Introduction and Terminology

National identity is so pervasive that it may scarcely be discernible in everyday media texts. As Michael Billig argues, we have become accustomed to this banal nationalism of “nationhood providing a continual background for political discourses, cultural products, and even structuring of newspapers,” to such a degree that it may even be difficult to recognise it as such (Billig Reference Billig1995, 8). This article examines nationalism as an exceptionally powerful ideology, matching or even surpassing the influence of other ideological heavyweights such as religion, communism, or liberalism in terms of preeminence in our everyday lives. It is likely that political developments over the past decade in Central Europe and elsewhere, which many authors describe as a populist or illiberal surge (Císař and Štětka 2016; Hanley and Vachudova Reference Hanley and Vachudova2018), can hardly be analysed without taking into account the influence of nationalism.

The populist period from the Czech perspective includes the years 2013–2023, when the country’s presidential office was held by nationalist Miloš Zeman, and the years 2013–2021, when the populist ANO Party of billionaire Andrej Babiš was in government. Ultimately, the populist period is not finished, and populism has become a firm part of Czech politics in the mid-2020s. This was heralded by ANO’s decisive victory in the October 2025 parliamentary elections and the subsequent forming of government with far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and anti-green Motorists for Themselves parties in what could be the most radical right-wing government in the country’s history since the Second World War.

In this article, the focus is narrowed down to what is perhaps the most prominent anniversary in the memory and narratives of the contemporary Czech national identity, 17 November.Footnote ¹ The article analyses the 17 November anniversary in media front-page articles in 2019 and 1999, and in doing so, examines the differences in the ways Czech national identity is constructed in 2019 media texts as opposed to those in 1999. An elementary overview of some of the key terms and methods employed in this article is provided below.Footnote ²

This article does not strictly adopt a single umbrella definition of populism, out of caution that doing so could sideline other social, communication, and political developments accompanying the illiberal surge. Nevertheless, the text engages with several works addressing the illiberal wave relevant to this analysis. This includes Cas Mudde’s definition of populism “as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’” (Mudde Reference Mudde2004, 543). As Mudde notes, populism’s vagueness poses an inherent challenge, which also becomes problematic when applied in empirical studies (Mudde Reference Mudde2004, 543). Moreover, the “overreliance on the concept of populism” faces further challenges when accounting for wider social and media changes for which the “illiberal turn” is characteristic internationally, including in the US, Western Europe, Latin America or India, as Sabina Mihelj and Václav Štětka point out in their work introducing the term “illiberal public sphere,” which provides a framework for addressing “the involvement of media and communication in fostering the decline of the liberal order” in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia (Mihelj and Štětka Reference Mihelj and Štětka2024, 2–3).

Finally, the Czech Republic, like other countries in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, occupied a specific position vis-à-vis the populist wave after undergoing a transition period marked by the fall of centralised communist rule in the “annus mirabilis” 1989, followed by efforts to be “recognised by universally valid, modernist culture of liberal democratic West,” in most cases culminating in accession efforts to the European Union and NATO (Buden Reference Buden2013, 60). “Indeed, Eastern Europe embraced most of the problems of late modernity over a single decade, so it did not come as much of a surprise to contemporary observers when those experiences were followed by a shift away towards ‘illiberalism’ fuelled by the accumulated stress, disappointed expectations and unfulfilled hopes of the 1990s,” wrote Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak in their elaboration of the “neoliberal turn,” which the countries in the region experienced in the 1990s (Pehe and Wawrzyniak Reference Pehe, Wawrzyniak, Pehe and Wawrzyniak2024, 6).

National identity is understood in this article as constructed and without any intrinsic quality of its own – that is, humans are not born programmed to be of a particular nationality – contrary to theories ascribing perennial qualities to national identity. This does not mean that national identity does not exist; quite the contrary, in the examined media texts about the 17 November anniversaries, national identity is invoked, referred to, or implicitly acknowledged so frequently that it is one of the constitutive themes recurring throughout the texts.

