Cultural expertise, hate speech, and the far right: the Slovak Mazurek case

Abstract

This article offers a case study of Slovakia focusing on the Mazurek case, the first criminal conviction of an incumbent Slovak far-right MP of hate speech. My explorative analysis uses data from my work as expert appointed by the investigation. It shows that cultural expertise in the Slovak hate speech cases involving prominent politicians has helped pinpoint the anti-minority narratives hidden behind the incriminated speech. The far right attempted to weaponize the legal process to cement their electoral base, raising the question of the mitigation strategies available to experts to counter this trend. The analysis points to the relevance of global legal pluralism not only in approaches to hate speech, but also regarding the interaction between the legal doctrine, the humanities and social sciences, and local legal regulation. The article concludes with positioning cultural expertise vis-à-vis global legal pluralism, whereby increased transparency of data from the proceedings and access to specialised training could mitigate the difficult position of cultural experts in hate speech.

Keywords:

• Cultural expertise
• expert witnesses
• far right
• hate speech
• Slovakia/Slovak Republic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See Lobba (2015) on the approach of the European Court of Human Rights.

2 For advice on how lawyers should work with expert witnesses including the need to recognise the non-adversarial nature of scientific evidence, see Rose (1955).

3 When explaining this preference of the judges, Wilson (2016, 738) writes of “the divergent understandings of causation held by lawyers and social scientists”, whereby only the former need to demonstrate an unambiguous causal nexus between the “accused’s act” and the “offence”.

4 In particular, the defendant’s attorney questioned the unbiasedness of the expert Michal Mazel due to his allegedly Jewish origin (Czech Bar Association nd).

5 I have not had access to the text of the indictment, so I cannot state with certainty whether there was a causal link between my report and the indictment.

6 MA in International Relations and European Studies.

7 Rupnik (2016, 79) even called them neo-fascists and Drábik (2022) used the label of “neo-Nazi”.

8 Mazurek’s move had its predecessor in Czechia, where the question was posed to an expert witness by the defendant’s attorney who was subsequently sanctioned by the Czech Bar Association. The sanction was reversed by a court in 2016 (ČTK 2016).

9 Moreover, an earlier Czech case pointed to the costs entailed in such an association of bias with ethnic or religious origin. An attorney of a Czech far right politician accused one of the expert witnesses of bias due to his Jewish origin. The attorney was fined and temporarily stripped of his license to practice law (Horák 2016). Still, the expert witness who was targeted ceased his activity shortly after this incident, referring to it as a major reason for his refusal to engage in cultural expertise (ibid.).

10 In the European Parliament elections in May 2019, Mazurek became the party’s first substitute for a seat.

11 In this case the exclusion of the Roma from the category of the Slovak nation. My expert testimony has been recorded in the minutes, including on this point (4T/36/2017 2018, 10–12).

12 The effect of framing in oral expert testimony and the subsequent possibility for both parties to draw on the arguments of the expert witness is examined in one case by Lynch (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by COST (European Cooperation in Sciences and Technology) Action 22101 led by Livia Holden.