CSOs and the Incomplete Polarization of Czech Society: Civil Society for What and for Whom?

Abstract

Against the background of the concept of pernicious polarization and the understanding of the dynamics of the current polarization of Czech society as an interaction of populist and anti-populist forces, the chapter analyses to what extent Czech society is polarized, how civil society organizations (CSOs) participate in its polarization and how the polarization of Czech society differs from other Central European countries. The role of CSOs in the process of polarization is viewed through the lens of A. Gramsci’s concept of allied blocs competing for political and cultural hegemony. As a result, the text provides insight into the polarization of CSOs themselves, as well as their activities in linking civil society with populist or anti-populist political actors. The text identifies four deficits in the sources of polarization and analyzes how these deficits contribute to a specific pattern of incomplete and topically fragmented polarization in the Czech Republic. It shows that although uncivilized practices typical of pernicious polarization are employed in the Czech political struggle, there has not yet been a broader alliance between the strongest populist movement on the one hand and the conservative, populist-friendly part of civil society on the other.

1. Introduction

Polarization of society is typically perceived as something negative with which civil society organizations (CSOs) should have nothing to do. Fanning conflicts, pitting people against each other, and inflaming emotions are activities and strategies that belong in the repertoire of irresponsible radical politicians, populists, and extremists. This is not business as usual for CSOs. At least no academic text deals with the functions of civil society includes the polarizing function of CSOs. However, it was CSOs (dissident organizations and organizations of mass protest movements) that polarized society during the Velvet Revolution¹ into supporters of building a new democratic society on one side and supporters of the old regime on the other. It was a short episode that supporters of liberal democracy still attribute to the benefit of CSOs, but conceptually, from the perspective of civil society theory, it remained largely un-reflected. A more important and still debated question was the extent to which CSOs contributed (significantly or insignificantly) to the fall of communist regimes.

In the early 1990s, everything seemed clear and obvious. Civil societies and their organizations in post-communist countries of Central Europe had clearly aligned themselves with the victors over communist totalitarianism, which, in the eyes of the academic public, only strengthened the positive association of CSOs with democracy. The relationship between CSOs and democracy was portrayed as a harmonious symbiosis of two interdependent phenomena. Together with other pro-democratic forces, CSOs were seen as a united bloc against former nomenklatura cadres of communist parties who might seek to reverse democratic development. From the early 1990s until the end of the Velvet Revolutions in Central Europe and after Ralf Dahrendorf [1] published his book Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe, the democratic world expected that building civil society as a pillar of democracy in post-communist countries would take a long time (about 60 years), but that everything was on the right track.

On the right track in the sense that the building of a highly diverse but pro-democracy homogeneous civil society continued as normatively prescribed by the Tocquevillian tradition in civil society studies that saw civil society as the pillar of democracy. In the background of building this pro-democratic civil society was the idea that CSOs would always defend democracy and that together, they could even act as a single unified societal actor with its own consciousness of its pro-democratic collective identity. In Marxist terms, it was expected that from “civil society in itself” it would eventually transform into “civil society for itself” [2]. However, this did not happen. On the contrary, in several democratic countries, including those in Central Europe, there was division or even polarization within civil society itself.

Few people noticed at the beginning of the 1990s that when Ralf Dahrendorf wrote about the long-term building of civil society, he meant a “decent and civilized” civil society, and that in fact its counterpart, that is, “un-civil society” [3], “bad civil society” [4], or “fake or pseudocivil society” [5], can also function in the reality of post-communist societies. The normative division of civil society into the “true” pro-democratic and the “false”, bad or un-civil society, has been written about in academic literature for a relatively long time. However, a more massive polarization, or splitting of civil society into two antagonistic camps, began to occur in the post-communist countries of Central Europe only with the onset of a strong wave of populism [4] triggered by the financial crisis, after the introduction of austerity measures, and also during the refugee crisis that began in 2014.

To the surprise of many, civil society did not act as a powerful and cohesive firewall against populist authoritarianism [6]. Tocquevillian democratic romanticism collided with the reality of civil society divided by populist politicians, primarily in Hungary and Poland. Internally divided civil society in these countries is openly linked to the polarization of society as a whole [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. The conceptual framework for examining civil societies based on normative Tocquevillian tradition has proven inadequate for explaining these phenomena. Conversely, Gramsci’s normatively neutral model of civil society as an arena, in which various interest groups and political formations coalesce into two polarizing allied camps (historical hegemonic or counter-hegemonic blocs), vying for cultural and political hegemony in society [13], is becoming increasingly popular.

The dynamics introduced into this competition by populist and extremist political leaders, with their aggressive anti-elitism and emotional performances, often result in the transformation of “true” pro-democratic CSOs into “false” ones that support the rise to power of populist and extremist leaders, or help maintain it. One of the most striking illustrations of this process comes from the Weimar Republic period, which existed in Germany between the two World Wars. As Sheri Berman states, CSOs (clubs, voluntary associations, and professional organizations) at that time created conditions for the spread of populist, fascist ideology, helping to destroy democracy in “the Weimar Republic and facilitate Hitler’s rise to power” [14]. CSOs infiltrated by members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and fascist ideology provided the Nazis with a dense network of experienced activists, who even formed “the backbone of the Nazis’ grassroots propaganda machine” [14]. It was not only directly politically oriented CSOs but also charitable organizations that got involved in collecting contributions to support the fascist movement and regime.²

It is significant that the authoritarian transformation of CSOs, or the partial colonization of civil society by populist politicians [4], occurs at a time of increasing citizen dissatisfaction with the quality of democracy and concurrently with the transformation of democracy into a hidden oligarchy, which various authors have begun to describe as “façade democracy” [16], “defective democracy” [17], “postdemocracy” Crouch [18], “simulated democracy” [19], “Potemkin democracy” [7] or “fake democracy” [20]. This coincidence suggests that the “degradation” of pro-democratic CSOs into organizations that support authoritarianism occurs precisely during periods of CSO involvement in the process of societal polarization. The phenomenon of societal polarization clearly shows that CSOs do not always serve the ruling forces of liberal democracy and dampen societal conflicts. On the contrary, they can, together with populists, reinforce or amplify societal conflicts [21, 22, 23, 11] and serve as a catalyst for the rise of authoritarian political entities to power [6] and even help them maintain this power.

