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Vigilantism Against Migrants and Minorities; First Edition 8 VIGILANTISM AGAINST MIGRANTS AND MINORITIES IN SLOVAKIA AND IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC Miroslav Mareš and Daniel Milo Introduction Vigilantism against migrants and minorities has won huge public attention in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia in recent era. Governmental documents on extremism or reports of intelligence services analyse this issue, media inform in headlines about home guards or anti-immigrant paramilitaries. This form of vigi- lantism has a long tradition in both these countries and it was connected mostly with extreme right politics. Currently, the pro-Kremlin spectrum, which mixes nationalist motives with legacies of the communist era, is active alongside tradi- tional right wing extremism. Many common trends characterize the development of the vigilante strategy and tactics in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. Parts of the scenes in both countries cooperate closely. On the other hand, some specific features can be found in both parts of former Czechoslovakia. This chapter describes the extreme right legacies and the recent development separately in each country (however, we do not describe Hungarian groups in Slovakia), then we deal with the profiles of individual important organizations and, finally, we try to analyse and to compare selected contemporary development trends of vigilantism. Historical legacy of extreme right vigilantes in the Czech Republic Modern forms of extreme right paramilitaries can be found on the territory that is now the Czech Republic in the interwar period. Czech fascists as well as Sudeten- German Nazis established their own party militias. The government prohibited some of them, such as “Scouts of the National Community of Fascists” (Junáci Národní obce fašistické) (Pejcˇoch 2009, 31–32). The “Order Service of the Sude- ten German Party” (Ordnerdienst der Sudetendeutschen Partei) served as a member base for recruitment of pro-Hitler insurgents in the late 1930s (Burian 130 Miroslav Mareš and Daniel Milo 2012, 306–327). The official Czechoslovak governmental paramilitary forces from this era are used as a model by some of the current Czech nationalist vigilantes. In the Second World War militias of Czech collaborationists operated with vigilante purposes, mostly against the Jews and against anti-Fascist resistance. During the Cold War, the communist regime eliminated serious activities of right-wing extremists. Since the mid-1980s, a new generation of the extreme right grew up in Czechoslovakia. Small gangs of youngsters attacked Roma people and foreign students from African and Arabian countries. The attackers, among others, justified these attacks by reference to the alleged criminal activities of their victims. The expansion of racist skinhead subculture at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s led to various skinhead “anti-Gypsy” patrols and even to the lynching of some Roma accused of crime (as Emil Bendík who was murdered in the town Klatovy in 1991). Associations and neo-Nazi groupings established from “post-skinhead” cir- cles continued with this form of vigilantism also later, as the patrols of the “National Resistance” (Národní odpor) against “Gypsy crime” in Orlová in 2005 show (Mareš 2012b, 137–139). A new era of Czech extreme right vigilantism started in 2007–2008, under the influence of the successful political marketing of the Hungarian Guard. In 2007, the “National Guard of the National Party” (Národní garda Národní strany) was foun- ded. However, this party and its militia had a very limited member base (despite huge media attention) (Stojarová 2012, 275). With the exception of one patrol of two men outside a primary school in the town Karlovy Vary (where the children were allegedly attacked by “Gypsy youngsters”), the activity of the National Guard proceeds mostly on the internet. Regular patrols of the “Protection Corps of the Workers’ Party” (Ochranné sbory Deˇlnické strany) and their involvement in anti- Roma riots in Northern Bohemia in 2008–2009 were more important. However, the real member base of this group is estimated to be only around 40 persons. The existence of this unit played a significant role in the ban of the “Workers’ Party” in 2010; together with the spread of racial hate and the interconnection with the neo- Nazi underground (Mareš 2012a). Smaller extreme right vigilante groups, such as the “The Kin Defenders” (Rodobrana) of the organization “Czech Lions” (Cˇ eští lvi), were active also during anti-Romani riots in the years 2011 and 2013 (Mareš 2014). The name “Rodobrana” was also used by the Slovak extreme right vigilante organization from the interwar period (see below). Current vigilantism against migrants and minorities in the Czech Republic Current Czech vigilantism has its roots in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century. At that time, a new type of vigilante groupings was established, without links to previous right-wing extremist scenes. In contrast, some founders came from the ex-communist milieu. They combined nostalgia for