The Prague Post Online: News: Far-right groups attract followers

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July 5th, 2008

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Far-right groups attract followers

Increased public profile may reflect a Europe-wide trend

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 2nd, 2007 issue

As a tacit nod to their icon Adolf Hitler, far-right groups around the Czech Republic held public gatherings April 21 to commemorate his birthday.

Although overt support of Nazism is illegal here, as are the display of Nazi symbols, it’s not difficult to skirt the law. Rallies the day after Hitler’s birthday are legal, and their chosen day makes plain their message.

Extremists in Plzeň demonstrated in support of Václav Pechanec, who was convicted of racially motivated murder; right-wingers in Prague visited Olšany Cemetery to pay homage to Radola Gajda, a Czechoslovak fascist; and extremists in Kladno, central Bohemia, marched for freedom of speech. And on Czechoslovak Day, Oct. 28, members of the National Party — whose leader, Petra Edelmannová, called last month for a “final solution of the Roma problem” — gathered in Wenceslas Square to call for the incineration of Muslim hatred. Edelmannová declined to comment for this story and objected to the characterization of her party as being far-right.

“It’s extremely traumatic [for] minority people here,” said Gwendolyn Albert, a human rights advocate. The point of these rallies, which lie on the periphery of the law, is for extremists to send the message that they will not be sanctioned, she said. Police say extremists are focusing more on demonstrations and marches these days and less on private activity.

The United Nations issued a report in March that called for Czech police to be more vigilant in controlling these groups and their concerts featuring neo-Nazi bands.

“[The U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination] remains deeply concerned by information according to which action taken by the public authorities to prevent and prosecute the organization of, and participation in, such concerts is neither systematic nor sufficient,” the report states, adding that “police should adopt a proactive and vigorous policy to ensure that such concerts do not take place, and impede the distribution of related propaganda.”

The report also notes that the Czech Criminal Code “mixes up the ideas of hate crimes, racist propaganda and genocide with that of class struggle,” thereby weakening the fight against racism.

Petr Uhl, a former dissident who recently resigned from the government’s human-rights council in protest over Deputy Prime Minister Jiří Čunek’s anti-Roma comments, said that “very often it is as if the police don’t ‘see’ [the rallies], it is being overlooked that, for example, people are ‘heiling,’ etc.”

The legal system to combat these movements is sufficient, in Uhl’s view, but enforcement lags behind legislation. Although there is no anti-discrimination law, there are provisions about defamation of nationality, race and belief, about inciting racial hatred and against supporting movements that suppress human rights.

But the problem is that authorities aren’t using these tools enough, according to Uhl.

“It is just laziness, laziness, laziness,” he said.

The new faces of extremism
Right-wing extremism is nothing new, but it continually changes form. Zdeněk Zbořil, a political science professor at Charles University, told the Czech News Agency (ČTK) that the number of secondary and university students participating in extremist activity is growing. Groups in the Czech Republic tend to be better organized, with more highly educated members, than in previous years.

Michal Mazel of the Interior Ministry told ČTK there are two groups playing the most important role on the Czech far-right scene: Národní odpor (NO), or National Resistance, and Národní korporativismus (NK), or National Corporativism.

NK tries to present itself as a serious patriotic organization made up of well-mannered, well-dressed and often university-educated people, and its members have political ambitions, Mazel said. They are trying to interconnect the historical roots of Nazism with Czechoslovak First Republic fascism. Contrary to NK, NO is solely a neo-Nazi group with no ambitions to achieve its goals by democratic means, according to the Interior Ministry.

The exact number of groups and participants in the movements is hard to pin down.

“There are a million of these,” Albert said.

Zbořil said about 5 percent of people in every society harbor largely radical or extreme attitudes.

The actual growth or decline of these kinds of groups is difficult to quantify. Some signs from Eastern Europe, however, are cause for concern. ČTK reported April 17 that a poll showed the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) to be the second most popular political group in Slovakia. In Moscow this year, foreigners were warned not to leave their dormitories on Hitler’s birthday for fear they would be attacked.

Western Europe, too, has harbored its share of prominent far-right groups and political parties. Far-right nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen has proved to be a sometimes surprisingly resilient figure in French politics. Even Sweden, a poster-child nation for left-leaning social democracy, has seen waves of anti-immigrant, neo-Nazi violence over the past couple of years, according a BBC News report.

In the Czech Republic, negative attitudes toward some minority groups are pervasive even among those without extremist leanings. For instance, Zbořil estimates about 60 percent of Czechs hold negative beliefs about Roma.

Despite this, some say Czech right-wing extremism is barely on the rise, if it is at all.

Uhl said the far-right movement is growing slightly, at maybe 2 percent a year.

“The reason, I assume, is not only the psyche of the people but also the fact that society offers no alternative; there is a capitalist abyss and people are just more detached from each other, a sort of alienation. This creates a fertile ground for extremism,” he said.

Youth, Zbořil said, want to identify with a new ideology, and, because traditional political parties often don’t represent them, they end up in extremist movements.

They do so at the peril of minority groups, Albert said.

In the worst case, groups with racially motivated fervor can foster the actions Czech groups seemed to celebrate April 21. “This kind of racial hatred … leads to genocide,” she said.

Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com

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