In this respect, national identity is understood as largely a cultural phenomenon and employs Benedict Anderson’s conceptualisation of national identity as collectively “imagined” deriving from Anderson’s term “imagined communities” where the national “we” originates in the community of “fellow-readers, […] connected through print, formed, in their secular, particular, visible invisibility, the embryo of the nationally imagined community” emerging in many nation-states in the 18^th and 19^th centuries (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 44).

Another important theoretical background is Ernest Gellner’s work on nations and states as not necessarily linked, and national identity as a condition, and in that sense a product of modernity and industrialisation. “The state has certainly emerged without the help of the nation. Some nations have certainly emerged without the blessings of their own state” (Gellner Reference Gellner1983, 6). Industrial developments transformed agrarian societies into societies where the economy is “dependent on mobility and communication between individuals, at a level which can only be achieved if those individuals have been socialised into a high culture” (Gellner Reference Gellner1983, 140), codified and implemented by the national education system. In this respect, national identity shares key features of modernity, a point also elaborated by Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1992, 14).

Identity construction is also influenced by the interpretation of the past. A similar inference is made by Stuart Hall, who writes of cultural identity as “always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth” (Hall Reference Hall and Woodward1990, 53). Identities have their “histories – and histories have their real, material and symbolic effects.” The past continues to “speak to us” (Hall Reference Hall and Woodward1990, 53) and partake in the construction of the present, as will be seen in the coverage of the Velvet Revolution anniversaries. In this regard, the Foucauldian notions of discourse and power, influential in the 1960s “discursive turn” and elaborated in Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge (Vezovnik Reference Vezovnik2009, 11), are important for the understanding of the accumulation of knowledge and information in public communication, and the power that its dissemination can wield over readership. Foucault’s concepts direct attention to the mastering of “discursive production” as well as to “the production of power,” and “the propagation of knowledge,” which can also “cause mistaken beliefs or systematic misconceptions to circulate” in the public (Foucault Reference Foucault and Hurley1990, 12).

Finally, the analysis of the media text employs the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework as its key methodological tool. The CDA framework was selected for several reasons, including the need to employ qualitative analysis for research in which ideological issues, such as the national identity in media texts, which include political speeches, play a central role. Moreover, such research also requires a critical approach informed by social theory developments rather than a strictly semantic approach if it is to map out the implicit meanings contained in the political statements, as well as in the media text covering anniversaries, and in which layers of symbolic meanings are encoded. The CDA framework of taking the context in which statements are made into account is highly suitable to deconstruct the meanings and the social and political environment in which these are transmitted. “CDA is not so much interested in language use itself, but in the linguistic character of social and cultural processes and structures,” Machin and Mayr write in How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis (Machin and Mayr Reference Machin and Mayr2012, 4).

Moreover, national identity is constructed through discourse, which is a fluid phenomenon. That is, discourses change over time, and imply “a mode of action,” as Fairclough observes, recognising earlier developments in linguistic philosophy and pragmatics (Fairclough Reference Fairclough1995, 54). As already noted, the discursive practice of national identity is a key tool in its construction within the ideological fabric of any particular society. National “discourses always collide with people’s everyday lives, as they regulate and structure their lives,” writes Maruša Pušnik in her study of everyday nationalism in Austrian Slovene Carinthian borderlands (Pušnik Reference Pušnik2011, 18). In this respect, Anderson’s formulation of nations as “imagined communities” that “are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 6) is a particularly useful one and fits in well with this analysis of media texts in which various actors regularly invoke ideas of national identity.

