Tit for Tat: Illiberal Tendencies and the Far Right in the Visegrad

On March 16, 2016, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico announced the creation of a new governing coalition. After the elections earlier that month, his “Direction—Social Democracy” remained the strongest party in the country but lost the parliamentary majority and, thus, had to find political partners to form a government. Those became the center right parties “Bridge” and “Network,” as well as the radical right Slovak National Party (also known under its Slovak acronym SNS).

This is not the first time that Fico cooperates with the SNS. In 2006, he formed a coalition with them and the national-conservative party of Vladimír Mečiar, a former prime minister who was responsible for most of the failures of Slovakia’s democratic transition in the 1990s. But it was Fico’s political association with the radical right SNS, rather than with the controversial ghosts of the past, that caused trouble for him abroad. The Party of European Socialists (PES), one of the two largest parties in the European Parliament, suspended his “Direction—Social Democracy” in 2006, because it had failed to adhere to the PES requirement that members should refrain from any form of political alliance or cooperation with any political party which incited or attempted to stir up ethnic prejudices or racial hatred. While the PES suspension of the Slovak social democrats may have strengthened the party’s nationalist and isolationist wing, this relatively mild sanction did have some impact, at least in the coalition’s statements directed at foreign audiences. Fico and the contemporary leader of the SNS Ján Slota wrote a letter to the PES leadership in which they pledged to respect minority rights. These assurances helped lift the sanctions, but they did not prevent the governing coalition from using hateful and racist rhetoric at home, employing ultranationalism as a tool to mobilize voters.

This time, however, neither the PES nor any other EU structure reacted to the inclusion of the radical right into the governing coalition in Slovakia. The EU is clearly preoccupied with other, seemingly more important troubles: the refugee crisis, the slow collapse of the Schengen area, Islamist terrorist attacks, the referendum on Brexit in the United Kingdom, and Russia’s war on Ukraine to name a few. However, the formation of the new government in Slovakia, as well as the electoral campaign and results of the elections themselves, are symptomatic of a frightening development that may turn out to be as subversive for the EU as the “bigger problems.” This development is the spread of illiberal tendencies across Europe that challenge the EU from within. While these developments characterize the entire EU, they have become especially evident in the recent years and months in the Visegrad countries.

Fico’s Slovakia is not an illiberal democracy, but his previous cabinets have undermined Slovak democracy through failure to make changes, and Fico’s tactical resistance to inconvenient internal and external pressure to reform has become the hallmark of Slovakia’s slide away from the explicit liberalism of the era of former Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda.

Moreover, Fico turned the refugee crisis into a smokescreen that covers the illiberal trends in the country. In autumn and winter 2015-2016, Fico ran a xenophobic campaign stressing his refusal to accept refugees in Slovakia. Billboards of his “Direction—Social Democracy” read “We protect Slovakia,” and Fico even threatened to leave the EU over the refugee quotas proposed by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Naturally, Fico was not serious about leaving the EU— Slovakia benefits greatly from the membership of the Union, while the Slovak political elites enjoy economic successes resulting from the generous European structural and investment funds—but populist ultranationalist mobilization is often efficient and Fico evidently did not want to miss the chance. There were two other parties that gained from Fico’s xenophobic campaign: the SNS and the extreme right “People’s Party-Our Slovakia” led by Marian Kotleba, an admirer of Jozef Tiso who headed a Nazi-backed puppet Slovak government in 1939-1945. The SNS secured 8.6% of the vote, while Kotleba’s party, which is more extreme than the SNS, obtained 8%.

While experts and journalists may rightly point to the dangers of the rise of the far right, the relative success of these two parties points to another important aspect of the developments in Slovakia. Since Fico already had experience of working with the SNS in the past, he knew that they would conform to the rules of his own political game. Thus, Fico considered the SNS as a convenient or even obedient partner, and the media close to “Direction—Social Democracy” promoted the SNS during the electoral campaign to make sure it enters the parliament (they failed to enter the parliament in 2012) and helps Fico stay in power. The success of Kotleba’s extreme right party has also been useful to Fico, because the shocking election of the extremists into the parliament has largely deflected attention away from his partnership with the less radical, but still far right, SNS. Thus, the relative success of the Slovak far right has a meaning outside the immediate danger of the rise of ultranationalism, because it can be instrumentalized by apparently moderate political forces to their own benefit.

Last but not least, the rise of the far right often helps the incumbents fractionize popular support for the opposition. A typical example of the instrumentalization of the far right could be seen in Ukraine in 2010-2012. Then, the Party of Regions of the former President Viktor Yanukovych covertly supported the far right Freedom party to weaken the national-democratic opposition and “prepare” the Freedom party’s leader Oleh Tyahnybok for the role of “a bogeyman” in the second round of a future presidential election to secure Yanukovych’s victory. To this end, government-controlled TV channels dramatically increased the media visibility of the Freedom party and contributed to its success in the 2012 parliamentary election—it was the first time in Ukrainian history that a radical right party formed its own parliamentary group.

