A dissident at the end of the communist era, Janez Janša suffered persecution by the Slovenian regime. He became, after the first free elections in 1990, minister of defence and, as such, commander of the Slovenian army during the 1991 war of independence. Janez Janša has been prime minister of Slovenia three times and was also president of the European Union for the second half of 2021. He currently leads the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS).
During your government, you had a good relationship with Viktor Orbán. Consequently, you were frequently attacked by the media, who accused you of wanting to “Orbanise” Slovenia. Why is there so much fear and stigmatisation of conservative governments?
Leftists attack conservatives because they want to dismantle the fundamental values upon which Western civilization is built: family, nation, faith, freedom of expression, elected governance, and so on. Conservatives defend these values, which is why we are their logical target.
Robert Golob’s government has done what your government did not do: i.e., persecute dissident media. Where are those who demanded enforcement of the rule of law in Slovenia?
Not only have they gone into hiding, but they mostly openly support the measures of the leftist Golob government to suppress freedom of expression in Slovenia. The vice-president of the European Commission, Vera Jurova, visited the Slovenian Constitutional Court during the decision-making process on the national television law. After her visit, the court changed its decision and lifted the suspension of the law, thereby completely subordinating Slovenian national TV to the Slovenian Left.
Under Golob’s government, the Slovenian economy has suffered a major setback, the health system has collapsed, insecurity has increased, and the influx of illegal immigrants has skyrocketed. Did you expect such disastrous mismanagement from the Left? Do you think many Slovenians feel cheated by the course taken by the Golob government?
We expected this catastrophe and clearly predicted it. At the same time, the vast majority of Golob’s voters did not. They were misled by the biased reporting of the mainstream media, which portrayed the ‘Freedom party’ as a solution to all their problems. Hence the drastic decline in support for this party, which lost two-thirds of its electoral support in a year.
What do you think about what happened in Brussels with the attempted cancellation of the National Conservatism conference?
The recent attempt to ban a conservative conference in Brussels is an ominous warning. Those of us who have spent part of our lives in a one-party totalitarian regime know exactly where this leads. As soon as someone succeeds in suppressing freedom of speech, they gain absolute power. While all other rights, freedoms, and institutions may exist on paper, without freedom of expression, there is neither true freedom nor democracy, even less so fair elections. There is only dictatorship, regardless of whatever name it adopts. Of all the influential global social networks—which today represent the central public space of humanity, the main Agora—only one remains without direct censorship. We are very close to the edge. Therefore, the fight for freedom of speech is a fundamental point of contention, where the success or failure of the defence of the West will be decided.
Restrictions on freedom of expression have always been easiest to justify in times of war. War can always be both the cause and the excuse for many necessary or unnecessary restrictions. That’s why the Left likes to abuse this concept, for example by declaring war on global warming or, even more transparently, by launching a campaign against hate speech, in which anything that exposes the leftist paradigm is declared hateful. However, in this artificially created state of war, two real wars have recently erupted. Russian aggression against Ukraine and Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel are reprehensible and condemnable in themselves. The price paid in the dead, the captured, and the destroyed lives of tens of millions of people is terrifying. The victims deserve help and support. At the same time, both wars provide an additional alibi for those seeking to limit and nullify freedom of speech. This fact simply needs to be recognized.
One of the most significant changes in Golob’s policies has been the stance on Ukraine, which is not surprising given the sympathies for Putin held by many politicians on the Left. As one of the leaders most committed to supporting Ukraine, how do you see the situation? Is there still enough leadership in Europe to help Ukraine with deeds and not with words?
The Slovenian Left is traditionally proto-communist and pro-Russian. During our visit to Kiev in March 2022, their representatives claimed that both sides were to blame for the war and that European leaders should visit Moscow instead of Kiev. With few exceptions, no one returned the decorations and medals that they received from Putin. Because they do not want to attract too much attention from the global public, they speak in words supportive of Ukraine when they are in Brussels, but they do nothing seriously to support Ukraine. Count, for example, their statements in support of Palestine and in support of Ukraine and compare them.