The aim of this chapter is to find out to what extent Czech society is polarized, how CSOs participate in its polarization and how the polarization of the Czech society differs from the polarization pattern of other Central European countries. The following second part of the chapter offers a theoretical background for the investigation of the polarization phenomenon. It looks for the factors that cause the transformation of normal polarization into a pernicious one and provides insights into the dynamics of polarization as a process of interaction between populist and anti-populist forces. The third part looks at the role of CSOs in the process of polarization through the lens of A. Gramsci’s concept of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic historical blocs addresses the issue of populist polarization of CSOs in the examples of Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The fourth and fifth parts examine the polarization of Czech society at the level of political elites, the mass public and CSOs themselves and identify the polarization deficits that distinguish the Czech pattern of polarization from that of Hungary and Poland. Methodologically, the text of the chapter is based on theoretical analysis, a comparison of historical examples and empirical evidence of polarization tendencies in the Czech Republic and in the entire Central European region.

2. Polarization of society

The topic of societal polarization is certainly not something entirely new in social science literature. American historian Richard Hofstadter already wrote about a “binary political culture” in the 1960s in his book The Paranoid Style in American Politics [24], where traditional, provincial forces were juxtaposed against pro-modernization and pragmatic ones. In the 1990s, the phenomenon of political polarization in the United States became the subject of empirical research [see, e.g., [25, 26]] and became one of the standard topics in public opinion research. The phenomenon of political polarization and its unhealthy intrusion into societal relations gradually expanded into sociological studies of modern society.

In this regard, the work of American political science professor Jennifer McCoy and her co-authors Tahmina Rahman and Murat Somer attracts significant attention. In their texts, they define “societal polarization as processes of group categorization and polarization in the context of social conflict that extend to spaces of social coexistence, such as families, schools, churches, and communities, and that take on the same exclusion, rigidity, and confrontation present in the political struggle” (McCoy et al. [27]). The extreme polarization of society has harmful effects not only on interpersonal relations but also on democracy. If the proportion of citizens with anti-democratic views is rapidly increasing in a democratic society and the public is becoming divided into, for example, irreconcilable supporters of liberal democracy on the one hand and supporters of authoritarian or illiberal regimes on the other, then this society faces a considerable challenge in combating the erosion of democracy and maintaining internal cohesion [28, 29, 30].

Cases of this kind under the name of “stasis” have been well-known from the time of the ancient Greek city-states. Stasis was considered a calamity for the ancient poleis because it endangered not only democracy but also the very existence of the city-state. Citizens of those democracies were so afraid of this word that they feared even uttering it [31, 32]. This fear stemmed from the experience of cases where the escalation of ordinary ideological polarization escalated into an irreversible, irrational, and socially destructive process that undermined the legitimacy of the existing political regime and ended in civil war. Something very similar happened in ancient Rome, where disputes between the optimates (representatives of the wealthy classes) and populares, who sought to politically act in the interests of the lower classes [33], indeed ended in civil war.

In ancient democracies, there were no organized political parties in the modern sense. Stasis thus did not begin as the polarization of political parties, but as the polarization of civil society, that is, of groups of oligarchs, loose political factions, or schools of thought, that is, informal networks united by common ideology and interests. Ancient stasis warns us that ordinary polarization of two ideological currents may contain a pathological seed of fatal, self-reinforcing internal dynamics or the mechanism of “vicious circles” of prejudice, fear, and hatred between two opposing camps. This mechanism is fatal because once it is set in motion, it spirals out of control and cannot be stopped. Once unleashed, it lives on its own, acquiring its own life with unpredictable consequences [34, 35].

2.1 Pernicious polarization

In any democratic society, there must be a certain “normal” degree of difference of opinion; otherwise, there could not even be political competition, but the process of polarization causes more and more people to “align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “Us” versus “Them” [27]. McCoy and her colleagues call this kind of harmful or pathological polarization a “pernicious polarization.” According to McCoy and Somer, polarization, or its harmfulness to society and democracy, becomes particularly dangerous when “polarizing actors exploit formative rifts—cleavages resulting from unresolved conflicts over citizenship rights or national identity or territory” [34]. Dividing society into Us and Them is accompanied by a black-and-white view, in which we, of course, are the good ones, and they are clearly the bad ones.

Another fundamental criterion that allows distinguishing between “normal and extreme (pernicious) polarization” [36] is the criterion of civility. Under the pressure of polarization, basic “informal but crucial norms of tolerance and moderation … that keep political competition within bounds” [28] are disrupted in intergroup interactions. In conditions of pernicious polarization, members of both opposing camps feel threatened by the others, or feel that their way of life, cultural roots, and the entire nation are threatened, and therefore tend to prevail over the enemy at any cost. “Citizens … have incentives to endorse non-democratic actions to gain or keep power, and to prevent or remove their opponents from power” [37]. Under the social pressure of pernicious polarization, individuals lose inhibitions to behave undemocratically towards members of the opposing camp and accept violent suppression of their rights to freedom of expression and participation in decision-making.

2.2 Populism vs. anti-populism

Pernicious polarization contains uncivil³ practices and uncontrollable emotions, which together constitute a reinforcing mechanism that locks politics into a vicious circle and destroys democracy. It is typical that uncivil practices and exalted emotions that incite violence have been associated with the rise of populism in the political arenas of democracies around the world in recent decades. Polarization (Manichean view of society) is even included in the very definition of populism in the form of an irreconcilable contradiction between bad, corrupt elites and virtuous people [38]. It is the combination of populism and polarization that is considered particularly dangerous for democracy [39]. Hungarian sociologist Attila Ágh argues, based on his experience with populism in his own country, that dividing society into two parts is the essence of populism [7]. Polarization is in fact the basic strategy of how populist leaders, their parties and movements rise to the limelight of political power. It is the uncivil, affective political style of populist leaders that brings with it the demonization and dehumanization of legitimate political opponents [40].

Populism is characterized by ethical dualism, emphasizing a strong distinction between good and evil and the identification of an enemy against whom citizens can easily be mobilized with moral indignation. As Alder and Wang [41] point out, this essentially involves an old strategy of “divide and rule” (Divide et impera!), which was already employed by ancient Romans. Some authors emphasize the interactive nature of “populist polarization” [9]. They describe its societal dynamics as an interplay between populist-anti-populist antagonism [4, 42, 43, 44], which has become the main driving force of politics in democratic countries today. According to them, “polarization between populism and antipopulism became a structural characteristic of the European political landscape” [44, 45].

This means that the vicious circle of pernicious polarization includes not only populists themselves but also the other side, that is, anti-populists, who employ similar strategies to populists. Stavrakakis states that “elite-driven antipopulist discourse has consistently employed dehumanizing repertoires enhancing pernicious polarization” (Stavrakakis [44], p. 62). According to Stavrakakis, pernicious polarization also involves the association of populist leaders and their supporters with abnormality, monstrosity, irrationality, and even paranoia.

