Author: Vojtěch Berger, HlidaciPes.org
Central Europe is seeing the spread of “best practices” for restricting civil liberties, tried and tested mainly in Hungary. There, their development is enabled by the bending of electoral and other laws in favor of the ruling party and state control of the media. However, each country of the CEE region adapts these practices in its own way, according to the local mentality, emotions, and customs. We are witnessing the erosion of freedoms à la carte, in various forms and with varying intensity. We will have to wait a while longer for the specifically Czech mix, but it is almost certain that it will come.
Central Europe has so far managed to avoid its “perfect storm” in terms of the concentrated rise of populist and extremist forces over the last three decades, but only thanks to a fortunate combination of election results in different countries. However, this may not – and probably will not – last forever.
Similarly, the strategy of completely isolating these political parties from formal participation in power will not work indefinitely. The realistic ambition of democrats may therefore be to weaken them as much as possible.
Democratic politicians will probably have to venture further and further outside their comfort zone, into the less explored and despised terrain of superficial marketing or political incorrectness.
In other words, they will have to use the weapons of the other side, knowing how dangerous they are. However, this cannot and will not work without real political steps that will convince at least some of the undecided voters that they should give the standard parties one last chance.
Such steps with more or less immediate effect could include: A rapid and visible change in the approach to illegal migration and related crime, as well as concrete measures to improve the availability of housing and, finally, clear (even if only verbal for the start) support for the feelings and needs of the younger generation, which, according to surveys, is increasingly being driven into the arms of populist and anti-establishment parties by its problems.
How the EU emancipated populists
“In Central and Eastern Europe, the liberal interlude has manifested itself in an unprecedented increase in the quality of life and wealth within the European Union, whose invocation (…) has become a matter for narrow elite circles. On the contrary, it is popular to complain about Brussels as ‘the second Moscow’ because it fits into the Central European myth of national liberation,” summarizes Slovak social anthropologist Juraj Buzalka in his book Postsedliaci (Post-farmers), which maps trends in contemporary Slovakia.
According to Buzalka, it was paradoxically the European Union that fully emancipated populists so that they could be “freely and democratically proud of their own opportunism”.
Why this happened in Central Europe – and why it was perhaps inevitable – was described some time ago by the Czech journalist and historian Jan Urban: “The revolutions of 1989 were supposed to liberate the temporarily suppressed civilizational model of Central Europe, allegedly enriched by the unique experience of surviving totalitarian self-destruction. But no such potential ever existed.”
Nevertheless, the myth of Central Europe’s exceptionalism as a region that can warn other European states against the erosion of freedoms thanks to its own experience with communism continues to resurface today.
“Only a few ethnically homogenized nation states entered the space of unknown responsibility for freedom, with a completely changed ethnic and social composition of the population, dumbed down by decades of isolation, pretense, and fear. Without identity and without a understood and processed history,” Urban describes the starting position of the Czech Republic and its neighbors after the fall of totalitarianism.
End-of-the-world laboratory
And so, when the „return to Europe“ ceased to function as an all-encompassing mantra after the fall of communism, when the sedative effect of European funds wore off, and when the European Union had to grapple with crises (whether related to economy, migration, or pandemic), many in Czechia suddenly thought that they could do better on their own: Let Europe deal with its problems; they are not our problems, we did not cause them, so why should we care?
Let us recall, for example, the former Czech PM Andrej Babiš’s words that he “does not want to accept a single migrant,” or the reluctance of some Czech politicians (again, including Babiš) to guarantee even a small part of Greece’s debts when the Czechs themselves are not in the eurozone.
Nevertheless, today, the conservative part of Central Europe (or the part that describes itself as conservative) has enough self-confidence to claim that it can show the way to other countries on the continent.
Austrian writer Karl Kraus once wrote about this region as a “End-of-the-world laboratory”. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán presents his version of the same idea when he repeatedly declares war on “woke” or “progressive” movements and calls for an end to “liberal world domination”. Naturally, he is echoed by many voices in neighboring countries, including the Czech Republic.
The basis for this criticism is well known, but let us briefly recall it: according to this view, the West, or Europe, is increasingly dissolving into political correctness, excessive prioritization of sexual and other minorities, forgetting its Judeo-Christian roots and “traditional values”.
The advice of Prince Svatopluk
In Central Europe, including Czechia, a certain resistance movement has been forming recently. However, it would be inaccurate to call it simply conservative. It includes representatives of both the left and right wings of the political spectrum, ultra-Catholics and post-communists. Its apostles proclaim that we should take back our country (our Europe, our whatever), that things will be better again, that all we need to do is return to our roots.
The rhetoric of what were originally extreme marginal parties has become political mainstream. In Czechia, too, currents calling for the revival of society have been growing stronger in recent years. They often seek solutions to today’s pressing problems in figures from ancient regional history – Prince Svatopluk, Saint Wenceslas, or Saint Adalbert, depending on which saint or historical personality they happen to revere.
“We want to unite left-wing and right-wing patriots. Together, they must face the transnational extremism of the current liberal and progressive center. Extremism of warmongers, climate and human rights activists, and transnational capital,” said political scientist and former diplomat Petr Drulák, summarizing the goals of his Czech association Svatopluk. Incidentally, Russia has long used similar rhetoric to point to the decline of Western values and portray itself as the last bastion of the good old world.
Enduring appeal of the East
The status of a certain exceptionalism between the West and the East is tempting to the Czechs. This is also shown by data from STEM agency survey Divided by Europe: according to the survey, 57 percent of respondents think that “the Czech Republic should remain somewhere in between” in the future. At the same time, however, there is a strong group of those who would like to steer the country in a western direction (40 percent).
Only four percent of respondents see the Czech Republic’s future in the East. In recent years, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, these social attitudes have been mirrored in the government’s foreign policy and the actions of President Petr Pavel. However, with former president Miloš Zeman’s departure into political retirement, the Russian card has by no means disappeared from the Czech public sphere.
“There is a peculiar Czech volatility, which, in my opinion, is also related to the fact that when processes began in the 19th century, which we sometimes traditionally refer to as a revival, but which we can also call civic, cultural, and political emancipation among the Czechs, it was as if the Czech political nation had not been fully formed. As a community that is confident in itself and takes responsibility for itself,” says historian Petr Hlaváček, reflecting on the enduring appeal of the East for part of Czech politics and society.
“It’s as if part of society still holds the attitude that history is passing us by, we won’t get too involved in it, and we’ll wait and see how it turns out. This also applies to belonging to the West or the East,” he adds.
