Czech President Petr Pavel on Thursday signed an amendment to the country’s criminal code that criminalises the promotion of communist ideology, placing it on the same footing as Nazi propaganda.
The revised legislation introduces prison sentences of up to five years for anyone who “establishes, supports or promotes Nazi, communist, or other movements which demonstrably aim to suppress human rights and freedoms or incite racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred.”
The change follows calls from Czech historical institutions, including the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, to correct what they viewed as a legal imbalance.
[…]
It’s fascinating that in a world where to far right is surging everywhere, having captured the only superpower, with the richest man in the world throwing sieg heils on live primetime television, where we are entering an era of new concentration camps, these kinds of liberals find it useful to do stupid shit like this. Do they not see that if/when the fascists capture their presidency they will use exactly these laws to turn the screws on everyone to the left of the far right?
Honest question: how did you deduce that “kinds of liberals” did this? What sort of party does the Czech president belong to?
edit: I forgot that there will be much confusion about the US-American definition of “liberal”, which sucks, because it applies to anything left of fascism. Fwiw, liberalism has a specific definition most which also many Republicans subscribe to. Fuck the US political system. Thanks for whoever tried to clarify below, but the discourse is a mess.
He was widely lauded as a pro-western anti-populist liberal when he was elected. His political positions as re generally aligned with liberal parties across Europe.
As an European - which liberal parties? Did you mean libertarian?
I mean liberal. Pavel was supported by parties like ODS, TOP09, KDU, which are economically liberal parties. More generally, European liberalism is represented by groupings such as ALDE, or Renew. But European technocratic liberalism is strong in both the centre left and centre right parties all over Europe.
Thanks for clarifying, have a pointless internet point.