{"id":1693,"date":"2014-06-09T13:14:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T10:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/?p=1693"},"modified":"2014-06-09T13:14:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T10:14:07","slug":"hate-speech-the-slang-of-populism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/hate-speech-the-slang-of-populism\/","title":{"rendered":"Hate Speech \u2013 the Slang of Populism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Spas Spassov, AEJ-Bulgaria<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Predictably, the European elections on May 25th gave yet another illustration of \u201chate speech\u201d firmly establishing itself as a communication tool. Even citizen initiatives, like the promotion of electoral activity, fell prey to this trend.
\nWhat happened?
\nOn Election Day, the Bulgaria Tomorrow Group published on its websites three banners, with the following text as common denominator: \u201cStay home! I will vote instead of you\u201d. The \u201cspeakers\u201d were men of Roma origin \u2013 in one picture they were seen posing with kebab and beer, in the other \u2013 brandishing metal rods and axes.
\nThe publishing of these banners did not induce any reaction, neither from the institutions involved in the organisation and carrying out of the elections, nor from the State Commission on Protection against Discrimination. There was also no reaction to the signal that was submitted to the Central Election Committee.
\nThis is how it transpired that hatred has been endorsed as a motivational aid in political marketing. It also became clear that racism and xenophobia are now conceived as a congregating, bonding strategy, even at a moment of extreme division, such as Election Day.
\nFollowing the entry of ultranationalist discourse in Parliament, the spirit of hatred and its language have been let out of the bottle for good. Their transformation into a part of electoral campaign communication proves that they have permeated the core of democratic interaction and have already become a danger to its integrity.
\nThe debut<\/strong>
\nAs so often before, ethnic tension and the discourse of hate once again became a part of political context in the run up to presidential elections in 2011. At that time, nationalists across the country utilized the clash between citizens and those close to so-called \u201cTsar Kiro\u201d (king of the Romas) in the village of Katunitsa in their attempt to establish new strongholds. Their effort led to limited success, yet the debate that was conceived then was what enabled for degrading and racist speak to enter media though the main gate. One of the most brilliant debuts of this sort was made by TV journalist Kevork Kevorkian. This is what he wrote concerning events in Katunitsa in an article for Weekend newspaper:
\n\u201cOnce again toothless grimaces have appeared on-screen, again they bemoan their situation \u2013 they dare not send their children to school because the Bulgarians \u201cbespatter\u201d them, so growls one of the women inarticulately from the screen. Nowhere else do you find television channels so trusting of lies and so tolerating of insults. And why do they exhibit such eyesore, especially at a moment like this one \u2013 do they not understand that in so doing they besmirch our common sense and our common values. And they breathe confidence into these savages a mere month before the election \u2013 again and again they spit upon Bulgarians. Make way for the gypsy woman to spit against the Bulgarian\u2026 The clashes are but one of the manifestations of the failure of the Bulgarian cause\u201d.
\nA \u201cselfie\u201d of failure \u00a0<\/strong>
\nOn October the 20th, 2012, three eleventh graders from the High School of Motor Transport in Dobrich \u2013 the Roma children Ali, Vasvi and Recep, posted on Facebook a provocative image, on which they were posing daringly along three portraits \u2013 of Levski, of Simeon the Great and of Tsar Boris I.
\nA day later, on October 21st, the picture published on the Internet was declared by the then-vice chairman of IMRO Kostadin Konstantinov as a \u201cmockery of Bulgarian national shrines\u201d. Immediately after, Ali, Vasvi and Recep were inundated with phone calls, SMS and Internet messages containing vulgar and outright threats to their lives. This could also be openly traced in anonymous forums under Internet articles related to the case.
\nWith only few exceptions the media reacted as if following a template. The word \u201cmockery\u201d was present in almost all headlines on the subject. The explanation to this \u201cmultiplication\u201d of the term that started a wave of extreme and intemperate reactions to what happened was professional cynicism \u2013 this is how the articles landed easier in the search results. It so turns out that the media readily \u201cgave voice\u201d to the thus far mute hatred and embraced her as a hidden key word to their success. But most importantly in this case, by using hate speech the media, driven by their chase of success at any cost, became accomplices in the construction of a new \u201cenemy image\u201d.
