ARR: hello and welcome to right rising the official podcast of the far right analysis network i'm your host alexander reed ross and i'm here today with my co-executive director vera Tika, and Miroslav Mare? of the Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. So, Professor M‡rez is at the Faculty of Social Studies and has spent decades researching the Czech far-right and the transnational far-right, and so, given the recent elections in the Czech Republic and a number of complicated political issues, we wanted to bring you on the podcast and uh and speak with you um with to act for our official collaborative partner um about everything that's going on so thank you so much professor marish for joining our podcast okay thank you for the invitation i hope that it will be fruitful also for for the people who can okay yeah um so your work uh i think is is fascinating because it we find it on the intersection of a number of different sort of axes um and i would describe this matrix as involving a kind of transnational um propaganda foreign fighters and coalition building within in the european and eastern european far right so um my first question is how how did you start to to research these things that have become so you know vital for everybody to understand today 
MM: yeah thank you for your question it's really old story because and and we can we can look deep in the history because uh originally i was maybe more focused generally on party system And then it was also maybe something like a request of the chair of my department at the time. However, also the Czech security bodies, because they want to consult some issues. It was a request to maybe consult some issues with academic sphere. and at the time they asked the Department of Political Science at the time of the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk University and one of my colleagues, he dealt with this issue very intensively, but he left the academic sphere and he became the public official at the Minister of Interior and he recommended me as a potential successor of this issue, so I was starting maybe with this maybe violent extremist scene and until this time i was maybe doing i i i was more focused maybe on this party system issues including democratic parties and radical parties and also non-democratical extremist parties but since this time i was maybe more focused on on right-wing extremist scene including violent extremism and it was also reason for my for my for my involvement in this issue originally the czech republic then in the broader maybe central eastern eastern europe 
ARR: so yeah i noticed that uh some of your earlier stuff looks at um sort of vigilante right-wing violence and this idea of leaderless resistance and and this also involves more recently some of your work on autonomous nationalism I think is that right so I think the Czech Republic is one of the sort of areas where that theme kind of or tendency really started to developed strongly 10, 15 years ago, where you have the, I mean, kind of traditional far-right politics, but given a kind of aesthetic makeover and produced with black bloc tactics in sort of urban guerrilla style, you know, protesting and fighting with the police. So can you talk a little your research in this interesting area okay so maybe we can we can again look more deeper in the history because 
MM: we can start in 1990s when i start my i started my research in in 1990s yeah yeah not 1990s frankly speaking and uh it was time at the time it was not the era of autonomous nationalism black box etc it was time of this hotline skinheads and including neo-nazi skinhead subculture in the czech republic and this um several people from this skinhead scene they were responsible for real racist attacks mainly against the roman minority in the czech republic about also again foreigners and again the opponents mainly from the left far political spectrum so if you look into this into this uh into this decade in 1990s we can see really several for example more around maybe 20 racist murders in the czech republic as i said committed mainly uh against the or the perpetrators were from from from the russi skinhead scene and the and the victims they were maybe roma foreigners and and uh and leftist or liberal opponents of the of this uh uh fire scene and then as you said really came to the change of the of the maybe visual style or or also maybe propaganda style of this uh extremist scene and they return to this black block style of autonomous nationalist uh so for free nationalists inspired from from maybe from german scene how they were connected also to leaders resistance uh organizations or networks to the united states and then this scene because maybe more professional if i may use this cynical word for this yeah because they really maybe left this this uh violent gang attacks at the at the roma community it's not in the world check probably we can i can mention also one case from 2009 when this attack one house this roma family and uh two years old were seriously burned on maybe 80 percent of her body it was radical attacked by by four skinheads in 2009 but then we if you look into the into this first decade maybe on the second half of the first decade of the 21st century and then uh if you look to the years maybe 2011 12 13 then we can see the as i said this professionalization of the far-eye scene for example the huge public demonstrations against the settlements with roma community with support of part of local population it was a it was a typical typical i mean teacher of this year that these years that the that this neo-nazi scene or racist scene was really able one sympathy of some of the of part of the local population in some in some in several regions with maybe some some problems with this interaction between Roma community and the majority majority popularity of ethnic Czechs 
ARR: so my next question is what is the relationship and then I'll turn it over to to Vera for um for her questions um um what's a relationship between these sorts of of violent, autonomous nationalists and leaderless resistance on one hand, and then the rising populist radical right. On the other hand, we saw in the recent elections, a pretty significant boost for the populist radical right in Czech Republic. But on that hand, and then also with the Russian disinformation that you've been studying. So the three things, Are they connected? Are they, you know... Partially connected. 
