Threat of Extremism from the Point of View of the Czech Armed Forces

Abstract:

The paper deals with the assessment of extremism in connection with the Czech Armed Forces. It analyses attitudes of various forms of Czech domestic extremist movements to the military sphere and possible impacts of the infiltration of extremists into the army, namely in time of danger (training militant activities, including paramilitarism, subversion, espionage, etc). The most important problem of the contemporary Czech counter-extremist policy in this area is the rise of neo-Nazi activities in the armed forces and the establishing of extreme right paramilitary units which take interest in the engagement of soldiers. Even though these activities are limited in our country, the author offers overall survey various obscure organizations, having connections to foreign groups sponsoring their Czech counterparts.

Prof. Miroslav Mareš, PhD., born in 1974. He is the guarantor of security and strategic studies at the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno. He focuses on the research of extremism and terrorism in the Central Europe. He is a member of the European Expert Network on Terrorism Issues. He has worked with the OSCE and participated in the counter-extremism and the counter-terrorism activities of the European Union. He is an author or co-author of more than two hundred publications (among other with Astrid Bötticher they wrote the book Theorien, Extremism – Konzepte, Restoring, issued in 2012, in Munich).

Country: Czech Republic

02/07/2020

Leave a comment