[LINK] "The Prague Café: a brief incursion into Czech presidential discourse"

[rfmcdonald]

Open Democracy's Jan Hornát wrote about the language of culture wars, waged by the right, in the Czech Republic. (Hint: Rootless cosmopolitanism is always an enemy of the people.)

Czech president Milos Zeman is currently halfway through his first presidential term and it has become more than obvious that his divisive election campaign was not just a calculated move to secure victory, but an enduring political tactic.

The divisions that Zeman aims to foster do not copy class or social status lines, nor are they set along party lines – he distinguishes simply between the “self” (himself and his supporters) and the “others” (his opponents). Zeman is showing little determination to conduct any consensus-building and seems to be constantly working on preserving a separating line between his perceived opponents, which he abhors, and his supporters. This persistent reiteration of dividing points inherently strengthens the positions of both camps (i.e. opponents increase their opposition and supporters increase their support) and translates into deepening divisions within the Czech society.

To be fair, every politician has a camp of supporters and opponents, no public figure is admired by all. Yet, not that many politicians in Western democracies devote so much thoughtful effort into further widening the gap between their supporters and opponents and instrumentally turning them into two irreconcilable groups as president Zeman. To navigate his tactic in public discourse, Zeman – with the help of his agile spokesperson Jiri Ovcacek – has recently formulated an ingenious term that encompasses all his opponents (and thus the opponents of his supporters) and permits him (and his team) to use this metaphor as a clear signal to his followers – the term is “Prague Café” and deserves a brief etymology.

President Zeman first used the term publicly last year as a reaction to demonstrations that took place in the center of Prague on the day of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Protestors held up mock red cards that were addressed to the president, calling for him to step down. Zeman called the demonstrators the “raging Prague lumpencafé”, perhaps referring to Karl Marx’s term lumpenproletariat, which described the social groups which were of no use to the collective cause of the proletarian revolutionary struggle. Since its first use, Zeman simplified the term to “Prague Café” and thus gave way to a metaphor that acquired a prominent role in the contemporary discourse emanating from the Prague Castle. How does the term resonate in the Czech mind? First of all, we can decompose the notion and observe each word separately.