The critical approach includes paying attention to power relations that are not immediately connected on the textual level and may not appear in a strictly semantic analysis. Besides the political context and the prominent attention political actors receive in the media, there are power relations that play a role in the financial health of the media and, in turn, often relate to the question of ownership. For this reason, the analysis focuses on the front pages of the most circulated dailies, anticipating that editorial boards are aware of the impact of front pages on their readership and their weight in the public opinion-making in a world described by cultural critic Jan Stern as one of “marketing strategies, marketing politics, omnipresent billboard, image, styling, imagology” (Stern Reference Stern2007, 207). In this culture, the technological advancement of images has overtaken the primacy of European religions (Stern Reference Stern2007, 210). This grounding of analysis along power relations and their communication channels in contemporary culture is motivated by Pierre Bourdieu’s elaboration on symbolic power, “a power capable of maintaining or subverting the social order,” and “the belief in the legitimacy of words and of those who utter them” (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu2003, 170). Moreover, as Bourdieu writes, “words alone cannot create this belief,” and, recalling Durkheim, in the symbolic system, “symbols are the instruments par excellence of ‘social integration’: as instruments of knowledge and communication” (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu2003, 170, 166).

As will be discussed further below, the events of November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, which ended the Communist Party’s rule in the country, generated a new system of symbols that came to define the post-1989 era in several ways. James Krapfl, in his seminal Revolution with a Human Face, likens this new system of symbols to other creative epochs “under the influence of some great collective shock” in history (Durkheim, in Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 40). He writes that “the collective effervescence of 1989 had […] the power to create a sense of transcendent communal fellowship among participants and to engender a new system of symbols with which this perceived community might be discussed and comprehended” (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 40). Moreover, several major events occurred in the twenty years separating the 17 November anniversaries of 1999 and 2019. This includes NATO entry in March 1999 and the EU accession in May 2004, placing the two anniversaries in different political and cultural environments, affecting the discourse and the imagining of the community outlined by Krapfl. This contrast would be difficult to capture through strictly textual analysis alone and is therefore better addressed through critical discourse analysis applied to the examples presented in the research section and the selection of analysed texts.

Critical Discourse Analysis and Selection of the Researched Articles

The research part of this text examines articles published on the day after the 10^th and 30^th anniversaries of 17 November (1999 and 2019, respectively) at the four most circulated dailies at the time, which covered or commented on the anniversaries. The focus is narrowed to the front pages of the four most circulated nationwide print dailies and the two events to which many front-page articles referred in their coverage of the anniversaries. These were the 1999 speech by the then-President Václav Havel and the 2019 speech by the then-Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. These two speeches occupied a pre-eminent space in the print media on 18 November 1999 and 2019, respectively, with several front-page articles referring to them. Nevertheless, Havel’s speech was not as dominant in terms of the November 1989 anniversary coverage as Babiš’s speech was, which was in part a result of other prominent guests taking part in the tenth anniversary, as shall be discussed below.

Furthermore, such a selection focuses on the power relations in several ways. Firstly, it grounds the analysis on the 17 November 1989 anniversary, a formative event in the post-1989 developments in Czechia. It has come to represent the Czech story of democratic revolutions seen in Central Europe in 1989, which “became immediately a part of political identity-building and political contest, both in Western democracies and in the region itself,” as historian Michal Kopeček notes (Kopeček Reference Kopeček, Barša, Hesová and Slačálek2021, 51). Moreover, the fall of communism, or Velvet Revolution as the November events of 1989 are referred to in Czech, and enshrined in the 17 November 1989 anniversary, quickly became a powerful symbol subject to interpretation across different political and ideological backgrounds, but largely dominated by liberal, positive assessments of 1989. As Ladislav Holy observes, 17 November invoked several traditions imagined in connection to the Czech identity, which “motivated the perception of the events of 17 November” and “were taken for granted rather than explicitly stated” (Holy Reference Holy1996, 148). Moreover, “their existence can only be inferred from discourses for which they served as unspoken assumptions,” Holy continues (Holy Reference Holy1996, 148).

