Abstract
The chapter provides an outline of the development of the Czech far-right from the end of 1980s to the year 2020, a period during which the Czech grassroots far-right scene changed in terms of ideology, organizational structure, and repertoires of action. We will focus primarily on far-right social movements, but political parties and musical subcultures will be included as well, as they not only interacted but also substantially overlapped.
To underline both internal differences in far-right movements and the milieus and external conditions for their development, we identify three far-right activism waves. We will analyze each of them from two points of view: (1) how did the structure of political opportunities (approach of political elite, media, police, civil society, and targeted populations) change during the period and (2) how did various far-right milieus transform internally in terms of their ideology, organizational structure, and form of activities.
These two questions will be interconnected by our analysis of how the development of various far-right movements and their interaction with political opportunities created path-dependency. We can observe the rise of new far-right actors from established strata of society and overlaps of "extremists" rhetoric with the rhetoric of a large part of the "mainstream." Unlike in many other European countries, this did not lead to an establishment of a strong far-right social movement in the Czech context.