IF YOU FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM YOU MAKE IT GROW!

Alenka Sottler 

"We appeal to all who think that public politics should not be based on biased selection of people for private interests, but rather on emancipation and acknowledgement of equal human rights. Take part in the demonstration against racism and fascism on the International Day Against Racism and Fascism on Saturday, March 19, at 4 p.m. at Zvezda park (Kongresni trg) in Ljubljana."

This was the last sentence of a text that came to my address and which triggered off my decision to write this article. I fully agree with everything that has been said in that text, except that I would like to draw your attention to the underlined words which might have fatal consequences. Why?

"The more you fight against something, the stronger it gets."

I came across these words in a recent interview with Andrej Debeljak, a theologian, former priest and psychotherapist. It seems to me that this rule holds water in life. If you try to resist something that you feel or something that is going on in the society this will only grow stronger. I think it would be well to consider this if you are against something. Against youth unemployment, against fascism, against refugees, against the system abuse, against corruption, against tax evasion, against world hunger, against domestic violence, against labour exploitation, against climate change…

History might teach us a thing or two about this.

Gorge W. Bush declared war against terrorism. Today, we have not only individual terrorist organisations but also an entire Islamic state. Terrorism has become deeply rooted in our world, by which I mean to say that terrorism is dictating the way we live: airport control, high security costs at international events, generous national budget for defence, security services at conferences… What is more, our lives are intertwined with terrorism and terrorism is counting on us. It counts on our response, on the media insanity selling terrorist messages for free, it counts on panic, fear and our growing weakness.

»The more you become attached to something, the weaker you become.«

We have been fighting against poverty since I was little. It would be a waste of time to say anything more about the consequences of this battle! I believe there have never been so many poor people in the world.

There are also numerous articles, reports, resolutions about fighting against the youth unemployment.

For instance, The EU Council declared a fierce fight against the youth unemployment already in 2012 according to the article published on EUROPORTAL: (http://www.euportal.si/en/politics/measures-to-combat-youth-unemployment/). Ministers of the Member States adopted a comprehensive plan against youth unemployment at the meeting of the EU Council in Brussels.

Associating Governmental Organisations and Research Networks Associated (AGORA), a newly founded state forum in 2013, took the fighting against youth unemployment very seriously.

EU media report states that Juncker's commission would pay 1 billion euros to reduce the youth unemployment!  

You can also find many examples in Slovene press.

The Slovenske novice newspaper published an article titled "Fight against the Youth Unemployment Should Become the Top Political Priority", which makes it even more clear that the battle is raging on. Further on in the same newspaper, you could observe another article titled "Members of the European Parliament Are Fighting Against Unemployment", which explains how Slovene Members of the European Parliament are dealing with this problem.

The STA agency reported that the European Commission wishes to speed up the fight against youth unemployment.

Our government joint the fierce fight of the EU institutions. It paid 20 million euros for the fight against youth unemployment in March 2014. The money was spent on carrying out the programme First Challenges 2014 that was supposed to provide work for over 3000 young people who are unemployed.

We can also read in the Slovenske novice newspaper an article titled "Fight against the Youth Unemployment Should Become the Top Political Priority", which makes it even more clear that the battle is raging on. Further on in the same newspaper, you could observe another article titled "Members of the European Parliament Are Fighting Against Unemployment", which explains how Slovene Members of the European Parliament are dealing with this problem.

What then are the consequences of all these fights?

We bear witness to more terrorism, more poverty, more corruption, more… There are many more unemployed young people than there were before the fight began. It seems that the success of the fight is reversely proportional to its intensity. We have to admit that it is really sad to see that despite all this fighting the situation is not getting better but even worse. If you now think of our fight against racism and fascism it can quickly become clear that the consequences of our fighting will be devastating! How do you feel if I say: The result of the fight against fascism is that the fascism is growing stronger!

»He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.« Frederic Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 

»Fight the system, not just the symptoms« 

Why is there is a higher unemployment rate, more terrorism, more poverty, more corruption, more everything despite the fighting we have undertaken?

I once listened to a lecture about how the chronic pain begins. If somebody spends too much time sitting in his office he will soon begin to feel a pain in the lower part of his back. When the pain does not go away the person starts fighting against it. He will put compress on the painful spot, he would take painkillers, buy himself a new chair, put a pillow behind his back, read articles about how to get rid of the pain, listen to commercials. He will visit a doctor, take a MR scan, receive a therapy, visit a masseur, take some days off, etc. The body reacts. The muscles at the affected area would contract and harden, which makes the pain even stronger. The white blood cells start doing their job. The skin gets red and infected.

