To the government that charged him, he was a “lone wolf,” a lost individual who represented none other than himself when he fired at least four bullets at Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia.
However, Wednesday’s assassination highlighted a much broader collective problem in Slovakia. In this Central European country, society and political culture are so bitterly divided that the violence attributed to one man whom authorities say acted alone has become another club that each side can defeat the other side.
“There is a level of polarization that has never existed before in this country,” said Daniel Milo, a former government official responsible for tracking misinformation who now works for a tech company. . “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hardened previously loose lines into factions that have since become hostile, he said, with little room for nuance. About half the population welcomes vaccines and half rejects them. “It becomes: Are you for or against? Do you believe it or not?” Mr. Milo said. And after Covid came the war in Ukraine, another source of division.
The suspect was quickly arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted murder, but authorities have not publicly named him. Slovak news agencies, citing police sources, identified him as a 71-year-old pensioner with money to write poetry and protest.
Each side of the political divide quickly used him as a foil, with his statements tailored accordingly. To Mr. Fico’s supporters who took to social networking sites this week, the suspect is the carrier of a free virus that must be eliminated. The prime minister’s critics consider him a right-wing extremist.
One particularly strident government supporter demanded in a Telegram message that the government hand over the guns “and we will deal with the liberals ourselves.”
“We are on the brink of a civil war,” Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok warned. The assassination of the prime minister is confirmation of that.”
“Many of you have spread hatred and it has turned into a storm,” the minister added.
Mr. Sutaj Estok oversaw the security force, including Mr. Fico’s security. He acknowledged claims that lax security allowed the gunman to get close and open fire, but appeared to dismiss the idea. He said he saw no evidence of a lack of professionalism, noting that the head of the department responsible for protecting senior officials was so close to the action that “his entire suit I’m covered in blood.”
Andrea Dobiasova, a spokeswoman for the Inspectorate, part of the police force, said the office had opened an investigation into the response of security officers at the scene.
In fact, senior officials in Mr. Fico’s ruling Smer party accused liberal journalists and opposition politicians of motivating the shooter to open fire.
Lubos Blaha, the party’s vice president, said the opposition and “liberal media” had “built a gallows” for the prime minister by “spreading too much hatred.” Rudolf Huliak, a government ally of the far-right Slovak National Party, said radicals and journalists “have the blood of Robert Fico on their hands.”
Such accusations fit what Pavol Hardos, a political scientist at Comenius University in the capital Bratislava, describes as a long-standing campaign by Mr. Fico’s government to verbally attack not only political opponents but also their legitimacy. Before being shot on Wednesday, Mr. Fico denounced an opposition leader as “worse than a rat.”
Mr. Fico is pushing a controversial reform of the judiciary to limit the scope of corruption investigations, reshaping the national broadcasting system to purge what the government calls bias. freedom and repression of foreign-funded NGOs. He opposes military aid to Ukraine, LGBTQ rights and the strength of the European Union, and supports friendly relations with Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.
In all these details, he mirrors the right-wing nationalist leader next door, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. Opponents accuse Mr. Fico’s government of preparing the ground for violence by increasing tensions, and some have compared him to Mr. Putin.
Jana Solivarska, a mother of three from Banska Stiavnica, a small town in central Slovakia, said that when she heard about Mr. Fico’s attack, her first reaction was: “I’m surprised that didn’t happen.” earlier”. She added that Slovakia is “a very polarized country”. On the night of the attack, she said, her husband predicted that “this could lead to civil war.”
On Thursday, Zuzana Caputova, the country’s outgoing president, insisted that the shooting was an “individual act” and said she would invite leaders from Slovakia’s main political parties to meet to “calm the situation”.
“We have different views, but let’s not spread hatred,” she said in a statement alongside president-elect Peter Pellegrini.
Mr Pellegrini repeated his call to tone down the rhetoric while calling on the country’s political parties to pause or “calm down” their campaigns for next month’s European Parliament elections. He told a news conference that campaigns naturally include confrontations and “strong opinions.”
“We don’t need any more confrontation,” he said.
Dominika Hajdu, a researcher with Globsec, a research group in Bratislava, said a big reason for the hot atmosphere is that the country of about 5.5 million people has undergone “a continuous political campaign”. custom” since the fall. Legislative elections in September brought Mr. Fico to power; Next came two rounds of presidential elections in March and April, and now the campaign for the European Parliament.
“Election campaigns by definition mean there will be more heat and more political attacks,” she said.
But, she added, Slovakia’s deep divisions also stem partly from its history – centuries of rule by Austria and Hungary, followed by seven decades as part of Czechoslovakia dominated by the Czechs, it was largely under Soviet control. It was nominally a separate state for six years as a puppet of Nazi Germany. Only in 1993, after the fall of communism and the division of Czechoslovakia, did Slovakia become a fully independent country.
“The important national narrative is that we have always been oppressed by someone – by the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Soviets or whoever,” Ms. Hadju said. “We always felt that there was one group that was endangering us and this led to a very divisive style of politics.”
Mr. Fico, an aggressive veteran politician loathed by liberals in Bratislava but popular outside the capital, was shot multiple times on Wednesday, receiving at least one bullet in the stomach in what his government called a politically motivated assassination.
The shooting happened after a meeting with local officials and supporters in Handlova, a town in central Slovakia that voted heavily for his party in September.
Officials said Thursday that Mr. Fico’s condition was stable after emergency surgery overnight. However, the deputy prime minister said in a press conference that he “could not escape the life-threatening situation.” He said Mr Fico had only “limited” ability to communicate and faced a “difficult” recovery process.
The winner of last month’s presidential election, Peter Pellegrini, is an ally of Mr. Fico, who has branded his opponent, Ivan Korcok, the former foreign minister, as aggressive in sending Slovak troops into Ukraine. Mr Korcok insists he has no such plans – and will have no authority to send troops anywhere as president, a largely ceremonial position. But he has struggled to fight back against a wave of misinformation aimed at him, spread by pro-Russian websites and social media accounts.
Divisions in Slovakia have been nurtured by a particularly toxic online ecosystem, where politicians such as Mr. Blaha, an admirer of Che Guevara, and Mr. Putin, have attracted large followings with attacks on domestic critics and Western leaders.
Mr. Fico began his political career more than three decades ago in the Communist Party and later became a champion of free markets, attracting billions of euros in investment from German automakers before turned to right-wing nationalism.
In 2018, he cut short his second term as prime minister, resigning in the face of mass street protests following the incident. killing in Bratislava by an investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, who is investigating government corruption, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.
Many analysts at the time believed that his resignation meant the end of his long career.
However, despite predictions, Mr. Fico returned to the prime minister’s position last year after his party won a narrow victory in a disputed legislative election. He strengthened his position this year when Mr. Pellegrini was elected president, freeing him from constraints imposed by Ms. Caputova, an outspoken liberal.
Sara Cincurova contributed reporting from Bratislava and Katarina Urban Richterova from Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia.
