FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A SLOVAK CASE STUDY

Peter Zilka

Сажетак

History often deemed as an ongoing spiral, can easily repeat itself and present a new security challenge. Inasmuch as people are driven by fear and grievances during uneasy times, it can often open doors to populism and demagogy as tools for power seeking groups – an unfortunate reality from the last century. Such political strategies have nowadays taken new shapes in the age of social medias, and due to the series of ongoing crises the European Union is facing, it can have far reaching consequences if it follows the current tendencies present in its member states. The aim of this paper is to observe on a case study of Slovakia, how such far-right tendencies can achieve a representative breaking point from marginal extremist groups into the mainstream political discourse. Accordingly, an ontological approach is adopted in order to assess how either a refugee crisis, a pandemic or a war at the border represents influential factors under which fear and grievances are shaped by the local political elites during the last two decades. Key findings have demonstrated how such tendencies can open doors for inexpertise, leaving the population in doubt under a discourse that contest every major topic, jeopardizing professional opinion, undermining the authority of state institutions, and on overall creating dangerous polarisation and ideological division within the society.

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