“With courage against the system.” The ideology of the people’s party our Slovakia

ABSTRACT

The Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) was founded in 2010 and has been the centre of attention from Slovak media, academia and politicians since 2013. In spite of this interest, there appears to be no consensus in the way that it should be referred to – is it a neo-fascist, a neo-Nazi or a radical right-wing party? The aim of this study is an attempt to analyse the ideology of the LSNS based on both official and unofficial statements and the rhetoric of its representatives, the party’s agenda and propaganda. It argues that the party´s past, its constant attacks on democracy and the democratic system, the glorification of undemocratic regimes, declared efforts to achieve an “alternative to the contemporary decadent era,” and a “new epoch,” its international cooperation with similar movements, racists, anti-Semitic statements and the use of neo-Nazi symbolism indicate the neo-Nazi character of the party’s ideology.

KEYWORDS:

• Neo-nazism
• Slovakia
• Marian Kotleba
• extreme right
• far right

Disclosure statement

There are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Notes

1. The name of the party changed several times. After its transformation from the Party of the Friends of Wine, the party was called the People’s Party of Social Solidarity in 2009, People’s Party – Our Slovakia in 2010–2015, Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia in 2015–2019, and today it is entitled Kotlebists – People’s Party Our Slovakia. To keep things simple, the abbreviation “LSNS” will be used in the whole text.

2. In the early 1990s Eatwell asserted that there is an “esoteric” and “exoteric” ideological appeal. According to Eatwell, esoteric ideology is what the fascists say among themselves, in closed circles – their sincere convictions, what they truly believe in. On the other hand, exoteric ideology is what the fascists consider appropriate to express in public (Eatwell 1992).

3. Mudde´s approach (Mudde 2002, 20) was inspired by Van Donselaar (1991, 16), Christian Fleck and Albert Müller (Fleck and Müller 1998).

4. Tamir Bar-On speaks of “fascism with a human face” (Bar-On 2007, 80).

5. This type of movements has been identified by Griffin as the groupuscules (Griffin 2003).

6. It was founded officially in 2004, and most probably served as a means of transfer for the core members of the Workers’ Party in the case of its dissolution. For more details see Dlouhý, Háka, and Brejchová (2014); Háka (2016).

7. Originally written in 1834 as a patriotic song and as the ethnic anthem of the Pan-Slavic movement, but used widely and often by the HSLS party throughout the existence of the wartime Slovak state.

8. Number 88 refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, the letter H, and serves as a cryptonym for the Nazi salutation Heil, Hitler! (Mikušovič 2017).

9. For example as the subheading of the Naše Slovensko newspaper and in many other places.

10. On party´s youth movement´s website http://www.ludovamladez.sk/?page_id=187.

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Jakub Drábik

Jakub Drábik is a historian mainly interested in comparative fascism studies but covering a broad range of topics from 20th Century history in his research and teaching. Completed his doctorate at Charles University in Prague in 2014 and since 2016 working at Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and teaching at the Masaryk University in Brno.