\nOne of the leading roles in this process once again went to Kevork Kevorkian.
\n\u201c\u2026there is no going back\u201d<\/strong>
\nOn November 22nd, 2012, i.e. in the midst of the xenophobic hysteria prompted by Ali, Vesvi and Recep\u2019s selfie, Standard newspaper and the website www.standartnews.com featured an article by Kevorkian titled \u201cTrash\u201d. Several days later \u2013 on October 26th, website Afera as well as, once again, the Weekend newspaper, ran another article by the same author with the title \u201cLevski, Yoto and the gypsies. The Bulgarian serfs will keep quiet and be still\u201d.
\nThe language of both publications as well as the message behind them preached and incited active hatred, discrimination and even violence.
\n\u201cDo you not understand that there is no going back \u2013 these animals have already developed their plan for us. The Bulgarians are now supposedly going to organise squads \u2013 but the squads of the gypsies already exist. Their ideas and notions have found shelter on Facebook a long time ago; there the gypsies read up on them; soon they will find their own gyppo Jan Palach \u2013 they will kill some filthy human creature and blame it on the sheepish Bulgarians\u201d, wrote Kevorkian in his articles.
\nThe lines above are one of the most painful examples of hate speech. They are all the more an illustration of how hate speech turns into a tool for inciting confrontation, a communication trick which hinders constructive relations between different societal groups and causes them severe damage.
\nIn certain passages of his articles on people of Romani descent, Kevorkian had even used the word \u201chalf-humans\u201d. This term bears a remarkable resemblance to the German expression of Untermenschen, known in Nazi rhetoric for designating so-called \u201cinferior people\u201d.
\nThe repercussions of the publishing of such texts on the Internet are instant and clearly distinguishable. The comment sections under the above-cited articles gave a clear and unambiguously indication as to how the readers had adopted the language and messages of Kevorkian as incitement and abetting of an assault on Roma people. This manner of speaking, the same vocabulary and the same suggestions were repeated by their author also on his own TV programme, called “Every Sunday”. This is one of the reasons why this case must be marked and recalled as a precedent in which the first national media became a platform for the outright use of racist and inhuman, degrading vocabulary. Moreover, this happened without any sanction by the editorial boards and their programming teams or by the Council for Electronic Media (CEM).
\nIt is true that the freedom of speech is a universal right, at that guaranteed by the Bulgarian Constitution. But this particular case concerns the distribution of malevolent and antidemocratic ideas, which degrade human dignity. It is all the more concerning that this does not induce any reaction from the Prosecutor\u2019s Office, the Commission for the Protection Against Discrimination or from most part of the media.
\nThe new target<\/strong>
\nIn the case of Ali, Vasvi and Recep the silence of institutions was tantamount to complicity in the verbal and psychological repression that they were exposed to. This silence was seen as a form of approval by hate speakers and they \u201creturned the favour\u201d only a year later.
\nThe impotence of the state in the face of the refugee wave from Syria in the autumn of 2013 gave rise to another wave of hate speech in the media. Yet this time the language of xenophobia and hatred rose to a new and higher level. The target was set not only on Syrian refugees but also on all foreigners who have chosen to live and work in Bulgaria.
\nIt was becoming apparent though the words of hate speech that emigrants are unwanted for no other reason than being \u201cnot one of ours\u201d. For this reason we should also think about them as posing a threat; the arsenal in this conflict included the mockery of both purely physical as well as religious differences. Internet forums flooded over with words, such as \u201cgyppos\u201d, \u201czingaros\u201c, \u201ecircumcised scum\u201d etc. The common denominator between all of this was \u201ctrash\u201d \u2013 i.e. something, which you must get rid of, must be free of, must destroy\u2026 Quite a few media outlets quoted this vocabulary, putting it between the brackets of duplicity. They were practically intensifying the voice of hatred; they were spreading it.
\nIn this case the CEM broke their silence. However, due to the delay in their reaction, its effect was rather ambiguous.
\n\u201cWhat is bad is that hate speech often comes from live broadcasts with the participation of politicians\u201d, said the chairman of the media regulator, Georgi Lozanov in front of Deutsche Welle. \u201cPursuant to the Law on Radio and Television, the only party responsible is electronic media. This is why Bulgaria needs a law to govern political discourse. Politics cannot be done at any cost!\u201d Lozanov stated. The case of Rozovo proved that everything is possible.
