Czech ultra-right joins forces to establish the "Let's Leave the EU and NATO" platform
A new political platform called "Let's Leave the EU and NATO" (Vystupme z EU a NATO) has just been presented in Prague, Czech Republic. The platform brings together associations, initiatives, movements and political parties that are marginal, ultra-right and xenophobic with the shared aim of leaving the EU and NATO and creating what they allege will then be an "independent, sovereign" Czech Republic.
The founding members of the platform are the Alliance of National Forces (Aliance národních sil), the Friends of Miroslav Sládek Club (Klub přátel Miroslava Sládka), National Democracy (Národní demokracie), and the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti). According to a press release published by the Alliance of National Forces, the signatories to the initiative agree on what they allege is the most important matter: “Membership in the EU and NATO is unequivocally the obstacle of the most significance today on the road to the Czech Republic acquiring sovereignty and development. The EU’s aim is not to aid its Member States, but on the contrary to feed off of them and force them to adopt a ‘progressive’ ideology.”
According to the right-wing extremists, NATO is allegedly an offensive military organization that exclusively defends the power interests of the USA. The Czech Republic, in their view, should immediately leave both organizations and become a neutral state.
The founding members of the platform are among the ultra-right, well-known entities which the Interior Ministry regularly warns about in its reports on extremism. The Workers’ Social Justice Party, (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS), which is led by Tomáš Vandas, has continued the activity of the defunct Workers’ Party (Dělnická strana), which the courts dissolved in 2010 for its extremist work.
In 2008, for example, right-wing extremists from the Workers’ Party attempted a pogrom on Romani residents of the Janov housing estate in Litvínov. The DSSS youth organization, Workers’ Youth (Dělnická mládež) openly continues the ideology of Nazism and is known for copying Nazi posters, for example.
At the platform’s constitutive meeting, the National Democracy group was represented by Adam B. Bartoš, an activist who has been frequently criticized and prosecuted for antisemitic, racist speech. In 2014, he published what he claimed was a list of Jewish people in the Czech Republic and was then investigated by the Office for the Protection of Personal Information (Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů).
In 2015, Bartoš visited the location of the 19th-century murder of Anežka Hrůzová in Polná, an incident that led to the unjust prosecution of a Jewish man, and posted a sign alleging that the “Jewish question has to be finally solved”, for which he was charged with inciting racial intolerance. In 2018 he was given a suspended prison sentence for denying and approving of genocide, inciting hate, and defaming a nation.
The head of the Alliance of National Forces, Vladimíra Vítová, is an Adam B. Bartoš fan. In 2021, during an interview for the online news server DVTV that was held in the runup to elections, she refused to distance herself from an anti-Jewish text he had authored.
Bartoš was the lead candidate for the Alliance in the Ústecký Region. The interviewer cut the interview short when Vítová would not distance herself from her candidate’s antisemitism.
“Every decent journalist should do exactly the same. Nazis do not belong in the public space in the 21st century!” commented the In IUSTITIA organization, which aids hate crime victims in the Czech Republic.
Miroslav Sládek did not attend the constitutive meeting in person, but was represented by Tomáš Franěk of the Friends of Miroslav Sládek Club, who was also introduced as his agent. Franěk reminded journalists more than once during the press conference that Sládek and his Republican Party (SPR-RSČ) had fought against the EU in the 1990s.
Sládek chaired the SPR-RSČ party and was infamous for his insulting, racist remarks about Romani people. “Gypsies should be made criminally liable from birth, because being born is their greatest crime,” declared the boss of the Republicans in 1996 on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies.
The Republican MP did his best to win voters through anti-Romani sentiment. He was not re-elected to the lower house in 1998, however.
The SPR-RSČ ultimately fell apart and Sládek was given a suspended sentence for leading the party into over-indebtedness. He has since established several other political entities, none of which have ever been elected at any level.
According to the Report on Extremism for 2022, “National Democracy and the Workers’ Social Justice Party are absolutely marginal entities which did not manage to organize any more significant events of their own during the period under review. With regard to their relationship toward the war on Ukraine, they can be considered the part of society that agrees with narratives which are pro-Kremlin. These are entities that are aiding the dissemination of the ideas generated by the official propaganda from Russia for the Central European region.”
