Jan Charvát

Antifascism emerged in the Czech Republic during the interwar period during the so-called First Republic from 1918 to 1938.

In the Czech environment, the most essential fascist groups in this period were the National Union of Fascists (NOF) and Vlajka. In both cases, however, these are relatively marginal organizations. Antifascist positions are then primarily defended by the political left, especially the Social Democrats, the non-communist Marxists, the Cultural Front led by the Liberated Theatre, the liberals, and the President of the Republic, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. His statement that fascism was the “pathological seat of the nation” is still remembered today.

A specific role is played currently by the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, which underwent a process of so-called Bolshevisation in the 1920s, culminating in its absolute attachment to the Comintern from about 1929 onwards, making its policy towards fascism directly subject to the decision-making of the USSR. Thus, in the 1930s, the communists used the word fascism instead to designate all non-communist political parties, especially social democracy (so-called social fascism), precisely in line with the policy of the Comintern.

The situation is somewhat different in Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking environment, where several political parties have formed, including the German Social Democracy, which strongly opposes fascism. At the same time, since the beginning of the 1920s, there have been pro-Nazi parties of the German-speaking population that have been oriented towards separatism and have demanded the annexation of the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany. After Hitler came to power, the most important Czech or German pro-Nazi party was formed, the Sudeten German Party (SdP), led by Konrad Henlein, which would make a significant contribution to the Munich Agreement and the disintegration of the First Republic through the surrender of the border areas to Germany in 1938. By this time, most of the non-leftist German parties no longer exist and are absorbed by the Sudeten German Party, which at the same time has the support of the Czech Agrarian Party, the most important Czech right-wing party, which sees the Sudeten German Party as a possible ally in the fight against communism.

A significant moment was the migration from Germany, when since 1933, tens of thousands of refugees from Hitler arrived in Bohemia, either from among the Jewish population or active antifascists who subsequently tried to organize in Bohemia to fight fascism. Among them was the writer Thomas Mann, who was granted Czechoslovak citizenship, and the actress Marlene Dietrich, who also sought Czechoslovak citizenship. Thanks to her husband, a native of Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic, she became a convinced antifascist. Nevertheless, among the refugees to Czechoslovakia was also Otto Strasser, founder of the Schwarze Front, a dissident Nazi movement emphasizing anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism, who had to flee Germany after the Night of the Long Knives, during which his brother Georg was murdered.

The position of German refugees in Czechoslovakia at this time was challenging. On the one hand, they faced the hatred of the growing pro-Nazi movement in the Sudetenland, but at the same time, they were also perceived as a problem by the right-wing Czech political parties, as described for example by Erich Maria Remarque in his Flotsam.

A greater activation of antifascism in Czechoslovakia occurred during the Spanish Civil War when about 2000 people from Czechoslovakia went to Spain to fight on the side of the inter-brigadists. The Interbrigades were organized in Czechoslovakia by the Communist Party and the Social Democracy, with communists making up about half of all fighters. After the defeat of the Republican government, most of the Interbrigadists went to France and then to England and participated in the war in the ranks of the Western armies.

During World War II, Czechoslovakia was seized by Nazi Germany, and the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established. From the beginning of the war, however, the domestic resistance became active, divided into the so-called pro-democracy resistance, consisting mainly of members of the army, the Sokol organization, and left-wing political parties, and then the communist resistance, which, because of Comintern policy, became active only after the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941. During the war, most of the democratic resistance was gradually liquidated by the Nazis, with its remnants subsequently joining communist groups. Thus, at the end of the Second World War, there were a few resistance and partisan groups in Czechoslovakia, but all of them were essentially linked either directly to the Soviet Union or to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. However, their members were not necessarily all communists. The Communist Party then used this legacy throughout its existence, stripping it of all non-communist elements.

In the post-war period, the German population was expelled from Czechoslovakia, and only those Germans who could prove that they had been active antifascists during the war were allowed to stay. However, many of them left Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948 in fear for their lives.

After 1948 and the communist coup, antifascism became formally part of communist ideology, with NATO and specifically West Germany being described as fascist, which was described by communists as a hotbed of fascist revanchism. The Communist Party formally rejected nationalism, although the Communist Party’s real action very often came close to nationalist postulates. By the 1980s, however, most of these phrases were exhausted; they had no more value for the youth, and it was natural for some people to define themselves against them, just as they had gradually defined themselves against the Communist regime. This is reflected from the mid-1980s onwards in the environment of the subcultures of Punk, Skinheads, and, to some extent, Metal, which gradually penetrated communist Czechoslovakia through the Iron Curtain and which, at this time, often adopted anti-communist and, in some cases, nationalist or racist rhetoric (often primarily for reasons of provocation).

This will be significant after 89 and the fall of the communist regime, when relatively aggressive anti-communism and nationalism emerged as moments characteristic of the newly forming Czechoslovak or Czech society, which were also approaches that legitimized the emergence of the far right after 1989.

After 1989, the far right took shape in Czechoslovakia along two lines. On the one hand, the political line, represented mainly by the Republican Party of Czechoslovakia led by Miroslav Sládek, but on the other hand, since 1990, subcultural right-wing groups associated mainly with the racist part of the skinhead subculture have been forming. Since 1990, these groups have profiled themselves in the Czech Republic in a similar way to the way the skinhead subculture profiled itself in the 1980s in Western Europe, i.e., through a combination of violence and racism. The target of attacks by these groups are people from the Roma community, which represents the most significant ethnic minority in Czechoslovakia, but also people from other subcultures such as punk, skate, or hip hop. It is from members of these subcultures and the anarchist movement exposed to attacks by racist skinheads that the first antifascist and anti-racist groups were formed. Subsequently, in 1996, the Antifascist Action (AFA) was founded, a continuation of the groups of the same name in Western Europe, combining militant antifascism and anarchist ideology.

In parallel, the first civic antifascist groups were formed. As early as 1993, the Civic Solidarity and Tolerance Movement (HOST) was founded, followed by several other groups that existed for most of the 1990s. They try to monitor neo-Nazi groups, inform them about their activities, and at the same time, put pressure on the state authorities to intervene against neo-Nazis. Specifically, in the first half of the 1990s, this was a significant activity as the police underwent reorganization and transformation following the period of communist dictatorship.

Antifascist Action was active until about 2018, undergoing several rather fundamental internal transformations that first made it firmly attached to the anarchist movement, only to have this link partially loosened after 2007, leading to a particular transformation of its functioning when the AFA opens to public action and is willing to supply information about people from the neo-Nazi milieu to the media. During this period, Antifascist Action is perceived by the Ministry of the Interior as an extremist organization, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a large part of the Czech media uses it for its relatively high-quality and adequate monitoring. As a result, its perception in Czech society is ambivalent, but because it primarily focuses on the fight against neo-Nazism, it is perceived rather positively by at least part of society. At the same time, the AFA has long been openly anti-communist (a characteristic element of anarchist groups in Central and Eastern Europe). After the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, it will issue a rather extensive statement calling attention to Russian imperialism and supporting anti-authoritarian groups in Ukraine.

At the same time, around 2008, the AFA stopped organizing blockades of neo-Nazi marches, which reactivated the emergence of new groups of civic antifascism. These are, on the one hand, ad hoc local associations that try to block neo-Nazi marches in a happening manner, which occurred predominantly in the period 2008-2011. Since 2010, the Initiative for No Racism (INR) has also been active, trying to organize antifascist demonstrations across the Czech Republic and as a kind of bridge between civic and militant antifascism. Since 2018, it has essentially been replaced by the group Kolektiv 115, which continues similarly.