Unfortunately, this is the case with most EU policies.—bombastic words, but not enough of the most needed assistance in modern weapons and equipment. They are waiting for Ukraine to exhaust itself, agree to a ceasefire, and then slowly restore old deals with Putin. If Ukraine had received sufficient assistance in weapons from the warehouses of some NATO member states in the summer of 2022, it could have liberated most of its territory given the then poor preparedness of the Russian army. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and today the situation is much more difficult. Unfortunately, in a dangerous crisis, the West lacks leaders capable of strategic thinking in key positions. The time is very reminiscent of the second half of the 1930s. We know the price.
You once told me that historical reconciliation in Slovenia was not possible because the descendants of the communist executioners do not forgive the victims. Does the current government want to erase the memory of the crimes of the communist regime?
Last year they abolished the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communist Violence. Something like this has never happened anywhere before. The rhetoric of a large part of the Slovenian Left has become extremely militant over the past decade and a half. Paradoxically, the situation has greatly worsened since joining the EU. They publicly state that there were not enough victims of the communist revolution. At their rallies, you can see hundreds of banners with direct death threats written on them. They publish books and brochures calling Christians and conservative politicians and parties filth and vermin. At the same time, they declare conservative voices as hate speech.
Everything points to the fact that the parliament that will be elected in the next European elections will be more right-wing. Your party belongs to the EPP. Do you think it is possible for the EPP, ECR, and even ID to work together in Europe against the policies of the Left?
Realistically, we can expect that in the next term of the European Parliament, there will no longer be a majority to confirm destructive leftist policies, as has been the case in the last two mandates. There will be more common sense, especially in the EPP. However, it is not certain whether there will be enough votes for radical changes needed to return to the authentic concept of the EU as conceived by the founding fathers of the EU, and to build a union that will protect our civilization, its foundational values, and on that basis enable peace and prosperity on our continent. Two points of contention will be crucial.
The first: safeguarding freedom of speech and demographics, including securing our borders against illegal migration and population and cultural replacements. In simplified terms, it is a question of preserving or degrading our way of life. Nothing changes the habits, customs, culture, and identity of a country more radically than population replacement.
Radical, progressive, left-liberal, socialist paradigms advocate for as liberal an attitude as possible toward illegal migration—the policy of so-called open borders—because they want to undermine the values foundation of Western civilization. This is nothing new. It’s long been written in the Communist Manifesto, textbooks of cultural Marxism, and is now also in the lessons of the so-called woke ideology. Consequently, they also count directly on new voters or supporters. In Slovenia, two years ago, the new leftist government, as one of its first measures, abolished the national office for demography and began dismantling the fence on the border with the Balkans, which they themselves erected in 2015. Money and staff were redistributed from the demography office to the migration office. The radically leftist prime minister has even repeatedly stated that it is necessary to formally equate illegal and legal migrations. The consequence of these actions and calls is a doubled pressure of illegal migrants coming to Slovenia through the Balkan route. Another consequence is the prolonged and reintroduced control at the borders with Italy and Austria. Due to public pressure, the leftist Slovenian government introduced border controls with neighbouring Croatia, where absurdly it controls legal border crossings and causes major traffic jams. A few metres away, illegal migrants enter Slovenia without documents, and then the Slovenian police drive them to overflowing migrant centers.
That is the opposite of what your government did.
Yes, because conservatives advocate for a strict separation of legal and illegal migration and the associated security of our borders. In doing so, we defend not only our territories but also our values and our way of life. Man is willing to defend and preserve what he values. Leftists have always wanted to undermine the values foundation of Western civilization, and illegal migration or open border policies are their tools. However, they can only be successful if they hide their true intentions well. Therefore, freedom of speech is currently under attack by leftist totalitarians of all kinds. It is in human nature to desire security, stability, and predictability—to desire sovereignty, where one can decide for oneself about one’s way of life. Therefore, the Left hides its intentions. They often publicly attribute them to conservatives and condemn them outwardly. At the same time, they wrap them in nice sounding phrases about equality, solidarity, humanity, and brotherhood. This primarily targets young voters. At the same time, they use all sorts of tricks to divert attention from the essence of their intentions. And they are very successful at it because they first seized the tools with which they influence the formation of the value system in a human being. The political struggle in the upcoming European Parliament elections literally represents a battle for Europe. The outcome is uncertain, but the cooperation of conservatives—or, better said, the force of common sense—is necessary for even the most necessary course corrections.
