Referendum fiasco, tea revolution, and the prospects of permanently pissed-off Slovakia

On Saturday, July 4th, a revolution ended in Slovakia. It was attended by 16.13 percent of those invited. The referendum on abolishing the lifelong pension, that is, a lifelong salary for former prime ministers, and on the re-establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the National Crime Agency, initiated by the non-parliamentary party Democrats, had the second-lowest turnout in the history of independent Slovakia. Only in 1997 did fewer people vote, when the Mečiar regime itself sabotaged the vote by printing ballots without one question. This time, no one sabotaged anything. The fiasco was the result of honest domestic work.

One lost weekend would not be worth a comment, but the referendum should be read as a symptom. Part of the Slovak opposition electorate has formed over the last few years into a peculiar political community with its own liturgy, its own calendar of holidays, and its own idea of what politics is. We will get closest to it through an American analogy. Slovakia has its (first) tea movement.

Slovak Tea Movement

The defining feature of this group is a feeling. Party affiliation is irrelevant to it. They voted for Matovič, then SaS, today PS or Democrats, and in two years they will choose differently again. Brands rotate, the customer remains. Politicians, that is, specific practical solutions to specific problems, are secondary in this world. The main principles occupy the forefront. Ideally empty, to carry anything. Decency. Expertise. Responsibility. Argentine philosopher Ernesto Laclau, a leading theorist of populism, called these concepts: "empty signifiers." They are words that sound strong but have no fixed content, and for that reason, they unite. Decency or expertise can be interpreted differently by everyone, yet everyone agrees with them, even if they do not agree on anything specific.

This community is held together by technology. Social networks confirm its importance daily and especially the importance of what it believes in. Participation in politics has shrunk to circulating digital content, and the sense of engagement grows proportionally as real influence diminishes. That is why it is worth looking at a movement that arose from the same mixture of anger, principles, and technologies 17 years earlier and across the ocean.

What was the American Tea Party? The movement was born on February 19, 2009, when CNBC economic program commentator Rick Santelli live from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange exploded against Barack Obama's plan to help people who were struggling to pay mortgages after the financial crisis. Santelli accused the government of "supporting bad behavior," called debtors losers, and called on the outraged middle class to have a "tea party" in Chicago, referencing the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773. "How many of you want to pay a mortgage for a neighbor who has an extra bathroom and cannot pay his bills?" he asked. The video went viral, tens of thousands took to the streets, and in 2010, the movement helped Republicans gain 63 seats in the House of Representatives.

From Principles to Identity

The Tea Party outwardly claimed fiscal discipline. However, Harvard political scientists Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson revealed a different anatomy. A typical member was older, educated, and materially secure. State pensions or public healthcare for seniors did not bother him as long as they flowed to him. What bothered him were "freeloaders," including immigrants, low-income people, and young people. Fiscal responsibility thus functioned as an identity disguised as a program. A costume from 1773 worn to express outrage, anger turned into moral superiority.

The movement was also significantly smaller than it appeared outwardly; its strength was amplified by media, especially Fox News at the time. When Donald Trump then appeared, all that fiscal passion spilled over into him completely. As Republican historian Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote for The Washington Post, the Tea movement never disappeared, it only "mutated into Trumpism." Principles were the first to run out. The identity persisted, and so did the enemy.

The Slovak incarnation of the Tea movement may share almost nothing with the American one: ideas, size, or intent. The parallel lies elsewhere, in the atmosphere, or in some kind of "vibe." British cultural theorist Raymond Williams used the term "structure of feeling" for this elusive political substrate. It is a shared mood of the time and a group that has not yet matured into ideology but is quietly organizing into certain structures what its members consider self-evident, funny, or intolerable. And that is where both movements mirror each other. In outrage, as a fundamental state of political experience. And in the conviction that outrage must be catalyzed by tearing down established political and institutional norms because the standard process acts painfully slow.

The Tunisian tea community grew out of a real systemic failure, just like the American one from the collapse of capitalism in 2008. The murder of a journalist, the kidnapping of the state, and later Robert Fico's return to power are legitimate reasons for anger. The problem begins when anger becomes a lifestyle. After years of complaining about Smer's degenerates and anything that even hinted at "anti-system," this community found a position that has something intoxicating about it. Defining itself against the system used to be the privilege of others. From now on, it can be anti-systemic too, but properly, cultivated, with graphs. The fervor remains the same, often vulgar as well.

Cliché reference: Hegel taught that a thesis carries its antithesis within itself, and contradictions mutually condition each other. Slovak (oppositional) internet adds empirical material to this. Those who have been opposing degenerates for ten years will eventually start speaking their language, only with better spelling.

Politics Died in 2020

The key date of this transformation should be sought before 2023, in the 2020 elections. French theorist Guy Debord described in the late 1960s a society of the spectacle, a world where lived life gradually turns into a show and politics into staging. The Slovak version of this stage matured precisely when Igor Matovič's marketing show finally defeated his program. Since then, politics in the original sense has almost ceased to exist here. The governing imperative is to stay visible to those who agree with me. One more protest. One more debunked disinformation. One more (Zomri) joke about Dank and his doctoral thesis. The measure of engagement shifted from results to reactions. And the endless story of Slovak discourse always ends the same way. Everyone eventually ends up with Matovič. If not directly on the candidate list, then at least by method.

Don't disturb, a reality show is being filmed here, and you will be part of it. Otherwise, you want Fico to be here.

Democrats are the perfect product of this era. The party is made up of people from the environments of Igor Matovič and Eduard Heger, politicians who for years legitimized one of the most controversial leaders of Slovak politics, and whose chaotic governance has died where it could be expected, in Fico's "triumphant" return. Today, the same people offer the country a cleansing from Fico. It’s a bit like an arsonist selling fire extinguishers. In politics, forgiveness is possible, so be it. Worse is that they have replaced the path to parliament with a bypass.

