus on their fate helped speed up the process for a more democratic Slovenia (by becoming a multi-party democracy) and, upon his release after six months, Janša became editor-in-chief of opposition publication Demokracija, until May 1990.
Janša helped the Slovenian Democratic Union party (formerly the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia) orchestrate independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 after being elected to parliament the year before. In 1993, he became leader of the party and has held this post ever since.
Despite his early beginnings as an independence figure and political prisoner, Janša has since faced criticism for his attacks on the media. Since independence, Janša has been Slovenian prime minister three times. His first term (2004-08) ended in controversy with accusations of interference in press freedom. His second term ended in accusations of corruption. In the same year, 2013, he was eventually imprisoned for soliciting bribes but his conviction was annulled because of a lack of evidence, and he denies the accusations.
Janša recently congratulated US president Donald Trump for “winning” the recent election and accused the “mainstream media” of “facts denying”.