The Struggle Against the Deep State in Slovenia

The Western world, including the USA, is rapidly devolving into a totalitarian state, similar to the communist totalitarianisms of the past, except with more sophisticated propaganda.

With that in mind, back in January I collected several accounts by volunteer translators who had lived under communism, and whom I invited to compare and contrast what they had endured with what is going on now in what was formerly known as the Free World.

Jože Bišcak, the editor of the Slovenian magazine Demokracija responded to my post by writing me the following email. I have been remiss in not publishing it until now, but yesterday’s election in Slovenia has made it especially relevant and timely:

The Slovenian experience is bad. After World War II, Slovenia was forcibly annexed to Yugoslavia, which became a socialist state. After killing off the managers, factory owners, priests, and louder critics of communism (the SD party, the direct successor to the Communist Party, is still based in a Jewish villa stolen after World War II.), the communist elite immediately started to look after its own comfort: it raised money by teaming up with the Italian mafia to smuggle cigarettes. Later, the Udba (the communist secret police that persecuted dissent) started setting up companies and banks (including abroad) and channelling money into them. After Slovenia’s independence (1991), which at least on a declaratory level became a democratic state, lustration was unfortunately not carried out; this is still evident today, when communists disguised as democrats control the judiciary and use it to settle scores with right-wing political parties.

While the centre-right coalition currently in power is trying to dismantle the socialist parallel system, the left-wing opposition is constantly causing problems by organising mass (and violent) protests. To do this, it uses money it stole decades ago (unofficial information says that more than $50 billion was routed abroad — mainly to tax havens — by the time of independence).

Last November, in an editorial for Demokracija, I talked about a book written by a young economist, Rado Pezdir, who researched what the Communist Party was doing, and used documents to expose the parallel mechanism of the communist Deep State.

Mr. Bišcak sent the English translation of the first chapter of Rado Pezdir’s book Parallel Mechanism (including a prologue explaining the parallel mechanism of the deep state) in PDF format. It’s too long to reproduce here, but it offers a fascinating glimpse into the way the communists, who kept their positions in the banks and formed the government at the time, laundered money for the Iranian terrorist regime.

It describes in detail the process outlined in Mr. Bišcak’s email. It sounds similar to what happened in Russia, but on a smaller scale.

Below is the editorial published in Demokracija. It mentions Janez Janša as one of the center-right people who struggled against the corrupt establishment that has emerged as the successor to the communists. Mr. Janša has been prime minister since 2020, and held the same office on two separate occasions before that. In yesterday’s election his party was defeated by the new SvoboDA party, which (as mentioned in last Saturday’s post) allegedly benefited from Russian interference in the election.

Parallel mechanism

by Jože Bišcak
November 3, 2021

The book Parallel Mechanism of the deep state by professor and publicist Rado Pezdir is not only important because it proves with documents the parallel economy of the former communist regime and reveals why the transition is not over, but also because it explains events in the first years after independence. In those days, there was already a lot of talk about the post-war massacres and murders of Udba [security service, analogous to the KGB]. Decades of fear of the Party police were still among the people, and even the Communists disguised as Democrats did not react excessively to their criminal activities; they were in sackcloth and ashes for a bit and tried to relativize and justify their actions with the legal system of the time. By doing so, they diverted the public debate about the legacy of the totalitarian system far away from the economy, for which they were genuinely afraid it would be revealed.

The only group of journalists who dealt with this issue more seriously was the so-called Slivnikova cetica (the late Danilo Slivnik and Vesna R. Marincic, Vinko Vasle, Igor Guzelj, me, and a few others). If the Organisation, as Slivnik called the Party’s leadership, manipulated and perfidiously blocked (even with moles within the spring parties) the work of various commissions, something happened in the first months of 1993 that caused all the red lights to go off in the deep state, the defence mechanism was triggered and in a good year it dealt with everyone who touched the parallel economy.

In Delo’s editorial “Casinò Royal”, Slivnik wrote about huge amounts of money flowing to the parties of the transitional left, Janez Janša spoke about the money you can use to buy elections. As they wallowed in Udba’s finances, the Udbamafia began preparations for Janša’s political liquidation, which led to the mounted Depala vas affair (later to the Patria affair), the group around Slivnik had to withdraw from Delo to the newly formed magazine Mag. Deep state soldiers, among whom Janez Drnovšek also played a prominent role, ended the purge (with some suspicious suicides) with the abolition of the Social Accounting Service, which was the only one under the leadership of Romana Logar to investigate the red mafia in depth. It took a quarter of a century for Pezdir’s book to be published, which confirms with documents what Slivnikova cetica wrote about, mostly on the basis of oral testimonies. Today’s defence of the deep state is that the parallel mechanism is presented as a system for the benefit of the Slovenian nation and preparations for financial assistance in gaining independence. Pezdir has already rejected this thesis, as no document proves it.