MM: Thank you for this question. It's a really good question. It's really something like a very specific answer, because we should look into the development of this originally neo-Nazis scene. One part of this scene, they really turned this ideological preferences to Putin's Russia. Why? because they see something like a new new strong leader and this new leader in moscow can be maybe something substitution for this historical person of hitler so that's that's maybe the change of of change the change of the mindset of some neo-nazis from this era of 1990s or or or first decade of the 21st century on the other hand you still have some small scene of this maybe neonazis and they they are still maybe deeply rooted in this in this traditional traditional mindset traditional traditional point of view of world questions and etc yes that and when we are talking for example about the situation at the turn of the first and second decade of the 27th 21st century we can see at the time the rise of this sympathy towards this racist racist movement however they were politically represented at the time mainly by the small party called original workers party then this party then this party was banned in the czech republic and its successor party was called very similar social workers party of social justice but still this party received maybe in in one election around one percent and in some regions It received maybe 4.7% of votes, etc. But still, it was very weak. But at the time, when this party was on the rise, then were established a new populist party in the Czech Republic. And they became more successful, because they maybe were not so openly racist, maybe they were not so openly, and definitely they were not so deeply rooted to the to the to the to the neo-nazi scene or to some historical models of of nazism etc and it was the reason why they became uh more popular another reason was maybe dissatisfaction with the czech politics in general and then of course also utilized in uh utilized in 2015 16 17 the so-called migration crisis because it was generally maybe until this time was not so huge topic for for east central european countries but they then we can observe this uh maybe it's a transfer of of many migrants across the across the central european countries yeah it was something untypical for for this region in the sense for example of refugees from syria or pro from from middle eastern west asian countries yeah and it was something like a mixture of these factors uh and this mixture caused the the rise of the of the new populist parties including recent uh party which is called freedom and direct democracy led by tomio okamura but generally we can see something like a gap between this between this traditional neo-nazi scene and this new populist party really also the also for example the maybe the stuff of this part the personal personal background or people in organization of these parties they are different than for example this traditional neo-nazis of course some of these old style neo-nazis they before the last election said okay we should vote for this spd but we can see maybe more something like a preparedness of the large partial population for potential vote of the party which was until this time not so accepted or maybe this opinion but not so accepted in broader public but after maybe 2014 15 16 we can see also the acceptance of this of this maybe item anti-migrant anti-governmental anti-western values in broader and broader part of society and was a reason for the success of the of the new populist parties 
ARR: just a quick follow-up so when we were talking about foreign fighters on the far right and this is some of your most recent work you have a book out um that was recently published about this in english um um are you seeing uh people from the more just broader populist areas joining these uh uh foreign mercenary or not even mercenary but foreign fighting groups are you seeing people from the leaderless resistance kind of uh tendency joining these uh a tenant joining these violent missions what are you observing in terms of who is becoming a foreign fighter 
