Last week, on the 3rd and 4th of October, the elections in the Czech Republic gave victory to a party that the systemic media had already placed on the immovable shelf of the “extreme right”. It turns out, however, that, to the right of the far-right party that won the elections, two parties of an even more extreme right-wing are now lined up, for coalition purposes, in what promises to be a true taxonomic puzzle for newspaper and television newsrooms.
Could it be that, given the widening of the range on the right to accommodate an extreme right, are we witnessing the advent of a “moderate extreme right”?
With around 35% of the popular vote, the ANO party, Party of Discontented Citizens, won over the centrist coalition Spolu (Together), currently in power. In 2021, ANO had 27.1% and Spolu, 27.8%.
ANO was founded in 2012 by Czech millionaire Andrej Babis as “a right-wing party with social sensitivity”; It did so from groups of small businesspeople who complained about the corruption of the system. Initially, ANO was part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, but in 2024, together with Victor Orbán, from Hungary, and Herbert Kickl, from Austria, Babis created the Patriots for Europe. Like other parties on the popular right – nationalist, suspicious of Brussels, conservative in family values and realistic in foreign policy – ANO grew quickly: from 18.56% in 2013, with 47 seats, to 29.64% in 2017, with 78 seats, then governing in coalition, with Babis as prime minister.
This time, the motto of the ANO campaign was “The Czechs come first” – concentration on internal problems, cheap energy, limits on aid to Ukraine, lower taxes, higher pensions, national sovereignty versus Brussels’ impositions on immigration and the “Green Agenda”, all that.
The victory was significant, but, to govern, Babis will need to form a coalition; in principle, with the parties to its right: they are the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (9%) and the Motorists Party (7%).
The first is a nationalist party founded in 2013, Eurosceptic, critical of uncontrolled immigration, especially Muslim, and with reservations about anti-Russian warmongering. The second, the Drivers’ Party, founded by Filip Turek, car racer, author, television commentator, critic of the “Green Deal” and the ban on the manufacture of gasoline cars and European deputy in 2024.
ANO’s victory – which, given the forces present, will have to be considered the victory of the centrist or moderate extreme right – was very well received by the… old extreme right – Victor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and other popular and national-conservative leaders, such as the Dutch Geert Wilders and the Austrian Harald Vilimsky.
In the Prague parliament, which has 200 seats, ANO, with 80 deputies, the SPD, with 15, and Os Motoristas, with 13, make up the majority.
But until the negotiations between the “extreme-right”, the “extreme-right” and the “ultra-extreme-right” to form a government are concluded, there is only one certainty: confusion has arisen in the journalistic modality of throwing qualifications.
We miss the times when the fascists, Nazis, xenophobes, racists and homophobes of the extreme right didn’t come out of the box or off the shelf.
Political scientist and writer
The author writes according to the old spelling