The Czech term Velvet Revolution is used in this article over its Slovak equivalent Gentle Revolution simply because the researched texts from 1999 and 2019 were produced in Czech in the Czech Republic, by that time a separate state from Slovakia. However, it needs to be noted that the fall of the communist regime in November 1989 was, first and foremost, a Czechoslovak event. “The actors of 1989, from striking farmers in the remotest village to students negotiating with Communist officials in the capitals, thought in terms of a Czechoslovak community and acted accordingly,” writes James Krapfl (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 5). Likewise, the discourse of November 1989, analysed in Krapfl’s work and drawing on “the tradition of November” (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 24), evolved in the Czechoslovak community and continued to inform both Czech and Slovak communities following the splitting of Czechoslovakia in 1993 in the struggle for the meaning of November 1989. Not least of all, in post-1993 developments, “there has been a tendency among scholars in both successor states to ‘nationalise’ their history,” Krapfl notes (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 5).

As much as it would be useful to carry out a deeper comparative study of 17 November commemorations in Czech and Slovak media, there is simply not enough room for such an analysis in the present article. However, that “ethos of 17 November,” whose contents Slovak philosopher and ex-politician Boris Zala describes as “dialogue, pluralism and universality” remained invoked and contested in political struggles in Slovakia in the ensuing decades since the winter of 1989–1990 when it generated “revolutionary movement of the whole society” (Zala Reference Zala2022, 173). As an example of the revolutionary fervour, Krapfl notes the Train of the Gentle Revolution, which ran from the Slovak capital Bratislava to the second largest city Košice in the east of the country on 6 December 1989, and with which the organizers from the ranks of Bratislava students wanted “to connect all of Slovakia,” including “reaching out to geographically removed countrymen” (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 59–60). In both Czech and Slovak cases, the peak of 17 November symbolism was swiftly followed by the neoliberal turn to which the first post-1989 President Havel also succumbed, as in both countries “neoliberal concept had door open” (Zala Reference Zala2022, 182), though in the latter case it competed with nationalist authoritarianism of populist Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar (Ivančík Reference Ivančík, Pehe and Wawrzyniak2024, 43).

The attention that is paid to the 17 November anniversary in the media is a fine example of “symbolic power” in the media content — “the power that journalism wields against us on a daily basis” (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu2008, 323). Analysing the title pages aims to narrow the focus to the most impactful part of the print daily, that is, where the editorial rooms place the most effort at attracting readership and disseminating their content. The selection of headlines and focus choices made by reporters and editors in the coverage of such a closely watched anniversary contributes to constructing the Czech national narrative for the readers and wider society. It may not construct this idea in a totalising sense, but it is instrumental in setting the agenda, tone, and angle under which the construction occurs. While these choices are not always representative of broader society, they nonetheless reveal how publishers and journalists frame events.

The coverage of the anniversary can be seen as an example of what Norman Fairclough describes as examining language as “social practice” and in a “dialectical relationship” with “other facets of the social.” In Fairclough’s words, this means that language “is socially shaped, but is also socially shaping — or socially constitutive” (Fairclough Reference Fairclough1995, 54–6). In the case of 1989 anniversaries, the way these are communicated is shaped by the past anniversaries, but it is also shaping the present and future anniversaries.

Finally, narrowing the analysis to the two speeches grounds the focus on the political power played out in the context of the two anniversaries. Michael Billig, invoking Teun Van Dijk in that “the media treat political speeches as newsworthy, giving space to the words of presidents and prime ministers,” states that “if the politician is a celebrity, then fame is principally achieved through the medium of national politics” (Billig Reference Billig1995, 97). Václav Havel in 1999 and Andrej Babiš in 2019 filled this space as celebrities of national politics.

The selection of the coverage in the four most circulated dailies was motivated by a) focusing on the most widespread print media, which also identifies the most powerful print outlets, and b) delimiting the scope of the examined texts to a manageable size. This second aspect also scaled down the number of texts that can be realistically covered in an analysis of this scope while maintaining the focus on the most impactful articles.

More importantly, it also includes the year 2013, which marks significant shifts in the ownership landscape of the Czech media market.