MM: again now i left the czech republic because this question may be focused more broadly but i will i want to turn also to the specs to the to some czech specifics generally we should turn into the 2014 at the time the ukrainian far ice scene was interconnected connected with this traditional neo-Nazis scene, because they really use some symbolism of traditional neo-Nazism related to some tragical parts of the history of Central Europe. and then we can see really the the flu of neo-nazis to some uh military units on the ukrainian side on the other hand also the part of the european fascist right including for example some some some some several several several french neo-fascists they were more inspired by the ideas of euro asianism propagated by for example the russian philosopher or political scientist alexander dugin close to the putin's maybe mindset etc and we can see at the time the presence of far-right fighters on both sides on the front line what happened after 2022 after the february invasion of russia we can see that that the number of maybe something like a real neo-nazis into the into the ukrainian armed forces is not so huge as in 2014. on the other hand we can see really the rise of some extremists on russian side but they are and now if i may use the term which is not my how it was a term of my polish police he speaks about the so-called red red brown cocktail yeah so so it's a mixture of me so many of these people they have some specific sympathies for example to stalin's soviet union how they are very intolerant to to to new migration but they are they are against the democracy as a political system but they they they they support So authoritarianism, they use maybe as a symbol red stars, but sometimes they mix this also with some far-right symbolism. As I said, really, the appreciate theme is this red-brown cocktail, as Kasper Reckabeck called it. So that's maybe something like an ideological mix of many foreigner fighters. On the other hand, then we can distinguish between individual countries. countries, because, for example, the foreign fighters from Serbia, they are maybe traditional nationalists with links to the traditional Russian far-right. On the other hand, if now I turn back to the Czech Republic, here you can really see the presence of people without some deeper ideological background, with some pan-Slavist sympathies, because both czechs and russians are slavic nations so they they try to use this pan-slavic ideas to for the reason this this this this uh this involvement on russian side yeah so so still you have also this this this uh strange ideological mix okay i said that recently you can see the decline of of presence of neo-nazis on russian or ukrainian side i'm sorry uh but still you have several small units and they are something like a hub for for presence also some some of these several of these traditional traditional neo-nazi fighters what if i can turn back to your to your ideas or the question on on our leaders resistance i can connect this traditional idea of resistance resistance this modern militant accelerationism very popular now in the western hemisphere and you can see also here some involved specific involvement of this militant acceleration is in ukraine created in war uh between between ukraine and russia uh on one hand yeah also some of these people maybe were connected also to the to the to the ukrainian side if you look to do to the organization called the base uh led by u.s neo-nazi however let's recently probably with a there's a headquarter of the city in russia i think that we can see in in in this propaganda of the base recently on social networks the attempt to want the sympathy to win the sympathy of part of the neo-nazi scene for this anti-ukrainian fight because for example the base they they claim that the the organization base claimed that they that it was the leaders want to establish something like a ethnically white state in carpatia ukraine western ukraine and they try to maybe establish this country or state with help of some neo-nazis pro-russian sympathies that's that's a that's that's maybe some of the attempt to divide this militant actually scene because uh former accelerators organizations they express more sympathy maybe towards the towards the this this ukrainian neo-nazi units or alleged recently you can see this this attempt to use this to use this organization base for propaganda that in in in neo-nazi circles with some anti-ukrainian direction 
ARR: yeah thank you very much for that uh answer that uh is really interesting and covers a whole lot of ground and answers all the other questions i had but i want uh vera to be able to ask some uh questions because um you You know, I know you have a limited amount of time. No, go ahead. Thank you. 
VT: Thank you very much, Alexander and Professor Maresh, for these insights into the transnational and security dimensions of the Czech far wide. I would like to ask, since you touched on the broader environment, security challenges, et cetera, I would like to ask to what extent Czech far-right actors are influenced from other movements or far-right actors elsewhere in Europe, in the USA, or even in Australia? Do they borrow strategies, narratives, or even economic resources from them? and also if they have collaborations with Germany, Austria, Italy, far-right actors. 
