Analysis: From populist to xenophobe. Tomio Okamura in official reports on Czech extremism

There is now a possibility that the Czech Republic will have to apologize to Okamura & Co. for that “label”. The District Court for Prague 7 has ruled that the state must apologize to the SPD for the Interior Ministry having associated it with prejudiced hatred and xenophobia. 

The verdict has yet to take effect and can be appealed. In its extremism report for 2020, the Interior Ministry published the assertion that the SPD movement was the most significant group among “extremist groups dominated by a xenophobic element”.

Okamura & Co. defended themselves against being categorized among “extremists” and “xenophobes” and the District Court for Prague 7 agreed with them. The Czech Interior Ministry is “considering” appealing the verdict.

“The state, and therefore the Interior Ministry, is exploiting its units to engage in a political fight against inconvenient people,” Okamura responded to the verdict on his social media networks, adding that: “This proves the SPD is a legitimate, democratic entity.” What is symptomatic of this statement to his followers is his omitting the fact that the verdict has yet to take effect.

They say one xenophobe doesn’t make a party

What exactly happened in court was perhaps best described by Marek Pokorný’s reporting here: Jeden xenofob není celá strana. Vnitro se musí omluvit SPD za zmínku ve zprávě o extremismu. Allow me to cite crucial passages from his description:

1. “Not all of the aspects of the definition of prejudiced hatred as established by the defendant itself were met,” Judge Iva Kaňáková explained as her main reason for agreeing with the lawsuit. The Interior Ministry’s own methodology states that it is only possible to categorize entities as engaging in prejudiced hatred for which such speech “actually represents the dominant component of their rhetoric and activities”. However, according to Kaňáková, the ministry did not manage to prove this in the report mentioned or during the trial.
2. According to the judge, it is possible to agree that some members of the SPD hold xenophobic opinions which can meet the definition of prejudiced hatred, but this is supposedly not a dominant phenomenon throughout the movement as a whole. “If a representative of the movement made such a claim, it was not proven that the whole party stood behind that representative in that opinion,” the judge stated.
3. The ministry and the SPD will meet in court again next month, when the court will review lawsuits over the rest of the monitoring reports mentioning the movement.

With regard to this last point, it is interesting to take a look at how the Interior Ministry has referred to Okamura and his political fellow-travelers in the past. By pure coincidence, I happen to have prepared an analysis of this subject in mid-February after the SPD started announcing it might be seated in a possible administration headed by Andrej Babiš after the next parliamentary elections:

Given the anticipated court battle between the Interior Ministry and the SPD, allow me to offer an expanded, updated analysis of this issue once more. The passages from the ministry’s report for the second half of 2020 below were reviewed during the recent trial.

Surfing the anti-Islamic wave

The Department of Security Policy at the Interior Ministry has continually mapped domestic extremism in its reports since 2009. Tomio Okamura, or rather the political groups he controls, has left a distinct mark in those reports.

Okamura is first mentioned in the report for the fourth quarter of 2012, as follows:

• “Support for some of the publicly active persons criticizing the ‘establishment’ was reflected by the leadership of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS), who offered both Daniel Landa and Tomio Okamura their party’s informal support. After [DSSS chair] T. Vandas withdrew his candidacy for the presidency, the offer of their support was made to Okamura.”
• “On the other hand, some adherents of PEX [author’s note: the Interior Ministry’s abbreviation for ‘right-wing extremism’] have been inclined to support the candidacy of Tomio Okamura with regard to his advocacy for ‘national values and pride’.”

Simply put, Tomio Okamura’s public appearances began reaching people who until then had fixed their gaze on the extreme right, but he did not yet deserve to be labeled an “extremist” by the Interior Ministry. That would also be the case in 2015 and 2016, when Okamura is mentioned in the reports repeatedly in association with feeding fears about people of the Islamic faith immigrating into the country.

• “Among the entities that are populist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, there were also attempts to create coalitions or partnerships. The above-mentioned BPI (Bloc against Islam) communicated with the Úsvit (Dawn) party, the ND (Národní demokracie – National Democracy) and then with Tomio Okamura, a member of the lower house,“ the extremism report for the second quarter of 2015 says.

