Mainstream pundits in Europe have long regarded Slovenia as a voice of democratic reason in a highly volatile region. It is the good student, following instructions well, almost getting a star beside its name — on the path to becoming the “Switzerland of the Balkans.”

The locally grown and long-ruling neoliberal center prides itself on its exceptional, fairy tale existence. On the one hand, it saw itself as “not succumbing” to the nationalistic barbarity of the recent wars in the post-Yugoslav context. On the other, it secured a swift and relatively painless transition to Euro-Atlantic integration and acceptance of the euro.

As a small country, the Slovenian PR apparatus focused on branding niches and presenting itself as one of the world’s greenest and most sustainable tourist locations, home to amazing extreme sportsmen from ski jumpers to the newly crowned basketball champions of Europe with the rising star Luka Dončić, a site of the new entrepreneurial crypto-spirit materialized in the first monument to blockchain (yes, an actual, physical monument) in the quasi-Silicon region, and last but not least, home to the philosopher-king Slavoj Žižek and first lady Melania Trump. The sense of national pride based on neoliberal individuality — if you work diligently, in the end you will always be successful and rewarded — was a strong part of the neoliberal ideology.