Chergar about his fake interview with the Dutch premier Mark Rutte
At the end of November 2011 I published on my blog a fake interview with the Dutch premier Mark Rutte entitled “The Bulgarians are Incapable of Creating a Working State”. The reason for this was that earlier on the Bulgarian national radio I had heard an interview with the Dutch prime minister taken by the journalist Angelina Piskova, where he diplomatically explained why he was opposed to our country’s entry into the Schengen area. A goal that the then Bulgarian Government had set in its program and to which the Netherlands firmly opposed because of the spread of corruption and organized crime in our country. As I listened to the radio interview, I realized that with its diplomatic tone it would not receive the necessary attention of the Bulgarian citizens, so I decided to do my interview where the politically correct speech is completely non-existent. In the text of my interview I made statements and conclusions that sounded quite logical and corresponded to a great extent to reality but in such a way that they hurt the feeling of pride of the Bulgarians and provoked in them indignation not so much to the Dutch prime minister as to themselves and their own incapability to overcome the findings pointed out in the original interview. To sound more credible, I said that the text was taken from a real interview broadcast on the Bulgarian National Radio /BNR/.
After sharing the interview on social networks, it began to spread quickly, mainly in online editions, forums and personal pages. The interview sparked violent reactions on the Internet. On 4th December 2011 in the program “Frontalno” /In the Firing Line/ on SCAT TV the journalist and TV host Stefan Solakov, who in 2011 was put in for president by the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria, invited three experts, who discussed and analyzed for 106 mintes the devised by me fake interview. Among these experts was also Dr. Boyan Chukov, Counter-Terrorism Expert, Former Diplomat, Freelance Journalist and Foreign Policy Advisor and National Security Advisor to the Three-party Coalition Government (2008 -2009). They all discussed the interview as completely real and not even for a moment did they doubt its authenticity.
On 13th December 2011 an article criticizing the lack of reaction from the Bulgarian government to the interview in question was published on the “Patriotic Attack” website supported by the same SCAT TV. The article was entitled “Who and why libels Bulgaria and who and why doesn’t respond?” Concerned about the great repercussion that the interview received online and beyond that, the Dutch embassy came out with a denial. On 15th December, the denial was posted on the BNR website, where they also denied that such an interview was broadcast on their air. However, the interview managed to collect 40,000 visits within one month only on my blog and much more on the different pages and forums where it was re-published or posted as a comment under ‘political news’.
One interesting detail is that nearly seven years later, Bulgaria and the Bulgarian government were again refused entry into the Schengen area by the Dutch government, again with Prime Minister Mark Rutte. That was why the interview received a new life on the Web and was published on several unpretentious sites and its readings on the blog rose.
In conclusion, I can say that the reaction to the interview by the readers clearly shows the difference in repercussions that provoke the diplomatic, politically correct speech and the politically incorrect and frank statement concerning the same issue.