Slovakia: MP for fascist party criticizes recipients of state honors because of their origins and work
Stanislav Mizík, an MP with the fascist party called “Kotleba-People’s Party our Slovakia” (LSNS) has criticized Slovak President Andrej Kiska for awarding high state honors to figures such as film director Juraj Herz and the Czech musician Michael Kocáb. The MP justified his criticism by stating that those honored were of Jewish origin and by disparaging their activities.
Slovak Justice Minister Lucia Žitňanská has condemned the MP’s statements. Mizík posted to online social networks that Kiska “gave the Order of the White Double Cross second class to the Czech director of Jewish origin Juraj Herz and also to Michael Kocáb – an optimist who defends Gypsies and Muslims, and who once shouted during a public discussion at Alexander Dubček: ‘… that’s what it would take for a Slovak to become [Czechoslovak] President’.”
Mizík was referring to the former Czechoslovak politician Alexander Dubček, a native of Slovakia, who after the 1989 Velvet Revolution became a serious candidate for the office of Czechoslovak President, the post to which Václav Havel was ultimately elected. Dubček became Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly.
The MP also mentioned the Jewish origins of two other honorees, including Holocaust survivor Eva Mosnáková. Honoree Michal Kaščák was labeled by the MP as an organizer of “the perverted Pohoda festival, which promotes homosexuality, Islamism, optimism and about which ‘evil tongues’ allege that the ‘tokers’ of grass and other drugs assemble there.”
Pohoda (which means “contentment”) is Slovakia’s biggest music festival, with a capacity for around 30 000 visitors, and was sold out last year. Kiska awarded state honors to 20 figures to mark the anniversary of the creation of an independent Slovakia.
The remarks by the LSNS MP were condemned by the Slovak Justice Minister. “Not everybody has to agree with the honors awarded by President Kiska, but to vet the recipients according to their origins, as MP Mizík (LSNS) has done on the Internet, crosses far beyond the line we can accept as a society. The remarks of the MP are not just fatuous, they are dangerous to society,” Žitňanská said.
Mizík already faces a fine for his previous remarks made on the floor of the Slovak legislature, where he called Islam the “pedophilic-Satanic work of the Devil”, among other things. Under the leadership of the Governor of the Banská Bystrica Region, Marian Kotleba, who organized anti-Romani marches prior to his election, the LSNS has made no secret of its sympathies for the WWII-era Slovak State, from the territory of which approximately 70 000 Jewish people were deported to concentration and extermination camps.
The LSNS was the biggest surprise of last year’s elections in Slovakia, winning 8 % of the vote. The party holds 14 seats in the 150-member Parliament.
