Czech politician spreads hateful racist hoaxes online against dark-skinned footballers, Muslims and Roma
The Czech daily Právo reported on 10 July that Dominik Hanko, chair of the Ústecký Regional Authority’s Committee for Social Affairs, Security and Socially Excluded Localities and vice-chair of the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) party there, recently posted to social media the allegation that “Pensions for the unemployed are calculated based on the average wage. That’s not fair!”
That piece of disinformation is already several years old and has been used to call for hatred, primarily against Romani people, even though the Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry long ago called it an absurd allegation. “A person who has never formally worked will not receive a pension, he will not be entitled to it. The content of this hoax that you are drawing attention to about how pensions are set for persons who have never worked is untrue and does not correspond to the applicable law, which is essentially unified for all persons insured,” ministry spokesperson Barbara Hanousek Eckhardová reiterated to the daily.
Hanko is sticking to his guns, though. The ignorance of the social affairs chair was remarked upon by the Regional Governor, Oldřich Bubeníček (Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia – KSČM).
“That stuff is used here a lot by people because of the problematic situation where there are many long-term unemployed people here and the rumor goes around that they are receiving pensions based on the average income, and sometimes it is difficult to explain to people here that this is not the case. I am surprised that even the chair is willing to write something like that,” the Governor said.
Hanko has published other hateful remarks to social networks, not just against Romani people, but also against Muslims. “According to them we are sinners, unbelieving dogs. The more of them there will be here, the more they will force their truth on us until it turns out like it does in their countries. They’re like locusts, they destroy everything around them wherever they are,” he posted.
News server Romea.cz has found other racist remarks on his social media profile. Hanko, for example, dislikes footballers who are dark-skinned and playing for Czech football teams.
The dissemination of hoaxes, lies, manipulation and racism, however, is something the entire the SPD movement does. For example, Czech MP Radek Koten (SPD), who is the chair of the Security Committee in the lower house, spread the disinformation that the recent shooter at a high school in Florida, USA, who murdered 17 people was a member of Antifa, which he characterized as an extreme-left group.
That particular piece of disinformation was also disseminated by public broadcaster Czech Television. Another hoax was spread by Czech MP Jana Levová of the SPD, who invented a story about a bus accident near Plzeň from which several dozen immigrants fled into the forest.
That fabrication was eventually corrected by the Aliens Police. Czech MP Tomio Okamura, who chairs the SPD, is infamous for doubting the suffering of the Romani victims of the Holocaust, and Czech MP Miloslav Rozner of the SPD is notorious for his allegations that the WWII-era concentration camp for Romani people at Lety u Písku was actually a “non-existent pseudo-concentration camp.”