MM: Okay, thank you for this question. It's a really difficult answer because we should divide this team into these militant neo-Nazis into the new populist right. And now we can see different directions and different foreign partners. If you look to this, maybe I can start with this violent, really neo-Nazis scene. They are well interconnected with foreign partners, mainly thanks to the new social networks. And recently we can see maybe the interconnection of traditional neo-Nazis, including, for example, former members of Hammerskins or Blatant and other organizations. They are sitting below, for example, in this music scene. and and and i mean white power music because it's still something like a mobilization tool recently not so focused on on young people but it's still focused on your people who are now in the age around 40 50 and they can cooperate for example this italian extreme right or with some with some other other countries in the spread of this uh and in the in the in the in the popularization of this white power music and they can maybe sell also some some music in some social networks maybe from 1990s another maybe field of cooperation of this traditional neo-nazi scene recently very popular is in the sport area and i mean mainly the mixed martial arts and some uh similar sports and this is for example box club or something like this that's now the the the subject of the of the new part of cooperation so-called active clubs also originally founded in united states when is this idea of this traditional neo-nazis scene to establish active clubs as a local gyms local boxer clubs local mma clubs and they maybe the official the the the public aim of this uh of this of these clubs is to the improvement of physical condition or or some some skills in in martial arts etc or box or issues but in fact they are infiltrated the the young people in this class are infiltrated by neo-nazi ideology this original u.s idea now is well spread in europe and we can see now also the rise of these actives clubs in East Central Europe, including the Czech Republic, and they are partially interconnected also thanks to the cooperation between these mixed martial art activists with neo-nazi sympathies. Not all mixed martial art scenes, of course, influenced by neo-nazi sympathies, but with small parts, yes, and in this small part we can see this cooperation okay it was it was my answer to this to this to the to this first scene related to far right if you ask me to do this new populist right then we can see also the growing cooperation including for example between the czech and german far right it was not not so typical due to the fact that that due to historical determination from the second world war etc but recently we can see also this cooperation between between for example the spd and uh alternative for germany as a representative of this new popular arriving populist party politics and we can see also the growing cooperation at european level and and we can see also for example in european parliament the cooperation of the cooperation i'm sorry between between uh various far-right parties parties from from european countries including former eastern europe including former western europe in the sense of eastern western bloc uh and uh yeah maybe we can observe that though definitely we can observe the the the recent ties to the to the united states uh if you look to the to the to the australia or new zealand i'm not so sure but here i can again maybe identify some some links to this to this militant neo-nazist team but i don't have information maybe there are some context but i don't information about the cooperation for example between australian populist new right and and the czech part the czech populist new right but definitely we can see this this strong cooperation between the in european area between these parties including czech parties and now i can turn back to this question on russian influence yeah we can we can observe also for example the fact that russia is hosting some of these transnational meetings of so-called national conservative far right yeah so so there's sometimes also also there are some obscure group that i invited to russia to discuss for example this russian pro-putin's parties but definitely we can see also russian involvement there and now if i yeah i'm still talking just about the czech republic but we can if when i mentioned this alternative for germany and this party has now strong ties also to to to check check check scene we can see if i now if i may also assess the situation in germany we can see also the division in the alternative for germany because one part of this of this recently in surveys the strongest german party uh but not in parliament but not in bundestag not in german parliament but in some some surveys this party uh is uh divided in in in relation to russia uh i i'm afraid a large part of this party is maybe pro pro putin's party so proper resistance programming party but we can see also the opposition to this very open and clear pro Russian positions. Some parties are more skeptical to this cooperation with Russia. And yeah, several situations we can observe also, for example, in France or in the United Kingdom, this [É] to the situation within this modern populist right. 
VT: I'd like to turn now to the digital sphere, which is reshaping far-right mobilization across the region and across the world. How would you describe the digital mobilization and online radicalization patterns of the Czech worldwide actors today? Are there some distinct characteristics that set the Czech digital ecosystem apart from other countries or settings? 