Referendum as a Case Study

From Saturday's vote, this world can be distilled almost in a laboratory manner. From the beginning, it was framed by the slogan "because of Fico." The Prime Minister's name ultimately appeared directly in the wording of the first question, with the pension receiving a direct addressee, "for example, for Robert Fico." The campaign primarily promised an experience. Let's show Fico the middle finger.

However, both questions are pure legislative matter. Abolishing the pension and restoring institutions that prosecuted the most serious corruption and which the government abolished are laws. And laws are (traditionally) passed in parliament in a parliamentary democracy. A party that wants to change laws has a proven tool: to get into the National Council. Instead, Democrats used the institute of direct democracy and employed it for a pre-election campaign financed by the state. This ultimately only repeated Matovič's bypassing and disintegration of normal political, legislative, and institutional work. To simplify, I will borrow (for this community) the controversial analogy of journalist Denník N Braňo Bezák: a steak can be cut with scissors, and scissors undoubtedly cut. But a knife and fork exist for a good reason, and normalizing cutting steaks just because Fico is sitting at the table is a road to hell in dining.

With norms, it is even more serious than good intentions' rhetoric suggests. Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt show in their book How Democracies Die that democracies rarely die by a coup today. They are eroded gradually by the erosion of unwritten rules, mutual respect, and institutional restraint. Norms are most harmed by the legitimation of their destruction, which spreads like a virus, regardless of who started it. In our case, Fico has legitimized and continues to legitimize this destruction for years. It is all the more important that the "other side" does not legitimize the same method just because it has a nobler goal. The strength of a norm lies in the tradition of its observance. A norm lives solely from the fact that actors repeatedly respect it. Those who destroy norms in the name of democracy inadvertently certify destruction as a legitimate political language. And in this language, Fico will ultimately always speak more fluently.

At the same time, not everyone who came to the ballot box on Saturday is a tea revolutionary. People who simply consider the pension an immorality or want the institutions fighting corruption back have every right to vote. It is about the gravitational field around the referendum, about framing and the dramaturgy of the campaign.

However, one thing the Democrats must admit: part of society truly believed that this referendum was practically existential. Those who hesitated helped Fico. Those who criticized made him happy. And those who "acted" came to show him the middle finger. Exactly in this figure lies a deeper problem of the opposition culture, the moralization of politics. Belgian political scientist Chantal Mouffe distinguishes between an opponent and an enemy. We engage in a legitimate dispute with an opponent about the shape of the country and respect his right to exist. With an enemy, we do not discuss; the enemy is removed. According to Mouffe, democracy lives from the first relationship and withers when the second displaces it. Meanwhile, the Slovak opposition community has transferred the logic of the enemy into its own ranks. Criticism is translated as betrayal, and every disagreement is weighed by whom it pleases.

Is it really necessary to question the steps of opposition parties so that Fico does not laugh? Should we applaud, or at least remain silent, at everything any opposition party invents until Fico disappears? Plurality and discussion should be able to withstand this. Different preferences signal at most that society still breathes. Fico will not disappear by collective agreement alone. Democracy is based on disagreement, and through this tension, it seeks tolerable solutions. Mouffe calls this "agonism," a dispute where opponents defeat each other with arguments and at the ballot box. Whoever, in the name of unity, demands silence and the illusion of discipline, has confused democracy with barracks.

The arithmetic of Saturday is ruthless. According to the referendum results, 93.4 percent of participants voted to abolish the pension, and 92.2 percent to restore the prosecution office. In a community where everyone agrees with everyone, every vote acts as a triumph, just like on social networks. Sociologist Émile Durkheim described rituals where the community, through shared excitement, affirms its own existence. Saturday's vote fulfilled exactly this role for the tea community. The tool of change played a secondary role; the main role was played by the ritual of belonging. However, only about 705,000 out of 4.4 million eligible voters came to the polls, and in three municipalities, no one voted at all. The bubble confused its own social network with the country, literally statistically. Voters from PS and SaS mostly came to the polls, while KDH and the Slovensko movement voters mostly stayed home. Even nearly full mobilization of their own community does not even reach a third of the required quorum. The American tea movement at least won elections. The Slovak one so far only wins discussions under posts.

The reaction of "the others" only confirmed the diagnosis. Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok demands an apology and reimbursement from the Democrats, mistakenly claiming that participation was the lowest in history. Democrat representative Jaroslav Naď said that participation "is not a big success, but it's not a disaster either," and looked for responsibility with the president and other opposition parties. Both parties were essentially saying the same thing. The dispute over the pension and prosecution somehow disappeared along the way. What remains is a competition for a better status.

An Industry That Produces Nothing

The tea revolution thus only succeeded online. In reality, only 16 percent of people participated. The American Tea Party in this story serves as a reminder. It started with principles and ended with Trump because principles without politics are just fuel for outrage. And outrage always finds a leader who burns it most effectively. Mouffe would add that moralized consensus is the best fertilizer for populism. The Slovak version of its "Trump" is still searching, although the audition is still ongoing.

If opposition politics in Slovakia is to have a future, it will have to stop talking to itself. It will have to reach out to the undecided, whom it despises today, and to people who care more about rent and salary than Fico's pension. It will have to offer practical solutions, visions, and space for young people, that is, everything it currently ignores. And above all, it will have to endure internal criticism without hysteria, that every disagreement is a gift for Fico. Until then, Slovakia will remain permanently pissed off, as it is today. A renewable energy source for a political industry that produces nothing.

The author is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at Comenius University in Bratislava.

The text was created with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, with representation in the Czech Republic. The publisher is fully responsible for the content; the views expressed in the text do not necessarily represent the foundation's position.