Slovak pubs to host anti-fascist festival
Nearly 100 bars across Slovakia will next month welcome more than 140 acts for Slovenská krčma (‘Slovak Pubs’), an ‘anti-fascist’ festival organised in protest against growing support for far-right politics.
Beginning on Monday 4 and running until Sunday 16 February, Slovenská krčma will feature domestic stars such as Billy Barman, Para, Rozpor, Vec & Škrupo + Tono, Bez ladu a skladu, Modré Hory and Komajota, as well as emerging acts from a variety of genres.
The venues, meanwhile, include ‘proper’ pubs as well as cafés and clubs, in cities and towns including Bratislava, Hurbanovo, Námestovo, Trebišov and Hostovice, near the north-eastern border.
The latest opinion polling for shows the Direction – Social Democracy (Smer–SD) party with a narrow lead (-6%) over the ultranationalist, anti-gypsy People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) – with many fearing that concerns over corruption could lead to a shock victory for the far right at Slovakia’s next parliamentary elections on 29 February 2020.
“Pub frequenters in Slovakia are not racist and do not identify with fascist views”
Meanwhile, Smer–SD’s leader, ousted ex-prime minister Robert Fico, is being investigated by police for supporting Milan Mazurek, an LSNS member of parliament fined and expelled for making racist statements, stating that Mazurek’s views reflect those of the average pub-going Slovak. Mazurek had said that “gypsy anti-socials have never done anything for the nation and never will” and compared gypsy (Roma) children to “animals in the zoo”.
In a statement, the event’s organisers, who are also the brains behind the country’s biggest music festival, Pohoda, say: “We believe that most of the pub frequenters in Slovakia are not racist and do not identify with fascist views. It was people who go to pubs that Robert Fico referred to when he said after Mazurek’s conviction: ‘If the Supreme Court’s verdict is to be a measure of what is a criminal offence regarding statements on Roma, police might as well enter any pub in Slovakia and lock up all the customers, including dogs lying on the ground.’
“We do not agree with the division of citizens into a café society and a pub society. We frequent both and we meet great people in pubs as well as in cafés. To show that Slovakia is not a racist country, we are organising the Slovak Pub festival.”
For more information about the festival, visit the Slovenská krčma website.
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Investigation into neo-Nazi concert in Austria
Austrian police have launched an investigation into a recent concert by Hungarian Nazi punk band Indulat.
The band, whose name translates as “Temper” or “Anger, reportedly played to an audience of around 70 Austrians, Germans, Swiss and Hungarians somewhere in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg on 5 March in an event organised by the group Blood and Honour.
Austria’s Prohibition Act (Verbotsgesetz) of 1947 prohibits any activity that promotes Nazi ideology, including use of its symbols, and criminalises Holocaust denial. Nazi party founder Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889.
The concert was to originally have taken place in Thüringen, Germany, reports Kleine Zeitung, but was moved to Austria after German authorities prevented it from taking place.
Vorarlberg state security chief Erich Schwärzler has called for better cross-border communication between German and Austrian authorities to crack down on future performances by neo-Nazi bands.