MM: I'm not sure if I can something like the differences we are going with of course now i can start with this modern populist right definitely if i see for example some of this may be pro modern arriving populist statements in internet connected with some pro-russian statements and maybe also with russian influence we can see this use of panslavism which that is relatively strong in uh in in the czech internet And for example, this pan-slavism works in the Czech Republic, works in Slovakia, but it doesn't work in Poland due to the historical determinants, due to the historical conflicts between Poland and Russia. So in Poland it doesn't work, in Czech Republic and Slovakia, yes. So that was this part about this maybe modern populist stride. If I can turn back to this militant scene, and it's my thought that I forget to mention it in my previous answer, we can see now also the rise of these really new youngsters' networks in social networks, as originally was connected with terrorgrams and with some links to the orgy of English 090 in Western countries. Recently, for example, we can see the new phenomenon of the so-called Millicolos Creek, and they are really this neo-Nazi, and I said neo-Nazi, but it's a really strange mixture of some brutal ideologies, neo-Nazism, satanism, maybe also the so-called white jihadism, etc. And it is focused not on maybe some, well, some experienced politicians, etc., but it focus on teenagers and in the in the age for example 12 13 14 years yeah and they they try to use very brutal videos some some if you look to the videos of some of the groupings this is this is a one minute video with this with some executions uh decapitations committed by by neo-nazis by by the so-called islamic state by the by by another brutal groups in the world and And they simply try to want the sympathy of this, maybe, of youngsters dissatisfying with their life. So that's really a strong focus to win sympathy in the minds of these teenager groupings. And then these teenagers are over-manipulated. They can be then responsible for some brutal attacks. And I can tell, several years ago, there was a crime in Bratislava, committed by a very young boy. he killed two people from LGBT community, and he was inspired by another Slovak citizen, young student, and he studied in Brno, in the town where I'm now located. So he studied in Brno, and he was connected with some people in California, also in the global terror network. network yes also so so so we can see this international international in this virtual sphere in this in the cyberspace and here really we can see this this uh this interconnection and and daily thoughts between between people from for example from central europe and in in in in the Pacific coast in the US okay so thank you for your questions 
VT: thank you professor that was extremely insightful Alexander perhaps you can pick up the thread from here 
ARR: well I think I think we'll have to you know bring it bring everybody back together sometime in the future because I think professor Marish has to to go i can discuss with you 
MM: frankly speaking i invited to the to the to the how to say in english when you there is a new book it's also baptism of new book a very very very new book because i invited because my colleague from the constitutional court of the czech republic wrote a book about this information in the czech republic and i invited to the to the theater in Brno to be the guest of this invitation of the new book into the market. So that's the reason why I am today not so into this time. But I have to leave because originally I was told that I can be here longer. But in the next 20 minutes I should be in one theater here in Brno. All right, well. Definitely we can meet again. So for me it's no problem. This is for me maybe the good time if you have nine uh a.m so i have six p.m so that's that's that's that's acceptable for both house also yeah thank you so much for joining us uh i hope your event goes uh swimmingly and um uh i hope uh people check out your work and your your latest book uh what was the title of the latest book about foreign fighters uh foreign fighters and extreme right there we go foreign fighters and extreme i sent you the full title it was because frankly it was it was just a moment i uh i also forget the full the wall subtitle but uh does they change it in last time yeah it's this this is in check it's in english it's not it says it it is it was published now in october but it's officially it's published in 2026 also the next year is the officials i put it in the chat yeah so that's my newest book it's not my book i'm co-editor with one german colleague with daniel keller and the the i'm i'm author one chapter and co-author three chapters but it's not not just my book but we have several authors including from united states is uh david mallet if you can invite him this is perfect this may be he's also perfect expert on on general on foreign fighters in general all jihadists etc but in this book this book is dedicated just to the to the extreme right foreign fighters so this david mallet wrote on this uh on this uh extreme right fighters from united states but if you want more guests this michael author from from germany daniel keller he's a chair of the deradicalization uh center and uh he is also active in this field that's also and he wrote also a book about the far-right terrorism in germany several years ago recently he works on more and more issues but you can see he's also one of the influential books just on on this violent neo-nazism it's really terrorism in in germany all right yeah so um well thanks again for joining us uh thank you and now everything we have to go because [leaves]
ARR: all right so um i i maybe we can spend a few minutes kind of unpacking uh before we sign out what do you think yeah yeah of course um it was wonderful 
VT: right yeah maybe we can devote another podcast uh alexander uh to these foreign fighters maybe we can invite david keller from the de-radicalization uh maybe on de-radicalization strategies uh etc etc landscape in europe what do you think 
ARR: yep absolutely i think what's fascinating here and what um uh professor mares was kind of um uh focusing on is the the kind of movement of the violent extremism right so we go from the kind of skinheads in the 90s who are doing violent crimes um to uh you know this within this leaderless yes uh resistance framework attacking the roma and uh houseless people And then from there, with the rise of the far right and the nationalist, autonomous nationalists, you have this kind of new form of that, the far right, right, which is like these violent extremists who sort of intermesh with, but also sometimes oppose the populist radical right. And then you also during this period in the mid 2010s have Russian disinformation, you know, amplifying oppositions and also supporting the national conservative movements. And more recently, the far right kind of rising amid the war. In Ukraine. In Ukraine, exactly. And foreign features. Yeah. yeah yeah all over the world sort of um increasingly taking up this uh the red brown cocktail i do wish um if he had if if he had been able to stick around a little bit longer i think uh your questions about the ideological evolution of the czech far right the the especially the populist party would have been interesting to learn about yeah yeah but we we didn't have much time so I skipped how many actors are operating in the Czech Republic would be a very interesting question kind of introductory question but yeah it was very nice I think it's really fascinating to learn about the Czech far right, because so much of it is so similar to what we see everywhere else. And I think that's part of what he's talking about is like, there are local features in the Czech Republic, or in Hungary, or in Poland, or in Germany, you know, obviously very, very different climates, very different sort of relations between the state and the government and the parties. But at the same time, there's a lot of communication and interlinking and hybridization between movements in these areas that share common ideology. Yes. And at the same time, they are against each other. 
