Post-dissent and the New Right: Problems and Potential of post-Communist Dissent in Slovakia and Beyond

The chapter focuses on how the legacy of dissident antipolitics operates in the context of post-Communist Slovakia, and in particular in the context of the long predominance of the centrist nationalism of Vladimir Mečiar and the social nationalism of Robert Fico. While in Poland and Hungary the anti-communist legacy was used by conservatives in order to fight culture wars against liberals, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia this legacy served to create an alliance of conservatives and liberals in the struggle against “populism” and the “legacy of communism,” supporting a depoliticized struggle for “decent politics,” diverting attention from socio-economic issues. Thus, post-dissident framings can be used also for discourse policing to conceal a race to the bottom in social policy. This discourse is characterized by an accent on the image of a “decent” and “cultivated” civil society struggling against the state, which further strengthens the apolitical character of post-dissident opposition. At the same time, the chapter also shows how opposition to this post-dissident narrative can lead the left into the same political corner as national conservatives. In the conclusion, the author proposes a dialectical reaction to post-dissident rhetoric—to formulate a new dissident position adequate for the situation of real capitalism.