Disinformation servers allege Czechs depicted as "white trash" in new comedy series

The "Most!" series is a Czech Television program that uses comedy to present contrasts, and not just about the city of Most itself. One facet of that contrast is its depiction of the social exclusion of a large part of the Romani community, including drug use and disorder.

Another facet of the series is that its portrayal of many of the majority-society characters reveals that they should not be reproaching members of the Romani minority when they themselves do not behave any differently. There is also a third line of contrast, and that is the division between adults and youth.

The series depicts young people as living their own separate lives and, in a city full of social problems, addressing their own apparently common personal problems with love, even as the writing inconspicuously points to the big differences that exist between those who receive a college preparatory education and those in vocational school. The series is very successful and is breaking viewership records.

Most Czech television stations are not accustomed to the Monday evening time slot, which "Most!" occupies, being a big draw. Apparently, anybody can find something to identify with in the series.

However, the producers of this comedy evidently cannot expect to find fans for it among those who create Czech-language disinformation content online. For example, the "Pravý prostor" (Right Space) website, which has long has demonstrated that it is a media outlet for ultra-right radicals, has now gone into battle against the comedy, which has apparently hit them too close to home.

"The basic attempt of 'Most!' is to depict white people who hold more radical opinions as stupid, unsuccessful zeros," the disinformation website opines. "Czech State Television [sic] has simply created yet another piece of agitprop showing gypsies as nice little guys and sweetie pies while the Czechs are shown as total 'white trash', as scum who are a waste."

If "sweetie pies" here meant "drug users", one might be able to agree with this assessment. As for the Sputnik disinformation website, it has read the online discussions posted beneath the article and written up an analysis of them in order to show how "perverse" the series is.

Elsewhere, commentator Karel Kříž calls the series "just multicultural agitprop dotted with several politically incorrect messages in order to increase viewership." The "Patriotic News" disinformation wesbite (Vlastenecké noviny) attacks the program for its alleged use of a "double standard".

There's nothing to be done about this. The disinformation websites see conspiracies in every pickle jar.

First published on the website Manipulátoři.cz.