In their report for the third quarter of 2016, the analysts at the ministry state that “a big part of the Islamophobic public has started preferring the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (established by Okamura in 2015). Compared to other, purely anti-Islam or anti-immigrant entities, that party has focused on a wider range of subjects”.

This anti-immigrant crusade is reported to have continued in 2017:

• “The greatest… use was made of the subjects of migration and Islam by the Freedom and Direct Democracy – Tomio Okamura movement (hereinafter, the ‘SPD’) to win votes, which celebrated with 10.64 % (538,574 votes), a significant success. The SPD movement, compared to extremist parties, uses higher-quality, more effective political marketing. Its representatives, moreover, unlike the DSSS and the NDS, are not limited by verdicts or ongoing criminal trials,” the report on extremism in the Czech Republic states for that year.

Co-opting the extreme right’s subjects

In their report for the first quarter of 2018, the experts at the Interior Ministry announced another of Okamura’s triumphs:

• “Traditional right-wing extremist groups are no longer politically relevant. The most effective entity to work with a similar agenda is the Freedom and Direct Democracy – Tomio Okamura movement.“ Of course, this was followed by a clause explaining that Okamura & Co. “cannot be labeled extremist under the definition used by the Interior Ministry”. However, that was meant to soon change.

Let’s return to that report from the start of 2018, though:

• “Of course, speech associated with the Freedom and Direct Democracy – Tomio Okamura movement (hereinafter, the SPD) attracted far more attention. In the context of the purchase of the industrial pig farm in Lety, remarks were recorded by several representatives of tha movement about the former labor camp, or rather about the former ‘Gypsy Camp’ where several hundred persons died during the Second World War and from which hundreds more were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp. In February, the Police of the Czech Republic started criminal proceedings on suspicion of committing felony denial, casting doubt upon, approving of or justifying genocide against three of the lower house representatives for the SPD movement, including its chair, Tomio Okamura. Those remarks by representatives of the movement sparked enormous criticism from national minority representatives, Holocaust survivors, and publicly-known figures, including some politicians. In the case of the former secretary of the SPD, Jaroslav Staník, police started a criminal investigation linked to remarks he allegedly made on the premises of the Chamber of Deputies. He is being investigated for felony incitement to hate a group, to restrict its rights and freedoms, and for denying, casting doubt upon, approving of and justifying genocide.”
• “In its output, the SPD movement continued to use the issues of migrants and Muslims. It proposed a bill to criminalize support for hateful ideologies, stating that the aim was to penalize ‘the hateful Islamic ideology’.”
• “The North Moravian cell of the SPD warned against civic initiatives, nonprofits and activists directed by the American financier George Soros. These ‘traitors’ were said to have allegedly planned a ‘Czech Maidan‘ [translator’s note: this refers to the wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine in 2013]. However, the security services have not found evidence for anything of the sort.”

At the close of 2018, the Interior Ministry reported this:

• Police investigated and then shelved the criminal reports against three lawmakers for the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, Tomio Okamura, Radek Rozvoral and Miloslav Rozner, for remarks they made about the camp in Lety u Písku. Nevertheless, the Office of the Prosecutor in Prague returned the matter to its detectives for further investigation in Rozner’s case. The Prague police subsequently requested the Chamber of Deputies strip that politician of immunity from prosecution. The case has already made it to the Committee on Immunity, but the legislators had not yet decided the issue during the period under review.
• At the District Court for Prague 1 a hearing began with the former secretary of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, Jaroslav Staník, who faced charges of having made hateful remarks about minorities on the grounds of the Chamber of Deputies.

