In many ways, the political landscape in Eastern Europe is still getting its bearings after the fall of Warsaw-pact regimes in 1989-91. Though many Eastern European political parties and movements have been integrated into regional political structures such as EU political parties and parliamentary groupings (both of which operate as EU-wide bodies to which domestic parties chose to affiliate themselves), Eastern European politics often fits imperfectly into this framework of integration largely created by the likes of France, Spain, Belgium, and the United Kingdom — Western European nations that underwent integration much earlier than their Eastern counterparts. Currently, nowhere is this more apparent than in Slovakia.
On March 5, Slovak voters re-elected their firebrand prime minister, Robert Fico. Fico is a social democrat, and the party he leads, Smer-SD (“Direction-Social Democracy”), is a social-democratic party — in label, anyway. They use the social-democratic red rose as their symbol, and, as one would expect, affiliate with the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) parliamentary group in Brussels. In reality, however, Fico and his party continually violate the basic ideological tenets of Western European social democracy, and end up as more of a headache than an asset to their counterparts in Brussels.
While PES and S&D generally take moderate lines on the refugee crisis, Fico’s appeal, and that of Smer, is mostly predicated upon his vitriolic anti-refugee (and, indeed, anti-immigrant) rhetoric, leading to alignment with the similarly anti-migrant heads of government Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. He’s labelled multiculturalism “a fiction”, pronounced that Slovakia was “built for Slovaks, not for minorities,” called for state surveillance of every Muslim in Slovakia, and launched a legal challenge to European agreements requiring that Slovakia, like every EU country, take a certain number of refugees. Though Slovakia is neither a popular destination for migrants, nor located on commonly used transit routes to destination countries like Germany, Fico purposefully made such issues the main focus of his re-election campaign, making bombastic statements such as a pledge to take no more than 200 refugees in total, and only Christians.
Moreover, immigration is not the only issue on which Smer differs from archetypal social-democrats: More generally, there is a wide gulf between Smer and most other European social democrats on social and cultural issues. In the modern political landscape, few positions are more widely held among European social-democrats than support for some level of LGBTQ rights, and in particular the legalization of gay marriage. Despite this relatively widespread consensus, Smer led the successful charge for the constitutional codification of marriage as strictly heterosexual in Slovakia. Additionally, while most European social-democrats adopt, to some extent, rhetoric of social inclusion when it comes to minority groups, Fico has continually blamed Slovakia’s economic problems on its already marginalized Roma population. While most European social-democrats have historically favored state spending on a social-safety net, Smer, in single-party government since 2012, have presided over government spending which represents the fifth smallest percentage of GDP in Europe. The list of differences on social issues goes on.
There is one factor which sometimes links Fico to the typical members of PES and S&D: Smer’s reliance on economically populist measures which in some sense mirror those of traditionally social-democratic platforms — investment in subsidized public transportation, for example. Despite such minor similarities, Smer is hardly a natural fit for PES/S&D, and this ideological divergence proves continually trying. In fact, PES and S&D suspended Smer’s membership once before, from 2006 to 2009, when Fico formed a coalition government with the openly chauvinistic right-wing nationalist party Slovak National Party (SNS).
This year, Fico has once again embraced SNS. Though Smer won a plurality, with only 28.3 percent of the vote and 49 seats in the 150-strong parliament, Fico found himself unable to govern alone and negotiated a four-party coalition including Smer, a neoliberal party called “network” (newly formed by an American-educated lawyer and styling itself #Siet’, or #Network), a neoliberal party centered around the protection of Hungarian minority interests in Slovakia, Most-Híd, and his erstwhile ally, SNS.
Understandably, after conducting an election based almost exclusively upon anti-migrant rhetoric, and once again leaping into bed with a right-wing nationalist party, Fico was summoned to Strasbourg to be chastised by the leadership of PES and S&D. It appears, however, that nothing will actually be done about Smer this time; it will continue to be allowed to affiliate with these groups, using their branding and resources, while in flagrant violation of any principles they theoretically hold. Why can’t PES/S&D actually suspend Smer?