the communist regime with a veneration for Putin’s Russia and after the start of the migration crisis also with anti-immigrant politics. The first of these groupings was the paramilitary- Vigilantism in Slovakia and Czech Republic 131 focused group the “Czechoslovak reserve soldiers against the war planned by the NATO command” (Cˇ eskoslovenští vojáci v záloze proti válce plánované velením NATO), founded at the beginning of 2015. At the end of 2015, after internal dis- putes, the new “Czechoslovak reserve soldiers for peace” (Cˇ eskoslovenští vojáci v záloze pro mír – Cˇ VVZPM) split from this original group. At the same time, another group of former members joined the organization “National Home Guard” (Nár- odní domobrana – ND), founded in the summer 2015 (Ministerstvo vnitra Cˇ eské republiky 2017b, 12–14). At the end of 2017, several dozens of members left the “National Home Guard” and they established a new organization – the “Land Home Guard” (Zemská domobrana). These four organizations are more deeply analysed in the next part of this chapter (including explanation of their internal dis- putes). They are the most important contemporary vigilante organizations in the Czech Republic. However, during the peak of the migration crisis in 2015–2016, several small vigilante groups were established, but usually they existed only for a short time. They were formed from the spectrum of new anti-Islamic organizations, which were founded as a reaction to a wave of Islamist terrorist attacks in Western Europe and as a reaction to subjectively perceived “migration threat”. Small groups, such as the “Czechoslovak Patriotic Guard” (Cˇ eskoslovenská vlastenecká garda) or the “Voluntary Public Patrols” (Dobrovolné obcˇanské hlídky), served mostly as pro- tection for political meetings. However, they were trained also for anti-criminal vigilante activities (Hrˇebenárˇ 2016). Patrols of the trains were organized rarely – one known case is connected with members of the initiative “We don’t want Islam in the Czech Republic” (Hloušek 2017, 31–32). In 2016, the political party “Dawn – National Coalition” (Úsvit – Národní koalice) initiated the “Foundation of the Guard of the Defence of the State” (Nadace Stráže obrany státu – SOS). The aim of this foundation was establishing a paramilitary corps (called SOS) for border protection within the structures of the Ministry of the Interior (Zelená 2016). It was named after a governmental para- military corps from the 1930s, which protected the Czechoslovak borderlands against German Nazis at that time. In the end, this corps was not founded due to a weak position of the party and due to lack of interest on the part of the govern- ment (which considered the “Dawn – National Coalition” an extremist party at that time) (Ministerstvo vnitra Cˇ eské republiky 2017b, 11). These groupings were affiliated with the Czech nationalist spectrum, including its anti-Nazi traditions. On the other hand, a group of former activists of the neo- Nazi spectrum founded the “Soldiers of Odin Czech Republic” in 2016, as part of a transnational network with roots in the Nordic countries (Ministerstvo vnitra Cˇ eské republiky 2017a, 5). The Germanic orientation of this group was criticized by the pan-Slavic pro-Kremlin spectrum. Neo-Nazi gangs with vigilante tendencies operated clandestinely in the Czech Republic besides publicly active and usually uniformed vigilante groups. A wave of anti-Romani skinhead violence culminated in the 1990s. Many violent acts were also committed later, however. In April 2009, a group of four young neo-Nazis, at 132 Miroslav Mareš and Daniel Milo least partially inspired by the Hungarian death squad (see chapter on Hungary), attacked a house with a Roma family in Vítkov (Cˇ T 24 2010). A two-year-old Roma girl was burned on more than 80% of her body. Luckily, she survived. While the perpetrators were sentenced to harsh punishments, they are celebrated in the far-right scene (Honus 2010). Similar attacks without seriously injured or fatal victims occurred in the town Aš in 2011. Two members of the “Blood & Honour/Combat 18 Bohemia/Sudetenland” set fire to the door and threw a Molotov cocktail into the window of a residential hotel with Roma residents. Fortunately, the fire was quickly extinguished (Nejvyšší soud Cˇ eské republiky 2017). The Czech neo-Nazi scene propagated positively also individuals who acted in self-defence or misused self-defence and who killed people from the Romani community (Nutil 2017), despite the fact that courts do not find a racist motive behind these acts. Historical legacy of extreme-right vigilantes in the Slovak Republic Contemporary vigilantism in Slovakia is present mostly in the form of groups either directly connected to extreme-right political groups or at least with close affinity to such ideologies. This comes as no surprise, since the historical legacy of vigilantism in Slovakia dates back to groups operating in the interwar period. In the 1920s and 1930s several vigilante and paramilitary groups existed in Slovakia (as part of Czechoslovakia) and it was usual for political parties to have paramilitary wings.
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