There have been unfavourable reports from the European parliament concerning a MEP from the ranks of the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS). At a session of the European parliament concerning an EU wide ban on Nazi and fascist symbols and slogans, the MEP Ivo Vajgl condemned “displays of Nazi, fascist, antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and other extremist symbols”, while forgetting the communist symbols under which more than a hundred million people had died. Later on, he only brought further shame upon himself when a Croatian colleague exposed him as a liar in front of the entire European parliament with a simple question. Vajgl was rendered speechless.
In a speech that was an end in itself, the MEP from the ranks of the DeSUS party, Ivo Vajgl, individually condemned various symbols of failed political regimes but forgot to mention the biggest murderer of them all – the communist regime. He declared that “there are countries in which displaying Nazi, fascist, antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and other extremist symbols is no longer surprising”. Considering the effort of the MEP of the ALDE group to list every one of them, we can attribute his failure to mention communist symbols either to intentional evasion or age-related memory loss.
If this were the only slip-up, we might be able to attribute it to bad memory; however, the mistakes, deceptions and lies just kept coming. In his speech, Vajgl continued: “President Trump retweeted messages of British neo-Nazis and made excuses for participants of the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville.” We could be nice and say that Vajgl was only badly informed; however, considering that at some point he was part of a diplomatic corpus in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, he should have known that the Nazis were allied with Muslims and that Adolf Hitler considered them allies in the fight against Jews.
How can a group that posts real videos showing actions of Islamists around the world be a neo-Nazi group is a question that would be worth posing to the greying man. The same goes for the fact that he was bothered by Donald Trump retweeting truthful facts. A question that also arises is what issues does he have with the truth? This was not the end of Vajgl’s lies in the European parliament. He claimed that “Croatian extremists have been putting up a monument to a fascist state entity in the concentration camp of Jasenovac. The Hungarian neo-Nazis are an untouchable part of the political scene in their country, the same goes for the Ukrainian and Polish ones”.
Croatian MEP exposed Vajgl’s lie, rendering him speechless
The Croatian MEP Ivica Tolić took issue with his statement and asked him the following question: “Dear colleague, why did you state that there is a monument in Croatia to the Independent State of Croatia when it is in fact a monument to the regular unit of the Croatian army during the Croatian War of Independence, which has no connection whatsoever with the Nazi and fascist regime?”
The lie of the Slovenian MEP was thus exposed. It was only one amongst many in his short speech. Vajgl did not know how to respond to this question. His only reaction was unintelligible mumbling, which he was not prepared to repeat more clearly after he had been asked to do so by the person presiding over the session.
There is no question that this is a disgrace for Slovenian foreign policy. And it is definitely a disgrace for the Slovenian diplomatic team. But the greatest disgrace, which Vajgl brought upon himself, was his Croatian colleague calling him out on a lie.
When we examine Vajgl’s statement more closely, we realize that he is chasing after his own fantasies. He is tilting at windmills and expecting to tear down the giants. He started talking like Don Quixote, believing that the other MEPs would calmly listen to his drivel. What happened was the opposite. The MEPs set him straight, and Vajgl was rendered speechless.
Ivan Šokić