Overall, however, there is a belief among polarization experts that populists or populist polarizers are more prone to uncivilized polarizing views, attitudes, and practices than anti-populist polarizers. Organizations of populist movements often deviate from the norms of civility and, instead, fulfil the criteria that characterize incivility or uncivil society. The authors who deal with the topic of uncivil society characterize organizations belonging to it as exclusionist, intolerant, illiberal, undemocratic, militant, aggressive, or violent [46, 47, 48, 49].

3. Populist polarization: friendly and unfriendly civil society

Generating negative feelings among supporters of different political factions is defined as “affective polarization” [40, 50, 51, 52]. Affective polarization “reflects the degree to which members of opposing parties dislike and distrust each other” [53]. This type of polarization is the result of viewing politics as a moral struggle between good and evil and its transformation into an existential struggle between friends and enemies [54]. This is exactly how successful populist leaders understand politics. They try to build a self-friendly network of CSOs, or to create their own conservative, illiberal, or “populist civil society” [4] to help them in the political competition. However, the reverse is also true, especially conservative-oriented, radical, or extremist CSOs who seek allies in populist politics to achieve their goals.

In Hungary and Poland, civil society mirrors the liberal-cosmopolitan vs. nationalist-authoritarian political divide [8, 9, 10, 12, 55]. The infiltration of political polarization into organized civil society is also considered one of the criteria for pernicious polarization of society. CSOs, whose original purpose was to provide freely available services and space for entertainment or recreation, also began to engage in ideological activities and become allies or opponents of the political regime.

Populists’ intervention in the normal polarization of civil society reinforces its structural rootedness. For example, Paul Dekker calls the institutional petrification of division in Dutch civil society into several loosely interconnected parts “pillarization,” reflecting the confessional pillarization of Dutch society as a whole. “‘Pillarization’ is the vertical segregation of different population groups along religious or political lines” [56]. The result of bottom-up or top-down stimulated pillarization is the existence of several mutually impermeable social pillars, which “had their own hospitals, burial funds, newspapers and broadcasting associations, social and economic interest organizations, women’s organizations, choirs, and soccer clubs” [56]. Polish sociologist Gregorz Ekiert defines the pillarization of civil society as its vertical segregation “into distinct compartments with limited interaction across a dividing boundary (be it religious, ethnic, political)” [8]. It can be said that the informational and communicational impermeability of individual pillars of civil society makes it a toxically polarized civil society [55].

On the other hand, Ekiert sees pillarization of civil society as a suitable opportunity for the rise of populism, noting that “the recent rise of populism can be traced to the emergence of pillarized civil societies across the world” [8]. In this sense, he resonates well with Somer et al. [37], who view polarization as a process that permanently emerges from the bottom of civil society, with political actors deepening it in their own interest.

As hinted at in the introduction to this chapter, even the Marxist sociologist Antonio Gramsci, in his theory of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic historical blocs, emphasized that civil society is an integral part of the struggle between political actors for hegemony in society. He pointed out that each party seeks to create alliances with as broad a segment of civil society as possible for its success [13]. This is typical even during the rise of populism. Populist politicians’ polarization strategies divide civil society into friendly CSOs and unfriendly CSOs, making them their hegemonic and counter-hegemonic allies, depending on whether they are currently in power or in opposition. When in power, they financially and otherwise support those CSOs they consider friendly, mainly using state funds. By manipulating state financial support, friendly CSOs bind them to themselves clientelistically and secure their loyalty [12]. This leads to the blurring of boundaries between the state and civil society, as was the case during socialism [57]. On the other hand, populist leaders harass and suppress unfriendly, independent, liberal CSOs in every possible way. They label them with pejorative terms and undermine their legitimacy in the eyes of the public. They consider them illegitimate political players (unelected “political CSOs”), traitors to the nation, and foreign agents who endanger the state’s security. Therefore, they seek to economically destroy or at least disrupt the financial viability of unfriendly CSOs.

The first populist leader who attempted to polarize civil society in the Central European region was Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia during the 1990s. After winning the 1992 parliamentary elections, he formed a coalition government with the nationalist-oriented Slovak National Party. Reports emerged indicating that he had started to create a network of pro-nationalist CSOs allied with him to gain political support, often through financial assistance and favours from his government [58]. For instance, he endeared himself to the Catholic Church and the Slovak Matica, the main organization of the broader Slovak national movement [59]. Mečiar continued to cultivate a loyal segment of civil society even after winning the subsequent parliamentary elections in 1994. He supported the establishment of alternative umbrella youth organizations [60] and trade union organizations [61], which he then utilized for his political support. On the other hand, opposition to Mečiar began to mobilize, with three coalitions of pro-democracy CSOs emerging, the most prominent being OK ‘98 (Civic Campaign) [62]. This counter-hegemonic alliance was sparked by Mečiar’s attempts to weaken mechanisms of public control over the executive branch by parliament, media, and CSOs [60]. It was the coalition of political parties and pro-democracy CSOs that demonstrated how to counter “leaders who try and use their powers of office to undermine the constraints placed on them by democracy” [62].

Similarly, Hungary’s populist leader, Viktor Orbán, has successfully polarized Hungarian society with the help of a friendly network of CSOs. After narrowly losing the parliamentary elections in the spring of 2002, he called on his supporters to form “small groups of people, troupes of friends, civic circles…” [63], which led to the emergence of the national conservative movement, the “Civic Circles Movement.” Besides promoting a conservative agenda, the movement aimed at controlling or politicizing the masses [10, 64]. Orbán managed to create his own illiberal civil society camp, which provided experienced activists to his political party Fidesz, formed new local party organizations, and integrated into the party machinery [10]. The conservative, illiberal civil society camp contributed to Orbán’s return to power, which he has retained to this day. Even after seizing power, populist elites led by Orbán and state institutions under their control have continued their efforts to dominate civil society, employing both rewards and intimidation tactics. They have rewarded allied CSOs while bullying autonomous CSOs active in human rights, civil liberties, and anti-corruption efforts, limiting their ability to scrutinize political elites [10]. Demonizing autonomous CSOs as enemies of the nation and allies of foreign powers has also been part of the struggle for civil society, with figures like George Soros being a primary target.

