Jumping on the ban wagon

The Czech Supreme Court's rejection of the government-requested ban on the anti-Roma, far-right Workers Party (DS) in March no doubt sent many "liberal" folk cursing or crying over their fair-trade coffee. On closer inspection, supporters of true democracy have reason to cheer what seemed a victory for a reprehensible bunch.

Acting on the advice of the Interior Ministry, headed by well known friend-of-freedom Ivan Langer, the government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek pursued a ban on the DS for violating the Constitution in at least four major ways. In the run-up to the verdict, The Prague Post reported that Klára Kalibová of the NGO Tolerance supported a ban despite admitting that the government presented no serious legal argument. Thankfully, presiding Judge Šimíček didn't agree, stating that, "The government produced no evidence of the radicalization of the party's activities with the ultimate goal of seizing power through nondemocratic means, or of its violation of the Right to Assembly Act. The proceedings before this court did not show that the Workers Party's activities, as documented by the government, provide reasons to dissolve it."

Even if Šimíček had upheld the ban, DS Chairman Tomáš Vandas insisted they would simply form a new party with the same agenda, under a different name - highlighting the practical difficulties of this approach for dealing with difference in a democracy. Kalibová was undeterred by this and, presumably speaking in the spirit of Tolerance, declared that the fight to ban any such organization would continue, as this is "a battle between right and wrong."

This attempt to demarcate the acceptable bounds of democratic society and limit the public sphere comes against a backdrop that includes the successful banning of the Young Communists (KSM: Komunistický svaz mládeže) in 2008 and is now followed by a push from a group of senators to ban the main Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM).

Many people, looking back in history, and to its supposed end - when Western liberal market democracy claimed victory over collapsed communism - would cheer these moves. However, it is worth considering the implications banning political parties have for our vision and practice of democracy as well as for our conceptions of politics and freedom in the Czech Republic and beyond.

European bans

The Czech Republic is far from the only country to ban or consider banning political parties, with numerous examples around Europe fueling the fire of debate on the ethics and efficacy of such moves.

In Germany, there have been repeated attempts by successive governments to ban the NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) which is held to represent resurgent neo-Nazism and as such violate clause two of Article 21 of the German Constitution (imposed by the Allies after World War II), which states: "Parties that, by reason of their aims or the behavior of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional."

No ban has ever been enforced, and, in 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government suffered humiliation when the Constitutional Court threw out the NPD case because the party inner circle had been comprehensively penetrated by government agents and informants. These agents had authored several of the key pieces of evidence against the NPD including anti-Semitic texts.

In Belgium, the right-wing, nationalist party the Vlaams Blok (Flemish Blok) was formed in the late 1970s, appealing to Flemish concerns about unfair representation and resource distribution and calling for Flemish independence. The Blok grew in popularity, polling progressively higher totals in national and European elections, reaching 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively, until in 2004 it was banned for "permanently inciting discrimination and racial segregation." After the ban, a new and similar party, the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) was quickly formed and is, by some measures, the largest party in Belgium, gaining up to 25 percent of the vote. The party is kept out of government by an alliance between mainstream parties, raising its own questions about democratic representation. The same questions are reflected in the contradiction between the aforementioned second clause of Article 21 of the German Constitution and the first clause, which reads: "Political parties shall participate in the formation of the political will of the people. They may be freely established."

In Spain, the banning of pro-independence, left-wing Basque parties drew "concern" from UN special rapporteur on human rights, Martin Scheinin, and followed the 2002 ban on Herri Batasuna, the political wing of ETA, the Basque separatist group.

In the United Kingdom, while no parties have been banned recently, in February controversial Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was prevented from even entering the country and there have been calls to similarly ostracize Avigdor Lieberman, the right-winger who is now Israeli foreign minister.

The logic

The argument for banning follows the line taken by the German Constitution, that "extremist" parties threaten the state itself or the nature of democracy within it. In the Czech case, this had been the line taken over the KSM and is the one touted in relation to the KSČM, largely for its desire to return the means of production to public ownership. With regard to the DS, the situation was less clear as, despite its ties to the NPD and other foreign right-wing groups, it was largely brought to court over its anti-Roma stance and overtly xenophobic views. While reprehensible, it should be noted that this is a tacit admission by the Czech state that it was incapable of defending Roma rights and freedoms through normal judicial mechanisms.

When a party is banned for the reasons given above, the government is saying that these views are not admissible to the public sphere: that they are dangerous to the practice of democracy itself and threaten both the state and the people in it. As Kalibová put it, the DS was dangerous because it was "getting [to] some of the so-called real Czech people."

Disregarding Kalibová's de-personification of those with different views than her own, this is reminiscent of the shutting down of the public sphere under Gustav Husak's Normalization project, as is the unwillingness to consider why the KSCM gets 20 percent of the vote or why only 25 percent of young Czechs think life is better now than under communism.  

This reasoning supposes that we, the people, are easily led sheep, incapable of acting as democratic citizens and differentiating between a political plurality and the vicious views of xenophobes and wannabe dictators. It assumes that enough of us actually hold extreme opinions or are all too easily swayed by the weasel words of those who do. Therefore, for our own individual and collective good, we must be protected from these opinions and those who hold them, lest they activate our greed, stupidity and prejudice.

This view only gains traction if people have become so disenfranchised, disengaged and de-politicized as to see these extreme views as offering a better representation of themselves and their view of society than the other options on the table. This is in fact where the true danger lies, as this de-politicization is an unfinished project of neoliberal, post-political governance. Such governance disguises large political decisions behind economic facades portrayed as science, technocratic decision-making or otherwise takes decisions out of the contestable realm of politics on the grounds of security. This, combined with the convergence of political parties in many parts of the world around a "center" that has shifted to the right in the past 30 years, leaves people feeling disconnected and with the feeling that politics is a game played elsewhere, by other people.

However, by getting engaged, holding politicians to account for what they promise and demanding that politics not be reduced to tactical voting for "the least bad option," both patronizing control and dangerous extremism can be overcome.

On practical grounds, we should also oppose the banning of political parties or of the airing of abhorrent views. The philosopher Judith Butler has argued that banning or censoring often has the effect of actually propagating the views that the banning authority was trying to restrict and that the attempt to censor endows them with a power and a platform they otherwise lacked. The example of Geert Wilders, who until recently was a largely unknown figure in the United Kingdom, is a case in point. Now he is a martyr for free speech, and his xenophobic opinions are aired on national television.

This is not to deny the potentially destructive and exclusionary power of language, which can make people feel like outsiders and make it more likely that they will live in fear or identify themselves as an under-class with fewer freedoms and opportunities than others. These are the real dangers that are posed by the views of parties like the DS.

There are always questions about who has the authority to outlaw certain views and why they do so. It is chillingly ironic to imagine a new control society in which first they came for the communists and we did not stand up, then they came for the fascists and we did not stand up and when they came for us, there was no one or no grounds to stand up for ourselves.

- The author is a London-based political analyst who works with the pan-European Libertas party.

Benjamin Tallis can be reached at
features@praguepost.com