Struggle between freedom, fear

Books prompt hatred concerns anew for Czechs

By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent, 8/28/2003

PRAGUE -- Michal Zitko says he was just trying to publish important and influential historical texts for the public's benefit. Czech authorities have accused him of peddling racial hatred.

When Zitko published a Czech-language edition of Adolf Hitler's infamous "Mein Kampf" three years ago, police moved quickly to confiscate copies of the book, which is banned here, from distributors and store shelves. Zitko was tried and convicted of "promoting a movement that aids the suppression of human rights" and given a three-year suspended sentence.

Zitko managed to get the verdict overturned on appeal, but in a new trial this month, he was again convicted and given a 22-month suspended sentence and three years probation. He immediately filed another appeal.

As the case has wound its way through the Czech judicial system, it became the subject of intense debate about the balance between free speech and censorship in this nation of 10 million, which freed itself from Communist rule in 1989. The controversy illustrates the conflicting instincts in the young democracies of Eastern Europe, which tend to be vigilant about preserving their hard-won freedoms but at the same time harbor deep fears of totalitarian ideologies that have plagued the continent in the past century.

"People are afraid, it's clear," Zdenek Zboril, a political analyst at Prague's Institute of International Relations, told Radio Prague recently. "They worry about some new similar anti-Semitism and racism, which is a problem among some young people between the age of 15 and 25," added Zboril, the country's leading expert on extremist movements.

As the controversy over "Mein Kampf" dragged on, a new scandal erupted this year over a book called "Taboos in Social Science," by psychologist Petr Bakalar. The book, published in February, appears at first glance to be a serious academic work. But its thesis, that race is a key factor in determining intelligence, as well as allegations that Jews control the US media, universities, and film industry, have led to calls for the book to be banned here.

Tomas Kamin, a sociologist in Prague, filed suit to halt the book's publication. The Czech criminal code forbids supporting organizations that suppress human rights or promote "ethnic, religious, nationalist, or class hatred."

In an article in the daily newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes, Kamin called Bakalar's work "pseudo-science in search of enemies" and accused Bakalar of trying "to present racist and anti-Semitic views" in the guise of science.

Likewise, Tomas Jelinek, president of the Prague Jewish Community, described the book as "more dangerous than the publication of `Mein Kampf' " and said it could become a manual for racists and anti-Semites.

Bakalar, a former chess champion, denies the charges of racism, saying he is simply a scholar and that "political correctness and science cannot go together."

Nobody is accusing Zitko of being a Nazi. His translation of "Mein Kampf" was part of a series of historical texts published by his small publishing house, called Otakar II, which included "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx, and "The State and Revolution" by Vladimir Lenin. He has also published translations of the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

His motive for publishing Hitler's work, he says, was to instruct Czechs about the origins and nature of the ideology responsible for World War II, the Holocaust, and the brutal occupation of their country from 1939 to 1945.