Similarly to Slovakia and Hungary, Poland has experienced the polarization of civil society, with Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, playing a significant role in this process. Under Kaczyński’s leadership, PiS formed alliances with conservative-oriented civil society organizations [65]. The Catholic Church has been a key ally of PiS, along with its affiliated organizations, which together constitute a dominant part of Polish organized civil society. Since the early 1990s, the “clerical sector” of civil society has gained increasing influence in Poland, with outlets like Radio Maryja contributing to its dissemination among the general public. PiS, under Kaczyński’s guidance, has utilized state resources to weaken the influence of unfriendly liberal organizations deemed hostile and to protect and strengthen the influence of friendly ones [8, 65]. The party has employed tactics of uncivil polarization, including delegitimization, bullying, and intimidation of its opponents [66]. Like their counterparts in Hungary, Polish populists have pursued a clientelistic strategy, rewarding and demanding favours from allied CSOs. Grzegorz Piotrovski [12] describes how populist actors from the PiS party manipulated financial support for CSOs to secure their loyalty. During the PiS government, conservative-oriented patriotic CSOs were considered the “true Polish civil society” and received generous support from the National Fund for the Development of Civil Society, controlled by the state, while other CSOs advocating liberal values suffered from a lack of support.

4. The Czech case: incomplete polarization

In contemporary Hungary or Poland, the inclination of a large part of the population towards illiberal democracy provoked a wave of mobilization of a significant number of liberal democracy supporters, followed by a long series of polarizing episodes, sometimes including symbolic and verbal violence. There is no longer any doubt about the pernicious social polarization between the liberal and conservative camps that completely permeates all levels of public social life, affecting elites, masses and CSOs alike in these countries. The irreconcilability of the two camps and the threat to democracy are manifested, for example, in the repeated public questioning of the legitimacy of the results of democratic elections in these countries. In both countries, we can also see clear signals of the functioning of polarizing and pillarizing mechanisms of civil society formation.

Some authors explain the electoral success of populist parties and movements as a result of the massive involvement of civil society in the struggle for political power on the populist side [8, 10, 59, 67]. Other authors see the absence or weakness of a conservative or clerical segment of civil society as a factor that, for example, conditions the specifically ambiguous Czech position among polarizing societies in Central Europe or as a factor that may explain why the Czech Republic is not as strongly polarized as Poland or Hungary [68, 69].

However, looking at Czech society, we find that while it is not consistently pathologically divided into two antagonistic camps across all its levels and strata, the situation varies according to the different levels and thematic lines of polarization. The situation is different at the level of political elites and elites in general than at the level of mass public polarization, and the situation is also specific at the level of polarization of organized civil society. Overall, the polarization of Czech society looks somewhat incomplete, and this is also due to its actors (polarizers) who have not yet found a common denominator that would allow them to connect all levels of polarization.

4.1 Czech elite polarization

The pernicious polarization and its consequences are most evident on the Czech political scene, which has become strongly polarized along the axis of populism versus anti-populism [70]. The formation of collective identity between two mutually reinforcing, uncompromising political camps can be traced back to at least the period of entry of the first representative of Czech “entrepreneurial populism,” [71] the “Public Affairs” party, into parliamentary politics (established by entrepreneur Vít Bárta). The party attacks all mainstream parties and their leaders as corrupt “political dinosaurs.” The initiation of a new polarizing interaction between two clearly identifiable political camps, which led to the collapse of the long-lasting stable left-right political architecture, occurred with the electoral success of the centrist and populist Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO 2011), founded by entrepreneur and billionaire Andrej Babiš as an anti-corruption political movement.

ANO continued anti-elite criticism of standard parliamentary parties as incapable, corrupt, and lazy parasites hiding behind the facade of democracy. In his polarizing activity, Babiš persistently attributes to these parties a shared collective identity as a covertly unified political camp, which he pejoratively labels the “post-November cartel”. In his eyes, this is a conspiratorial formation of elites, which he suspects of pretending to be democratic competition in order to parasitize public budgets behind the scenes. According to him, the post-November cartel ruled the Czech Republic from November 1989 until 2017, when his ANO won the parliamentary elections and became the leading force in the government coalition. Essentially, Babiš accused traditional political parties of endangering democracy, not only because, according to him, they introduced mafia-style governance akin to Palermo but also because they managed to expand their power networks into the structure of the entire society, including civil society. Later, Babiš defined the “post-November cartel” as: “an informal power colossus of traditional politicians, journalists, activists, lobbyists, officials, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who share the same interest: privatizing power, ruling quietly, and promoting their deals behind the scene.” [72]. Paradoxically, Babiš defines the “post-November cartel” as his anti-elite manifesto, even though he himself is part of the elite, and as a member of the billionaire elite club, he undoubtedly had to contribute to its construction.

Babiš’s entrepreneurial populist companion in Czech parliamentary politics is Tomio Okamura, whose populism has never been merely anti-elitist but has always been rougher and more xenophobic, anti-refugee, anti-Roma, and sovereigntist (menas anti-European and anti-NATO in orientation) than that exhibited by Babiš. Okamura is the chairman of the political movement “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD), which has had stable support from approximately ten per cent of voters but has not yet become part of any government coalition and, compared to Babiš’s ANO, plays more of an outsider role in parliament.

However, in terms of societal polarization, its role is very significant. Firstly, Okamura and his political movement actively work to shape a common “patriotic and conservative” collective identity of political forces defending Czech national identity and democracy. Secondly, they consistently label mainstream political parties and their representatives as globalists, cosmopolitans, and progressives who do not have good intentions towards the Czech nation. Thirdly, they demonize CSOs as a hidden centre of power that controls political parties and public administration, promotes foreign interests, and has a progressive agenda. For example, the first deputy chairman of SPD, Radim Fiala [73], stated in his Facebook post: “… there is currently a factual cold civil war going on, where the Soros network clearly stands on the side of globalists. In the Czech Republic, Soros and his political nonprofits effectively control public media, have a huge influence on state administration and political parties.” The term “political nonprofits” (which became widespread in public discourse after the refugee crisis in 2014) has a pejorative connotation in the language of Czech patriots and conservatives and refers to CSOs with a progressive agenda (anti-corruption, environmental, humanitarian, advocating for the interests of minorities or migrants) that have, however, hidden ambitions to intervene in politics or public policy. While only Babiš and his ANO stand against the “post-November cartel,” Tomio Okamura and his party colleagues have clearly outlined two opposing political blocs to Czech society: the patriotic-conservative bloc and the progressive bloc, between which there is an irreconcilable struggle over national identity and democracy. They have not yet precisely defined who belongs to their patriotic-conservative bloc. However, they unequivocally include mainstream political parties and “political nonprofits” in the second, hostile bloc.

