Freedom of speech is a basic human right. If it is violated, that can endanger the protection of other human rights.
The defense of any right necessarily involves the public communication of that defense. Despite this, however, democratic states do restrict freedom of speech to a certain degree when it involves direct incitement to violence or support for movements that advocate violating other citizens’ rights; examples of this are those political parties that want to overturn democracy and institute political systems without any freedom of speech at all.
Last week several bands close to the neo-Nazi scene made two attempts to subjugate the Czech capital. One concert by the Ostrava-based street rap band Fuerza Arma, which takes care to avoid direct references to neo-Nazism and racism in its lyrics, was cancelled by the band itself, who said a negative media campaign had been waged against it.
The other concert, which was supposed to feature overtly neo-Nazi bands on Saturday in the Na Slamníku pub in the Bubeneč quarter of Prague, was also cancelled by the organizers. After news server Antifa.cz pointed out the neo-Nazi pasts of several of the band members scheduled to perform, the Prague police began to ask those attending the planned concert for their identification, reducing the numbers of those in attendance to about 80 people.
Was this a success for those opposed to Nazism, or a defeat for the advocates of freedom of speech? It’s hard to say if one wasn’t actually there.
Fans of the bands who were just interested in a cultural experience and who are not themselves adherents of Nazism or racists are angry. The organizers will most likely endeavor to improve their conspiracy skills next time and the concerts will most probably take place later.
As part of maneuvers implemented by the Organized Crime Detection Unit (Útvar pro odhalení organizovaného zločinu – ÚOOZ) in 2009 (operations with names like Lotta or Power), the main organizers of neo-Nazi concerts in the Czech Republic were arrested and taken into custody for quite some time. They are still being tried for felony promotion of Nazism and the proceedings are becoming protracted.
However, this does not at all mean that such concerts have stopped; they are now being organized in secret. Since this automatically reduces the organizers’ prospects for higher numbers of paying visitors, their strategy has changed.
Promoters have stopped openly propagandizing for Nazism during their "public concerts", banning, for example, the giving of the Nazi salute and asking those attending not to break any laws in the neighborhood of the concert venue either beforehand or afterward. During the closed, secret events, however, everything runs as usual.
Last November the Žatecký deník daily paper reported on what this has looked like in their area in recent years:
• 2009– an enormous neo-Nazi concert in Žatec attended by hundreds of people where riot police intervened; two very eventful public gatherings organized by the [ultra-right] Workers’ Party in Postoloprty; extensive arrests of right-wing radicals causing a disturbance in Žatec as well.
• 2010 – a Workers’ Party event featuring banned symbols in Louny and concerts in Žatec.
• 2012 – celebration of Hitler’s birthday in Žatec, police arrested concert-goers at the venue during another large right-wing extremist music event.
• 2013 – calm. No [ultra-right] public events or concerts.
Violence happens even when not directly incited
When evaluating or prosecuting such events, it’s not just the content of song lyrics or lawbreaking (such as giving the Nazi salute) that is at issue. Another reason the police monitor and sometimes even disperse such events is the violence that accompanies or follows them.
The Czech band Sons of Bohemia, which played last June at Na Slamníku, also performed at the start of 2011 in the Central Bohemian town of Velký Osek. That same night after the Velký Osek concert an arson attack was committed against a Romani family in the nearby town of Býchory.
News server iHNED.cz identified one of the concert organizers as having been involved in the arson. The convicted perpetrators eventually left the courtroom with suspended sentences, while the victimized family moved to another town in fear for their lives.
At the end of January 2009, Silesian neo-Nazis held a concert across the border in nearby Poland. Concert-goers returning to the Czech Republic just before dawn threw a Molotov cocktail into the dwelling of a Romani family in the town of Moravský Beroun.
The attack was investigated, but not in connection with the concert. The result was that the perpetrators were never identified.
Three months later, those same youths, together with a fourth accomplice, performed a similar, but this time highly professionally prepared nighttime attack in the Silesian town of Vítkov. The result was that a two-year-old girl suffered third-degree burns and will have to deal with the painful repercussions of her injuries for the rest of her life.
For that crime the court sentenced the young White Power adherents to 22 years in prison. Today they are probably recalling their successful concert across the Polish border, which evidently bothered no one at the time, even though it was monitored on the spot by the leader of the Counter-Extremism Division of the Moravian-Silesian Regional Police, who is still "serving" in that post today.
Bans are not the only option for preventing violence
In connection with the planned concert in Prague by the Ostrava street rappers, Mayor of Prague Tomáš Hudeček said the following last week to the daily Mf DNES before the band cancelled its own concert: "Such productions are part of democracy, but they have no place in a decent society." The law, however, does not define what a "decent society" is or what does and does not belong to it.
This means it is possible that such considerations might be abused to the detriment of those who, for example, may look or think differently, such as anarchists, Romani people, etc., who just want to play music somewhere. However, in last week’s cases there was no official ban of either concert.
All it took was for the media to warn of the kind of concerts they would be, of the pasts of some of those usually in attendance, police who were prepared, and the understanding of the organizers that their way forward was blocked. It seems everything turned out well.
However, we do not yet know whether the disappointed fans might have taken out their anger over the cancelled concerts somewhere else. We should always be prepared for anything and everything.
