When the Ku Klux Klan holds public rallies in the US, cordons of baton wielding police are always on the scene.
They're there to protect the pointy heads from the crowds of protestors that always assemble to scream them down. This is a bizarre security arrangement considering it's the Klan that extols and practices violence, but it remains within the bounds of the US Constitution, a document that guarantees the right to peaceful assembly for all citizens.
Neo-fascist groups in the Czech Republic, however, enjoy no such rights. Czech law explicitly forbids the public display of fascist symbols or the expounding of fascist ideology. Given the modern history of the region, the anti-fascist laws make sense.
And yet skinhead rallies regularly receive not just the tacit consent of state police, but their active support. Opposition rallies are routinely dispersed with force, while skinheads are treated to free security. In a national political culture that views anarchist collectives as more dangerous than neo-nazis, this practice raises precious little controversy.
Only when Berlin or Brussels cracks the whip over lax Czech enforcement of anti-fascist laws do token shows of police attention occur.
These occasional arrests are always broadcast with bugles on the 7:20 news, as if they represented standard practice by the Czech police. But standard Czech practice is quite different. Massive rallies of skinheads - including many from Eastern Germany, where they rarely dare to congregate in such numbers - are quietly tolerated (and even attended) by Prague's finest.
The most recent example of this came in late February, when a skinhead meeting at Eden hall near Zelivskeho drew several dozen protestors. True to form, the police moved against the collection of (admittedly militant) leftists who were holding a counter demonstration.
This was a micro version more memorable events, like May Day 1999, when the cops went on a rampage against protestors and bystanders alike as they cleared a parade route for several hundred skinheads carrying red, black and white flags. But despite scant media attention and the relatively low number of arrests (19) and injuries (3), the clash between police and leftists in February was a landmark.
The protestors were holding camp at Eden hall because inside the Nazi Party of the Czech Republic was being born. The new party, duly registered and preparing to field local candidates, is called the Narodne Socialisticka Strana. As in, the National Socialist Party.
[This birth followed an evolution. First there was the ultra-conservative Republican Party. But tensions between extreme and moderate factions led to the defection of a hard-core of neo-fascists, who had joined the Republican Party only when the seig heiling National Alliance was banned.
The Republican Party defectors founded Vlastenecka republikanska strana (The Patriotic Republican Party) and had it legally registered, careful to avoid the mistakes of the National Alliance.
When a critical mass of skinheads further infiltrated the Patriotic Republican Party, it became a seething, thoroughbred fascist organization with an alleged 2,000 members. Hence the hastily called meeting in February voting to change the name to the National Socialists and bring other Czech far-right groups under its tent.
By any reading of this nation's laws, the meeting should have been raided and shut down, all equipment and assets seized. Surely the only thing more glaring than the evil of Czech skinheads is their Cro-Magnon stupidity. Naming your party after the war machine that invaded your country, occupied it for seven years, burned down villages and murdered thousands of your citizens is just not smart politics.
But poll driven electoral gamesmanship isn't what Czech skinheads excel in.
The twenty-eight corpses and several hundred serious injuries that they are responsible for over the last ten years is more representative of their interests and talents. The terrorized Roma communities around the country and dark skinned individuals who feel threatened at night are their real legacy, not the smattering of local council members that they may eventually succeed in electing.
But while their urban goon squads and impunity from punishment are clearly the most urgent threats posed by the skinheads, their political efforts cannot be ignored, however marginal they may seem. Part of neo-fascist mythology is the story of Adolf Hitler and his small band of brown shirts growing into the big black Hulk that violently outgrew the frail clothing of the Weimar democracy. They do have explicit political ambitions and the smarter among them have strategies for achieving them.
The mere presence of their parties in the political arena is legitimizing and allows them to act as vehicles for the intrusion of barbaric and antidemocratic ideas into a free society still experiencing growing pains. Those who argue that it is also antidemocratic to bar far-right groups from politics are correct. It is antidemocratic. But it is nothing compared to the kind of antidemocratic praxis that these groups teach their victims in the street, to say nothing of their fantasies for the future of "Motherland Bohemia."
If you want to see what real antidemocratic animus in domestic politics looks like, read the first 400 pages of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Or talk to one of the dozens of dark-skinned residents of Prague who've had their faces kicked in on Wenceslas Square.
When the police are not willing to enforce the anti-fascist laws on the books and the political class shows little concern over the Ministry of Interior's lack of control over its own forces, the onus of responsibility falls elsewhere.
Unfortunately in this country that crucial layer in the body politic called "civil society" is still onion skin thin.
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