"Peace" has become a dirty word in closely watched Czechia

A conversation with Czech writer Cecílie Jílková

“The opinion of the people is of no interest to the current government.”

Today we will turn our gaze to a different Slavic nation, the wonderful but troubled Czech Republic. What’s been going on over there?

I asked Czech writer and activist Cecílie Jílková if she would be willing to answer a few questions about current events in her homeland. She graciously agreed.

Jílková (born in Prague in 1981) is the daughter of writers and dissidents Ludvík Vaculík and Lenka Procházková, and granddaughter of writer (and one of the main participants of the Prague Spring) Jan Procházka. After her first novel, The Journey to Drromm (2010), she channeled her energies into promoting healthy eating, and has published four books on this topic. Her most recent literary work (not yet published) is the autobiographical novel Father God and Mother Love.

Cecílie also runs an independent news site, Reporters Online, a platform that aims to combat censorship and provide deeper context to the news cycle.

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I wanted to start by asking you about Covid’s “legacy” in Czechia. Are there still signs of the “new normal” in your country? Are people still wearing masks/getting vaxxed/etc.? Did “public health” measures have socioeconomic consequences that are still felt today?

Thank God, masks have completely fallen out of vogue. Only tourists wear them.

I should say that I live in Prague, where masks have been worn the most and the longest. In the countryside, masks were worn less. (Passengers on trains and buses in the countryside often took their masks off during the journey, etc.)

The latest numbers on vaccination uptake are very low. By February, only 7.4% of the Czech population had received four doses. And only 551,000 people received the new bivalent vaccine, which was made available in September 2022. That’s less than 8% of those eligible—i.e., of those who received doses of the “original” vaccines.

Covid measures had a hugely devastating impact on small and medium-sized businesses, not all of whom were entitled to state compensation for lost profits.

Children who had studied online for a few months not only suffered academically, but worse, they became accustomed to online entertainment and some never fully returned to reality from the virtual world. Of course, the physical condition of children also deteriorated, etc.

And above all, brutal censorship began, which continues to this day. I even remember the exact day I realized there was censorship. It was the day when a major Czech news site banned a writer from publishing a link to the European Parliament’s website, which detailed an initiative by MEPs to compensate victims of vaccination. The document contained cases of suspected adverse reactions reported in the EMA database.

That was when I realized we were back in the totalitarianism we had before 1989. Except now that totalitarianism was digital.

Are efforts to accelerate digital transformation in the EU noticeable in the Czech Republic? Are Czechs concerned about CBDCs and other forms of digital control being introduced worldwide?

Oh yes, a campaign for digital ID cards on mobile phones already started during Covid.

The initiative is being pushed primarily by Prime Minister Petr Fiala and the Pirates, a liberal progressive party that has only four MPs in the Chamber of Deputies, our country’s lower house of parliament. Somehow, this party still has the ear of the European Commission-subsidized mainstream.

It should be noted that Covid passports have not been very popular in the Czech Republic, because 35% of Czechs are unvaccinated, and many Czechs still remember the totalitarian communist regime and are sensitive to restrictions on freedoms and state surveillance. Promoting digital identity is therefore not easy for the authorities.

For now, the government’s digitalization efforts have focused on Bank ID and data boxes, which are like email inboxes through which you can send tax returns or communicate with authorities.

Czechs are accustomed to using data boxes, but now they have become mandatory for all businesses.

Of course, a lot of people don’t like this, and I personally know a few senior citizens who refused the service, saying they would remain “offline”, even if it meant being arrested. I doubt it will come to that, though.

The first reports of the planned European Digital Identity Wallet appeared in 2021, but its development is being kept rather quiet.

At the moment, the Pirates are trying to sell people on IDs that would replace birth certificates, and would be required for the “wallet’s” functionality.

Considering its huge price tag, the proposal is not popular—even journalists are against it.

As for CBDCs: In 2018, a prominent Czech economist commented that we should expect them.

There was period of relative silence on the topic, but now people are starting to talk openly about the introduction of a digital euro. And there are still a lot of questions and uncertainty. Political scientist Petr Drulák, for example, expressed doubts that Czechs would want to switch to the euro right now.

It should be noted that the Czech banking system is surprisingly robust, the collapse of Western banks has not yet affected us.

We have a strong bitcoin community that adheres to the Austrian school of economics, and would therefore prefer to see the separation of finance from the state.