How much money (we are talking about billions of euros) disappeared abroad (especially in tax havens) and then came back in the form of various privatisation stories, Pezdir does not answer and we will probably never know. The invaluable value of the book is to describe the operation of a parallel mechanism in concrete examples: from classic crime (cigarette smuggling) of the communist avant-garde and cooperation with the (Italian) mafia after World War II to sophisticated financial operations at the turn of the millennium, which proves that the mechanism is still alive and that money is constantly being returned to Slovenia for purely political and ideological needs; some indications suggest that violent street protests are being funded in agreement with career criminals.

The parallel mechanism defends what is dearest to it: huge amounts of money, care for the blood successors of communism, the integrity of its (im)moral system and its interpretation of the world. The battle to dismantle this mechanism and against it does not take place in daylight, it is fought at the most visceral levels. It seems to the public to be a relentless struggle for supremacy between the right and left poles, but in reality it is an ancient struggle between good and evil, between truth and lie. The left wing experiment, which also built a parallel mechanism, has been going on in Slovenia for more than three quarters of a century, but sooner or later it will collapse under the burden of history. The question is what the price will be and how deep the wounds will be. But this house of cards, this Ponzi scheme, will end the moment people realise that knowing the truth is the result of observation (and experience), and by no means of (empty promises and) imagination. I just hope that it does not take too long.

Jože Bišcak is the editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine Demokracija, president of the Slovenian Association of Patriotic Journalists and author of the books “Zgodbe iz Kavarne Hayek”, “Zapisi konservativnega liberalca” and “Potovati z Orwellom”.

The following article from the BBC reports on the results of yesterday’s election in Slovenia:

Janez Jansa: Slovenia Votes Out Pro-Trump Populist

Slovenia’s populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa has suffered a heavy defeat in parliamentary elections by a left-leaning party formed only in January.

Mr Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic party took about 24% of the vote, compared to 34.5% for the Freedom Movement party led by former businessman Robert Golob.

The poll was marked by allegations that Mr Jansa has undermined the rule of law in the former Yugoslav state.

Mr Golob said his win will enable him to lead his country “back to freedom”.

An outspoken supporter of former US President Donald Trump, Mr Jansa was seeking a fourth term as prime minister and stood on a platform of “stability”.

But his critics allege that the 63-year-old, who came to prominence as a post-communist reformer, has spent several years eroding democratic standards and restricting press freedom.

He engaged in lengthy rows with the EU over his moves to cut funding for the national news agency and has sought to delay the appointment of prosecutors to the bloc’s new anti-corruption body.

Mr Golob is a political newcomer who entered politics in January after being removed as chairman of his energy investment firm.

He had billed the election as a “referendum on democracy”.

The 55-year-old celebrated his victory in isolation from his home after contracting Covid-19 and told jubilant supporters via livestream that “people want changes and have expressed their confidence in us as the only ones who can bring those changes”.

He is expected to form a governing coalition of other left-wing parties.

Turnout for the vote was significantly higher than expected, with some 70% of the country’s 1.7 million residents going to the polls — an increase of 18% on 2018’s poll. A much tighter race had also been predicted.

8 thoughts on “The Struggle Against the Deep State in Slovenia

  1. The conscientious survivors of various hard-line Communist dictatorships are far better equipped by their experiences to defend against revanchists of the Left. The fact that even such shrewd critics as they are finding this struggle to be a severe test and a prolonged and festering national injury strongly suggests that the effete, complacent anomie of Western constituencies has little chance of realising the danger or of mounting any coherent kind of resistance to it.

    • Until the next Napoleon, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet or Hitler shows up and takes the reins. They knew how to deal with communists.

        • The Chinese will do what they always do, over extend themselves and then retreat to mainland China for a few centuries.

      • These chaps seem like a terrible warning of what happens when democratic societies allow their Marxisant tendency to overrun the state and it’s agencies. Rampant reaction, being an equal and opposite form of authoritarian, totalitarian intolerance, tends as a cure to be every bit as horrible as the disease.

        So on the whole I’d prefer a robust democratic order that could deal with things before they got out of hand. Of course I know I’m indulging in pure fantasy now and we’re really living in Weimar on the eve of a World War.

        • Democracy is dead and gone, welcome to the time of the return of Kings and the hard men.

  2. All educated and trained by Jesuits. Another will show up soon…..Jesuit trained dictator.

    • Pssst, al so called dictators were not jesuit trained. Just thought I would enlighten you.

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