Dangerous words

"The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, grey eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal."

This is the jacket blurb from a mid-80s edition of 'The Day of the Jackal', a 1971 thriller by British novelist Frederick Forsyth. The book is actually better than this description makes it sound – the 1980s have a lot to answer for – but it may soon be difficult to obtain in Slovakia.

That's because Slovakia's SIS intelligence agency – or more accurately, its National Security Analytical Centre (NBAC) – has reportedly included it in a series of bulletins listing "dangerous" literature that were issued to government ministries earlier this year.

We know this because the Culture Ministry recently sent out an internal memo warning employees about Mr Forsyth's works and, equally bafflingly, those of Slovenian celebrity philosopher Slavoj Žižek. (It also included books by some considerably uglier characters – among them a now-imprisoned Holocaust-denier, Marián Magát, and the loathsome American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.)

All of these scribblings, Culture Ministry staff were given to understand, risked "radicalization of people in the context of modern technologies".

The list received applause from an unlikely source: Irena Bihariová, the deputy leader of opposition party Progressive Slovakia (PS).

She posted on Facebook: "Even I, who have specialized in extremism and misinformation throughout my professional life, could not have written a similar document better."

Bihariová's post was mostly ironic: the letter sent out by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová had also warned about Zem & Vek, a conspiracy-mongering magazine, despite it being broadly in line with her own worldview. Sure enough, Šimkovičová quickly disowned the memo (even though it had been signed on her behalf by her deputy minister), sowing yet more of the confusion and incompetence that have become her hallmark.

However, the Pravda daily reported that, separately, the Education Ministry plans to use the list to inform public institutions. One can only hope that school librarians do not really need to be told to avoid works by Hitler, Stalin and other mass murders who also made the list.

Pravda quoted Radoslav Štefančík, a political scientist from the University of Economics, saying that the creation of lists of prohibited literature should definitely not fall under the Ministry of Culture.

I quite agree. But should any state authority in an open society really be in the business of deciding what books citizens should read?

Banning books is both a) profoundly illiberal, b) pointless (perhaps someone should tell the SIS about the internet?), and c) counter-productive – at least if the purpose is to avoid dystopian outcomes.

The problem with banning or restricting books – apart from the fact that it's just a very bad idea – is that there have to be criteria that dictate what is to be banned.

But once you announce what these are, then pretty soon every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Slovak Spectator opinion writer) starts challenging your choices – or omissions. I mean, if we're in the business of banning books, why is 'Mein Kampf' on the list, but not 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', for instance?

This back-and-forth very quickly becomes a massive pain in the neck. So what's a harassed bureaucrat to do? Obfuscate, naturally.

In this case, the criteria, we are told (the SIS has already said as much), can't possibly be revealed – for 'security' reasons.

But that's never quite enough: the lists still circulate – they have to, if all those culture ministers and librarians are supposed to enact them – and their contents allow the same smart alecks as before to continue speculating about the 'secret' criteria, based on what's on the list or isn't.

At this point, the bureaucrats invariably decide that not only the criteria, but the list itself must be classified. Et voilà! The list of banned books is itself banned, and Orwell's memory hole beckons.

***

Just a day or two after this pantomime premiered in mid August, the leaders of some of Slovakia's most august academic bodies, including the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) and Comenius University, issued a public statement "on the current social situation".

Their statement notes that the quality of public discourse has become increasingly vulgar of late – which seems plausible, though no comparative analysis is cited – and concludes that vulgarity is, well, not nice.

So far, so unobjectionable.

However, the authors then leap to the startling conclusion that not only is public mudslinging regrettable, but that disaster is imminent:

"We are convinced that the further continuation of this trajectory will be devastating for Slovak society."

Crikey.

It is worth noting that the opening phrase of that sentence – "Sme presvedčení, že" – is one of the most weaselly in Slovak. It almost always presages a bald assertion, made without reference to facts or analysis, that is designed – to paraphrase Orwell – to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

And so it is here. After lamenting a lack of expertise and the redundancy of professional criteria, Slovakia's leading academic institutions provide not one jot of evidence to back up their "conviction" that society is going to hell in a handcart.