In their report for the first quarter of 2019, analysts at the ministry quote a verdict in which judges link Okamura and his party to the first act of terrorism for which a conviction has ever been handed down in the Czech Republic:

• “The Regional Court in Prague convicted Jaromír Balda of terrorism and threatening terrorist acts and sentenced him to four years in maximum-security prison. He was also instructed to undergo outpatient psychiatric treatment. In 2017, in two separate instances, Balda felled trees across a railway track in Central Bohemia with the aim of derailing a train. He threw fliers around the scenes of these crimes in an effort to ascribe blame for the attacks to immigrant Muslims. The senior citizen also distributed fliers with threatening texts around various places in Bohemia which were meant to give the impression that they had been written by an immigrant espousing an extremist form of Islam. By pure coincidence, neither terrorist attack had fatal results. Both Balda and the prosecutor appealed the verdict. This is the first case of a conviction for the full execution of a terrorist crime in the Czech Republic. During the trial, Balda’s ties to the SPD movement were proven. The panel of judges state clearly in their verdict that public figures exploit fear and the credulousness of persons such as Balda in order to score political points through such manipulations.”
• “The SPD movement struggled with internal disagreements. First, its influential cell in North Moravia was dissolved. The lawmaker and former chair of that regional organization, Lubomír Volný, accused the movement of having neo-Nazis and racists in its ranks. He and two other legislators were then excluded from the SPD club in the lower house. Another important moment was a rupture between the movement and the influential Aeronet website. That media outlet, which is xenophobic and publishes conspiracy theories, began publishing pieces critical of the leaders of the SPD.”
• “The Chamber of Deputies declined to strip SPD lawmaker Milosav Rozner of his immunity from prosecution over remarks in which he called the camp in Lety a ‘non-existing, pseudo-concentration camp’. The Committee on Mandates and Immunity had previously not recommended he be stripped of his immunity. The trial continued at the District Court for Prague 1 of a former secretary of the SPD who is an assistant to legislator Jaroslav Holík and who was indicted on suspicion of committing felony incitement to hate a group or to limit its rights and freedoms, and of committing felony denial, casting doubt upon, approving of or justifying genocide, crimes he is alleged to have committed by shouting hateful remarks in the Chamber of Deputies.”
• “The most-followed event on the domestic ‘alternative’ media scene in the first quarter was the schism between Aeronet and the SPD. The website began attacking some representatives of the movement started by Okamura. The articles contained no revealing allegations but attempted to give the impression that they conveyed new, scandalous revelations. The SPD movement did its best to respond to the pieces. The entire rupture was followed in great detail both by activists oriented in favor of xenophobia and by other media outlets. Thus arose the paradoxical situation in which this movement, which is strongly represented in Parliament, was significantly harmed by an anonymous media project. Such media projects manage, on the one hand, to quickly score points for political entities, but on the other hand they also manage to damage them quite rapidly and effectively.”

The leader among the Czech xenophobes

In its report for the second quarter of 2019 the Interior Ministry pulled no punches and categorized Okamura’s party as a “xenophobically-attuned entity”:

