Slovakia Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately

February 3, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Our effort to create and nourish a “world-wide committee of democratic correspondence” began long before the coronavirus laid waste to our world. And as a world-wide network, our efforts have always involved a strong online component. For the web affords our far-flung group many opportunities for the sharing of ideas ...

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

Democracy

Democracy “As If“

August 17, 2020 • by Dagmar Kusá

More than a century ago, Hans Vaihinger formulated his philosophy “as if” to describe our willing choice to live in a world of logical contradictions. As we cannot reach our ideals (e.g. a truly just society), we produce imperfect fictional explanations full of deliberate errors to fill in logical gaps ...

Democracy

From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic

August 5, 2020 • by Michal Vašečka

Slovakia is a rather unique case within post-1989 Central Europe as far as democratic transition is concerned. The lack of a tradition of statehood is the most evident difference between Slovaks and the other nations of Central Europe. It is necessary to keep this fact in mind when examining the ...

Democracy

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

July 15, 2020 • by Ján Orlovský

Overnight, on Monday, February 26th, 2018, Slovakia became a very different country. The news of the brutal murder of a young investigative journalist and his fiancée in their village house at the outskitrts of the capital shattered all illusions about corruption in the country being remote and harmless. The deaths ...

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

Democracy

Fascists in Slovak Politics

Waiting for a new chance in times of the COVID-19 crisis?

July 12, 2020 • by Alexandra Bitušíková

Marian Kotleba, a former IT teacher, is infamous for his open hatred of the Roma minority, Jews, immigrants and the LGBTIQ+ community. He denies the Holocaust and admires the World War Two fascist Slovak State and its president Jozef Tiso, who was hanged in 1947 as a war criminal. Kotleba ...

Feature

Permanent Mystifications

The Story of Post-Conceptual Art in Slovakia

April 30, 2019 • by Max L. Feldman

Prague City Gallery’s “Probe 1: The Story of Slovak (Post)Conceptual Art” (12th December 2018 - 24th March 2019) came and went unnoticed. This is hardly surprising, despite the prime location of the museum’s 13th-century Stone Bell House site: a corner of the Old Town Square beneath the piercing spires of the Church ...

Feature

How to Beat a Populist

Populists’ biggest strength is a weak opposition

April 12, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

The progressive reformer Zuzana Čaputová’s victory in Slovakia's presidential election suggests that populists' biggest strength is a weak opposition. If her winning formula is adopted elsewhere, populist forces' recent gains in Western democracies could be reversed. There have never been more populist governments in place than today. Until now, populists have ...