Czech Education Minister appoints alleged sympathizer of Haider and Le Pen as his adviser

Czech Education Minister Josef Dobeš (Public Affairs – VV) has appointed Ladislav Bátora as his economic adviser. Bátora was the top candidate of the chauvinist and racist National Party during elections to the lower house in the Vysočina region. The media have been speculating that he would be engaged by the ministry for more than a month. After his candidacy on behalf of the extremist party was criticized, Bátora received the backing of Czech President Václav Klaus. Bátora is to help Dobeš optimize the ministry’s economic operations.

“This person does not have extremist opinions. He will help me reduce the bureaucratic and economic burden of the ministry and he has the courage it takes,” Dobeš told journalists. The minister claimed to have investigated Bátora’s work in the National Party and at the College of Media and Journalism (Vyšší odborná škola publicistiky), which wrestled with enormous economic problems following Bátora’s departure.

Bátora is the chair of the conservative D.O.S.T. initiative. Not long ago, many nonprofit organizations, politicians, and representatives of the academic community expressed their disagreement with the idea of his being appointed first Deputy Education Minister. “In my opinion, there is no place for a person who ran as a candidate for the National Party in my administration,” Czech PM Petr Nečas said at the time.

One prominent element of the National Party’s program during the time Bátora was active there was the relocation of Roma people from the Czech Republic to India. The party later published its opinions in an official publication entitled “The Final Solution to the Gypsy Question” (“Konečné řešení otázky cikánské”). The author, Jiří Gaudin, was given a suspended prison sentence for so bluntly concurring with the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, which resulted in the murder of millions of innocent people.

Bátora allegedly told the magazine Respekt that he politically identifies with Jörg Haider and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Both politicians are well-known populist political leaders with strong fascist tendencies who are very familiar with the use of lies and manifestations of hatred against immigrants, Jewish people and Roma people. For example, in March 2009, Le Pen declared in the European Parliament that it is evident that the gas chambers were just a “detail” in the history of the Second World War. In making that statement, he was repeating a claim for which he was criminally convicted in 1987.

The late Jörg Haider praised Adolf Hitler for his “healthy employment policy”. He also declared that members of the SS deserve “all honor and recognition” and compared the Nazi transports of Jewish people to concentration camps for annihilation to the displacement of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland after the Second World War. From the beginning, the National Party in the Czech Republic stood unequivocally behind both of these politicians whose legacy Bátora allegedly also espouses, so it is clear that the ideological trains of thought of both of these political actors have always been more than closely aligned.

Czech President Václav Klaus, on the other hand, has labeled the “Bátora cause” an example of “the dictatorship of political correctness” and a “little Czech Hilsner affair” without commenting on Bátora’s National Party candidacy or on his sympathies for the fascist politicians mentioned above. Klaus also declared that many signals have been accumulating which show that today’s society is not a democratic one. Various authority figures in society also condemned the Czech President’s statement.

Bátora is said to have been tasked at the ministry with performing an audit of its real estate and will be one of a dozen ministerial advisers. Dobeš selected him at the recommendation of presidential adviser Petr Hájek even though he was the leading National Party candidate in the Vysočina region in 2006. Although Bátora technically ran as an independent, critics say he must have recognized the party’s approaches and ideas because he otherwise would not have run on their list. The party, which no longer exists, was first and foremost a party opposed to immigrants and Roma people.

About Ladislav Bátora:

Membership in political parties: Member of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party (Československá strana socialistická -ČSS) 1983-1990, the Nationally Social Party (Národně sociální strana – NSS) 1990-93, the Civic Democratic Alliance (Občanská demokratická aliance – ODA) 1993-2001, and the Party of Free Citizens (Strana svobodných občanů -SSO) 2009.

Bátora is a political writer for the monthly 51PRO and the quarterly Národní myšlenka (“National Idea”). As a critic of the EU and multiculturalism, Bátora is close to people around Czech President Klaus, whom he has called a “peerless model”. He is the chair of Akce D.O.S.T., which declares itself to be a civic association supporting civil rights and freedoms and the traditional values of Czech culture and statehood. The initiative has supported Czech President Václav Klaus in his resistance to the Lisbon Treaty, rejects some parts of the EU agenda, and has opposed sex education in the schools. Recently Klaus said Bátora’s opinions are very close to his own in many respects and that a serious dialogue about them should be held.

Bátora has been an unsuccessful national political candidate on several occasions, first to the Czech National Assembly and later to the Chamber of Deputies – in 1990 (to the Czech National Assembly) for the ČSS, in 1996 for ODA, and in 2006 as the independent leader of the National Party candidate list in Vysočina (a nationalist party which long opposed the EU, immigrants, and Roma people). In 2009, Bátora was a candidate for the SSO during the elections to the European Parliament, and last September he unsuccessfully ran as an independent for the Suverenita (“Sovereignty”) party in the Prague 1 Senate race.

For many years, Bátora has worked as a civilian member of the District Court for Prague 7. The weekly Respekt recently charged him with racism when he allegedly “measured Roma and white thieves by completely different standards” in that role, a charge Bátora rejects. Respekt also recently quoted a statement Bátora allegedly made that “If I had to identify with anyone, it would definitely be Jörg Haider or Jean-Marie Le Pen.” However, according to Czech daily Mladá fronta DNES (MfD), Bátora claimed to have never said any such thing and has said he does not hold any great affection for either of those extremist politicians.

At the end of February, information was reported in the media that Czech Education Minister Dobeš had introduced Bátora at a meeting of the ministry leadership as his adviser and candidate for Deputy Minister. Czech PM Petr Nečas (ODS), after meeting with Dobeš, said he could not imagine Bátora at the ministry. President Klaus then labeled the scandal around the possible employment of Bátora at the ministry “the dictatorship of political correctness”.

In mid-March, the Academic Council of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague issued a statement against Bátora’s possible work at the ministry. Their stance was supported by the student chamber of the Council of Universities and by the Rector of the Higher Technical College in Brno (Vysoké učení technické v Brně), Karel Rais.

Last week, Akce D.O.S.T. held a debate in support of Bátora which featured Czech President Klaus’s secretary, Ladislav Jakl.