ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces Tomio Okamura, a Czech populist far-right politician who entered politics in 2012, a period of popular dissatisfaction with established political parties, and who offered a distinctive populist and nativist alternative to liberal democracy. Okamura may be less well known than his counterparts in countries like Hungary and Poland, but he has had notable success pursuing similar political objectives. This chapter begins by providing background on the Czech political landscape and Okamura’s emergence, before addressing Okamura’s use of the language of liberal democracy to camouflage nativist and far-right identity politics. Okamura uses the liberal language of freedom, especially free speech, in claiming to be a defender of liberal values. The chapter continues to show how Okamura seeks to recruit new supporters by drawing analogies between Czechoslovakia’s communist-era governments and the current Czech political establishment, casting both as enemies of democracy. He offers a vision of direct democracy that he promotes as genuine democracy, suggesting that his real aim in making these claims is not to support the Czech Republic’s democratic system, but to undermine it.