Until recently, an important polarizer of the Czech political scene was the former president Miloš Zeman (elected president in a popular plebiscite in 2013 and again in 2018), who played on an anti-elitist string in his public appearances. He emphasized the incompetence and detachment of political elites from the lives of ordinary people. To discredit them in the eyes of the public, he often referred to the elites as the “Prague Café,” which included cultural elites together with representatives of CSOs. Zeman’s polarizing activities were reflected by the Czech public early in his first term. In a representative public opinion survey from 2014, 70% of respondents stated that his opinions divided the public [74]. Zeman also became notorious for his derogatory remarks about CSOs, in which he labelled most of them as “leeches attached to the state budget” [75], thus defining their place in the camp of the Czech society’s parasites along with the elites. However, Zeman did not seek to play the role of unifier of the populist political scene in his presidential function, nor did he espouse an ideology that would allow him to do so; he only positioned himself on the side of ordinary people and delineated himself against the elites of mainstream political parties and the progressive agenda of civil society.

The significant success of the populist ANO in the parliamentary elections in 2017 (after which Babiš became prime minister) galvanized representatives of political and cultural elites, as well as the liberal-oriented part of civil society, to retaliatory polarizing activity, the common denominator of which was anti-populism. Representatives of traditional political parties criticized Babiš’s populist political style, the undemocratic, or authoritarian nature of ANO (Babiš was often referred to as its owner), the ownership of a significant portion of mass media, and the intertwining of his business activities with politics. They portrayed Babiš as an acute threat to democracy, labelling him as a corrupt oligarch who dangerously combines political, economic, and media power in his person. After the 2017 elections, the social movement “Million Moments for Democracy” emerged, which pointed out the illegitimate authoritarian practices and corruption scandals of Andrej Babiš and demanded his resignation as prime minister. The repeated mass participation in the protest actions of this movement undermined Babiš’s populist ambitions to speak on behalf of all ordinary citizens and decent people. His attempts to question the altruism of the participants in these actions were also unsuccessful.

The anti-populist vs. anti-progressive discourse dominated the pre-election campaign in the autumn of 2021. Under pressure from the “Million Moments for Democracy” movement and a large part of the public, five opposition parties formed two anti-populist coalitions (SPOLU and PirStan), in which the “anti-populist motivation even surpassed ideological differences” [43]. After the elections, they formed a government coalition as a cohesive allied anti-populist bloc, which continues its anti-populist rhetoric and attacks the parliamentary opposition (consisting only of Babiš’s ANO and Okamura’s SPD) as bearers of “uncivil, spendthrift, undemocratic, but also pro-Russian and pro-Chinese policies” [42], which represent a major threat to the prosperity and security of the Czech Republic. On the other hand, the opposition populist ANO and SPD accuse the ruling coalition of censorship in the public media, discrimination against the opposition in parliament, and the introduction of a “new totality”, that is, the destruction of democracy and a return to a regime similar to that of the communists.

This is a textbook case of pernicious political polarization, where the antagonistic camps of political elites cannot agree on anything, perceive each other as existential threats, and spread it further into society. However, while the anti-populist bloc has a clear enemy and its collective identity as defenders of liberal democracy, the anti-elitist and anti-progressive bloc, although able to name its enemy, is still ideologically forming. The fervent patriotism and conservatism proclaimed by Okamura’s SPD may not yet sound attractive enough for Babiš’s pragmatic anti-elitism. According to the Czech expert on culture wars Zora Hesová [76], Babiš also occasionally plays the xenophobic and national-protectionist card, but his technocratic populism rather forces him to position himself “rationally” between extremes. Both blocs seek to construct a pejorative identity of the other and impose it on the public. Progressivism indifferent to national interests imposed on the anti-populist bloc and irresponsible populism imposed on the anti-elitist and anti-progressive bloc is, in both cases, either directly rejected or at least ignored and not accepted as a legitimate part of their own identity.

4.2 Mass polarization

For some time now, sociologists and commentators on public affairs in the Czech Republic have been debating whether or not Czech society is divided into two mutually hostile camps. It is significant that the disputes about the split in society are based directly on sociological research data. Even the authors of the same research cannot agree in their public statements whether Czech society is more divided or more fragmented. Some see the idea of a divided society as a myth [77, 78], others as an acute threat [79], and others as a reality [80, 81].

Signals of ongoing mass polarization in the Czech Republic are weaker than in other Central European countries, but they exist and are significant. For example, we can see them in the results of several presidential and recent parliamentary elections, where the Czech public was divided roughly into two equal camps supporting either candidates of the current coalition or opposition political parties and movements. This division of voters and sympathizers of political parties into supporters of the current coalition and opposition was confirmed by quantitative sociological research conducted in 2020 by Alena Macková and her colleagues. The research focused on measuring affective polarization and found that coalition voters sympathize significantly more with each other than with opposition voters and vice versa [81]. However, according to the results of this research, it is mostly concerned with normal ideological polarization rather than pernicious polarization penetrating deeply into people’s social lives. While most respondents perceive societal polarization, only a minority transfer this polarization into their private attitudes and behaviour.

Thus, the majority of the Czech public resist political polarization and refuses to confine their lives to ideological bubbles and the world of political collective identities. On the other hand, the main political polarizing rift between anti-progressivism and anti-populism (coalition vs. opposition) is very pervasively manifested in the communication of citizens on various internet portals and social networks. Unfortunately, this communication is often characterized by uncivilized language, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and hoaxes. A significant threat in terms of deepening polarization associated with the internet and social networks today is posed by fraud and lies powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Thanks to AI, damaging deepfake audio clips and videos with polarizing potential are spreading with great speed.

It is not surprising that the views of the two main political camps, that is, anti-elitists and anti-progressives on the one hand and anti-populists on the other, are reflected in the communication on social networks. Both camps have entered into a sharp conflict over the fate of democracy in the Czech Republic. The former express concern about the return of false elitist democracy ruled by corrupt politicians and the threat to national interests, while the latter are horrified by the prospect of the destruction of liberal democracy under the pressure of authoritarian populist leaders.

Ordinary anti-elitists and anti-progressives demand protection for authoritarian leaders from predatory elites, which anti-populists consider civic barbarism that could have spread only due to the ignorance and lower intelligence of the mass of voters who cannot distinguish empty promises from real possibilities. They criticize their irrational, emotion-based voting behaviour and feel intellectually superior to the demented loyalists of populist leaders. Anti-populists refer to public opinion surveys indicating that populist leaders are mainly supported by less educated, older, and poorer people from rural areas. Unlike followers of populist leaders, anti-populists believe that democracy is devalued today more by incompetent masses manipulated by populist leaders than by corrupt elites.

