Robert Fico

I don't know if anyone has already posted about it here, but what do you think about the attempted assassination of Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, which took place in May? The perpetrator, Juraj Cintula, was a liberal and supporter of Slovak opposition parties. It's really hilarious that such ''peaceful'' (yeah, sure...) liberals started complaining against Fico and even wishing him death on social media immediately after the attack.

He's a by-proxy killer, so understandably, people are not going to have much sympathy. Regardless, Fico is not a likeable or trustworthy person. He has decades-long history of ideological flipflopping, meaning everyone on the political spectrum gets fucked over by someone like him in charge. The only consistency is his own profit and power. Also, reducing punishments for corruption while raising them for whistleblowers is so comically supervillain-like, that it would be funny.. only if it wasn't real.

While obviously not the case for everyone, the few people in Slovakia that I've talked to about Fico gave the impression that this is more of a young gen vs boomer gen issue more than left wing vs right wing. Even Juraj Krajcik wanted him dead (Fico was on a list of potential victims) and he wasn't a liberal. Neither am I, and I got excited to hear the news; one of the reasons being because I thought Jan Kuciak and his fiance would finally get some actual justice. So what really surprised me was how old this shooter was.

Would civil war have broken out, if he had died? No. I love those funky little Slovaks like you wouldn't believe (naozaj, milujem slovensko..), but they let an actual mafia-tier guy get back in office; if that wasn't a kick-off, then neither would his death be.

I think politicians sensationalised the open reactions of some because they wanted to avoid civilians getting any ideas about turning on their own governments, because this was the first (almost) successful attack on a European country leader in a long, long time - a HUGE deal, only undermined by the fact that Slovakia is a "literally who?" country to most of the world. In other words, imo, it's less about civilians turning on each other, and more about the risk of turning on them. So, they're acting unified and telling everyone to lol calm down.. except Fico, who's recent statements on how this is the media/opposition's fault are obviously setting himself up to further censorship goals. gg wp