They do, however, think that "all those who have the right to make decisions, public institutions, the media, and public figures, [should] consider the impact of their statements and actions." Once again, it's hard to argue. But who exactly are we talking about here?

No one is named. Responsibility lies with "all those..."

This sort of flaccid both-sidesing of the issue – implying that somehow everyone is using vulgar and dehumanizing language, when this is clearly not the case – fails to acknowledge that these institutions know precisely where much of the bile is coming from.

In several cases, it emanates from their very own staff and alumni.

Take SAV scholars, for instance.

In one of his more absurd outbursts – and that's saying something – pro-Russian Smer MP Ľuboš Blaha, who is perhaps the most well-known member of the academy in Slovakia, recently noted that a much-delayed Ukraine aid bill was passed by the US Congress on Hitler's birthday. This, he concluded darkly, was no coincidence – rather, "American liberal circles" lay behind it.

Presumably, this analysis arose by applying the "professional criteria" that led the SAV to employ him in the first place.

Comenius University has a similarly patchy record.

Last autumn, its law faculty's dean contributed an analysis supporting the government's plan (since enacted) to dissolve the anti-corruption Special Prosecutor's Office. At the centre of his report was the insinuation – by means of an invented adjective, "criminogenic" – that the office might be legally unsound.

The dean's students, in respectful terms, asked him to explain what he was talking about – they are, after all, the ones who will have to deal with the consequences of the violence currently being done to the criminal justice system – and were promptly hung out to dry by their university.

Not only did the dean refuse to answer the students' questions, the prime minister – himself a Comenius University law graduate – then castigated their main representative in the most vindictive terms:

"If a student with acne on his nose is to have priority over the dean of the law school and determine what is true and what is not, God save this country!"

The comments were posted on Facebook, and the student in question started receiving death threats. Only then did the dean ask people to lay off.

A month later, the Academic Senate of Comenius University finally condemned Robert Fico's attacks on the student. He has never apologised (nor has the dean answered his students' questions).

***

On Friday, August 23, it was the turn of the president to weigh in, via a recorded address, on "the current situation" (that phrase again).

In a less-than-presidential move – albeit one in keeping with the habit of other populist Slovak politicians – his official website does not record Peter Pellegrini's actual comments, but instead relies on a US social media website to broadcast them for him.

Under the enigmatic title "What is really happening in Slovakia?", followed by a photo of President Pellegrini looking stern and a boilerplate statement asserting his independence, citizens are redirected to YouTube via a teasing link: "You can hear more about the current situation in this video."

The speech itself is pure pablum, a series of statements that are supposed, one assumes, to sound presidential and reassuring, but achieve the opposite effect by being ambiguous or meaningless.

To give just one example, here is what he had to say about the ructions at the Culture Ministry, which has recently taken to sacking the directors of national institutions for no apparent reason, prompting large public protests:

"I agree that the methods and arguments for dismissals should reflect the standards of the 21st century, but I also point out that such changes have occurred not only in this sector but across all areas in Slovak history."

Hmm.

***

Somewhere behind the book lists, the academics' letter and the president's professed "concern", it seems likely, is the unease generated by the attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico's life on May 15.

This unease is not just the result of the horrific act itself but, more than three months on, the apparent lack of progress in the official investigation.

The attack has been used to justify all manner of illiberal actions and proposals by the government and by Fico himself, who continues to insist that another attack is imminent.

But we still know next to nothing (at least, officially) about the circumstances of the attack or the attacker's motives – despite dozens of witnesses, copious film and photographic evidence, and the immediate apprehension of the perpetrator.

Tellingly, the SIS began issuing its bulletins about "dangerous" literature from May onwards.

Frederick Forsyth's most famous novel uses political assassination as a plot device.

And Slavoj Žižek has written and spoken about political violence in ways that are easy to (mis)characterise as an endorsement of it.

Maybe the spooks should try Žižek's 2018 book 'First as Tragedy, Then as Farce'.

It could almost be the recent history of Slovakia.