Czech extremists are like Vančura’s bogeyman Barbucha – they get stronger only if you are scared of them. This weekend they invited the former Ku Klux Klan leader to Prague and called an anti-Roma march to the north Bohemian town of Krupka. Both events fizzled out from two reasons: They ran up against strength and became ridiculous.
With regards to the first issue, lectures on Jewish conspiracy and Afro-American inferiority did not take place, because the police arrested David Duke and expelled him from the country. “This has never happened to him in Europe,” the organiser said, describing Duke’s shock. Well, there is a first time for everything, David. Of course, it would have been neater if police had done it immediately at the airport, and it would have been more amusing if they had taken him away from the lecture. However, it is a clear message for other global peddlers of racism: You are not welcome in this country, and next time you might spend an afternoon chained to a radiator at a police station.
David Duke himself provided a conclusion to the event on his website. “I’m free, for now,” he wrote and pathetically called on his sympathisers to make contributions for his attorney (as if he did not leave for Austria in the meantime!). The petty crook, who was sentenced once for tax evasion and for deceiving his petty sponsors, will evidently not stop at anything. His Czech supporters can now think about how much they served him as useful idiots.
And the issue of Krupka? The main image of this event was not provided by the posthumous children of the once Republican party of Miroslav Sládek; simply because a few of “Sládek’s children” came and the police easily outnumbered them.
The most interesting picture is therefore a leaflet, in which a Romani association says: Refuse to be provoked and follow the instructions of the leader of self-government.
Instead of a chaotic battle, the disciplined and well-organized Roma filmed the young skinheads – that is not a bad result of an event that looked so frightening.
