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"pharisees." With such clear instructions on how to distinguish
"pharisees" from "honest intelligentsia," as the old Communists said, the
numerous thought police could throw themselves on the tedious but ob–
viously important job of moral cleansing among the intellectuals, part of
the official program of "spiritual renewal" that produces more and more
casualties every day.
Who are the supposedly dishonest intellectuals? It appears that the la–
bel
applies to a variety of individuals, from the left (Branko Horvat) to the
right (Dobroslav Paraga), from journalists Oelena
Lovri~
to the leader of
one Serbian minority party in Croatia (Milorad Pupovac) . The list - in–
formal, of course - includes some writers, various political leaders, uni–
versity professors, and so on. Among the media, the sole satirical publica–
tion and one daily paper have been singled out. The interesting thing is
that the attacks are not made directly by politicians; they are carried out
by
journalists eager to prove absolute fidelity to their new masters by do–
ing their dirty work. The attacks are usually brutal and crude, without
proof or arguments. One day you wake up, open a newspaper, and find
out that you are, say, a "Yugo-Zombie." The principal "sin" of these
"inside enemies," and perhaps the only thing they have in common, is
that they think differently and have expressed their thinking when and
where they can. Such "sins" are typical in Communist systems, but as the
new state has not departed from the model of a one-party type of rule, it
too makes natural victims of these "inside enemies."
It is what I call ''Jelena's Paradox." Jelena Lovric'is a famous political
journalist who used to work for the most serious and influential political
news magazine,
Danas .
During the last ten years of Communist rule in
Yugoslavia, she was admired for her courage and integrity, for her criti–
cism of the Party and her struggle to bring about democratic changes -
while remaining a Communist herself When the new government came
to power, she continued to write critically, but as the war started and na–
tional homogenization reached the top, Lovric was labeled a non-patriot
and
a Yugo-nostalgic, equal to treason. From being a popular heroine, she
sunk to being unemployed and the recipient of anonymous threats. This
would have been understandable, if Lovric had herself resisted and failed
to
adapt to the new circumstances of democracy - freedom of the press,
investigative journalism, and the other changes - as was the case with
many
journalists in ex-Communist countries who were able to function
in one system but not in the other. However, this was not the case with
Lovrit,
as her actions proved. The paradox is that she and others like her
who have made the changes in this country possible should be winners
now. Instead, they are losers. They ever appear to be double losers. There
is
no public opinion now to stand up for Lovric! and the others who ac-