• “The continuing trend of the second quarter has been the rise in hate speech targeting specific groups or individuals for their political convictions. The elections to the European Parliament showed the clear dominance of the Freedom and Direct Democracy – Tomio Okamura movement among these xenophobically-attuned entities. The movement has unequivocally overtaken the traditional extremist parties.”
• “Traditional right-wing extremist parties were focused mainly on their relations with their colleagues abroad during the period under review. A big part of their domestic subject matter continues to be co-opted by the more progressive, more effective Freedom and Direct Democracy – Tomio Okamura (hereinafter ‘SPD’) movement and other xenophobic and populist groups.”
• “Leading figures of the right-wing extremist scene have long been unable to agree on how to collaborate. The situation is being complicated for them by their relations with the SPD movement. Some right-wing extremists have already objected to Okamura, others still hope the chair of the movement will start cooperating with them and that they will be able to exploit the advantages enjoyed by the movement, which is seated in Parliament.”
• “After the April assembly called by the SPD movement on Prague’s Wenceslas Square, criminal investigations were started against two persons. One man was informed through an accelerated preliminary proceedings that he is suspected of having given the Nazi salute on that occasion. He was given a suspended prison sentence and fined CZK 30,000 [EUR 1,200] by court order. However, he disagreed with the sentence, so his case will be heard by the District Court for Prague 1. A woman is also suspected of showing sympathy for a movement to suppress human rights and freedoms for visibly adorning herself with pendants referencing neo-Nazism.”
• “The District Court for Prague 1 sentenced the former secretary of the SPD, Jaroslav Staník, to one year in prison, suspended for two years, and a fine of CZK 70,000 [EUR 2,800] for racist remarks he made in 2017 inside the Chamber of Deputies. Staník appealed the verdict.“
• “[Police] started an investigation on suspicion of committing felony incitement to hate a group or to limit its rights and freedoms against an SPD lawmaker in the lower house, Karla Maříková, over her remarks comparing immigrant Muslims to invasive species of flora and fauna who should be banned from entering EU territory.”
• “The xenophobic mood of part of Czech society continued to be artfully encouraged by the SPD movement, which continually, intentionally created the impression that the majority population of the Czech Republic is in acute danger because of immigration and Islamization and that they must start immediately defending themselves, otherwise ‘we will be second-category people in our own country’. Representatives of the SPD expressed themselves quite actively about negative phenomena or incidents which they registered either at home or abroad as associated with migrants or Muslims. In the runup to the elections to the European Parliament, the movement was clearly betting on its partnerships with other European entities, especially with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally movement of France, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands, and Matteo Salvini’s Northern League in Italy. Okamura first met with Salvini in Prague and then in Milan. Le Pen and Wilders were present in person for the April assembly organized by the SPD on Wenceslas Square. At that event the musician and former neo-Nazi Tomáš Hnídek (a.k.a. Ortel) also made an appearance. A counter-protest action was also convened against the SPD assembly called the Noise Olympics (Hluková olympiáda). Ten participants in the counter-protest were arrested for failure to obey the orders of a public official.”
• “The elections to the European Parliament were an unequivocal success for the SPD, which won 216,718 votes (9.14 %). The movement overshadowed all the other anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups. The new MEPs for the SPD became Hynek Blaško and Ivan David. The SPD movement should be joining the EU-wide faction called Identity and Democracy, along with the National Rally, or the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other entities.”
• “Aeronet continued to publish pieces against the SPD.”

2020 – first half

• “Representatives of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement (hereinafter, the ‘SPD’) in particular tried more than once to spark anti-Romani sentiment (as part of their official presentations they make use of the term ‘inadaptables’).”
• “The chair of the SPD movement has also presented the opinion that the pandemic (the coronavirus) is being abused in western countries to introduce the euthanasia of senior citizens. The aim is meant to be, according to Okamura, their destruction as advocates of traditional values so they can be replaced by aggressive immigrant populations.”
• “[The SPD] aimed quite intensive criticism at several media outlets, in particular [public broadcaster] Czech Television. The chair of the Prague cell of the SPD called for the leadership of that public institution to be defenestrated.”
• “The former secretary for the SPD, Jaroslav Staník, did not succeed with his appeal to the Supreme Court against the verdict finding him guilty of making remarks in which he proposed shooting ‘fags and dykes’ and sending homosexual people, Romani people and Jewish people to the gas chambers. Police asked the Chamber of Deputies to strip an SPD lawmaker of immunity from prosecution over her remarks about migrants. Neither the Committee on Mandates and Immunity nor the Chamber of Deputies did so.”

In the report for the second half of 2020 the actions of Okamura and his SPD are again described as being in line with “xenophobically populist entities”:

• “In addition to the neo-Nazi and the other right-wing extremist entities, several other xenophobically focused, populist groups were active during the period under review. However, those entities did not manage to unite and their fragile alliances created through social media fell apart. The Freedom and Direct Democracy movement (hereinafter, the SPD) played the dominant role there, unequivocally. In the runup to the regional elections, the SPD objected to various entities which were also accenting ‘patriotic’ subjects. Tomio Okamura’s movement defended their leading position [among such groups] in those elections, winning 6.13 % of the vote and a total of 35 seats. Other, similarly-attuned entities failed to win seats.”
• “Adherents and members of some of the less significant xenophobic entities who did not trust the SPD previously and wanted to see an ‘ethnically more appopriate’ politician leading the ‘pro-national opposition’ have started to change that opinion over time.”
• “During the period under review, several ‘patriotic meetings’ were realized which were attended by ultranationalist politicians and activists. These events confirmed the trend of ideological dogmas becoming fragmented when, in the name of ‘protecting national interests’, politicians from various parts of the political spectrum come together. In some cases, representatives of the SPD attended such meetings. Alternative media outlets usually publicized their attendance.”
• “The District Court for Prague-West fined Milan Kraft, an assistant to lower house lawmaker (editor’s note: for the SPD) Jaroslav Foldyna, for anti-migrant online posts. The District Court in Chomutov fined the body builder Filip Grznár (editor’s note: a candidate for the SPD running in the elections to the Plzeň Regional assembly) for his anti-Romani remarks. The decisions have yet to take effect.

