London, Sept 14 (CTK) – “The rhetorical fusillade against Muslim incomers” of Czech President Milos Zeman makes the anti-Islamic sentiments of Slovak and even Hungarian prime ministers, Robert Fico and Viktor Orban, “seem mild in comparison,” the British daily The Guardian writes yesterday.
Zeman’s “anti-Muslim rhetoric and criticism of the EU has won him plaudits at home and in neighbouring countries, but raises questions for rest of Europe,” The Guardian writes.
Zeman warned that the Czech Republic could be attacked by Islamic radicals and he urged Czechs “to arm themselves against what he referred to as a possible super-Holocaust.”
The Guardian writes that his alarmist messages are particularly striking as unlike most anti-immigrant politicians in Western Europe, Zeman is a social democrat rather than a right-winger, and the Czech Republic “has been largely spared the waves of refugees that have swept into neighbouring Austria and Hungary en route to Germany.”
Zeman also claims that moderate Muslims pose a threat because they “could be radicalised to commit terror attacks as ordinary Germans were once inspired to fanatically back Hitler.”
In reaction to the accusations of populism and inevitable comparisons with the U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Zeman says British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had always been a populist and he was right.
Calling somebody a populist is “a slogan, a label, nothing more,” Zeman said.
“Criticism is also levelled at the president’s Euroscepticism, manifested in his denunciation of EU sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea. Zeman has demanded referendums on the Czech Republic’s membership of the EU and NATO, while insisting he would advocate staying in each,” The Guardian writes.
The Czech need to remain in the EU is justified by finances according to Zeman. “My cynical explanation is that we are not the net payer in the European Union. We get a huge amount of subsidies from European funds,” the daily quotes him as saying. “This is not the situation of British people, of course.”
Zeman said the EU is unlikely to survive Brexit without triggering further exits unless there is a change of leadership and radical reform to stem pointless directives, The Guardian writes.
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