The Cult of Assholes — Political surrealism in Czech Republic explained.
Czech President Milos Zeman last week yet again shocked the world by publicly sharing comic brought by his press officer of himself saying: “I respect the journalists very much, for that reason I am hosting a banquet in the Saudi Arabian Embassy”. That just a year after him telling president Vladimir Putin that Journalists should be liquidated and having a good laugh together about it and days after the brutal murder of a journalist committed by the Saudi Arabians days ago.
I was asked by my Estonian friend and journalist Evelyn Kaldoya to explain how such things can happen in Czech Republic (This article has been reprinted by Estonian newspaper Postimees). The answer is that sadly there is so much shit going on in my country in the latest years that while Miloš Zeman’s statement made world news again here we are in a situation where comics are complaining that it is increasingly hard to came up with jokes absurd enough to be still unbelievable.
Just to frame a bit the environment: Our president Miloš Zeman refused to attend an UN Council and generally stopped speaking publicly after his reelection saying that all the important things he said already. So the major press conference he held this year was a happening of him burning oversized red trousers that an artist group hang in place of the presidential standard couple years before.
His press officer Jiří Ovčáček, was a former journalist from the communist party press “Halo newspaper”. He has a fake alter ego on facebook, who has more followersthan him (106 000 vs. 8000 on facebook) and sadly does also a better work than the real one, since from time to time gives serious presidential statements in case of national events while the president is silent. The fake Ovčáček complained in one of his latter statements, that it is nowadays impossible to make a statement that would be more absurd than what the real Ovčáček is producing.
The presidential chancellor Vratislav Mynář is the former leader of the political party “Friends of Miloš Zeman” and the secret services refused to give him security clearance probably because of his ties to Russian interests. After this afera went public Mynář hid from the public but retained his position occasionally amusing the crowds by aferas as last week when we learned that he sold 17 thousands cubic meters of stone mined from the park of the presidential summer residence to his friend at laughable price while asking for a 10 million Euro investment from the state probably to widen his mining enterprise in the presidential park.
The prime minister Andrej Babis is currently prosecuted for a fraud involved in a subvention from the European union used for the construction of a congress center called “Čapí hnízdo”. Babis is known also as “Bureš” which is allegedly his code name gained when collaborating with the communist secret services in the 80s. He is also the richest Slovak citizen, and gained his fortune by building an Agricultural empire in the Czech Republic. He created his party ANO 2011 (ano means YES) after the subventions from the European union that fueled his enterprise started to vane in 2011 and came to power after buying several medias in 2013. The subventions to his holding Agrofert rose from 20 mil EUR in 2011 to 77 in 2018.
Babis swore to the health of this children that would not influence journalists in his medias to be proven wrong shortly afterwards by a secret tape of him giving instructions to a journalist in the media owned by him. In the position of the minister of finance he was also proven by another secret tape to use ministry of finance tax department to confiscate bank accounts of rival companies causing them to close business.
Reelected in 2017 Babis is the first premier in the modern history of the Czech Republic to rule with the support of the largely unreformed Czech Communist Party (which he ruled as not an option on his facebook before the elections).
A last mention is the chief of the extremist right parliamentary party “Rise of direct democracy” Tomio Okamura who gained voters with extremist stands against economical migration and islam. Okamura is himself originating from Japan and gained fame and fortune in the travel business, in the nineties he was also the organizator of a beauty competition for immigrants “Miss Expat of Czech Republic”.
Tomio Okamura together with Jewish former prime minister Jan Fischer, a 90 year old Austrian citizen and aristocrat Karel Schwarzenberg that almost won the election by disguising himself as a punker and thus attracting young voters, and the artist Vladimír Franz who is known by the fact that 100% of his body is covered by blue tattoos attained to the presidential elections of 2013 ending with the saying: A Japanese, an Austrian Punk a Jew and a “Smurf” meets… well that is not how a joke starts but the candidates for the Czech presidential election.