\nMonopoly of the \u201cmedia yellow\u201d<\/strong>
\nThe dramatics surrounding the expulsion of 17 Syrian refugees from the village of Rozovo end of April came to show that the words of haters are only a step away from their actions.
\nAfter they hung the Bulgarian flag on the trellis vine in the house, in which several Syrian refugee families had been accommodated, and after they declared Rozovo \u201cthe most ethnically clean\u201d village, its villages explained that their fears and their hatred are based on the fact they \u201csee what is going on on television\u201d. Consequently, in this case, like in all previous cases described thus far, it turns out that the monopoly of the \u201cmedia yellow\u201d has led media outlets as well as society into a matrix. The attempt at a discussion of the matter was quickly stifled with the hypocrisy of monologues ending most often in a rhetorical question. Below, a few examples:
\nNedyalko Nedyalkov in a commentary on the PIK website (April 29, 2014):
\n\u201cbTV and Nova Television are cursing at Bulgarians because of Syrians. Yet who is going to defend the people of Rozovo? How long will they be insulting them from the TV screen as \u201cthugs\u201d and \u201cfascists\u201d?\u201d
\n\u201cThe historic guilt of the people of Rozovo is that they have stated freely, on the street, their will as a society \u2013 \u201cwe do not want refugees among us. We are afraid of them. We are afraid for our children and our homes\u201d.
\n\u201cThe majority of our population doesn\u2019t like gays, Turkish people, gypsies, Muslims, Arabs\u2026\u201d
\nBoyan Rassate, leader of the so-called Gvardia (Guards) movement: We must protect our own kind with universal resistance. Nature has created a mechanism – first take care of your family and your kind\u201d.
\nNeither Nedyalkov, nor Rassate are the first to discover that xenophobia earns new readers, more clicks and viewers. Hatred of foreigners and of differences can even win elections. However, such language, and the behaviour motivated by the free use of it, is imprudent. These factors lead Bulgaria right into the trap of neo-racism and the new xenophobia.
\nThe virus<\/strong>
\nIn recent years, the Council of Europe and the European Commission published several worrying reports regarding the rising wave of \u201cmutant\u201d forms of racism and xenophobia in Europe. This time around they are adapted to modernity. The clearest sign of their existence was shown to be hate speech. It successfully makes use of basic democratic principles like the freedom of opinion, of expression, of speech and of the press.
\nThus the discourse of racism and xenophobia has turned into a virus which finds a nourishing habitat in democracy, not only for its existence but also for reproduction and further spreading out. It mutates into the political and media speak, turns into a fully-fledged component of the language in democratic public debate. It models the latter from within and compromises it.
\nBut racist and xenophobic discourse imposes black and white expressiveness as a universal and easily understandable language in which complex social problems get a simple and quick explanation. Thus, most media in society become a victim of pre-prepared “monochromatic schemes” for winning power.
\nThus, the so-called \u201csoft dictatorships: in Eastern Europe have demonstrated already once that they are not only fluent in hate speech but are also able to create a jargon out of it. Depending on current needs, a particular case can become enveloped in a fog of duplicity and be made to sing the falsetto of hysteria. This is the reckless language of populism.
\nIn this language, the sense of “public disorder” in the country in the last 20 years, the poverty, and mediocrity, are easily translated into a feeling of fear of the foreigner, of the one who doesn\u2019t look, doesn\u2019t think and doesn\u2019t behave like us.
\nBut most importantly, hatred is a platform on which sudden and swift rifts in society can be staged. They drain the energy out of development, point it in the wrong direction, wasting it, and slowing it down, so much so that they can even stop societies from moving forward altogether.
\nThis analysis was prepared in the framework of the Mediator project, implemented by The Association of European Journalists \u2013 Bulgaria<\/a>, with the financial support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation. All contents of this project are the sole responsibility of The Association of European Journalists \u2013 Bulgaria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Predictably, the European elections on May 25th gave yet another illustration of \u201chate speech\u201d firmly establishing itself as a communication tool. Even citizen initiatives, like the promotion of electoral activity, fell prey to this trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[960,973,970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-analyses","category-media-news","category-whats_new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}