Regional candidate for newest Czech party featured in music video by infamous establisher of neo-Nazi movement

Czech news server Aktuálně.cz reports that the candidacy of Muy Thai boxer Ondřej Hutník in the regional elections on behalf of the ultranationalist Tricolor movement is currently being promoted by the leader of that movement, Václav Klaus, Jr. On the same day Hutník’s photograph was promoted by the Facebook page of Tricolor, the establisher of the neo-Nazi “National Resistance” (Národní odpor – NO) movement, Filip Vávra, also released a new music video.

The video features the ultranationalist slogan “Bohemia for the Czechs” (“Čechy Čechům“) and Hutník is featured in it as well. Yet another famous figure of the right-wing extremist scene is also running as a Tricolor candidate.

Hutník is running in the regional elections in 19th place on the Central Bohemian Region’s candidate list for Tricolor and serves as vice-chair of its cell in Líbeznice. His candidacy was announced in June through Facebook by the leader of the movement, Václav Klaus, Jr.

That same day Hutník could also be seen online performing in Vávra’s video. The NO espouses the alleged superiority of the “White race” and antisemitism.

The movement also espouses the ideology of “national socialism” or Nazism and uses colors and insignia reminiscent of the symbolism of Germany under Hitler. Hutník has therefore now associated himself with one of the most infamous right-wing extremists in the Czech Republic.

In April 2009, for example, Vávra brought David Duke, an American activist and former leader of the Ku-klux-klan who is also a Holocaust denier, to discuss issues with students at Charles University in Prague. Duke was arrested by the Czech Police and deported instead.

Vávra has been prosecuted for supporting neo-Nazism in the past, but that prosecution was stopped after being procedurally delayed over the course of 10 years. It was recently reopened by the Czech Supreme Court.

Today Vávra runs a website called Středoevropan.cz (“CentralEuropean.cz”) which the news server Manipulátoři.cz reports is used to disseminate disinformation and manipulation. For example, the website published the untrue and deceptively framed allegation that a dog had been found dead and raped in a Greek refugee camp.

It was exactly thanks to the web that Hutník found Vávra, and the candidate says he finds the output of his website “interesting”. However, he has ruled out the iea that his world view and that of NO are close.

“I absolutely distance myself from any ultra-right thinking, opinions and activities,” the candidate has claimed. He explains why he performed in Vávra’s music video as follows: “I have performed in vidos for several artists, each of whom is from a different scene. It’s a form of promotion.”

The chair of Tricolor, Václav Klaus, Jr, said he sees no problem with the candidate performing in Vávra’s music video. He spoke of the candidate as a father and successful athlete.

“I said he should be careful about that stuff, that it will be used against us. However, if somebody asks him to feature in a video for a second and he says ‘OK’, then all I can say is that I have also shaken hands with many people on many town squares, but that doesn’t mean I’ve vetted them,” Klaus, Jr told news server Aktuálně.cz.

Tricolor and extremism

Other right-wing extremist scene figures are running as Tricolor candidates, and the movement itself is not far from being a right-wing extremist one. One example is Jan Kopal, who was expelled in 2017 from the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) movement of Tomio Okamura, which competes for such voters with Tricolor, and who was the boss of the ultra-right National-Social Bloc (Národně sociální blok), established the National Militia (Národní domobrana), and has been active in the fascist National Party (Národní strana) and the Patriotic Front (Vlastenecká fronta).

Kopal is running in the Liberec Region in 14th place on the ticket and is declaring that he is the vice-chair of Tricolor’s “Commission on Safety” locally. During the parliamentary elections of 2013 he ran in fifth place for the “Head Up!” (Hlavu vzhůru) voting bloc in 2013 in that same region, in fifth place.

Former Czech President Klaus, the father of Klaus, Jr, appeared at rallies held by that particular coalition of parties in 2013 and was alsofeatured on its billboards. News server Deník N has also pointed out that the person running for Tricolor in the Karlovy Vary Region is a former vice-chair of the neo-Nazi “Workers Social Justice Party” (DSSS), Jiří Froněk, who also used to be involved in NO.

The chair of the Tricolor cell in the Karlovy Vary Region, Matěj Drbohlav, has called for Froněk to leave the movemement. He has claimed to have been unaware of Froněk’s past.

A bond with right-wing extremists seems to clearly exist for yet another Tricolor candidate. The vice-chair of the party cell in the South Moravian Region, Aleš Karásek, has been photographed with the kickboxer Zdeněk Pernica.

The kickboxer is also the leader of the Brno-based “Decent People” (Slušní lidé) movement, which the Czech Interior Ministry called an extremist movement in its report for 2017. “The underpinning of the ‘Decent People’ group in terms of personnel consists, among other matters, of people with neo-Nazi or hooligan pasts,” the experts reported.

Karásek’s colleague, the Brno-based attorney Richard Novák, who is running for the Senate there, is also directly active in supporting the “Decent People” movement. One year ago, the chair of the ultra-right DSSS, Tomáš Vandas, also expressed sympathy for Tricolor as a whole.

“The program Václav Klaus, Jr has presented is 95 % in accordance with my opinions,” Vandas said. This August, representatives of Tricolor attended the same event as Vandas, the “Patriotic Rally” at the chateau in Příčovy to which Czech President Miloš Zeman gave his auspices.

In July, Czech MP Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková (Tricolor) posted a photograph to her Facebook page in which she is posing with Ortel, a xenopobic band. Despite all of this, the Tricolor chair has been maintaining all this time that the ideas of the ulta-right are alien to his movement.

Klaus, Jr also said he sees no reason to ostracize former extremists who do not have criminal records. “They’re not second-class people, each of us did something when we were young and then underwent some kind of rebirth. Why should they remain tarnished by that forever? I don’t want to vet people so thoroughly that they lose consciousness,” he told the media.