Czech experts Michal Šimečka and Benjamin Tallis appear to be correct when they argue that “the migration crisis has exposed another crisis—of liberal democracy in post-communist societies.” Across the Slovak border in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is almost officially building an illiberal democracy, having severely undermined the Constitutional Court and the media, as well as pursuing policies of economic nationalism. And, again, one sees how Orbán and his Fidesz, ideologically a center-right party, have adopted ultranationalist rhetoric to mobilize voters. In spring 2015, Orbán began to argue for “keeping the issue of the death penalty on the agenda,” thus directly challenging the European consensus. At the same time, the government launched “a national consultation” on immigration, among other things sending out a questionnaire which was designed to vilify Hungary’s immigrants, fan xenophobic sentiment, and promote harsh anti-immigrant measures.

During the refugee crisis, Orbán has resisted the quota system proposed by Germany, and allowed the use of tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon on refugees attempting to enter Hungary. But Orbán’s ultranationalist policies and rhetoric have also created conditions for the further rise of the radical right Jobbik party. The radical right are now the most potent opponent of Fidesz, much to the benefit of the latter. Jobbik functions as “a scarecrow party” for the external audience, presenting Fidesz as a more moderate party, although, according to the research of the Budapest- based Political Capital Institute, Fidesz has implemented at least 10 measures that were originally part of Jobbik’s program. Moreover, Jobbik operates as a reconnaissance scout for Fidesz, pushing the boundaries of politically permissible rhetoric and expanding the space in the (far) right segment of the political spectrum.

Across another Slovak border, in Poland, the national-conservative Law and Justice (also known under its Polish acronym PiS) seems to be following an example set by Fidesz and is trying to undermine the Constitutional Tribunal and the media. On the eve of the elections in the midst of the refugee crisis, the leader of the PiS Jarosław Kaczyński claimed that the refugees from Middle East could bring diseases and parasites to Poland. Apart from the PiS, the elections saw significant gains by the right-wing populist party Kukiz’15 that cooperated with the National Movement originally formed as an alliance of far right movements. Two weeks after the electoral victory of the PiS, the far right organizations held the largest protest in Poland’s recent history “against non-white invasion of Europe.” In the short-term perspective, the PiS may also start using the trick of instrumentalizing and facilitating the rise of the party-political and street far right in order to present themselves as moderates and to veil the illiberal developments in the country.

The Czech Republic largely resists the temptation of illiberalism, but still reveals worrying signs evident in other Visegrad countries. At the very height of the refugee crisis, President Miloš Zeman attended an anti-Muslim rally organized by the far-right “Bloc against Islam” group, standing side-by side with the leader of the group, Martin Konvička. At the time of writing, Konvička faces up to three years in prison for inciting hatred against Muslims by, among other things, writing on Facebook that “Muslims should be put into concentration camps or that they should be made into meat and bone meal.” President Zeman himself is known for anti-Muslim and anti-refugee rhetoric. On one occasion, he declared that refugees would stone unfaithful women, cut off thieves’ hands and deprive the Czechs of the female beauty because women would be covered by burqas. More recently, Zeman claimed that the wave of refugees and migrants to Europe had been orchestrated by the Egyptian Islamist organization “Muslim Brotherhood” in a conspiracy to control Europe.

In the Czech political system, the president, although popularly elected, has very restricted powers, so Zeman cannot change the country to the same extent as Fidesz and PiS have been doing in Hungary and Poland respectively. After all, during Zeman’s presidency, the legal framework of democracy—the constitution, the legal system—has not changed. However, Zeman’s xenophobic statements are far from being harmless: he is mainstreaming illiberal rhetoric and contributes to the creation of a new environment—an “uncivil society”—which may facilitate future attempts to openly undermine the constitution or to subvert democratic institutions. Apart from Zeman’s ultranationalism, anti-Westernism, and pro-Russian sentiments, yet another worrying development is evident in the Czech Republic, namely the “Berlusconization” of the Czech political space associated with the consolidation of political and media power in the hands of Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, whose own political party, ANO 2011, is currently the most popular party in the country.

The far right is on the rise in many European countries, but there are important differences related to their successes across Europe. In France, for example, mainstream parties still seem to be able to team up to keep Marine Le Pen’s National Front from winning council seats. The parties in Scandinavia, which could be considered as radical right in the 1990s, have significantly transformed and moderated themselves in order to win popular votes, and some of them, for example, the Progress Party in Norway, can no longer be described as far right. At the same time, in the Visegrad, one can see attempts by the incumbents of questionable loyalty to liberal democracy to instrumentalize far right parties and, simultaneously, mainstream far right rhetoric. The combination of these two processes may lead to a situation in which illiberal democracy thrives, while the far right enjoy the implementation of their own policies without even coming to power.