When populists win in Prague, that's nothing peculiarly east European'. It's the new normal of the western world | Timothy Garton Ash

"If you open your window on a quiet street in central Prague, the first sound you hear is the trrrrk-trrrrk-trrrrk of carry-on suitcases trundling across paving stones, as tourists walk to their hotel or Airbnb. (The Czech capital had 8 million visitors last year.) As they trek around Prague Castle and fill the Old Town bars with cheerful chatter, these visitors many of them probably unaware of the recent election victory of rightwing populist nationalist parties may think this is just another normal European country."

"And you know what: they will be right. Some more extensively informed newspaper commentators, reaching for an attention-grabbing generalisation, tell a different story. This is eastern Europe reverting to type, they say. After Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, now Czechia as well! The truth is more interesting and more worrying. Thirty six years ago, at the time of the velvet revolution in autumn 1989, people in Prague would constantly tell me they just wanted theirs to be a normal country."

"By normal, they meant like (West) Germany, France, Britain, Spain or Italy. Well, now it is. It's just that the normality has shifted in the meantime. Back then, the prevailing western normal was liberal, internationalist, pro-European; now it's increasingly anti-liberal, nationalist and Eurosceptic. In the Czech election campaign, the incumbent prime minister, Petr Fiala, tried to mobilise Czech voters by asking: Do we want to move towards the east or towards the west? ."

Prague remains a bustling tourist city with millions of visitors and the everyday sounds of travelers moving between hotels. Despite this surface normality, political life in Czechia has moved toward rightwing populism, mirroring trends in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The Western model of liberal, internationalist, pro‑European politics has shifted toward anti-liberal, nationalist and Eurosceptic positions in several Western countries. In the recent election campaign, incumbent prime minister Petr Fiala contrasted east and west, while Andrej Babis, a billionaire businessman and leader of Ano (Yes), led his party to victory after using personal wealth to build a political career.

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