Some have argued that PES/S&D should not de-stabilize Slovakian politics in light of another new entry into Slovakia’s parliament this March — the ominously named “People’s Party — Our Slovakia”, which received 8 percent of overall votes and 23 percent of votes cast by those who had never voted before. This new party makes Robert Fico look like a downright flower child. Its leader, Marian Kotleba, has spoken of his admiration for Jozef Tiso, the clerical leader of the Nazi puppet-state set up in Slovakia during World War II, a man complicit in the Holocaust. Before setting up his current party, Kotleba led a since-outlawed organization known as the “Slovak Brotherhood”, devoted to, in the words of the American Embassy in Slovakia, “commemorate[ing] the wartime fascist state,” and was fond of wearing uniforms reminiscent of those worn by the Hlinka Guard, the paramilitary organization of Tiso’s Slovakia, which held responsibilities including suppressing internal opposition and deporting the country’s Jewish population, many of them to Auschwitz. Indeed, Kotleba once faced inconclusive criminal charges for ending a speech with the phrase “Na stráž”, or “on guard”, commonly used in the Hlinka Guard. He’s organized marches against the Roma, affiliates his party with the same international alliance as Golden Dawn, a Greek Neo-Nazi party, and is considered by academics, and even by Smer politicians, to be a Fascist or Neo-Nazi. By this way of thinking, then, some have argued that for PES/S&D to withdraw their tacit endorsement of Smer would weaken Smer and thereby strengthen its political opponents – including the Neo-Nazis.
The problem with this way of thinking is that many academics, journalists, and observers of Slovakian politics posit that Kotleba benefitted more than anything else from Fico’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. By making xenophobic ideas mainstream, Fico polarized much of public discourse in Slovakia on the subject, and pushed anti-establishment voters to consider even more dramatic alternatives. If PES and S&D withdrew support from Smer and instead supported some other (possibly new) social-democratic faction in Slovakia, Fico would undoubtedly lose some of his electoral influence, and his dangerous xenophobic rhetoric would thus be somewhat less powerful. Thus, PES and S&D may actually be helping the Neo-Nazis by refusing to expel Fico.
More broadly, some have argued that PES/S&D are reluctant to drop Smer simply because Smer is politically successful at a time when social-democratic parties in much of the continent are on the rocks. The fact that Smer’s popularity is on the wane, however, and quite possibly will collapse without the charismatic figure of Fico at the helm, belies this argument as well.
A more convincing explanation for why PES/S&D have not acted lies in the modern nature of these organizations themselves, specifically in their lack of ideological frameworks. In ideological terms, Smer is less social-democratic than it ever was – not only is it as anti-immigration and socially-conservative as ever, but the governmental program presented by its current coalition government draws heavily on the economic policies of Siet’ and Most-Híd, and is hence essentially conservative and neoliberal. Thus, if PES/S&D had any ideological standards to which member parties owed fidelity, expelling Smer would probably be a necessary choice.
The problem is that, for the most part, PES and S&D lack these standards. Ever since the advent of Blairism in the Labour Party of the UK, many social-democratic parties have been on an unprecedented march towards neoliberalism. For example, Helle-Thorning Schmidt, who recently failed to be re-elected as Prime Minister of Denmark, privatized large portions of a state energy company, DONG, transferring some of its ownership to Goldman-Sachs, while still claiming the moniker of social democrat. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, whose role in creating and advocating for the Macron Law (a package of economic measures including de-regulation, sale of state assets, and public-sector liberalization) places him firmly to the right of traditional social-democracy. And in many other parts of Europe, social-safety net cuts are being advocated for (and implemented) by social-democratic politicians.
These recent actions by politicians and political entities purporting to be social democrats highlight the tricky situation in which PES and S&D find themselves. If they had meaningful ideological standards, violation of which would result in the removal of a particular party, they would probably be pushed to remove Smer. However, they would also be pushed to remove many of their most prominent member parties, engaged as they are on a separate ideological shift which shows no sign of ending. The elite of PES and S&D don’t have any interest in expelling such parties — rather, they generally support their rightward shift. Hence, PES and S&D don’t have meaningful ideological standards, and their elites find themselves unable to remove parties for ideological reasons whatsoever, so Smer, despite its flagrant xenophobia, will in all likelihood stay — even though by continuing to prop up Robert Fico as Slovakian PM, European Social-Democrats act directly against their supposed ideology, and perhaps even strengthen their greatest opponents.
The ultimate lesson here is one for Europe, rather than simply for Slovakia. Social-democracy on the EU level has, for the most part, become nothing more than a brand, a color, a commonly-used logo. It lacks an ideological center and for this reason must tolerate extreme deviations from its supposed legacy and purpose. If moderate progressives of the European center-left, in Slovakia and elsewhere, then, want to have any hope of solvency in their political choices and activism, they need to abandon and actively organize outside the confines of PES, S&D, and other vacuous organs of a bygone time.