This change of ownership was set off by the acquisition of the Mafra publishing house by the Agrofert conglomerate, then owned by the billionaire founder and leader of the populist ANO Party, Andrej Babiš.Footnote ³ Major ownership changes followed with the establishment of the Czech News Centre (and later Czech Media Invest), controlled by energy oligarch Daniel Křetínský and his Slovak business partner Patrik Tkáč of J&T Financial Group. Additionally, in 2015, the Czecho-Slovak Penta investment group took over the Vltava-Labe-Press from the German media group Verlagsgruppe Passau, which includes the largest collection of regional dailies assembled under the Denik brand.Footnote ⁴ In practice, this redrawing of ownership on the Czech media market meant that owners – media companies mainly from pre-2004 EU countries – were replaced mainly by domestic owners who do not primarily originate from the media sector, and whose main activities are grounded in key segments of the Czech economy such as energy, agriculture, the chemical industry, telecommunications, and real estate.

In 1999, the following dailies fit the criteria of the four most circulated nationwide dailies. Právo , Mladá Fronta DNES (MF DNES), Lidové noviny (LN), and Hospodářské noviny (HN). In 2019, the four most circulated dailies were Blesk , MF DNES, Právo, and Aha!.Footnote ⁵ Circulation data were derived from the NEWTON Media archive, which stores Czech media data and media texts from the researched period in 1999, and from the Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations. Additionally, from the research period in 2019, it also stores complete visuals.

In 1999, dailies Právo, MF DNES, and LN were considered respectable newspapers, and HN was (and continues to be at the time of writing) a reputable daily with a focus on business and economics. In 2019, Právo and MF DNES aspired to the description of respectable media, but the latter was caught up in a conflict-of-interest controversy over its ownership — that of Agrofert conglomerate, which EU audits found to have persisting links to Agrofert’s founder and the then-PM Andrej Babiš. Additionally, by 2019, there were several reports of MF DNES furthering the political agenda of Babiš and his populist party ANO. Finally, in 2019, Blesk and Aha! were and continue to be tabloid dailies owned by the Czech News Centre media company set up in 2014 following Daniel Křetínský’s entry into the media market.

The above criteria for selecting the most widely circulated dailies bring together content from respectable media, together with content from tabloids. That is, content built around different strategies – one of delivering quality daily news reporting aspiring to high journalistic standards and another of attention-capturing tabloid business, which may have adapted better to the era of social networks and ever-increasing media digitalisation. This is in line with the aim of this analysis, which looks at shifting power positions in the print media. In a broader sense, it reflects the changing nature of the media market worldwide, as media analysts, government reports, and international media associations point out, where operating print newspapers is ceasing to be a profitable business model (LeGall Reference Gall2021, 17).Footnote ⁶

Transformation of Havel from a Living Politician to the Power Symbol of the Czech National History

A short description of the general discursive environment of the two November 1989 anniversary coverages is necessary before turning attention to the speech by Babiš (Reference Babiš2019) and its contrast with the 1999 anniversary coverage. One of the differences between the depiction of 17 November in the 1999 front-page articles and those in 2019 is the increased celebration of key symbols of the political changes in late 1989, endowing them with an aura of historical artefacts.

The turning of November 1989 into an object of history is recurrent throughout the articles in 2019, in contrast to 1999. In the 1999 coverage, there is more engagement with November 1989 still open to interpretation and debate, as opposed to the 2019 treatment of it as an event to be remembered rather than questioned. In other words, the 1999 discourse is more open to interpretation of November 1989, inviting questions such as “sobering up” (MF DNES 1999, 1) from the ideals or “was it even revolution” (MF DNES 1999, 1). In this respect, it is reminiscent of the “language of revolution” in Krapfl’s analysis and the way it was used by the actors, reinforcing it romantically and tragically or distancing from it in a comedic or satiric way (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 19–34).

On the other hand, the 2019 discourse constructs November 1989 as a historical event, an object of memory. It develops nostalgia for the 17 November 1989 demonstration, its violent suppression at Národní třída [National Avenue], and subsequent events culminating in Václav Havel’s election as the president of Czechoslovakia.