Additional health measures must be taken. All the body and health systems are activated to help the pain go away but it will not do because the pain is only a symptom of another problem. By fighting against pain, you only help to 'secure' the pain. So instead of helping to lessen the pain you make it stronger.

Just think about how much energy and money is spent on fighting against the pain. If you really want the pain to go away you need to find out why it appeared in the first place and then deal with that primary reason. Why does this person sit so much in the office, why does he spent so much time at work, why doesn't he take some rest… when the primary reason is detected and the problem solved, the pain will disappear. Similar to the patient who is preoccupied with his pain all our systems are now focusing on the occurrence of fascism instead of finding out why the fascism was born in the first place! Let's focus on the primary reason and not on the consequences!

Lack of Vision

Indeed, our society is full of those primary reasons. One of the main ones is rooted in the question how this society is going to survive and develop. How can we use the natural sources and the ability of every individual in the society in such a way that they will support one another and help each other to build and be constructive? Wherever you go in Slovenia, you can see there is work to be done: bad roads, half-ruined bridges, abandoned forests, fields, flood devastation. At the same time we have a lot of young people and people in their 30s whose vital energy is flowing away into the abyss of subsidies.
What will we live on in the modern world? What kind of a world are we going to build? Is the only alternative that we have desperately trying to get a subsidy?

"We cannot live on the power of others," said the Croatian philosopher, economist and theoretician Slavko Kulić. I think this holds true for all nations. The only solution to our problems that the politicians have so far offered is to get a loan. By taking a loan we have lost our independency. This is why our society got sick. To find out how very sick it has become you only need to have a look at its symptoms: spreading of fascism, xenophobia, racial discrimination, building fences. The Icelandic writer and political scientist Erikiur Bergmann Einarsson explained nicely what we are lacking:

"In western democracy politics has always been understood as leadership; as a conflict of ideas. Every politician would present his own vision of how the society should look like and would then try to convince others that his vision is the right solution for progress. Out of some strange reason, politicians nowadays think that their job is to find out what people think and then stand up for that… But we have to be aware of the fact that only great visions would lead this society forward. If things were different, the human rights would never be acknowledged. Democracy would never have been born if the politicians would have only tried to guess the thoughts of people in their time. Politicians are no longer aware what is their real mission!"

In the end, one might conclude that the only vision of Slovene politicians for the last couple of years has been how to become an MP and then a bureaucrat in Brussels. I would say that there are not many people who would deserve to be called a politician, let alone receive a politician's salary or pension. To be a politician is extremely difficult and you need to carry a lot of responsibility. However, in Slovenia being a politician offers an excellent excuse to get to financial safety and stay there during the turbulent times of economic crisis. Nowadays, politicians refuse to exit the politics just for the sake of retaining the financial safety. So they would grasp every opportunity, every idea that might lead them closer to the voters. Just as a drunkard makes us of anybody at the bar willing to listen so that he has an excuse to continue drinking. 

How to fight against fascism, racism and other similar -isms? 

To avoid fascism it would be necessary to immediately set up a survival vision for Slovenia and all the inhabitants, but also a vision for the whole world! We should get down to creative and optimistic thinking, not hindered by fear. We should answer the question:

How will we continue to exist and how are we going to implement our vision with the visions of other nations?

Once we have our answers, we should take immediate action. Everything else is a waste of time. Meanwhile we could be planning new accommodations for refugees, start teaching Arabic and other Eastern languages in schools, open new departments at universities. We could create new job opportunities preparing work that could be carried out by the refugees.

While we are trying to preserve the 'old world', healing the symptoms, we are losing valuable time that could be better spent if we prepared the ground for a new world. Life goes on and we should move with it or we'll be left behind. Let there be demonstrations for a common vision with the refugees, for understanding, racial diversity, open borders, equality and justice for everybody. This type of action, thinking and demonstration would be the best answer to the above question. But above all, it would be most welcome if all the politicians immediately started finding solutions for healing of society.

It's time they propose the vision of the society's survival or, if they have none, to let somebody else who has a vision to take their place.


translation Sibil Vilfan Gruntar 

A flyer used recently to invite people to take part in demonstrations against fascism and racism.

Alenka Sottler 

has established herself as an outstanding artist, particularly as a master of
black-and-white images. Her illustrations are produced using a variety of creative techniques,
many of them extremely innovative.  
Born Oct. 24, 1958, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her father was a sculptor and her mother worked
for Slovenia’s leading newspaper. Sottler received her first informal training in drawing and
sculpture at her father’s studio.
She has illustrated more than 50 books for which she received numerous international awards
and nominations, including two nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.