Unfortunately, even in this community, some defectors are timidly lobbying for the CBDC. But bitcoiners are not stupid. Moreover, Bitcoin and Ethereum have some support in parliament.

So, CBDCs are not here yet, but the implementation of the European Digital Wallet is being worked on in the background.

I’m interested in the Czech media landscape and its coverage of Russia. Do you think Czechs who see through the bias of mainstream outlets are able to get more nuanced perspectives from alternative sources?

The Czech mainstream only picks up information from pro-Western agencies, and there was even a period of heavy censorship applied to alternative media, where the government had these domains completely shut down for a time.

It should be remembered that the Czech government is fully under the control of Brussels, and therefore Washington.

Pro-Russian views are criminalized, people lose their jobs and face prosecution for so-called genocide denial.

This is what actually happened, for example, to one Czech teacher, because she said in front of her pupils that nothing was really happening in Kiev. She was basing this on webcam footage.

A number of authors and politicians, including former President Václav Klaus, have spoken out against the prosecution of this teacher. People have also started to send monetary donations to the teacher because she was fired from her job and cannot afford rent or lawyers. During the first few days, almost 200,000 crowns ($9,000 USD) were collected.

So the coverage of what is going on in Russia is poor because it is only covered by alternative (and therefore unprofessional) media, which completely avoid the issues of digitalization, vaccination, and the digital ruble.

I have to fully agree with Karine Bechet-Golovko that some “pro-Russian” Westerners want to love Russia “against” their own country, so to speak. As she said, when these people look at Russia, they want to see everything they can no longer find in their own homeland, and refuse to see the nuances of Russian society, which is quite complex.

I also agree that the basic human need to believe in something, to be sure of something, plays a role here. And so some Czechs believe in the myth of a perfect Russia, where the world is perfectly fine, because the reality that there is no salvation in either the West or the East is too depressing.

And of course we must not forget that we have common Slavic roots and our cultures are very much related. In this respect, I completely understand why some Czechs’ hearts bleed when government propaganda spits all over Russia.

Is there any meaningful debate about the war in Ukraine? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine there is a huge amount of social pressure to express unconditional support for Kiev, which probably does not encourage open discussion about this increasingly bizarre (and frankly, senseless) conflict. For example, if a Czech said he/she didn’t like the idea of fellow Slavs killing each other, apparently for the amusement and profit of the global oligarchy, would that be considered absolutely blasphemous?

“Peace” has become a dirty word. Those who want peace are automatically branded as Putin lovers and traitors. Which is very curious, because there are a lot of people who want peace, many of whom are quite demonstrably critical of the current Russian regime.

For example, one of the presidential candidates, Jaroslav Bašta, a former ambassador to both Russia and Ukraine, has advocated for peace. And although he has repeatedly mentioned in the mainstream media that he does not consider the current Russian regime to be democratic, he has been labelled a pro-Russian collaborator.

In a recent opinion poll conducted by Czech Radio, which is a national public media outlet, about 80% of Czechs, I think, answered that peace should be negotiated through diplomatic channels.

You can see from this what kind of support Kiev’s policy seems to enjoy. Many of the more educated Czechs have also been following events in Ukraine for many years and still remember how the Western mainstream warned years ago about the extremism that was rampant in Ukraine: The children’s training camps, where children were taught to hate Russians, were also reported in our mainstream media. Today, the mainstream would have censored it.

Moreover, we have many citizens who came here from Ukraine to work, for example, ten years ago. Many of them also disagree with Kiev’s policies.

However, the opinion of the people is of no interest to the current government. It immediately branded the 100,000 demonstrators at the anti-war rally in Prague last year as pro-Russia traitors.

Many people are bracing for the Brave New Davos-Inspired World. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of seeking refuge somewhere in Czechia? 

The Czech Republic is a small, modern country, which is a disadvantage because there are no forests “deep enough” to hide from digitalization, or possible mandatory vaccinations.

On the other hand, the Czechs are used to living in totalitarianism and can instantly build a black market. Even during the harshest lockdowns, many pubs operated secretly and many police officers refused to participate in enforcement.

Even our business (a gluten-free bakery and café) was repeatedly raided by police because we didn’t force our customers to wear masks. The police always came, bought a coffee (they refused free coffee, it could be taken as a bribe), we gossiped about the government together for a while, and then parted amicably.

I consider Czechs to be quite reasonable, they don’t like extremes. They don’t demonstrate like the French do, but rather mock the government. And when a rule is really excessive, they usually find a way around it.

Děkuji, Cecílie!

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