The afera of the 50 Syrian refugees.
In this context it is hardly strange that the Czech general public is often amused by bizarre aferas like the one that broke down before the election to the senate this year. The Cristian democrat MP Michaela Šojdrová two weeks before the election came with a plead to prime minister Andrej Babiš largely covered by media to give refuge to 50 syrian orphans alegedly residing in a refugee camp in Syria. Babiš who is lately trying to assimilate Tomio Okamuras voters with a hard stand on immigration quickly come with a negative response causing mayhem in the “TruthandLove” Liberal community, that earned this pejorative nickname from Zeman and Babish sustainers in the latest years.
After a week bragging in the media, Babiš came with a response that there no orphans exist but the Ministry of interior would provide Christian Democratic MP Michaela Šojdrová with the information where refugee camps in Greece are so she can actually find the orphans.
About the same time though we learned that the original plead to the Christian Democrat MP to accept these orphans came from the humanitarian organization “International Children Cross” in 2013 when the party was actually in power giving some lead that the real motivation of starting the cause was not really about the orphans not mentioning the fact that these people would probably be grown up men nowadays.
The situation started to grow more absurd shortly afterwards when the head of the organization International Children Cross Taťana Horáková, came with a letter addressed to Babiš, stating that accepting the refugees would be a mistake. The letter was later sent from the cabinet of the prime minister to the newspaper Lidove noviny owned by Andrej Babiš which reprinted the statement. This brought attention to the humanitarian organization itself which allegedly works in 29 countries having over 20 doctors losing its life in war operations. The head of the organization MUDr. Taťána Horáková according to her statements had to refuse three time the nobel prize of peace for security reasons.
Accidentally the organization founded by the former communist candidate for presidency JUDR. Jaroslav Kříženecký has its seat in the building of the Czech communist party, had no web pages at the time and no real activity except for multiple interviews and press relesaes for the media that has been published in years.
Days after the revelation a fake satirical web page of the organization www.mezinarodnidetskykriz.cz came to existence showcasing the incredible adventures and feats of miss Horáková in the course of history resembling Gulliver travels. The redactor of Lidové Noviny that reprinted the letter was fired days after the press release and to my knowledge MP Michaela Šojdrová is still trying to find the orphans. Her latest statement on her twitter account regarding the cause says that she reached her goals since UNICEF has released a statement in support of orphaned children in war zones.
Organizational assholism
I could go on giving examples of absurdity and situations when comics preceded reality like the Czech Sitcom Kosmo — describing the absurd project of a Czech NASA agency that used European funds to pretend a mission to the moon. The storyline describes 4 Czech cosmonauts trying its best to actually make the mission happen while all the funds were diverted to the private bank accounts of a politician responsible for the project… Well guess what — last week Czech social democratic party member Petr Dolínek seriously asked for millions of euros to institute a Czech NASA causing serious criticism that he should come at least with an original excuse on how to gain access to state finances.
The question at mind of course is how is possible that our nation found itself in a reality comparable to the roman times of Caligula instituting his horse as a senator while experiencing unprecedented economic wellbeing.
Less note than Švejk but quite interpretionally useful in this context I found a theory of a Czech Blogger called DFENS who postulated in 2001 a theory of organizational behaviour based upon the concentration of assholes (or bastards) in an organization.
Upon his theory all organisations can be classified in to four stages analogical to cancer evolution according to the concentration of assholes. An asshole can be classified by his own preferences of game according the game theory — in other words when you can chose a non-zero sum game (eg. we both cooperate and both gain benefit) or a zero sum game (eg. we both play, but I stab you in the back to gain all the benefit) an asshole would certainly chose the latter over the cooperation.
A typical examplary of an asshole can be easily distinguished by the unscrupulous binary way he makes decisions based solely by the short term benefits he could gain ignoring any ethics or regards for other people. For example — creating an anti-immigrant party while being himself an economical migrant or swearing on the health of its own children upon a fact that he already knew that it is not true.
