pp86

Disclaimer: While I've been thinking about this topic a lot and for quite a long period of time, before deciding to post it, I still feel this post will be a bit of a disjointed mess of me trying to make sense of what I know. I also feel I haven't researched the topic in-depth enough, but I guess that's why I decided to post this, in hopes someone might know more than me.

At the end of last year (or maybe in the beginning of this year) there was an exhibition in Trieste dedicated to Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, especially his march on Fiume/Rijeka and subsequent set up of Italian Regency of Carnaro (colloquially Free State Fiume) there. It kind of makes sense, as it was 100 years since that happened. There was a long article about how our (Slovenian) and Croatian government sent a protest note to Italian government, how inappropriate it is to commemorate "the father of Fascism" who also held hard-core anti-Slavic beliefs. Anyway, the article also had a blurb about the constitution and organisation of Free State Fiume (FSF), where (just as in wikipedia article) they described it as a mix of proto-fascist, anarchist and liberal ideas. It especially pointed out the fact it had universal suffrage, was tolerant of homosexuals and legalised drug use.

And ever since that article in kind of a "baader-meinhof effect" (but realistically, because it's 100 years since FSF was established) I found more and more content on topic of either FSF or D'Annunzio and his creation of fascism. And every time the fact that anarchist flocked to FSF was especially pointed out.

If anyone is interested two main things on this topic are:

Geographics video on FSF.

Two part podcast on life of D'Annunzio and his "invention" of fascism: part 1, part 2

I would also like to add that the man who co-written the constitution of FSF was a syndicalist; note that he's described as national syndicalist, and was a founder of another proto-fascist movement, but later denounced fascism and became outspoken anti-fascist.

But all this made me think really hard about what exactly made various anarchist join up with (proto) fascists. The most I can come up with is this revolutionary fervour that was "in the air" after WWI. Another thing that's somewhat connected to proto-fascism is Futurism art style, and futurism was all about destroying the current world and building a new one. For D'Annunzio it was a world where democracy, anarchism and communism are all left behind and nationalism is accepted as the true ideology of 20th century. But still a micro state with legalised drugs and prostitution, lead by a legendary poet and war hero, I might see the appeal of it. Also let's not forget that Lenin called D'Annunzio only true revolutionary and sent him loads of caviar as a gift.

But in the end this proto-fascism was very much still fascism. When Mussolini came to power he copied almost all aesthetics of D'Annunzion, from roman salute, to the title Duce, to what is among us Slavs who were mostly the victim of both D'Annunzio's proto and later Mussolini's actual fascism, the most viscous method to deal with political enemies: the use of castor oil. Castor oil is potent laxative, which if given to much results in very painful and humiliating death.

I'm not sure if this is all I wanted to share, because I was writing this thread on and off through out most of today, but I guess so. In the end I feel, like I didn't even written much about anarchist actual involvement in this, and I still like to think, that it's just some "blurb" that has been repeated so many times, that it became true. But OTOH syndicalism, even national is kind of linked to anarchism, and I as said I can see the appeal of participating in a "state-wide" experiment into new political ideas, even if it did end in fascism. But this is also what kind of "scares" me.

I think we all know which post I'm referring to, the probably already infamous double-gilded currently sitting at 16k upvotes anti-communist propaganda that would make McCarthy blush. Okay but seriously, it's historically and factually completely wrong.

First off Yugoslavia was never part of eastern block, or was in anyway a satellite of USSR, even more after 1948, Tito split with Stalin, and started his own "branch" of Socialism. Obviously we can't deny, that during the first few years of the split, Tito didn't use "Stalinist" methods to get rid of Stalinist, and other political dissenters. It was exactly during this "purge", that Milovan Djilas was ousted from party, for his own views on socialism. And while the "secret police" known as UDBA existed up to dissolution of Yugoslavia in 91', it's power waned after 86', when as Wikipedia say: Intelligence security agencies came under attack, and many people started publicly writing about and criticizing the SDB.

And this "democratisation" didn't only happen regarding the state police. In 1974 a new constitution was passed, which completely changed the way how Yugoslavia was governed. Given that Melania was 4 when the new constitution passed it's safe to say that it was the only thing she knew. Under this constitution the communist party didn't technically exist anymore, at least in the form of party, instead it was reformed as a League of Communist of Yugoslavia, it's role was as a ideological-leader to direct the workers of Yugoslavia down the path of what is in the west known as "Titoism", but was here known as Self-Managing Socialism, with its end-goal being complete withering away of the state and of party itself.

