On November 17 Czech President Miloš Zeman spoke at a rally in the Czech Republic organized by the group “Block Against Islam”. Among the other honored guests present for President Zeman’s speech was Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League.
Many thanks to Margita for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Below are excerpts from the Breibart report on Mr. Zeman’s speech:
Eastern Europe Rising: Czech President Speaks at Anti-Islam Rally With PEGIDA Leaders, Tommy Robinson
Speaking to a crowd this afternoon that included observers from Germany’s PEGIDA movement and Britain’s Tommy Robinson, president Miloš Zeman was a guest of the Czech political action group ‘Block Against Islam’.
Speaking on stage, the president said nobody else would be able to dictate to the Czech people, and took aim at the mainstream media, which he accused of “massaging” the migrant crisis for their own ends. He took a strong position defending free speech, remarking that everyone had the right to an opinion, but Czechs should never try to silence people with opposite views.
Mr. Zeman remarked using slurs against your political opponents didn’t constitute a real argument, and accordingly those opposing migration should no longer be called “extremists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, racists or fascists”, reports Radio Prague. The audience greeted the president’s words with cheers and chanted “long live Zeman!”
[…]
‘Block Against Islam’ have been active in the Czech Republic in agitating against the ingress of Islam into the country. Breitbart London reported in August how the group erected blooded statues of women in Islamic dress around the city in a warning over the Muslim practice of stoning women to death. Signs reading “Pregnant after Rape” or “She Was Unfaithful” along with the now familiar no-Mosques logo were placed with the statues to hammer the point home.
Video transcript:
| 00:15 | [crowd] Long live Zeman! | |
| 00:25 | Dear fellow citizens, | |
| 00:28 | let us first of all respect the memory of the victims of the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris with a minute’s silence. | |
| 01:10 | Thank you. | |
| 01:13 | I should like to thank the organisers of this meeting for their invitation, | |
| 01:25 | because we should all commemorate in peace and tranquillity the two events of 17th November, | |
| 01:40 | that of 17th November 1939, and that of 17 November 1989. | |
| 01:52 | What connects these two events despite the gap of 50 years? | |
| 02:03 | I think that these are two things. | |
| 02:13 | Firstly our nation’s disagreement with occupation – be it visible, in the case of the German occupation, | |
| 02:24 | or the badly-hidden yet real one in the case of the Soviet occupation. | |
| 02:34 | This nation deserves to govern itself with nobody, I repeat nobody, from the outside dictating what it can or cannot do. | |
| 03:07 | But the second memory of both events of 17 November is perhaps equally important. | |
| 03:19 | At that time people came out onto the streets to protest against manipulation | |
| 03:27 | To protest against being forced to accept only one ‘correct’ opinion, against being forced into a straitjacket of uniform opinions, | |
| 03:48 | against being forbidden to think otherwise than the way those manipulating them ordered them to think. | |
| 04:08 | [crowd] Long live Zeman, long live Zeman | |
| 04:17 | Today we live in a free society where brainwashing is more difficult than in the past. | |
| 04:28 | But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. | |
| 04:32 | Manipulation exists, and it has many beautiful names. | |
| 04:41 | I’ll tell you only three: Some consider themselves as value-leaders and say about themselves | |
| 04:47 | that only they have the right to tell us which values we must share and which not. | |
| 05:10 | Others style themselves leaders of public opinion. Usually these are would-be ‘elites’ | |
| 05:15 | who simply want to raise their profile | |
| 05:35 | and legitimise their position without anyone voting for them. | |
| 05:51 | But the most sinister are the opinion makers. People who call themselves this despise the people. | |
| 06:14 | They think that people are like plasticine or dough which can be moulded into a shape which suits the manipulator. | |
| 06:31 | But we are not dough, we are not plasticine. All of us here today try our best to think independently. | |
| 06:58 | We have witnessed many examples of ‘media massage’, but there’s one I’d like to talk about especially, | |
| 07:13 | because it has been stirring the whole nation. | |
| 07:19 | It is the media massage regarding the migration crisis. | |
| 07:26 | I think that tolerance of different opinions is necessary. | |
| 07:38 | That everyone is entitled in a free society to express his opinion but also that the opposite view must not, in a truly free society, be silenced and labelled with abusive titles, | |
| 08:08 | such as extremists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, racists or fascists. | |
| 08:33 | Labels and slurs like these do not make an argument and only show | |
| 08:35 | the inadequacy of the thought processes of those who utter them. | |
| 08:56 | Nor is shouting an argument. Shouting is the expression of the fascists; | |
| 09:01 | shouting is the expression of the kind of herd which met here last year. | |
| 09:24 | Our nation is not xenophobic. In this nation, in this country there are more than half a million foreigners. | |
| 09:39 | They are able to coexist with our culture, they are accepted in a friendly way. There are no problems with them. | |
| 09:50 | On the contrary, they contribute to our society. | |
| 10:03 | But their culture is fully compatible with European values. | |
| 10:11 | It is not culture of murderers and it is not culture of religious hatred. | |
| 10:29 | When I ask what causes migration I know that the vast majority of these illegal migrants are well-fed young men. | |
| 10:50 | And I ask why these men don’t fight for the freedom of their country against the Islamic State. | |
| 11:12 | And if they come from countries where there is no fighting, I ask, | |
| 11:17 | why don’t they work for their country to make it better and more prosperous | |
| 11:30 | and make it overcome its current state of backwardness? | |
| 11:43 | The voice of the president of the republic should be the voice of the nation. | |
| 11:51 | and not the voice of the media, never the media’s trumpet. | |
| 12:09 | Although I admit that my life would be much more comfortable if I were the voice of the media. | |
| 12:20 | Journalists who write about something different every day without understanding anything | |
| 12:25 | would praise me for the beautiful speeches I make. | |
| 12:39 | But I would come into conflict with my nation. | |
| 12:50 | And therefore, in conclusion I’d like to call upon you to do everything we can | |
| 12:55 | in order to continue living in a free society, | |
| 13:07 | where we respect differences of opinion, discuss them and argue about them | |
| 13:19 | and where we will not succumb to brainwashing. | |
| 13:27 | Thank you for your attention. | |
| 13:33 |
Until we meet again next year. Goodbye.
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