The storyline behind a strong picture of a girl’s that is czech for neo-Nazis

It had been a group that is strangely international of marching down the roads of Brno.

Plastered with a picture of burned-out cars and blaring music that is angry a van led the group through this ancient town when you look at the Czech Republic on Monday. “Stop multi-kulti experimentum! ” Read the expressed words from the van.

Hundreds adopted. Some wore black colored, with shaved heads and sunglasses. Some waved the green banner of the Slovakian governmental celebration whose users utilized to dress like Nazis and now hold seats in parliament.

Eu flags gashed with red X’s travelled over the audience. A big banner that is black the German “identitarian” motion — the exact same label utilized by the US white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Each time a battle or screaming match broke down between your marchers and the ones whom mocked all of them with pussy hats and detergent bubbles, completely armored authorities would drag some body away.

Lucie Myslikova, 16, ended up being sitting on the sidelines in her own scout’s uniform with some buddies and handwritten ads: “A good patriot does not Heil. ”

Their terms had been swallowed because of the rally that is passing.

However the overnight, a picture of Lucie would be a worldwide icon of defiance against European countries’s increasing far-right movements: for a continent where many worry the heirs to Nazism are collecting power, within an amateur photographer’s framework, a teenage scout half smiles when confronted with dark-glassed anger.

Before anybody knew exactly exactly just what Lucie had thought to the man — before her title ended up being even understood — she became “young Girl Scout protesting against neo-Nazi march” on Reddit, where thousands of individuals voted the picture on the web site’s front page.

Then, she had been known as a “total hero” on HuffPost. And the BBC ended up being calling her in school to inquire of if she’d been frightened.

Lucie was not frightened, she told The Washington Post. She also told the marcher therefore, when he warned her that “those refugees will rape you, ” the teenager recalled in a phone meeting.

“I told him they truly are fleeing a war, ” Lucie said in Czech. “This is approximately life. ”

The Brno march happens to be held frequently for longer than a ten years, stated Miroslav Mares, whom lectures on extremist politics at Masaryk University when you look at the town. The governmental celebration that very very first arranged the rally was prohibited with a Czech court this year, Mares stated, after being connected to Nazi-inspired teams and assaults on minorities.

Now the march is arranged by the employee’s Party of Social Justice. “It’s a successor of a party that is banned” Mares said, and even though the employee’s Party publicly disavows neo-Nazism, it offers links to extremist groups across European countries and “serves as something of a camp of these militants. ”

Lucie happens to be a Scout for seven years. The organization that is global Brno supply has taken her hiking over the Czech Republic and elements of Europe and taught her to just accept individuals regardless of who they really are or whatever they think, she stated.

She understands that scouting had been prohibited if the Nazis occupied her nation during World War II, she said — and also by the Communists after that.

“I do not genuinely believe that it’s time for the next Hitler, ” Lucie said. But “there are individuals who tune in to them. They understand neo-Nazis are bad, nevertheless they may concur with a few of whatever they’re saying. ”

When the employee’s Party placed on this season’s rally may Day in Brno, Lucie placed on her uniform and took place towards the square.

For the past a few marches, a big band of counterprotesters — the so-called Brno Blocks — has come away to oppose the rightists. “Some associated with the militants, they such as this conflict, ” Mares stated.

In 2010, the blockers made a decision to mock the nationalists alternatively, arranging opposition through jugglers, bubble blowers and dancers.

“The scouts began peacefully, playing guitars and drums; I happened to be hopping around and dancing, periodically yelling one thing away, ” Lucie stated. “Some individuals may say we provoked them, but we desired to show they had been saying and against their extremely presence. That individuals were against what”

The marchers formed a band in the square and unfurled their ads.

There clearly was one when it comes to employee Party’s youth brigade, whose site condemns the alleged that is“BombenHolocaust of urban centers in World War II.

And there have been flags when it comes to individuals’s Party in Slovakia, whoever frontrunner utilized to dress yourself in a black colored uniform “reminiscent regarding the Nazi-era Hlinka guard, ” The Post reported just last year, once the celebration won seats in Slovakia’s parliament for the very first time.

Mares, the Masaryk University lecturer, placed these groups on a spectral range of extremism that operates from neo-Nazism to Islamophobia, extending from France to Russia.

“Whores! ” somebody yelled in Czech during the counterprotesters within the Brno square.

A marcher shoved a person in a pussy hat, knocking a lady beside him to your russian brides pavement. A person in a platform was climbed by a suit and started yelling as a megaphone, as constant drumming muffled his terms.

The Worker’s Party president, Tomas Vandas, ended up being planned to talk during the rally. In the past, Mares when penned, Vandas produced message in another city, and after that demonstrators “tried to strike homes occupied by Roma families. ”

The Roma minority — “gypsy parasites, ” since the Slovakian People’s Party calls them — utilized to be the scapegoat of preference in main European countries, stated Selma Muhic Dizdarevic, whom lectures on politics at Charles University in Prague. “What is becoming now a lot more prominent is Islamophobia, ” she said. “Muslims, Arabs or Africans, or anybody who wish to come right right right here. ”

Dizdarevic noted that the employee’s Party holds no power within the parliament that is czech but she said “their agenda has become mainstreamed” all the method as much as the nation’s president, Milos Zeman, whom stated a year ago that it is “practically impossible” to integrate Muslim immigrants.

As she viewed videos associated with the Brno rally — with officers in complete face helmets pinning counterprotesters to the floor after disruptions — Dizdarevic wondered if European countries’s tilt toward the far right had spread into police ranks. “Anything on extreme left is managed swiftly and severely, ” she said. “On the right that is extreme fundamentally, the authorities say: we are helpless. ”

Lucie stated she saw a little bit of scuffling through the sidelines but no major physical violence. Nor ended up being she much concerned, she stated, when a man having a shaved mind made a beeline toward her and began yelling.

“He would knock she said into me, or grab my friend’s shirt. “But we might make sure he understands: you understand you can not hit us. You cannot harm us. ”

The person ended up being attempting to convince her that she should really be frightened about waves of immigrants crossing through European countries, Lucie stated.

“Those refugees will rape you, ” she recalled him saying. “Maybe you’re not scared, but I’m afraid for my child, her. That they’ll rape”

They went backwards and forwards for a little, amid the chanting and drumming and sirens, before authorities herded the counterprotesters down the block.

The employee’s Party had a license for the rally, most likely.

Vladimir Cicmanec, a pc programmer utilizing the counterprotesters, ended up being pictures that are snapping few yards away. He would gone to the blockade in 2015 too, he stated, whenever neo-Nazis had a bigger existence.

At Monday’s rally, he stated, the demonstrators was indeed bicyclists that are kicking.

But Cicmanec discovered a various scene: a lady in a scouting uniform, hands stretched wide across a banner that proclaimed the worth of each and every son or daughter, smirking at a bald guy’s tirade.

A bubble drifted just above her eyebrow. Cicmanec snapped a solitary picture, and today the whole world understands Lucie’s stance.