Comprehension for Vladimir Putin

The year 2021 showed that there is not necessarily impunity for pointing the finger at media outlets or at the political competition:

• “Representatives of xenophobically populist subjects, including the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement and the new group called the Free Bloc (Volný blok – see below), spread unfounded allegations from media outlets purveying disinformation. The Vrbětice scandal was frequently belittled in those stories.“
• “The District Court for Prague 1 decided that the chair of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, Tomio Okamura, has to apologize for making untrue remarks about Czech MEP Zdechovský and Czech MEP Svoboda in 2017 who, according to Okamura, voted for sanctions against the Czech Republic over its failure to receive migrants. Zdechovský and his family then became the target of threats and were given police protection. Okamura appealed the verdict.“
• “The High Court in Prague ruled with full effect that the chair of that movement must apologize for this remarks about the HlídacíPes.org website. Okamura called the website ‘fradulent’.”
• The District Court for Prague-West fined Milan Kraft, an assistant to lower house lawmaker (editor’s note: for the SPD) Jaroslav Foldyna, CZK 30,000 [EUR 1,200] for felony incitement to hate a group and limit its rights and freedoms over remarks he made against migrants. Should the fine not be paid, he will have to serve 60 days in jail. The verdict was later upheld by the Municipal Court in Prague.“
• “The Freedom and Direct Democracy movement (hereinafter the SPD) maintained its dominant position (among the xenophobic projects) by winning 9.56 % of the vote in the elections to Parliament (with 513,910 votes) and 20 seats. Their campaign was relatively moderate. Their representatives were aware that they are in the process of forming an established, long-term political force that also has international reach.”
• “The chair of the SPD, Tomio Okamura, published his apology to the Institute for Independent Journalism (Ústav nezávislé žurnalistiky), which runs the news server HlídacíPes.org, on his Facebook profile. The High Court in Prague ordered him to apologize for calling the news server fraudulent and a ‘media cesspool’.”
• “Police investigated a meeting by regional Romani politicians in a restaurant in the Česká Lípa area where aggressive remarks were made about Tomio Okamura. The prosecutor sent the case to the local authorities as a misdemeanor.”

In 2022 the experts at the Interior Ministry recorded Okamura’s double “turnaround on Ukraine” and his continuing efforts to present himself and the SPD as a “normal political subject“:

