Czech D.O.S.T. initiative member linked to fascist and neo-Nazi scenes

Martin Kadlečík, a native of the South Bohemian town of Strakonice, characterizes himself as a conservative Czech nationalist. The website of Anti-Fascist Action in the Czech Republic, Antifa.cz, has published an article in which it has no scruples about labeling him a fascist with longtime personal contacts to the neo-Nazi scene. The article is available in full (in Czech) at http://www.antifa.cz/content/martin-kadlecik-fasista-v-radach-nejen-dost . The following is an abbreviated translation.

Kadlečík has been mentioned in past reports on the South Bohemian neo-Nazi scene. He has repeatedly been photographed in the company of the Strakonice members of the local organization of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strany sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS) and other South Bohemian Nazis. On the other hand, his name has also turned up in relation to the activities of the conservative/nationalist D.O.S.T. initiative, which has profiled itself as on the side of Czech President Václav Klaus. Investigative reporter Ludmila Hamplová has devoted an entire article to Kadlečík in which she analyzes in detail the various fascists and ultra-conservatives active in the D.O.S.T. initiative, but the Editor-in-Chief of the Czech weekly Reflex has reportedly refused to publish her piece.

At first glance it might seem that this information and the year-old photographs on the Antifa website are sufficiently illustrative examples of the society in which Kadlečík spends his free time. In those photographs, Kadlečík has let himself be captured for posterity together with South Bohemian Nazis including:

Kamil Víta, a former member of the neo-Nazi band Imperium, active today in the band Gabreta;

Jan Bízek, one of two people arrested in connection with the racist attack on the singer Tonya Graves;

Martin Vachta, a member of National Resistance (Národní odpor) recently released from serving several years in jail for participating in a knife attack in Strakonice that resulted in serious injury;

the head of the local organization in Strakonice, Jiří Polák, for whom it is no problem to wear a t-shirt with a swastika.

Kadlečík’s many years of political development, including his current work, are so interesting and symptomatic of the mutual coexistence and intermingling of the neo-Nazi and ultraconservative scenes that Antifa.cz has decided to devote this entire article to him.

Kadlečík’s activity began prior to 2001, when he was part of the creation of the Strakonice branch of the Patriotic Front (Vlastenecká fronta – VF). Around 2003 he moved to Prague in order to study. After arriving in the capital he was active in the local branches of the VF and National Unity (Národního sjednocení). Neither organization has ever had a problem collaborating with openly neo-Nazi organizations to a certain degree. Thanks in part to his visits to matches of Prague’s Sparta football team, however, Kadlečík also made friends among the political wings of the neo-Nazis in National Resistance Prague, who were at the time partially organized in the structure of the National Social Bloc (Národně sociálního bloku).

In 2010 the members of the Prague branch of the VF, led by then-chair David Macháček, commemorated the 10th anniversary of the organization, and Martin Kadlečík was of course there. The chair did not forget to praise the fruitful cooperation with the National Corporativism organization, which lies on the border between neo-fascism and neo-Nazism and was headed at the time by Jiří Petřivalský. Today Petřivalský is the chair of the Prague regional organization of the DSSS and its republic-wide “committee of conciliation”.

Macháček also gave a similarly positive evaluation to the collaboration with the ultraconservative organization National Unity (Národní sjednocení), whose chair at the time was none other than František Červenka, today the secretary of the D.O.S.T. initiative. Today Červenka is fully devoted to D.O.S.T., and the chair of the declining National Unity organization was taken over by the former chair of the VF, David Macháček. Kadlečík is still a member of National Unity’s board, as he was during the Červenka era.

The fascist VF and the ultraconservative National Unity have always inclined toward converging with the neo-Nazi scene, which is much more numerous in terms of activists. Kadlečík has played and to a certain extent still plays a leading role in this.

Kadlečík started turning up in public regularly, starting in 2003:

At the 1 May demonstrations that year he and VF vice-chair František Nonnemann attended the neo-Nazi demonstration convened by the National Social Bloc (then the political wing of the National Resistance and the National Alliance).

On 28 October, the traditional holiday commemorating the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, which the VF celebrates annually, Kadlečík turned up as one of the official conveners of the event. The demonstration organized by the VF, which shares staff with National Unity, was supported in large numbers by activists from the neo-Nazi National Resistance Prague and local neo-Nazis from other Czech towns.

