How a Slovakian neo-Nazi got elected

In December 2013, Marian Kotleba, a former secondary school teacher who had become Slovakia’s most notorious political extremist, arrived to begin work at his new office – the governor’s mansion in Banská Bystrica, the country’s sixth-largest city. Kotleba venerated Slovakia’s wartime Nazi puppet state, and liked to dress up in the uniforms of its shock troops, who had helped to round up thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Now, in the biggest electoral shock anyone could remember in the two decades since Slovakia’s independence, the people of Banská Bystrica and the surrounding region had voted for the 37-year-old Kotleba to be their governor. The four-storey mansion, with its vaulted ceilings and gilded pillars, would be his workplace for the next four years.

Banská Bystrica is a tranquil kind of place, with a genteel Mitteleuropa charm: the centre has pavement cafes, neat rows of burgher houses and a number of handsome baroque churches. At eight minutes to every hour, a clock in the central square plays a dainty jewellery-box jingle. And now, it had the dubious distinction of being the first place in modern Europe to have elected a person widely regarded as a neo-fascist to a major office.

For the next four years, heavy-set men in the green shirts of Kotleba’s Our Slovakia party guarded the door of the administration building; they worked out in a gym that was constructed for them in the basement of the governor’s office. Journalists, for the most part, were forbidden to enter. Kotleba branded the mainstream media liars, and said he would communicate directly with the people. An industrial printing press, brought into the building early in his term, pumped out regular pamphlets called Our Slovakia, which were sent across the region, and later, the country.

The colourful, four-page leaflets were packed with the tropes that had defined Kotleba’s campaign: decent Slovaks were being exploited and terrorised by corrupt politicians, “Gypsy criminals” and shadowy international forces. Articles railed against promiscuity, abortion and homosexuality, all of which threatened the traditional family and the Slovak nation. Often, there was a personal appeal from Kotleba not to believe the “tendentious opinions” about him in the media. Tall, stocky and balding, and always wearing a neatly trimmed moustache, Kotleba looked equal parts supply teacher and gang leader. He had a purposeful strut and a boxer’s habit of shifting his weight from one foot to the other. At meetings and rallies, he spoke in a hectoring, insistent tone about the urgency of his tasks.

In many of the smaller settlements there were simply not enough jobs, and the most talented people got out as soon as they could. There was a vague resentment at being seen as second-class citizens inside the European Union, and a more acute feeling that the Slovak political class was isolated from the masses and only interested in lining its pockets. Soon enough, the same issues would fuel the rise of rightwing populism across the region. Within a few years, after migration and nationalism had taken over the political agenda, much of Europe would also be grappling with the far-right’s success at the ballot box. But back in 2013, nobody was expecting a neo-Nazi to win an election. How was it possible that 55% of voters had backed someone this extreme?

Three years later, Kotleba pulled off another electoral shock, using his platform as governor to take his far-right party into parliament after a vigorous campaign in small towns across the country. Our Slovakia won 14 out of 150 seats in the Slovak legislature. In March, he will run for president.

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In Slovakia, regional governors are responsible for the unglamorous nitty-gritty of local administration: bus timetables, road maintenance and some education and healthcare. The country’s population of about 5.5 million is divided into eight regions; in the west, the capital, Bratislava, brushes against the Austrian border and is just a short hop from Vienna. In the east, the country stretches to the Ukrainian border. Banská Bystrica, the largest region by area, is right in the middle, a three-hour train ride from the capital. The city of Banská Bystrica itself