Hate is not an opinion, the state is not able to protect the victims

You had a break for more than three months, and when you announced it, you wrote: “The public space has been becoming unbearable for me for a long time. For the last two years, the joy in life and in my work, which I love, has been gradually leaving me. In order to be able to return to her in some time, I need to gain strength.” You rested so much that you became pregnant, congratulations. Did you manage to gain strength?

Well thank you. I managed to gain strength and I’m very glad that it didn’t take longer, it’s been almost four months already. I disconnected a lot at first, and then I gradually started to find my way, watch and read everything I need to, and it helped, I’m better now.

How it is made?

I probably needed a bit of distance, because I was already living in a carousel, even threats from several members of the coalition, which were “off the record”. I will not elaborate on them, but the pressure on me was very great. I already know myself well enough, and if I have any good quality, it is self-love, working with myself. I felt that if I dragged it out at such a pace and stress for longer, it could have much worse consequences for my psyche and life. So I told myself that I needed some distance, I cut myself off from everything, including social networks, which helped a lot. The newsletter I wrote at the time was called “For the last time”. In some way it touched a lot of people very deeply, they didn’t know it, they had no idea what I was going through. This may also have helped bring the information into the space that it was becoming unbearable, and thus it somehow stopped. I don’t know if it’s a portable experience, but it worked.

Are you going back to work?

I return. On Friday, I will have my first interview in almost four months. I hope it’s like cycling, that one doesn’t forget it, we’ll see. I’m gradually getting back to normal.

One of the reasons she left was the hatred we face as journalists. Now, in her newsletter, she described in great detail what she experienced from the anti-Semitic YouTuber Daniel Bombica, who is also accused. This person is mentioned by government politicians, especially from Smer, even in such a context that you have to respect a different opinion, Blaha even called him a hero. Is what Bombic is doing an opinion?

It’s not an opinion. We can also help each other through the courts, because I also have a court decision that says it is “hate speech” (hate speech – editor’s note). That’s also why I wrote my story with him, because it started circulating in the public space as if he was just saying some other opinion and had three arrest warrants for it. I considered it necessary to describe the unprecedented level of bullying that he also does towards me, although I have no idea why he chose me. We have to deal with it somehow. Since I’ve been following it for quite a long time and in detail, and we’ve been adding to the files everything he writes and does, I have quite a rich archive. And so I decided to summarize it so that it is clear that he is a person who denies the Holocaust and who makes dangerous threats. And now I don’t mean only me, because we as journalists are probably better prepared for that, but he also threatened ordinary officials. For example, he threatened hygienists during the pandemic, which really struck me in the sense that who would want to do that when an ordinary hygienist who enforces our laws and rules gets it from him to publish her address, house, phone number and be about tell her that she is a prostitute. We have scientists, experts, officials here, and if we allow this kind of bullying, no one will want to do it anymore. On the one hand, I wanted to defend myself, but I actually saw a wider context in it, because I can imagine that a hygienist from Trnava, for example, is not prepared for such a level of hatred.