The convergence begun in 2003 is also proven by the support of VF activists for the attempt in November to hold a nighttime torchlight march through Prague’s Jewish Quarter on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. The event was announced to authorities by National Resistance Prague activists Petr Fryč and Petr Kalinovský. Their provocation was responded to by civil society and by radical anti-fascists and was a fiasco for the neo-Nazis. Martin Kadlečík and František Nonnemann attended on behalf of the VF – with Kadlečík holding a candle instead of a torch – while VF chair Macháček just lurked in the background, not even participating in his demonstration.

The heads of National Resistance Prague at that time, including Petr Kalinovský, Tomáš Kebza and Jiří Tůma, then attempted to disrupt an event taking place in the Waldstein Garden in Prague on the occasion of the Days of Jewish Culture. Kebza and Tůma had just been released from prison. Tůma would later become famous for his contact with the one of the Vítkov arsonists. However, Martin Kadlečík also made it there to engage in the provocation together with his friend Patrik Vondrák of National Resistance Prague.

The year 2004 closed with a further convergence of the VF and National Unity with the neo-Nazis, when those organizations convened a demonstration on the anniversary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia on 28 October together with National Corporativism. At that time VF was already openly collaborating with neo-Nazis from National Resistance. Kadlečík was one of the official conveners of that demonstration.

Kadlečík has left no doubt as to his political orientation and sympathies for the Nazis and has regularly attended the events of his “home” organizations, the VF and National Unity, as well as events that are purely neo-Nazi. That was the case of his attendance at events run by National Resistance, National Conservatism, and the new organization of the Autonomous Nationalists in Kladno, whose ideological background grew out of the Kladno branch of the VF.

In September of last year, Kadlečík turned up in a video recording made by news server Romea.cz in relation to the Ladislav Bátora scandal. More than anything else, this video provides us with a clear image of how closely linked the fascist, neo-Nazi and ultraconservative scenes are in Prague.

Petr Kalinovský, at that time a leading figure in the neo-Nazi National Resistance, gave a lecture on “The Causes and Development of Czech Anti-Jewishness” to the VF in Prague. Kadlečík attended, as did Bátora, who was later put through the wringer in the media for it. Others attending included the leaders of the political wing of National Resistance, Erik Sedláček and Patrik Vondrák, as well as representatives of National Corporativism, Zdeněk Zvoníček and Jiří Petřivalský. Other attendees include Petr Fryč and Martin Tauš, at that time representing the Autonomous Nationalists in Lhotka, and VF representatives David Macháček and František Nonnemann.

The end of 2007 saw a sharp rejection of a neo-Nazi attempt at a provocation in the form of yet another march through Prague’s Jewish Quarter, planned by the informal organization of the political wing of the National Resistance, the Young National Democrats (Mladí národní demokraté). Some of the ultraconservatives then began a new strategy associated with a petition launched by the D.O.S.T. initiative.

Even though that initiative at the start was supported by several MPs and senators with the Civic Democrats (ODS), few would have expected that today, thanks to the support for it offered by the Office of the President of the Czech Republic, it has become the most important and most visible initiative of the most conservative section of the political spectrum. It is supported by several other initiatives, politicians, and smaller political parties such as Mach’s “Freedom” party (Svobodní) or Jana Bobošíková’s “Sovereignty” party (Suverenita).

The success of this initiative – which was most visible in the pressure exerted by the Office of the President of the Czech Republic to keep the indefensible Ladislav Bátora in a high official post at the Education Ministry – and the growth in self-confidence of heretofore insignificant regional conservatives and nationalists might have been expected to lead to the dissolving of D.O.S.T.’s contacts with open fascists and neo-Nazis, as they could potentially be politically damaging now. Not only has no such step been taken, but as has been reported elsewhere by Antifa, those personal relationships remain intact. There are several examples, such as links to František Červenka, former chair of National Unity and spokesperson at the demonstrations convened by the fascist VF and neo-Nazi National Corporativism; the regular participation of neo-Nazis led by Petr Fryč and Patrik Vondrák at D.O.S.T. events; and the participation of Martin Kadlečík, who regularly turns up at D.O.S.T. initiative events as an official convener.