VT: So this is the big puzzle, Alessandro. How do they communicate, collaborate with each other? And at the same time, they are, historically speaking, they are against each other. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like there are two interests. environment of nationalism and uh yeah revivalism uh of nationalism 
ARR: yeah yeah it's almost like there's two interests there's like a transnational interest where they recognize as sort of uh the interest of a solidarity and strategies against a common enemy and then there's on a nationalist level there's a sense that uh a nation that is conscious of itself and works towards its own good common good naturally also has an enemy in the other nation that's trying to do the same thing so so underneath the common alliance against the common part of common um enemy there's this friction uh where the nationalists you know um oppose one another for historical territorial even cultural and linguistic reasons yeah 
VT: yeah yeah it's uh nice uh should we write a summary of this podcast and publish it in a friend website or something? Yeah, sure. Let's do a summary and we'll stop recording this podcast right now and so we'll post that as well. Yeah, okay. all right well so thanks to sent it also to me uh in order to publish it in my to act for website oh yeah absolutely oh yeah and i i mentioned it earlier but this has been a collaboration between uh the far right analysis network and to act for do you want to talk a bit more about about to act for it it is my organization it is against against xenophobia discrimination in greece but western balkans and in europe also um yeah i i finally did together with a colleague of mine, Nicolaus Gaitenidis. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Very cool. I will send you the link of the website to have a look. And we'll post it in the summary. Yeah. It was very nice, Alexander, and generally speaking, it's very nice to collaborate with you it's uh uh everything uh flows very smoothly um okay yeah we have a lot of deadlines and yeah happy program uh what do you think if we uh invite also valerio bruno next week or 
ARR: yeah next week might be a little soon yeah we definitely should we should get into some italian politics because i know they've had the Qatargate recently they've been a lot of tumult because uh uh the president a close associate of the president said uh some mean things about um about Meloni and there was a big sort of a scandal around that and so um i don't know maybe we're seeing uh um some challenges uh in for for Meloni 's block in terms of uh some national politics there's also been mixed signals about ukraine you know they're kind of trying to pull out of a european agreement about ukraine But then at the same time, they're also sending aid, you know, so it's very confusing. And we should have Valerio and maybe some other folks. And I know Valerio also has a recent book maybe that just came out and he needs to be able to amplify that. So that's another reason to bring him on. We can watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking also, if we make podcast series also for other countries, for example, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, very interesting. And, you know, different countries of the world and to make it on a frequent basis. 
ARR: Yep. Yep. That's what we're doing. um but for everybody who's been listening uh thank you very much for tuning in uh this has been the far right analysis network um monthly meeting no just kidding um a podcast with Miroslav Mare? and of course my wonderful uh co-host today um and um uh executive committee co-member Vera Tika with 2 Act 4 and we are very happy to have you here and hope to see you next time. Professor Mare?, thank you for sharing your expertise. Alexander, thank you for the thoughtful conversation and to all our listeners, stay informed, stay critical and stay engaged. Until the next Front End 2 Act 4 podcast episode, thank you for being with us.