The main example of this contrast is the transformation of the figure of the leading Czechoslovak dissident and president, Václav Havel. In 1999, writing about Havel retained a more human dimension, while in the 2019 texts, there is a discernible shift towards a historical and mythologising portrayal of the late dissident president. Naturally, in 1999, Havel was the sitting Czech president, and his anniversary speeches are directly quoted in the researched articles. In contrast, the 2019 articles covering the anniversary adopted a more commemorative tone, with Havel’s 2011 death contributing to the myth-making process surrounding his life and actions.

This approach to Havel as a key figure in Czech history is also visible in the speech of Andrej Babiš from 17 November 2019. Babiš delivered the speech during the state ceremony held at the National Museum at the upper end of Wenceslaus Square — a highly symbolic venue laden with spatial representations of Czech nationalist mythology. The ceremony’s guests included international politicians whose attendance itself was reminiscent of international politicians attending anniversary ceremonies hosted by the late Havel, such as the one in 1999, though the lineup was not as high-profile. Three of the four examined 18 November 2019 front-page articles referred to Babiš’s speech, with two citing key passages. The remaining one, the tabloid Aha!, indirectly referenced the ceremony at the National Museum.

MF DNES cited Babiš’s praise of Havel, a passage which contained some ambivalent features, and acknowledgement of Babiš’s membership in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Právo rephrased the quote into its headline — “Havel was brave, I am not proud of KSČ membership” (Právo 2019, 1) — and tabloid Blesk, by far the most circulated of the 2019 dailiesFootnote ⁷, featured a single line “Babiš on KSČ” (next to the line “A quarter of a million people at Letná”) as one of its front-page teasers otherwise dominated by a former biathlon star Gabriela Soukalová and Blesk’s latest photographs from her private life (Blesk 2019, 1). The second CNC’s tabloid daily, Aha!, focused on an interview with the former bodyguard of the then-deceased pop music icon, singer Karel Gott,Footnote ⁸ and his appearance on the balcony in front of the 1989 demonstrators singing the national anthem along with dissident singer Karel Kryl (Aha! 2019, 1).

Therefore, the three most frequently referenced events on the front pages in 2019 were Babiš’s speech, the Letná mass demonstration from 16 November 2019 against Babiš’s conflicts of interest and his political allies – President Zeman and Justice Minister Benešová — and the Národní třída commemoration. Notably, 18 November 2019 was a Monday, so dailies generally covered events from the whole holiday weekend. Although there are significant divergences in the coverage (MF DNES did not feature the Letná demonstration — see below) across the four 2019 front pages, these three reference points stand out in articles about 17 November.

MF DNES quoted Babiš in its main article, referring to the speech even in the headline “Thank you for Freedom” (Hromková and Janouš, Reference Hromková and Janouš2019, 1). Právo published a supportive article on the speech, while Blesk referred to the line in which Babiš addressed his membership in the Communist Party. MF DNES paraphrased the quote while Právo left it intact. The quote from the speech, as used by MF DNES, is as follows: “The bravery of Václav Havel was extraordinary, even though there are varying opinions of him. Moreover, in November 1989, I was not in Czechoslovakia. As most of you know, I was a member of KSČ, and I am not proud of that. As I have said many times, I was not as brave and engaged as Havel” (Hromková and Janouš Reference Hromková and Janouš2019, 1). One translation issue worth noting before closer analysis is Babiš’s use of the word “ angažován ” (translated by the author of this text as “engaged”) in the Czech original.

Given the context in which Babiš used the word “ angažován ” (engaged), it could also be translated as “active”, a choice which would avoid the ambiguity in English. However, the word “active” has its Latin-based equivalent in Czech, that is, “aktivní“, which does not entail the same set of meanings. One of the differences in the usage of these two words is the connotation that “angažován” (engaged) has in relation to the state socialist past in Czechoslovakia. In that context, “engagement” functioned as a euphemism for career progress (or stability) through political activities and for political control as well as pressure exercised over employees. The expression was immortalised in popular culture through films such as the 1997 Bliss Was it in Bohemia. “Now you will get engaged until you shit yourself” (Nikolaev, 1997), a situation that Jan Čulík (Čulík Reference Čulík2007, 103) and Veronika Pehe (Pehe Reference Pehe2020, 53) note as an example when a superior (here the head of the (state-owned) glass factory, Šperk) uses state-sanctioned Marxist-Leninist ideology against a subordinate (a talented analyst).

