Victory for Pro-Western Democrats

I watched the victory of Fiala’s right-wing coalition SPOLU in the 2021 parliamentary elections in a stylish coworking hub in the center of Prague, together with other professionals working in diplomacy, the nonprofit sector, the media, and government.

When SPOLU’s percentage surpassed that of the ruling ANO movement headed by then prime minister Andrej Babiš, a tycoon often labeled the country’s version of Silvio Berlusconi or Donald Trump, cheers erupted around me. As has been common in declining liberal democracies around the world in recent years, the 2021 elections were portrayed as a battle of democracy, the rule of law, and a pro-Western orientation against populist authoritarianism. This time, the “good” side had won.

In the Czech case, the threat to democracy was said to be embodied by Babiš, a political opportunist who, during his political career, had traveled from the liberal positions of the EU Parliament’s Renew Europe faction to the far-right Patriots for Europe. He today sits in this continent-wide grouping together with his “friend” Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian Hungarian premier, and Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant Rassemblement National in France.

Among other things, Babiš’s defeat in 2021 was aided by the successful campaign of the Million Moments for Democracy movement, which managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of his opponents. The movement pointed to his conflicts of interest, as both prime minister and de facto owner of the Agrofert agricultural concern, plus the fact that Babiš faced criminal prosecution for misuse of EU subsidies. It rightly portrayed him as a threat to the independence of Czech institutions.

In addition, billionaire Babiš was often criticized for his former membership in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and his parliamentary cooperation with the unreformed Communist Party. This alliance allowed his opponents to frame the last parliamentary elections as a familiar story of the victory of democracy and pro-Western orientation over “communism.” According to the Million Moments activists, the ideological clash over real policies, such as taxes, housing, or climate change mitigation, has to wait until the democrats have definitively defeated Babiš.

After its victory, Petr Fiala’s government included, among other things, the restoration of “Havel’s foreign policy” in its policy statement. In line with the values of the first postcommunist president, Václav Havel, this policy is meant to focus on supporting democracy, human rights, and civil society. Foreign policy developments over the past four years, specifically Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliation, soon revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of this tradition.

Ukraine: A Story We Know

In 2022, I worked on preparations for the Czech presidency of the Council of the EU. In the European Union, each member state gets to chair ministerial meetings for half a year, offering it an opportunity to promote its own priorities and gain greater ownership over the EU’s actions.

Among other things, our task was to select the topics on which the EU should focus during our presidency and to come up with ways to present these topics to the public. When Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, the story of the Czech presidency suddenly became clear: we would recall our own unfortunate history with Russia, the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, the victory of “freedom and democracy” in 1989, and our joining the EU in 2004. We would then apply this story to war-torn Ukraine, which is fighting an aggressor we know well and which is also aspiring to membership in Western organizations. During the Czech presidency, we would base our priorities on this story.

The war in Ukraine has brought to the fore issues that are traditionally among the priorities of Czech foreign and European policy and that Czechs understand: the Eastern neighborhood, EU enlargement, energy, and anti-Russian sanctions. Thanks to this, the presidency under Fiala’s government was generally considered a success.

With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many in the eastern wing of the EU felt like they gained moral superiority over the arrogant West, which had overlooked their experiences and fears of Russia. When Czech prime minister Fiala traveled to Kyiv with Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki in March 2022, he and these long-criticized leaders of Poland’s hard-right Law and Justice Party received pan-European praise. Thanks in part to the well-managed presidency, the Czechs finally felt that they were at the center of European decision-making.

Czech support for Ukraine and Ukrainians should not be idealized. The country’s total military, financial, and humanitarian support for Ukraine relative to GDP lags behind that of Poland and Slovakia, for example. Integration of Ukrainian refugees often fails, and many fall prey to predatory employment agencies.

Still, thanks to a staunchly anti-Russian stance and some ambitious policy actions, including an initiative to boost the ammunition supply to Kyiv, the Fiala government is surely praised by many Czechs for its foreign and security policy.

The Russian threat — most recently materializing in a major drone incursion into Poland — and Czech and European defense capabilities are understandably playing a key role in the campaign for next month’s Czech parliamentary elections. According to the ruling parties, if the next government is again led by Babiš, this could undermine the hard-won respect for the Czech Republic abroad — and even threaten national security.

Gaza: The Story We Don’t Know

The question, however, is whether Prague has already undermined this position through its unwavering support for Israel. This has often led to its isolation within the EU and the UN and rightly casts a shadow over proclamations about the country’s values-based foreign policy.

The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was widely interpreted in the Czech Republic as an unprovoked act by barbarians against the only democracy in the Middle East. Here too, national mythology played an important role. Czech pro-Israel attitudes have deep roots, as mapped out in the August issue of the Czech Journal of International Relations: Czechs like to recall the support for the establishment of Israel by the first Czech president, Tomáš G. Masaryk, and empathize with Israel’s image as a small, resourceful, democratic nation surrounded by enemies. Moreover, post-1989 elites use their support for Israel to distance themselves from the pro-Palestinian attitudes of the Communist regime.