According to DFENS theory in the first stage there is a relatively healthy organization with a couple assholes operating independently, in the second stage the concentrationě of assohles is such they start creating coalitions to misuse the work of others in order to gain benefits and to hire more likely thinking assholes. In the third stage assholes attain majority and managerial positions resulting in massive abuse of other employees and their exodus. In the fourth stage the organization is entirely consisted of assholes which leads to its demise since having no people doing actual work turn assholes upon each other with no chance of remedy.
The last stage ends usually into putting the organization out of business which is a self healing mechanism of the market- the only exception of this is alas the fact that state owned organizations cannot go bankrupt since they live by other people’s money thus prolonging the fourth stage ad infinitum which is especially true in nowadays Europe where there is no directs competition among states that could statal collapse.
In this context is clear that the state strongly attracts such individuals since the potential of massive abuse of others is great and normally evolved democracies have strong mechanism that should prevent such people gaining too much power like checks and balances and public control instituted by media and independent justice.
Crisis of the system — pareto principle applied
The problem in Czech republic lies in the fact that we reached the last stage and the state itself is too small to have competing groups effectively providing balance by competition. The last attempt of former Social Democrat prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka to end Babiš rise to power by asking his demise as minister of finance after he was prosecuted by the police ended by Babiš winning the elections while the Social democratic party barely entered the parliament.
Afterwards Miloš Zeman decided that Babiš would be Prime Minister although no democratic party wanted to create a coalition with him. The conclusion of this was that Babiš effectively ruled the country with a unicolored cabinet without parliamentary trust for 200 days before he managed to create a cabinet with the support of the Czech Communist party. The prosecution against Babiš has not been heard of since the elections and we broadly expect that all the charges against the prime minister will be dropped since the organ that controls the policemen doing the investigation is held by people loyal to the prime minister.
The question that comes to mind is how is possible that people still vote for these guys — I mean there are several obvious contradictions: the most visible are the Japanese Tomio Okamura fighting against migration, the ninety year old aristocrat portraying himself as the punker representative of the students and of course the whole persona of Babiš that gained momentum by performing as a political chameleon switching the party ideology from a righ-liberal one to a lefitsh antiimmigrant in four years putting out of competition both main right and left ruling established parties by effectively gaining possession of their traditional political topics.
And this reality has of course real negative consequences — the Czech economy has risen rapidly in the last years bringing real benefits in higher wages and low unemployment — with 300 000 unoccupied jobs we currently have more vacancies than unemployed people able to fill them. The lack of human resources is among the major causes that prevent us from further growth and in this situation the government is effectively hiring new state employees creating further administrative burden on businesses while making it harder for workers from foreign countries to work here.
My idea is that what is happening right now in our country is no accident — myself I am a business consultant and most of the work I do is resolved around the Pareto principle — the fact that in any businesses 20% of the goods or services makes up to 80% of the revenue — this has proven to apply to most economical matter like that 20% of people in the society controls 80% of its resources… under this assumption it is probably no shame to assume that 80% of the talent or brains in a society is held by just 20% of the population while the majority of the voters are exactly those 80% most easily swayed by populist campaigns and superficial arguments like the fear of any migration.
This of course puts us in hard situation — because without putting any unacceptable discriminatory measures agains less informed or nonproductive voters (which would leave of course a lot of space to especially to assholes to discriminate their opponents) the only solution of this issue is to promote critical thinking and a political culture that would make such behaviour from out ruling elite unacceptable.
Although the situation looks bleak at the moment there are some signals of partial change like the political debacle of Babiš in the municipal elections in Prague this year and the rise of the Pirate party which employs programmatically transparence among its control mechanisms which is by no chance mentioned by the blogger DFENS as the most effective measure against assholes.
Until these Initiative gain momentum celebrate with us the 100 year anniversary of the Czech Republic an amuse yourself with surreal stories about our political elites.
