This is contrary to the idea of liberal democracy, based on the sovereignty of citizens, opposite to the nation as the organic category.
Democracy presupposes freedom of choice between different interests by different social groups; nationalist ideology is based on the link between nation and territory.
Jansa has used the nominal transformation of the old Yugoslav one-party system into a quasi-plural society, characterized as a multi-party system, to hide his intention to create a new form of authoritarian state organisation.
The first moves in this direction in Slovenia occurred shortly after independence in 1992, with the erasure of a large number of people as citizens, based on the same policy that Jansa advocates today.
This policy is based on the assumption that the nation, as the primary element of identification, takes precedence over the individual.
National interest is placed above the rights and freedoms of citizens – especially above those of artists, cultural figures, immigrants, Roma, homosexuals, socialists, etc – although the discourse of Jansa’s supporters is full of slogans about human rights and freedoms that are (symptomatically) always violated when it involves “conscious” Slovenes.
State domination over citizens is an element that is common to both communist and nationalist ideologies. Both employ totalitarian mechanisms of governance: from unconditional loyalty to the party to the personality cult of the president-for-life.
Both ideologies envisage a monopoly of power, politically instrumentalizing all the important social institutions, from the courts to the media.
In this sense, there is no difference between the former Yugoslav regime’s agitprop and the current media established by Jansa’s SDS party, which are convinced that their truth is the only one. Convinced of their historical mission, they condemn everything that doesn’t comply with their truth, often with intolerant, hateful speech.
In the post-communist period, Jansa exchanged communist collectivism for collectivist nationalism. He sincerely believes that power should be concentrated in the hands of the nation or state as a collective authority, which will replace individual mistrust and powerlessness with shared security and power.
His supporters believe that by establishing an emotional bond between the nation and its leader – which is the only relevant authority not to be doubted – the security needs of all citizens will be met.
Those unable to realize their identity as individuals can do so through the masses in the nationalist movement, in which Jansa is the supreme leader.
Recruiting them from the pool of party supporters, Jansa has inserted incompetent but politically obedient people in many positions. The more hopeless and incompetent they are, the stronger their need to identify with the nation and the supreme leader as the highest form of authority.
Such staff changes occur almost daily. There are hardly any state-owned institutions or companies in which Jansa hasn’t implanted his own people.
However, the media, in carrying out their mission and reporting on the wrongdoing of the government, present a thorn in his side. That is their fundamental sin. Jansa’s greatest enemies are those who confront him with the consequences of his actions.
To keep scoring political points, Jansa continuously mobilizes his supporters against a so-called deep state. In doing so, he ignores the fact that he himself is responsible for practically everything he has labelled as the operations of a “deep state” over the past 30 years during which time he has participated in almost all major state affairs.
Throughout his career, Jansa has been addressing the most paranoid elements of Slovene society with simplified conspiracy theories with the aim of creating general mistrust and creating an environment that requires action and increased privilege for him.
When the mainstream media fail to report on the conspiracies that he wants to talk about, Jansa and his supporters foment a belief that the mainstream media are biased – and are obviously part of the same conspiracy they don’t want to report on. In such cases, Jansa, like Trump, attacks the media as “fake news producers”.
So, he picks a different path, like Trump, communicating via Twitter or going to his party’s television station, where he can communicate by selectively picking the arguments.
