On April 6th, the temperature is exceeding 30 degrees. The first street market of the year opens today on Mala Strana Square in the heart of old Prague. Stalls sell everything from Argentine delicacies to organic lemonade. But to get to them you have to contend with hundreds of young people who aren’t here for a snack. They are holding banners such as ‘My body, my choice’ and ‘We are truly pro-lifers.’
Peter, a member of the Mater Noster student council, is shouting into a loudspeaker. “The so-called pro-life movement (Hnutí pro život) is not pro-life at all! We are defenders of social justice and workers’ rights. It is we who are pro-life! Pro-life for women, pro-for children. Life, pro-life for queer people, pro-life with bodily autonomy, pro-life for love!” .
Meanwhile, a group of people in the front row are arguing over Spanish verb tenses.failure” (“They will not pass”).
With pink flags flying above the stage, the crowd moves to block the nearby Legion Bridge. Some are sitting on the bridge deck, others are standing hesitantly on the edge. The blockade was secured by two climbers who extended the bridge’s cables. The March for Life, the annual anti-abortion parade, is not yet visible, but the crowd on the bridge is already chanting “clerical fascism, filth, scum!”
The Czech government is making things easier for neo-fascists
The April anti-abortion march blockade was the fourth protest, continuing the tradition of anti-Nazi marches that began in the 1990s. At the time, the Czech extreme right still looked like the typical Nazi image, with shaved heads, boots and swastikas.
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As a political scientist Jan Schavart He points out that it was easy to criticize the appearance of neo-Nazi skinheads. And this was true even for those who shared views about Rome, for example.
“Yes, for a long time the only people who spoke loudly and clearly against neo-Nazis were the anarchists,” Charvát points out. “But the anarchists also said: we are against the state, not civil society. Therefore, the anti-fascist blockade was presented in the media as a conflict between two extreme and marginal groups, a fight between skinheads and punks, which was not usually the case. Usually It’s about people.” That blockade ended in 2007. Anarchists have come to realize that neo-Nazis attend protests primarily to fight, Charvát says.
In 2015, in response to the so-called migration crisis, the far right finally changed its tactics. Racism and anti-Semitism have been replaced by Islamophobia, overt nationalism has been replaced by “Euroscepticism”, and authoritarian references have been replaced by appeals to direct democracy (the most powerful far-right party in the Czech Republic is called Freedom and Direct Democracy). .
At an anti-refugee event, the speakers on stage were men in suits. They have succeeded in convincing sections of society that the world is controlled by “unelected” non-governmental organizations. There were protests in solidarity with Syrian refugees across Europe, but only a few dozen people showed up in Prague to advocate for their acceptance.
In fact, opposition to refugees from the Middle East and Africa has become a consensus in mainstream politics. The Czech Republic accepted a total of 12 refugees under EU quotas at the time. In this way, the specter of Muslim immigration soon ceased to function as a mobilizing problem.
So the disinformation machine and the far right have turned to other crises, including the coronavirus pandemic and related restrictions, the war in Ukraine, and the arrival of half a million refugees. And on top of all that, there is inflation.
This whole crisis came to a head at a time when real wages in the Czech Republic had been declining continuously for more than two years. By the end of 2022, it had the steepest decline in the OECD.
The right-wing Czech government responded to persistent population poverty with so-called “austerity,” a policy of cuts motivated by neoliberal ideology. This played into the hands of fascist currents in society. They were too keen on blaming, among other things, aid to Ukraine and the government’s (albeit rhetorical) opposition to Russian gas as the cause of the economic downturn.
In September 2022, Jindřich Rajchl, a former member of the far-right movement Trikolóra, called the anti-government demonstration ‘Czecia Against Poverty’. The demands included the nationalization of energy company CEZ, the abolition of government media and disinformation commissioners, and an end to military aid to Ukraine. He filled Wenceslas Square. More than 70,000 people gathered.
The moral superiority of Czech liberals
Mariana Novotná of Milion Chvilek Pro Demokracii (“A Million Moments for Democracy”), a civic initiative that has been organizing large-scale protests since 2017, said: “We are all appalled that fear-mongers are attracting so many supporters to Wenceslas Square. “,” he recalls. – the largest since the 1989 revolution – everyone united against the (indicted) Czech conservative Prime Minister, businessman and media owner Andrej Babiš. “But we had a lot of economic fears. Czech society was afraid of not having anything to heat their homes in the winter. So we wanted to bring together people who, despite their fears, supported a pro-European direction. Among us, to make this clear, “No one is alone in this.”
They had some success. Andrei Babiš did not win a majority of seats in the 2021 elections. The ‘Czechia Against Fear’ protest in October 2022 was attended by a similar number of people as the protest in Jindřich Rajchl. However, Novotná admits that “Chvilkaři” is careful to limit criticism of the government so as not to help Babiš or the far-right SPD.