In the Czech Republic, on the other hand, there is no resonance with the history of colonialism, displacement, and murder of the indigenous peoples of other continents by Europeans, a story that many today understandably see being revived in Palestine. Perhaps this is why the prime minister’s adviser Pojar can so ingenuously reproduce Orientalist discourse with his talk of “our civilization” and “barbarians.”

In the ethnically near-homogeneous Czech Republic, there are also no large minorities who would be familiar with the legacy of colonialism and able to maintain contacts and promote solidarity with the Global South. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Czech Republic looks almost exclusively to the West for inspiration. At the same time, the Czech elite has long behaved naively or cynically when it comes to the missteps of states they see as part of their civilizational sphere. A prime example is Václav Havel’s support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which surprised many of the former president’s intellectual cohort.

In this respect, the Czech “Havel-style” human rights foreign policy has always been rather tribal in nature — criticizing Russia, China, or Cuba but never the United States or Israel. Unfortunately, the unwavering support for Israel’s extremist government two years after October 2023 shows how far tribalism and selective blindness in Czech politics can go.

How We Have Become Desensitized

As researchers Michal Smetana and Daniel Prokop point out, the dehumanization of Palestinians and the denial of the universality of human rights by the Czech political elite increases the population’s tolerance for injustice and war crimes. This makes it easier for them to tolerate such acts elsewhere.

Surely Ukraine is perceived by most Czechs — and certainly by current elites —  as part of our “Western civilization”; hence why Ukrainian civilian victims are grieved, while Palestinians are overlooked. Still, the dehumanization of Palestinians and denial of Israeli war crimes even amid increasing proof of genocide fuel the arguments of those who would like to treat Ukrainian and other war victims with similar cynicism and disregard.

Hatred of Ukrainian refugees, who are allegedly receiving support at the expense of Czechs, is one of the saddest aspects of the current election campaign. Tomio Okamura, the leader of the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), currently polling at 12 percent, promises to revise the residence permits of all Ukrainian refugees — a group that he accuses of draining social benefits. In parallel, the number of physical attacks on Ukrainians has been rising.

It is as if Czechs cannot imagine that they themselves could ever be dehumanized.

At the same time, the behavior of Fiala’s government supports the relativization promoted in the European information space by hostile Russia: namely, the claim that all superpowers violate international law to achieve their higher goals and therefore cannot be judged for it. This is not a favorable argument for the security and prosperity of a small Central European nation.

The fact that Israeli violence in Gaza is supported by a government that champions morality, democracy, and human rights contributes to a general nihilism and the relativization of these terms. Outrage over the killing of Ukrainian civilians while turning a blind eye to dead Palestinians seems hypocritical both abroad and in the Czech Republic’s own political struggles.

A Good Side to Power?

One of few Czech politicians who has no problem speaking out against Israel and pointing out the double standards of today’s government is Communist Party chairwoman Kateřina Konečná, a member of the European Parliament. She describes the situation in Gaza as genocide and accuses Netanyahu of war crimes.

Konečná is running for the Czech Chamber of Deputies at the head of the “patriotic-leftist” movement Stačilo! (Enough!). In addition to Gaza, this movement is not afraid to point out other issues neglected in Czech politics, such as the fact that the dependent Czech economy sends billions of euros annually to foreign company owners in dividends.

However, Stačilo!, which considers the Left in the European Parliament too “liberal” on social issues, also promises to stop “progressive extremism” and to introduce registration of foreign nonprofit organizations following the examples of Hungary and Russia. It promises a referendum on withdrawal from the EU and NATO, rejects military support for Ukraine, and seeks to normalize relations with Russia. It is thus hardly surprising that the current ruling parties portray its possible future participation in government as a threat. The resurgence of the Communist Party within Stačilo! was also one of the reasons the parliament amended the penal code this year, making the promotion of communism and its symbols illegal.

The campaign for October’s parliamentary elections is taking place at a difficult time, with the war in Ukraine continuing, liberal democracies eroding, and Trump definitively shattering the illusion of a benevolent United States — so popular in the postcommunist Czech Republic. It is perhaps no surprise that the ruling parties are once again trying to portray the vote as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, with secondary ideological issues seemingly of no interest to anyone. “It’s time to stand on the right side,” appeal posters with Fiala’s face across the country.

But is there a right side, when “pro-Western democrats” openly support the far-right Israeli government, which is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide in Gaza? If Prime Minister Fiala wants to portray the elections as a question of values, Gaza remains the biggest hole in his argument. A hole that his opponents will always be happy — and right — to attack.

The Czech Republic’s leadership is surely not alone in failing to respond to Israel’s crimes. Acknowledging the grim reality and responding appropriately remains a problem for many other European countries, which otherwise present themselves as defenders of liberal democracy and a rules-based international order in an increasingly authoritarian world.

This failure shows the many blind spots of the now dying world of Western-led, liberal-democratic capitalism. Alternatives to it should not only be offered by the emerging nationalist conservatives but also by forces that value all lives — Palestinian as well as Ukrainian.