Fico: Fight Against Fascism Will Always Be in Our Political DNA

Bratislava, March 14 (TASR) – Whether Smer-SD ends up in Government or Opposition, the fight against fascism will form the main characteristic trait of its politics, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Monday.

Fico spoke on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of the first Slovak state’s founding, as he laid a wreath on the monument dedicated to Holocaust victims at Rybne Namestie in Bratislava.

It wasn’t so much for the past as for the sake of the present and future that Fico came to pay his respects to the victims. “Slovakia can be proud of many things. However, there’s one aspect we must never allow to be taken away from us because it’s a fundamental pillar of our statehood and that’s the resistance against fascism,” said Fico.

According to Fico, his heart sank for the first time when he learned of 2013 regional election results in Banska Bystrica, when Marian Kotleba, head of far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia, became Banska Bystrica Region Governor. He was also shocked by last week’s general election results seen in some Slovak villages. “If the party, whose representative (MP Marian Magat) claims that Hitler was more or less an okay guy and the Holocaust was a hoax, manages to garner almost one-fifth of votes in a village such as Ostry Grun (Banska Bystrica region) … then we should all be on high alert,” Fico said. “The village that was burned down and stands as a symbol of the atrocities committed by fascism.”

The Prime Minister stressed that both he and his party will utilise all democratic means at their disposal to prevent such things from reoccurring. He recommended anyone who casts doubt over the Holocaust and mass extermination of peoples to pay a visit to at least one former concentration camp. “They stand as a memento of the atrocities committed by fascism,” he added.

Fico was accompanied during the wreath-laying ceremony by Justice Minister Tomas Borec, Education, Science, Research and Sport Minister Juraj Draxler and Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Lubomir Jahnatek.