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.
