Czech campground owner cancels reservations after learning hundreds of neo-Nazis from all over Europe to hold festival there

This coming weekend, 9-10 June, an international event called the “Bohemia Excalibur Night” was scheduled to take place in Chotěvice (Trutnov district) featuring openly neo-Nazi bands performing at a car campground usually reserved for children’s summer camps, an event allowed by the local town assembly, whose members allegedly had no idea of its nature. The Antifa.cz news server first informed the public of the situation, following up their initial reports yesterday with the news that thanks to pressure from the media and the public, the owner of the campground has canceled the reservations.

“Bohemian Excalibur Night, the festival the Nazis planned for this weekend, was officially canceled less than an hour ago. The promoter himself is writing to the bands and blaming the cancellation on the threatened resistance of crowds of antifascists directly at the location, but the reason is much more prosaic – the owner of the campground, under pressure from journalists and the public, cancelled the reservations for the area where the event was to take place. We thank everybody who spoke up!!” reported Antifa.cz.

“The moment that we learned that they would be extremists, we immediately called the organizers and banned the festival right away! We very much apologize. We should have done a better job vetting the organizers. They told us it would be a club event, we had no suspicion who they were!” the owners of the campground have posted to their Facebook profile.

The leadership of the municipality is said to have allegedly allowed the event because they had not been able to reach the organizers of it by telephone and because the concert was being held on private land in any case. “Objectively, of course, we disagree with it, but that’s all we can do about it,” the mayor told news server Aktuálně.cz.

The mayor went on to say he was not glad that the entire village will now probably be scrutinized by state police; for hist part, campground owner Luboš Velecký denied that he knew anything about the extremist focus of the event and is said to have responded with surprise when contacted by the reporter for Aktuálně.cz, saying he was shocked to learn what was actually being planned. According to the information published on Antifa.cz however, everybody involved has long known the event would be a neo-Nazi one.

“There’s a private event reserved by a Mr Krupička. He told me some bands would play there and that it would be for about 400 people. The information that they are neo-Nazis shocks me, I will have to contact the organizers,” Velecký told Aktuálně.cz, which has also reported that four years ago the campground owner was acquitted on charges of blackmail and intimidation for lack of evidence.

“Luboš Velecký is an old friend of the organizers, mainly of the Nazi-metal musician Pavel ‘Pallus’ Krupička, who is currently setled in Dvůr Králové. It is he who arranged to lease the camp. It is meant to be closed to the public during the event so participants can do what they want inside, and outside it is supposed to be guarded by private security so nobody unauthorized gets in. The organizers, according to our information, have most probably chosen the Berserk security agency for that job, which employs people with ties to the ultra-right scene,” Antifa.cz reported.

White Demons instead of summer camp

The Bohemia Excalibur Night was meant to feature bands like White Demons, which includes a former member of the cult English neo-Nazi group Screwdriver. The Italian group Legittima Offesa, whose lead singer Luigi Guerzoni was imprisoned for several years after brutally attacking a student together with another three Nazi skinheads, and who is a promoter of the Italian ultranationalist party Forza Nuova, was also scheduled to perform.

Another band on the bill was the Polish group Nordica, which previously existed with the name Agressiva 88, and the group Mistreat, which espouses hatred of LGBT people, calls for “racial purity”, and uses Nazi symbols. Of the Czech bands, Violence Station from Děčín and Sons of Bohemia were on the bill.

Other Czech neo-Nazi bands apparently were not scheduled to perform. Antifa.cz reported that they may have been concerned that there would be legal consequences if they did so.

The poster for the now-canceled event that is making the rounds online advertises the international neo-Nazi bands as performing with the sponsorship of the Bohemia Patriot company. Tickets were to be sold by e-mail reservation for CZK 1 000 [EUR 38].

The owner of the Bohemia Patriot e-shop, Jan Mošnička, has absolutely rejected the idea that his business had anything to do with the car campground event. “We have nothing to do with it, we are just an e-shop selling clothing, we do not organize events,” he told Aktuálně.cz.

“I absolutely distance myself from it,” the e-shop owner said. As Aktuálně.cz characterized the now-canceled event, “A car camping ground where children usually stay for summer camp will be the gathering place this weekend for hundreds of neo-Nazis celebrating one of the most horrible ideologies to ever exist.”