Everything else was drowned in discussions of election results and dramas of government formation, yet statements to the effect that the Lithuanian right lacked the vote to protect Lithuania from “victorious parties worse than our own that wish to do harm to the state” are something more than just an unwitting outburst of emotion.
They are an unambiguous algorithm of the way the right is going to behave in the coming four years.
Ever since, we've been treated with similar utterances – similarly lofty-sounding if somewhat less crude – about the good conservatives, the wonderful Government of Andrius Kubilius, and the evil left, the wicked coalition, and the good-for-nothing left-wing prime minister.
These are bits from the daily torrent of propaganda – coming from different sources and quoting different arguments – about the political situation in the country and the conservatives who alone can do something good.
None of them are willing to bow to the demands of democracy and accept the government of the victors as expressing the will of the majority. As long as democracy prevails, this is how it is going to be – some will look for justice with one side, some with another.
But if the Political Committee of one of Lithuania's major parties proclaims the end of the Republic, we are to understand that it won't lead to a calm and responsible common effort for the benefit of the state and the nation.
With all their emotional might, the conservatives went into professional propaganda mode with the aim of forming a public opinion negative towards the new ruling majority. Sooner or later, the authorities will make a mistake, big or small, and that's when we will hear even more sinister talks about the “ruinous” new government.
But what political benefit do the conservatives draw from this frenzied denouncement of everything the left says or does? The next election is still far off and major state-related decisions from the right are hard to control. Why, then, such an uproar?
I reply: What would the conservatives be left with if the conservatives did not speak thus? The loud statements from the Political Committee on the situation in the country and inside the party are less to do with professionally delineating future work than with reminding everyone about themselves.
Looking at things from a propaganda perspective, a party has a public existence only as long as it is visible and audible. When it loses elections – and someone else gets to lead the ruling majority – and the society only speaks about the victors, a party feels bad. Especially one with hypertrophied sense that it alone holds monopoly of truth while everyone else's truths are but thinly veiled lies.
So we'd better not assume, naively, that the conservatives will come to their senses and start speaking about the common public matter. For them, the only legitimate matter is everyone else agreeing with them. We are to understand that, during the coming political season, the main issue for the political right will be to vote against the left and not for the matter at hand.
Such is the logic of a party that lives in the world of propaganda. Let's look beyond all the acts of negating those who “are not with us” and try to search for conservatism in the resulting void. Where is it?
It is non-existent or totally negligible. In order to prove us wrong, the conservatives would have to work hard and do more than scaremongering and paying tributes to themselves.