When the group raises issues with the government, it covers topics such as disinformation and Justice Minister Pavel Blažek’s conflicts of interest. “We had to narrow our focus,” explains Novotná. “We did not focus on socio-economic issues – these were not our main topics and we had no expertise.”
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The main response of Czech liberals to the slow development of neo-fascism has been a persistent effort to refute disinformation. Alas, this is often accompanied by hints of moral superiority towards the naive public, which is eloquently explained in terms of “desolate” (“Deception”) Used to describe people who spread and support false information.
Liberals inside and outside the ruling party tend to downplay the possibility that the government will drive potential supporters into the arms of right-wing populists through anti-social policies. that much desolate They seem to suggest that they should have tried harder to get a better education and become wealthier.
“Nationalists these days have nothing to sell but fear,” said Dave of the Illuminicati Initiative, who is waving a Ukrainian flag at a protest in Rajchl. “They are exploiting the anti-government anger of the poor, who find it easy to blame the government for their problems. This is not to say that the government is doing everything right, but we have to wonder whether part of the problem is self-inflicted. .”
What bothers Czech liberals most about today’s fascist-adjacent populism is that it is often pro-Russian, rather than its anti-refugee or anti-feminist rhetoric. The “anti-establishment” opposition is in fact highly critical of the Czech government’s Western-centric foreign policy.
Concerns of the Czech left
The social roots of neo-fascism are therefore generally considered a priority by only a small minority of the progressive left today, who prefer to attack right-wing populists (with justification) over cultural issues such as abortion.
“We are not a political party and it is not our job to convince anyone,” argues Kryštof of Kolektiv 115, who co-organized the March for Life blockade (real name withheld at his request) . “We promote a politics based on workers, immigrants, gypsies and transgender people. We reject the generic xenophobic concept of the ‘working class’.”
This blockade mobilized a large number of people, but this was somewhat unusual. “Abortion rights affect half the population,” said sociologist Eva Svatoňová, explaining the high participation rate. “At the same time, this is a unifying issue on which the left and feminists agree. Moreover, it is easy to see what the pro-life movement has done in the United States, Poland, Italy and Slovakia.”
On the other hand, in mid-March, there were rare protests commemorating the International Day Against Racism and Fascism. The Czech left is weakening and remains divided. In 2021, it fell out of parliament entirely for the first time, its voters driven by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s populist ANO movement. The Social Democrats foolishly decided to join his coalition twice, and even the communists supported the government for several years.
The situation is further complicated by anti-immigrant and anti-feminist rhetoric coming from the conservative wing of the Czech left. The vain belief is that this will win back traditional left-wing voters and make the left relevant again.
In this year’s European Union elections, so-called communists are running alongside former members of Jindřich Rajchl’s far-right movement. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to track down Social Democrats who have defected to the far right.
Bohumír Dufek, president of the Association of Independent Trade Unions, even spoke at a protest in Razicl. He later invited notorious disinformation peddler Daniel Sterzik to a protest following a teachers’ strike, giving the mainstream media an excuse to talk about something other than the striking workers’ demands.
Political scientist Ondřej Slačálek said, “The role of the far right in our country has been replaced by a new wave of conservatism that comes from both the right and the left and is opposed to immigrants, women, minorities and modern liberalism.” . “As demonstrated when neither same-sex marriage nor the Istanbul Convention (on domestic violence) were approved by parliament.”
His colleague Charvát believes that the Czech public’s helplessness towards the fascist threat stems from their understanding of Czech history. “We think of ourselves as a small country, whereas in Europe we are more of a medium-sized country. The thing is that we are being manipulated and we are trapped in the limbo between Russia and Germany.”
This demobilization was further promoted by Václav Klaus, right-wing prime minister in the 1990s and later leader of the conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS). “Klaus saw civic movements as usurping political parties as the only legitimate actors who should win elections and deserve support,” adds Charvát.
a strong opponent
Meanwhile, today’s right-wing Czech government continues to enjoy support. The current approval rating remains at around 17%. A year and a half before the general election, Babis’ return as prime minister seems almost inevitable.
The question remains whether he will rule alone or in unity. Potential partners include the far-right SPD and conservative ODS. The latter is the most powerful party in the current government, but it joined precisely thanks to its promise to remove Babiš from power and “save Czech democracy.”
Nonetheless, his presence in the government is beneficial to powerful figures in the Czech oligarchy, so a post-election agreement between ODS and Babiš appears likely. Indeed, the specter of Babiš’s ANO-SPD coalition could be useful as an alibi to allow ODS to rule alongside Babiš.
Whatever the outcome, it is almost certain that the next Czech government will have no sympathy for non-white refugees, will be subservient to fossil fuel oligarchy and agribusiness, and will not have social cohesion as its priority.
Even if the next Babisi government turns out to be authoritarian, a takeover by the traditionally defined far right is not imminent. But parts of the far-right worldview have long since seeped into the Czech democratic mainstream. This will be harder to fight than a bunch of bald and booted ones.
