One August night, Andrej will not fare well Our country – our rules

(portalnovosti.com)

"We condemn the threatening messages directed against Mr. Jergović. As for his cynical assertion that 'the controversial messages were written by Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Božinović,' we emphasize that it is absolutely certain and verified that it was the Prime Minister and Minister who went in disguise and under cover of night to write the controversial messages, as they regularly do."

The official response of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, which, upon Tportal's request, commented on Miljenko Jergović's post about the threatening graffiti that appeared on the building where he lives – “One August night Miljenko will not fare well”, with the annex “Our country, our rules” – represents an unprecedented event in our short modern history. No Croatian government to date, including the wartime ones and the short-lived, infamous Karamarko para-government, has communicated with the public in the language of the street, social networks and walls in front of supermarkets, always leaving that matter to its political and media paramilitaries: the first to do so turned out to be, well, the decent, polished and European government of Andrej Plenković, Sanader 2.0. Who so effectively proved that he really wrote the controversial message in disguise and under cover of night.

As he usually does.

Never an easier graphological case: just as the popular "hard" in "Miljenko won't do well" in Jergović's threatening message caused an eye-sore, two significant errors in the jovial message from the government of Andrej Plenković were equally eye-sore. So here is a brief lesson for Prime Minister Plenković.

Nothing to do with it.

First, I quote, “regarding his cynical expression of suspicion that ‘the disputed messages were written by Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Božinović’”: when something is quoted in quotation marks, then – as we have just seen – the exact quoted words are placed in quotation marks. In his post about the threatening message, Miljenko Jergović did not write that “the disputed messages were written by Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Božinović”, but rather that he “knows who its inspirers and sponsors are”, and that he “suspects the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, and the Minister of the Interior, Davor Božinović”. “Suspects that the disputed messages were written by Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Božinović” is just a free interpretation of Jergović’s words, and in that case quotation marks are not appropriate. No, they are not appropriate. Because that is the rule.

Petty nitpicking? Maybe. Just as petty as the insistence on the "ć" in "neće".

Secondly, I quote, "as for his cynical presentation" of this suspicion: Jergović's suspicion that the disputed messages were written by Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Božinović - without quotation marks, you see, it's not difficult - is not cynical: if they had paid attention in Croatian language and literature classes, the Prime Minister and his night patrols - who, disguised and under cover of night, write graffiti and government announcements - would have known that this is a figure called irony.

What is cynicism then? In short – Plenković, focus and don't yawn around! – cynicism is, by definition, a caustic, mocking, calculated, reckless and brazenly ironically expressed negative attitude towards man and society, conditioned by distrust in social values ​​and man's honest intentions. For example, I am speaking off the top of my head, when someone from a position of authority and power, say the Prime Minister, to a writer's ironic claim that the threatening messages addressed to him were written by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Police, brazenly and causticly replies that it is "quite certain and verified that it was the Prime Minister and the Minister who went in disguise and under cover of night to write the controversial messages, as they usually do".

That is a textbook example of cynicism.

Cynicism has been, I'm not saying, the official language of HDZ governments since the very beginning, for thirty-five years, but it has never been so surgically exposed before, in the handwriting of anonymous commentators on social media, fan banners and night patrols of Sturmabteilung brownshirts with spray cans in their hands. After he declaratively posed with Thompson before a concert at the Hippodrome, legitimized Ustasha extremism and showed touching sympathy for the sensitive defenders, turning out to be the "inspirator and patron" of the right-wing summer festival and the August cultural revolution - the August ringleader - his government's outrageously cynical and poorly written response turns out to be material, precisely graphological evidence of Plenković's involvement in writing poorly written threatening graffiti to journalists, writers and opposition politicians.

What, after all, if similar graffiti had appeared on the wall of the Banske dvori? What if a message had appeared overnight on Marko Square – or on Facebook, in Novosti or on Plenković's answering machine – saying, "One night in August, Andrej will not fare well"? Would the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, together with the Director of Police, the Chief of the Zagreb Police Department, the Head of the SOA and the Government Spokesperson, have been busy coming up with stupid and cynical adolescent responses, or would, for a change, six people have been looking for the author?

Two years ago, here's a good example, the Zagreb Police Department announced that it had "received a report from an unknown person who, in the early morning hours" - that is, very overnight, ed. - "made threats against the president and members of the Croatian Government": strong police forces were immediately dispatched and deployed to St. Mark's Square, the police and the SOA very quickly tracked down the "unknown callers", and by evening, Prime Minister Plenković, in a dramatic and not at all jovial voice, announced to the public that these were "very clearly identified persons who were connecting a circle of people with the aim of violently overthrowing the constitutional order".

“The overthrow of the constitutional order.” Very good. The question for everyone – and for you, Plenković! – is: how exactly is this threat to the Prime Minister an attempt to “violently overthrow the constitutional order,” and is the same attempt to “violently overthrow the constitutional order” not also a threat to the writer Miljenko Jergović, with an unambiguous, clear and precise message, “our country – our rules”?

Whose state, Plenković, whose rules? The state of which you are the Prime Minister, and in which "our state" and "our rules" are used to threaten anyone who thinks differently from the ideologists and thugs of the August Cultural Revolution - and yes: their inspirers and patrons - already has clearly written rules. These rules, you may be interested in, are also called the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, whose "original rules" state, for example, that the statehood of the Croatian people "was manifested in the decisions of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia in 1943". Rule number 3, for example, states that "freedom, equality, peacemaking, respect for human rights and the rule of law are the highest values ​​of the order of the Republic of Croatia", in which, according to rule number 14, "everyone has rights and freedoms regardless of race, skin color, sex, language, religion, national origin and political or other belief", so rule number 38 guarantees "freedom of thought and expression of thoughts", and rule number 69 also guarantees "freedom of cultural and artistic creation".

This, Plenković, is the constitutional order of the Republic of Croatia, and when someone threatens a writer, a protege of these rules, with “our state, our rules”, he is not only threatening the writer with these “rules”, but the entire state. Unless the constitutional order has already been overthrown in the meantime, which we would certainly like to be informed about, this is just as much a “threat with the aim of violently overthrowing the constitutional order” as a telephone threat to the Prime Minister or graffiti on the Banski Dvori. And yet, we did not see strong police forces, SOA agents and the Prime Minister speaking dramatically on television about a “circle of people with the aim of violently overthrowing the constitutional order”. Instead, we heard only the arrogantly cynical, childishly immature and Facebook-like stupid response of the inspirer and patron of this “circle of people”, how they “went disguised and under cover of night to write controversial messages” and overthrow the constitutional order.

The threat that was written that night on the wall of a skyscraper in Novi Zagreb is therefore much worse and more dangerous: Miljenko Jergović, namely - like every free citizen of the Republic of Croatia - is only one, unrepeatable and irreplaceable, while we have had twelve prime ministers so far: both the writer and every other citizen of the Republic have their constitutional rights for life, and the Prime Minister only until the next election.

And then, one August night, Andrej doesn't do well.

Fuck. Our country, our rules.