However, sometimes, the views of anti-populists on the voting masses resemble a sort of demophobia, which contradicts the fundamental principle of democracy that the vote of every voter is equal. It is no wonder that anti-elitists and anti-progressives accuse anti-populists of elitism and betrayal of the interests of the people or the nation. They eagerly denounce their democratic hypocrisy when they see them ignoring the undemocratic practices of their anti-populist-oriented politicians. They criticize their accommodating attitudes towards refugees, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, EU worship, support for Ukraine, and constant efforts to impose their opinion on others as the better one.

4.3 Polarization of CSOs?

Is Czech civil society polarized? What does polarized civil society actually mean, and when does this polarization occur? Ben-Ner [22] describes the polarization of CSOs as a continuous process going through three phases: “From splintering into many disjointed groups with few overlaps to fragmentation with broader categories on to polarization, there is a gradual transformation of boundaries of identities, some coalescing with others into larger groupings that reflect worldviews and ideologies.” To complete the process of polarizing CSOs into two mutually antagonistic camps, according to Ben-Ner, it is necessary that they “become aligned or subjugated to ´higher-order´ ideas” [22]. CSOs, whose original reason for being was to provide freely available services and space for entertainment or recreation, have also begun to develop ideological activities and become an ally or opponent of the current political regime. When we look at Czech civil society today, we see that nothing of the sort has happened yet.

What can be observed is the continuous formation of flexible rather smaller, horizontal advocacy coalitions of CSOs that engage in particularistic conflicts (culture wars). This is not a process of institutionalizing two communicationally impenetrable pillars of CSOs, nor is it the formation of two broad ideologically-based allied blocs of CSOs, vertically linked to the most prominent political leaders and parties. Individual CSOs are quite intensively involved in conflicts, for example, over various social issues such as corruption, migration, human rights, animal rights, Roma, women’s and other minority rights, the war in Ukraine, poverty, etc. CSOs are usually on either side of these conflicts, thus polarizing them, but only to a limited extent. For example, the refugee crisis (2014) in the Czech Republic started both a wave of refugee aid organized by various charitable CSOs and a wave of anti-Islamist movements and protests framing refugees as a security threat. And a similar scenario is playing out now with regard to refugees from Ukraine. In neither case, however, has there been an ideological extension of this conflict to other CSOs that were not primarily concerned with it?

Indeed, even confessional polarization of CSOs has not reached significant proportions in the Czech Republic. Although, as noted by Ondřej Slačálek [69], the Catholic Church attempted to create broader alliances with political parties based on conservative ideology and engaged in culture wars against issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and the Istanbul Convention, this effort did not elicit any positive response from the larger part of other advocacy, leisure, or service-oriented CSOs. It is typical for the Czech Republic that there has been no wider mobilization of CSOs in the name of higher-order ideas. Most civil society organizations remain aloof from the main polarizing split between anti-populists and anti-elitists or anti-progressives. This means that one of the symptoms of pernicious polarization is missing in the Czech Republic. Political polarization has not penetrated too deeply into civil society and the vast majority of CSOs have remained apolitical.

However, a certain part of Czech civil society has recently been bustling with mass activities. This includes a disparate conglomerate of associations, internet platforms, and informal social networks that are in permanent conflict with official authorities and protest against them almost as a matter of principle, regardless of whether populists or anti-populists are in power. These CSOs thrive on the political disillusionment of citizens and their fear of the future, and they exploit every crisis (economic, refugee, pandemic, war-related, or inflationary) as an opportunity to make themselves and their leaders visible. In order to increase their popularity, they spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. As Roman Máca [82], an analyst of the disinformation scene, notes, “It is a certain subculture that emerged as a result of massive dissemination of disinformation and propaganda. They demonstrated against Islam, refugees, masks, vaccines, and now it’s Ukraine and economic issues.” In short, these organizations and networks are thematically conjunctural, and their purpose always justifies the uncivil means.

With some reservation, it can be said that these organizations form a kind of underclass of CSOs. They are “lumpenassociations”⁴ that are part of an uncivilized civil society. Their supporters engage in violence, most commonly verbal and symbolic (such as carrying gallows replicas to demonstrations), engage in stalking against their opponents, threaten them with violence, clash with the police, and forcibly enter public buildings and courtrooms. Lumpenassociations use apocalyptic language, securitize public space, and constantly urge their followers to radically defend society against threats of moral and economic decline, the collapse of traditional values, and democracy.

In this regard, lumpenassociations are very close to populist parties and movements, but they are even more radical. They are often personally and ideologically linked to small extra-parliamentary parties whose leaders strive to enter mainstream politics. Therefore, populist leaders of parliamentary parties generally behave suspiciously and reservedly towards them. However, when they deem it appropriate, they cooperate with them. For example, former President Miloš Zeman [83] openly supported the anti-Islamist movement, but when it came to the opponents of the COVID-19 vaccine, he called them people who were “taking revenge for their own insignificance.”

Lumpenassociations act in civil society as a loose radical element that awaits its chance to speak more loudly in mainstream politics. They wait for a major populist polarizer established in parliamentary politics to take them under his protection, thus opening access to state support and involving them in the governing system. As for the size of the lumpenassociations segment in Czech civil society, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many there are. However, it is more likely to be in the order of dozens to hundreds of organizations and networks rather than thousands. Overall, they represent a small but highly visible part of civil society with a significant impact on shaping public opinion.

5. Polarization deficits

It seems that the reinforcing polarizing mechanism has already been initiated in the Czech Republic. The process of pernicious polarization is underway, but it is still somewhat incomplete and ideologically uncrystallized. The fundamental question is, why is this case? Why is the Czech Republic not as strongly and unequivocally polarized as Hungary and Poland? What are the differences between the Czech pattern of polarization and those of Hungary and Poland? It can be said that Czech society has several deficits in terms of suitable conditions for the escalation of its polarization.

5.1 Deficit of a radical major polarizer

In the Czech Republic, there is a lack of a populist politician who would fulfil the homogenizing function of the populist (anti-elite/anti-progressive) pole of polarization. The most popular populist in the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš, paradoxically and exceptionally among populist politicians, did not gain political power by harassing liberal CSOs but with their help! Babiš’s electoral success was aided by cooperation with the Czech branch of Transparency International and other anti-corruption CSOs. Thanks to this cooperation, he became a well-known anti-corruption figure, which significantly helped him in the 2013 election campaign. However, this unusual cooperation quickly ended after it was revealed that as prime minister, he had co-determined the allocation of state subsidies to Agrofert, a holding he himself owned. This essentially ended his efforts to create a bloc of CSOs that were friendly to him. Moreover, Babiš had no ambition to unite populist parties and movements. He never invited Tomio Okamura and his SPD into a governing coalition to form a populist bloc but joined with a standard social democratic party. Babiš simply did not care about homogenizing a populist bloc composed of political parties and CSOs.

