In November 2015, Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) issued new analytical publication – book Extremism vs. Democracy in Central Europe: Issues, Experiences, Challenges (editors Grigorij Mesežnikov and Miroslav Kocúr). The book is an outcome of a project Extremism and its revival in public debate and political movements in Central Europe. 

Authors from Visegrad countries – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – have analyzed historical, political, ideological and socio-cultural aspects of the right-wing extremism in central Europe, right-wing extremist scene and radical-nationalist scene in each country and trends in current public discourse on nationalism.

Political extremism has its wider historical and social context. There are shared factors in each of the V4 countries – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia – that serve as the basis for manifestations of extremism in public and political life after the fall of the Communist regimes. They include hyperboles in the politics of national symbols, ambiguous or even conflicting reading of the past, revanchist attitude among some segments of the society, the traditions of nationalist politics, tensions characteristic for multi-ethnic societies that had lived for years under closed regimes, and confessional conflicts. They are essentially based on resistance to the liberal democratic West. 

Download: Extremism vs. Democracy in Central Europe: Issues, Experiences, Challenges [pdf]