debate in front of the Presidential Palace
On October 23, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Grassalkovic Palace at a protest in support of the nomination of SNS deputy Rudolf Huliak. Some of them waved Slovak flags while the crowd chanted “We want Huliak!”. I managed to reach a few protesters and ask them for their opinion.
“Hello, what is this protest about?” I asked three gentlemen who were standing on the wall of the Peace Fountain in front of the Presidential Palace and applauding the organizers of the protest after their final speech.
“About stout beer,” one of them laughed. I didn’t understand what he was specifically referring to, so I ignored his answer. Right away, the other gentleman told me that it was a protest against the president’s decision not to appoint Rudolf Huliak as Minister of the Environment.
“Is that the politician who says bears are a biological weapon?” I asked. This is where our debate began.
It is not very important what we have managed to analyze. However, it is important to mention that their argument for the well-known nonsensical statement about bears was “after all, bears are part of biology, therefore they are a biological weapon”. It didn’t matter how many strong counterarguments I gave them back, we didn’t agree. They didn’t even listen to me.
“The Slovak shouted at the Russian, trying to convince him that life is better in Russia.”
From their point of view, I felt no interest in my opinion, only pure impatience when they would get to speak again. It was the same with the alleged introduction of masturbation places by progressives, or the “equality of the seventy-seven sexes”. For example, when I asked where they got the number seventy-seven from, they told me that they made it up. Later it became clear to me that they were inspired by the song Sedemdesiat sueken mala.
exchange of views between a Russian and a Slovak about life in Russia
After about twenty minutes, another person joined the debate – a new member of this group, who comes from Russia. What really surprised me was that he himself did not know what kind of protest he was at. He decided to go there with his friends because they don’t have protests in Russia. “All this would be dissolved by the police within five minutes,” he said. He also did not understand why anyone would protest against the decisions of our president. According to him, she is perfect. However, when I explained to him that this particular protest was organized by a political party that is ideologically very close to Russia, he realized that this was not a protest that his moral principles would lead him to. .
I learned that he managed to get out of Moscow thanks to work, but his wife had to stay in Russia. He also mentioned that he belongs to the minority of Russians who disagree with domestic politics.
A passing protester overheard us. Since the SNS voters who met at the protest are often Russian sympathizers themselves, I knew where this debate would lead. It didn’t even last five seconds and I got a rather ironic look. The Slovak shouted at the Russian, trying to convince him that life is better in Russia. Meanwhile, the gentleman I was talking to earlier was saying something to me, but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was how to get out of here. How do we get to the point where we start listening to each other and don’t just blindly convince each other of our own truth?
maybe once…
Slovaks are chameleons. We live our peaceful lives, but as soon as we sense danger approaching, we take a defensive position. We’ll morph into whatever wins us an argument at the moment in the comments below the Facebook post. We can be virologists, geopoliticians, experts on any regional conflict currently taking place, or psychologists focused on gender identities.
But when do we start being human? People with empathy, who know how to listen to each other, who know how to empathize with the sufferings of another nation and who know how to accept people as they are. When will we finally understand that even if we have Tatras, gnocchi and fujara, we are still not the navel of Europe and we can also learn something here and there from other nations? When will we finally understand that no, we don’t know everything?
Rye. It will come someday. I believe it. When Ľuboš Blaha was able to go from a liberal supporter of the LGBTI+ community to a communist who hangs a portrait of the president in his office and replaces it with Che Guevara, Slovaks will also learn to look beyond their own noses. It will take time, but there is hope. The young generation has the opportunity to travel and learn about new cultures from a young age. We cannot blame our parents that they did not have such an opportunity and now they are afraid of everything that is only a centimeter away from us. We have been asleep for thirty years and we are only now beginning to wake up, so I believe that this bad dream will one day end.
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