Although Miloš Zeman has recently aspired to the role of homogenizing the populist bloc, his post-presidential position is not strong enough to succeed. In the Czech Republic, there has not yet been a conjunction of a strong populist leader and polarizing tendencies in the political scene and within civil society as seen in Hungary and Poland. In the Czech Republic, the situation regarding major polarizers is not as clear; not only are there several strong populist leaders, but the strongest of them, Andrej Babiš, is a moderate rather than a radical polarizer.

5.2 Deficit of suitable ideology

A fundamental factor that prevented Babiš (unlike Orbán and Kaczyński) from expanding cooperation with civil society was the absence of a suitable ideology that could evoke feelings of solidarity between politicians and CSOs. His entrepreneurial populism [71] offers only a vision of technocratic, efficient state management akin to a private company [84]. It is evident that this vision lacks the potential to create an alternative to the neoliberal ideology prevalent among Czech advocacy CSOs. Although Babiš has recently been trying to align himself more with the conservative or clerical part of civil society, he faces resistance (for example, priests refuse to let him into churches). His long-cultivated image as an ideologically neutral technocrat (and partly his communist past) makes his courting of conservative ideology seem inauthentic. Another problem in Babiš’s alignment with conservatives is that the conservative wing of the political spectrum has long been occupied by the standard Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL). Overall, in the rather atheistic Czech society, the conservative part of civil society is considerably weaker than in other Central European countries. It is telling that the Catholic Church did not become a national church in the Czech Republic [85].

5.3 Deficit of populist-friendly CSOs

For Czech populist politicians, it is typical that they have long worked to clearly define their unfriendly “political nonprofits,” but they forgot to publicly define their friendly CSOs. It started with former President Václav Klaus, who first criticized the very idea of civil society and then denounced the ideology of “NGOism”. He saw the participation of CSOs in politics or public policy as a threat to freedom and democracy because they did not get their mandate to have a say in politics in democratic elections [86]. Even before Andrej Babiš entered politics, all the most important populist figures on the Czech political scene agreed that civic activists only bring chaos to the management of society and are a completely unnecessary obstacle to modernization (they obstruct the construction of highways and other useful facilities). Environmental activists, in particular, have become the scapegoat for failed modernization projects. The word “activist” has become a slur in the Czech Republic in general.

During his presidency, Miloš Zeman tried to discredit CSOs from an economic point of view and openly referred to them as parasitic organizations. Babiš, in his role as prime minister, only hinted at the parasitism of CSOs and then unsuccessfully tried to cut their state budget subsidies. It is characteristic that both Zeman and Babiš referred to a wide range of service and leisure CSOs. Tomio Okamura’s efforts to reduce this frontal attack on CSOs to mere “political nonprofits” could not fundamentally change the negative relationship between populist leaders, or rather their voters, and the CSO community. Under the pressure of populist leaders, the credibility of CSOs in general has suffered significantly in the eyes of the Czech public.

As for Babiš, after a negative experience with anti-corruption CSOs, he was skeptical about forming further friendships with CSOs. As Hanley and Vachudová [68] point out, Babiš has significant economic and media power, allowing him to effectively use robust political marketing and create friendly clientelist networks within political, administrative and economic elite, so he was not particularly interested in building his own network of friendly CSOs. However, it is very likely that despite this, Babiš has strong voter support among small leisure and community CSOs in small towns and villages with mostly older membership bases (gardeners, breeders, beekeepers, tourists, senior clubs, etc.). However, these organizations do not share a common ideological base. Babiš never named them as his allies and did not mobilize them collectively in the interests of his electoral success. As prime minister, Babiš did not hold a protective hand over the conservative part of civil society. He did not establish significant clientelistic relations with it and did not give it preferential treatment. He has never resorted to the tried-and-tested “Divide-and-rule!” tactics used against CSOs by successful major populist polarizers in the Central European region.⁵ The examples of Orbán’s Hungary, Kaczyński’s Poland and Mečiar’s Slovakia speak unequivocally in favor of Gramsci’s thesis on the formation of political and cultural hegemony. It implies that whoever succeeds in polarizing civil society and forming an alliance with its currently stronger part gains power (wins parliamentary elections).

Babiš has not even established friendly relations with traditional advocacy organizations such as employers’ associations and trade unions. For example, unions did not support Babiš in the presidential elections. On the contrary, union leader Josef Středula ran for president against him, and when he withdrew his candidacy, he recommended his voters to vote for Babiš’s competitor. Finally, we should also mention the role of chance, or rather the “bad timing” of Babiš’s premiership during the COVID-19 pandemic, which naturally put him in opposition to the numerous lumpenassociations protesting against the restrictions he himself imposed. Among them, he would not find any friendly CSOs even if he wanted to. But Babiš does not want an alliance with the lumpenassociations and their leaders, and he just wants their voters.

5.4 Deficit of Czech national “deep story”

Andrej Babiš also has a problem with any greater inclination towards nationalism. His Slovak origin (in fact, he is an immigrant in the Czech Republic) prevents him from authentically assuming the role of a nationally charged political leader. Similarly, Tomio Okamura, who has a partial Japanese background, faces the same challenge. Neither of them can authentically invoke Czech national myths or rely on them to legitimize their careers as populist leaders or claim the role of a homogenizer of a wider patriotic-conservative bloc. Additionally, there is the factor of “saturation of Czech nationalism” [87], which indicates the fulfilment of Czech national ambitions in the twentieth century when they first gained an independent national state after World War I and then, after World War II, a single-nation Czech state was established through the expulsion of three million Sudeten Germans. In the Czech Republic, there is therefore no strong emotionally charged narrative of acute national injustice that could offer populists and nationalists an opportunity to appeal for its urgent resolution. In Hungary and Poland, such “deep story” [88] exist and provide populists with a valuable source for mobilizing their supporters.