• “The Freedom and Direct Democracy movement (hereinafter the SPD) had said, prior to Russia’s [full-fledged] invasion, that Ukraine wanted to provoke a war with Russia, with NATO’s assistance. Okamura wrote that: ‘Fiala, Lipavský and Černochová are not defending the interests of the Czech Republic, but of Brussels and Washington, and are blinded by hate and their desire to go to war.’ After Russia [fully] attacked that neighboring country, however, the SPD movement took the stance that the attack was a violation of international law. Its lawmakers supported resolutions by the Chamber of Deputies in February and in April condemning Russian aggression. Over time, however, the movement started returning to the line that suits Kremlin representatives. It advocated, for example, for stopping the supply of weapons and munitions to a Ukraine that was facing Russian military superiority, incited the Czech public against refugees from Ukraine, and continued to attack the EU. On 25 June, its legislators did not vote in favor of a resolution supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine and condemning the aggression of the Russian Federation’s war. In their statements, SPD representatives made their traditional mentions of Muslim immigrants, claiming they wanted to protect the Czech public from their alleged criminality. Okamura, in accordance with Kremlin statements about Russia’s special military operation aiming to allegedly deNazify Ukraine, called that country a ‘hotbed of neo-Nazis’. The SPD movement also criticized domestic blocking operations targeting media outlets purveying disinformation which deceptively, manipulatively frames that Russian aggression for the public.”
• “Okamura’s appeal to the Supreme Court failed against the High Court verdict ordering him to apologize for the remark calling news server HlídacíPes.org fraudulent and a ‘media cesspool’.”
• “The Municipal Court in Prague, in an appeals proceeding, upheld the finding that Okamura lied about the politicians Tomáš Zdechovský and Pavel Svoboda when he alleged those MEPs had voted in favor of the EP adopting sanctions against the Czech Republic for its failure to receive immigrants. According to the appeals verdict, Okamura has to apologize to them through his Facebook profile. Both men were targeted with threats as a consequence of Okamura’s untruths.”
• “The District Court for Prague 4 sentenced former SPD lawmaker Miloslav Rozner to six months in prison, suspended for one year, for his felony denial, casting doubt upon, approving of and justifying genocide. Rozner committed that crime through his remarks about the camp in Lety, which he called a ‘non-existent pseudo-concentration camp’.”
• “The prosecutor indicted Daniel Makay, a local assembly member for the SPD in Bruntál, for denying, casting doubt upon, approving of and justifying genocide over his remarks about Vladimir Putin’s ‘excellent strategy’.”
• “During the second half of 2022, the Czech Republic had to face many societal, economic and political problems which present fertile ground for extremist and xenophobic groups. However, those entities did not manage to sufficiently take advantage of those opportunities. With the exception of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, those domestic entities can be considered marginal. These are usually groups of limited reach, or function for a limited time. Frequently their mutual disputes also limit their impact.”
• “Local elections again proved that the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement has no competition in the ‘pro-national environment’. Movement representatives are aware of their exclusive position and cautiously guard it. Competing ‘patriotic’ activists are attempting, in some cases, to create an alternative to the movement of Tomio Okamura. Usually, however, they are not politically successful and gradually end up forgotten.”
• “During the period under review, representatives of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement put xenophobic subject matter on the back burner. They dedicated themselves to the priority of criticizing the Government and its domestic and foreign policy.”
• “The war on Ukraine became a strong subject for the movement. Tomio Okamura said in a television interview, for example, that he does not know who actually unleashed this war. When asked by the moderator whether the Russian attack was sparked by the necessity of protecting the ethnic Russian minority there, Okamura said that ‘there could be some truth to that’.”
• “Movement politicians have an absolutely clear position on the Government’s support for Ukraine defending itself. Okamura has been calling Government representatives ‘warmongers’, [SPD] lawmaker Jiří Kobza wrote of the Government’s ‘treason’, of their being the servants of ‘bankers overseas’, etc. Kobza also accused ‘journalist prostitutes’ or ‘unsatisfied, horny bitches’ of endeavoring to draw the Czech Republic and all of Europe into war.”
• “Lawmakers from the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement nominated Jaroslav Bašta as their candidate in the presidential elections. The chair of the movement said that ‘the only thing [Bašta] wants to do is to dismiss Prime Minister Fiala and his Government’. In an attempt to gain support from voters dissatisfied with the current administration, Okamura presented the unconstitutional opinion that the President has such power without having to meet any other conditions.”
• “The District Court in Bruntál fined Daniel Makay, a local assembly member for the SPD, CZK 45,000 [EUR 1,800] for his remarks about the ‘excellent strategy’ of Vladimir Putin in the war on Ukraine, adding, for example, his own recommendation that he should use hydrogen bombs. His punishment for denying, casting doubt on, approving of and justifying genocide was also upheld by the Regional Court in Ostrava.”

Fascist movements

Compared to the previous period, in 2023 the Interior Ministry paid little attention to Okamura and the SPD. The report for the second half of the year does not mention them once. The following quotes can be found in the report for the first half of 2023:

• “Most of the xenophobic groups which were formed in reaction to the migration crisis of 2014–2015 have already lost their importance or no longer exist. The only constant on that scene remains the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement. In the period under review it drew attention for its contacts with representatives of the Alternative für Deutschland movement, or rather with its youth organization, Junge Alternative. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has called that party a ‘suspicious case’ with regard to right-wing extremism and has directly called its youth organization a right-wing extremist group.”
• “In February, the Municipal Court in Prague rejected a lawsuit against the RESPEKT weekly by the movement (the SPD) to protect its good reputation. That media outlet had previously called it a ‘fascist’ movement.”