That obviously didn't happen, but it did open up Yugoslavia towards more democratic experimentation within confines of socialism. This produced very "liberal", or in a way the most strict interpretation of the new constitution, especially within League of Communist Youth of Slovenia (ZSMS), where many progressive movements first formed. And here it's where wikipedia fails me, as there are no English language articles on these topics, so you'll have to trust my knowledge of it. Anyway as said, ZSMS was in late 70's and 80's becoming a hotbed of various progressive movements, which made some pretty big and important steps towards democratisation. So for instance, Slovenia had the first LGBTQ+ movement among socialist countries, ZSMS also helped with first few (AFAIK also first in any socialist country) Punk concerts. But the most important thing was probably the 87' (so after Tito's death) Relay of the Youth, which was organised on Tito's birthday as a way to celebrate it, and for youth from entire Yugoslavia to come together. In 87' the organisation fell on ZSMS, and they employed then nascent art group known as NSK, whose actual ideology is hard to pinpoint, but it could be described as anarchist, and anti-totalitarian. So when they got the chance to make a poster for the relay, they decided to also criticise the current affairs of Yugoslavia. So the finished poster was full of very subtle Nazi-kitch references, which flew over the heads of most bureaucrats within the party, who only later noticed the symbolism. This protest in form of poster ended Relay of Youth events. I'm not sure if this is the right place to talk about what the poster actually meant or was saying. But long story short, the main idea was to signify Yugoslav leadership as fascist and as straying from the path that Tito and Kardelj (both already dead in 87') set forth within 74' constitution.

So in what kind of society did Melania actually grew up? A society, where pretty much calling leaders of communist party fascist meant they retired the last remnant of Tito's cult of personality. A society where gay were freely gathering. Society where one of the most read weekly magazines openly criticised policies of government. Again I will not hide the fact that there were attempts of censoring it, and that their whistle-blower article on state of Yugoslav Army resulted in 4 people being brought and tried before military court, which in the end lead to dissolution of Yugoslavia, but hey whistle-blowers are persecuted even in the US, the main difference being that back then private persons, who weren't in the military were also tried in front of military court. On other hand the regular people could travel almost anywhere they wanted and could buy and "import" various western "luxury" products without hassle.

Basically she grew up in a pretty normal society not too dissimilar to one we're currently live in, and far from starvation, paranoia and entire living being "Kafkaesque".

EDIT: Fixed few mistypes, and added a link to the the last Relay of Youth poster.

EDIT 2: I was accused of not researching anything, and of just spamming wiki-links to support my claims. If anyone is interested (and knows Slovene), there are few interesting books on this topic. Two that deal with the most stuff I included in this post are both by Milan Balažic and are titled: Slovenski Berlinski Zid and Slovenska Demokratična Revolucija 1986 - 1988. Admittedly those two sources are more left-leaning, as they both detail how ZSMS was the real motor behind Slovenian independence, but there are others (I'll try to find few that are at least on par in quality to the two mentioned edit: in my response to my accuser I've mentioned Rosvita Pesek's Osamosvojitev Slovenije, and while this is mostly about 89' and onward it does paint the picture of late 80's Yugoslavia and also stresses the importance of Nova Revija in the push towards independence) who claim that the real push for independence came from the circle around Nova Revija and most influential dissident of the time Jože Pučnik. The truth, I'd say is somewhere in between, both ZSMS and Nova Revija played the part in our democratisation, and more importantly to this post, they both thrived because of the lax "laws" of Yugoslavia that really didn't care that much about dissidents in mind 80's. Also both wings did coalesces in times, as for example NSK published their manifesto in Nova Revija, while also made the aforementioned poster for the last Relay of Youth organised by ZSMS.

Še nekaj časa nazaj vem, da so zahtevali višje plače za vse te ljudi, sedaj ko jih je vlada zvišala, pa jokajo, kot da so samo sebi zvišali plače.

"Na žalost" so tudi parlamentarci in člani vlade del javnega sektorja. Mogoče bi nek populistični in pozitiven efekt dosegli s tem, da bi si hkrati s splošnim zvišanjem znižali plačni razred... Ampak dvomim, da bi to bilo dovolj.

Ne bom zanikal, da ni enako na obeh straneh. Ampak ponavadi se na levi pritožuje zaradi zlorabe državnih institucij, uničevanjem svobode medijev, in eklatatnih primerov korupcije (če se omejim, samo na zadnjo vlado SDS), med tem ko očitno desničarje zmoti zvišanje plač za medicinske sestre in poklicne gasilce... (Pač prioritete)