6. Conclusions

As seen, in comparison with Hungary and Poland, the Czech Republic lacks both the symbolic resources and a suitable major polarizer for the escalation of pernicious societal polarization. Finally, we can ask whether the incomplete polarization of Czech society is also a consequence of the depolarizing activities of CSOs or of the compactness of their liberal orientation, which makes them resistant to the populist, polarizing lure. First of all, it should be seen that the vast majority of the roughly 150,000 Czech CSOs do not comment at all on the issues of the threat to democracy and the alliance of civil society with the world of politics. However, the resistance of most CSOs to the polarizing efforts of politicians is not based on the pro-democratic values of balancing public debate, opposing extremism and mitigating “the principal polarities of political conflict “[89], but on the apolitical and civic comfortable behavior of their members. Nevertheless, even this has a significant depolarizing effect. On the polarization scale of Czech CSOs, there is no significant emptying of the neutral centre in favor of the radical poles.

As has already been said, the conservative part of civil society is weak. This is mainly due to the weak Catholic Church position in Czech society, which cannot function as a centripetal force around which a conservative block of political and civil forces is forming. Its weakness must be sought in its history, which coincidentally put it at odds with Czech nationalism [90]. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church has become the object of anti-clerical resentment of the majority of the Czech population. Not only is the Catholic Church, according to public opinion, responsible for the martyrdom of the Czech national hero, Jan Hus (zealous critic of the Catholic Church in the fifteenth century), but it is also a symbol of the Germanization of the Czech nation of the period when the Czech lands were part of the Habsburg monarchy. The Catholic Church acquired the image of the extended arm of the German-speaking Aristocracy and did not participate significantly in the emancipatory efforts of the Czechs for an independent state at the end of the First World War. It also did not play a major role in the fall of the communist regime, as was the case in Poland, for example. Moreover, for a long time after the Velvet Revolution, in terms of shaping its image, it wasted much effort and attention on the restitution of property confiscated from the churches by the communists. Only very marginally did it devote itself to issues of building democracy and civil society [91]. Nor has the Catholic Church systematically cultivated its charitable image in public space.

The more extensive restitution of church property after 1989 was opposed by the majority of the public [92]. Czechs are mostly either convinced atheists or do not subscribe to any church [93] and view church restitution as an unjust enrichment of the church at the expense of others [94]. The Catholic Church is perceived by the public as a rather selfish institution that is mainly devoted to its own interests and cannot respond honestly to scandals of abuse of children by its priests. Its trustworthiness in the eyes of the public is low and has long been between 25 and 30% of the adult population. Therefore, the most prominent Czech populists (Klaus, Zeman, and Babiš) have long pandered to the majority anti-clerical sentiment of the public and have not supported the Catholic Church in its efforts to restitute church property. On the contrary, they have tried to weaken its influence in society (e.g. all three supported the adoption of a law on the taxation of financial compensation in church restitution in 2019). The weak and long-weakened populist Catholic Church has recently been developing some polarizing activities (e.g. in the interests of the pro-life and traditional family movements against abortion policy), but this is only sufficient for short-term ad hoc alliances with populists of various kinds that can at most block the adoption of new liberal rules [69].

Nor are the polarizing activities of liberal-oriented CSOs massive. Their anti-populist mobilization depends on the degree of perceived acuteness of the threat of a populist bloc victory in the parliamentary elections. At the time of the rule of the pro-democratic anti-populist coalition, this threat is not yet acute. That is why the activity of the anti-populist movement Million Moments for Democracy is currently very subdued. It is symptomatic that the nationwide umbrella association of CSOs “ANNO” (Association of Nonstate Nonprofit Organizations), apart from a few statements in support of the reputation of CSOs, has not carried out any mobilizing activity against the populist attacks on democracy and CSOs. Only a few advocacy coalitions and networks of CSOs are trying to do so (e.g. Advocacy Forum OSF, Network to Protect Democracy, and Czech Elves). However, even in these cases, it is mainly a non-mobilizing, educational and expert activity.

It is common for the actions of lumpen associations to provoke an immediate reaction in public space from pro-democracy, liberal-oriented advocacy organizations, journalists and commentators. They label the leaders and supporters of the lupenassociations with various pejorative names such as “desolates” or “pro-Russian cockroaches”. This, of course, adds fuel to the fire of polarization among CSOs, but it cannot be said to cause any significant escalation. There are no two communication-impenetrable blocks, although their communication is often uncivilized. Even in this case, there is no pillarization of Czech civil society. However, the polarizing activities of a wide range of CSOs can serve as a kind of warning to us not to ascribe to CSOs only one correct, that is, depolarizing, role in democracy at all costs. It does not matter so much whether they support the escalation of polarization or which side of the polarization rift they stand. For what reason and for whom are they polarizing or depolarizing?

Paradoxically, all populists use polarizing strategies in order to eventually achieve a kind of depolarizing nirvana (national unity, classless society, pure race, etc.). That is to say, they actually want the opposite extreme, but one that is as dangerous for democracy as pernicious polarization. For once national unity is achieved, they continue the polarization by pushing it further beyond the borders of the state, where they identify an external enemy against which an internally united country must confront. Those who disrupt this unity are traitors, including CSOs, who polarize and disrupt national unity by criticizing the corrupt and authoritarian practices of populists. Therefore, the assessment of CSOs’ involvement in polarizing or depolarizing activities depends in many ways on the nature of the political context in which these activities take place.

It turns out that the role of CSOs in the process of polarization in society is ambiguous. It will require much more attention than it has received so far, because the involvement of CSOs in the polarization or depolarization of society has a significant impact on democracy. The future direction of research in this area should focus on uncovering the factors explaining the colonization of civil society by populist leaders, or the conditions for the formation of a populist-friendly civil or un-civil society, as well as the polarization and pilarization of civil society itself. It will certainly be interesting to explore the value connotations of CSOs’ involvement in deepening social polarization, that is, to find out under which circumstances CSOs’ polarizing activities are pro-democratic or pathological. It would also be good to know what polarizing or depolarizing practices of CSOs promote democracy, or what forms of democracy do they promote? Future research should also provide answers to questions about whether the depolarizing activities of CSOs can protect liberal democracy when toxic populist leaders (sowers of hatred) in power call for depolarizing society (as is currently happening in Slovakia). This kind of research would help avoid unpleasant surprises such as the depth and breadth of CSOs’ connections to polarizing political actors. It would also help to better answer the question of whether the Czech Republic is more of a landscape before a great polarization battle or whether we are facing a period of depolarization of society.

Acknowledgments

At this point, I would like to thank my colleagues Michaela Šmídová, Ludka Wladyniak, Martin Vávra, and Peter Witz. They spent a lot of time with me discussing and commenting on texts related to the polarization of Czech society and provided me with a lot of inspiration to write this chapter.