It is ironic that the same word choice was employed by Babiš in his speech when referring to Havel’s dissident activities, since it was Babiš who held an elite post in the Czechoslovak state’s foreign trade in the 1980s. Of the two post-communist-era politicians, it was Babiš who was, in fact, more “engaged” pre-1989 in the sense in which the word is used in popular culture as described above. Moreover, in this context, Babiš endows Havel’s activism with a certain set of values — that Havel was active in the right way is contrasted with Babiš’s public acknowledgement that he does not consider his Communist Party membership to be positive.

In a notable shift of roles, Havel occupies the realm of post-communist moral exemplars. On the other hand, Babiš admits to his own ordinariness, appealing to the multitude of those who adapted pragmatically under the political and social circumstances, which required compromise with the state.

Ordinary as Noble and Noble as Ordinary

This shift is also notable because it groups Babiš with ordinary folk while elevating Havel to the status of an elite. In other words, it aligns Babiš with the imagined people, or “a mythical and constructed subset of the whole population,” as Mudde writes (Mudde Reference Mudde2004, 546). When analysing the full speech, this is also the audience Babiš addresses, alongside the politicians and guests of the ceremony at the National Theatre.

Babiš states: “Thank you to you, who had the courage to walk from Albertov to Národní třída on 17 November 1989” (Babiš, Reference Babiš2019), referring to students and actors who helped them spread the message of the violent crackdown. In a more substantial part of the speech, he is very clearly extending the thank you address to “all the Czech people” and particularly to those who “work, raise children,” and “achieved what we are going through now,” that is, “the best and freest period” in the history of the Czech Republic. Babiš’s speech culminates by praising “the Czech Republic, the most beautiful country in the world” in which “ordinary people” are bound by “patriotism”, a feeling which “we all know and feel” (Babiš Reference Babiš2019). In this way, the then-prime minister makes another link by identifying himself with ordinary people.

This reaching out to “ordinary people” bound by “patriotism” can, in Mudde’s and Paul Taggart’s terminology, be described as “the heartland,” in which, “in the populist imagination, a virtuous and unified population resides” (Taggart, in Mudde Reference Mudde2004, 545). Babiš’s construction of the Czech national “heartland” also offers an implicit alternative to the post-communist condition of the second-class return to Europe (Buden Reference Buden2013). Czechs should first and foremost be proud of themselves, regardless of their delayed arrival or position within the EU.

The first link between Babiš and “the people” is implicitly present in his admission that he was not as brave as Havel. In other words, Babiš did not oppose the regime and was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In this way, Babiš was also reflecting the extensive membership in the Communist Party, which historian Tony Judt describes as “communism’s firmer political basis in the Czech region than anywhere else in Eastern Europe.” (Judt Reference Judt2010, 699) While only a handful of Czechs and Slovaks took part in dissident activities, more than 1.5 millionFootnote ⁹ were members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1989. Judt notes that by 2003, the party was still “the largest political organisation in the country” (Judt Reference Judt2010, 700).

The salient point here is that Babiš positions himself as a representative of ordinary Czechs — individuals who worked, adapted, and navigated life under the regime. The appeal to ordinariness is not too explicit, but the culmination of the address is directed towards the ordinary Czechs of today.

Ordinariness has been analysed as an important element of national myths in Central Europe, and particularly in Czechia, by several researchers. When Robert Pynsent writes that “contemporary [C]entral European nationalism is based on a mystical conception of the people and thus of the State” (Pynsent Reference Pynsent1994, 170), he points out the Czech mythical figure of Přemysl Oráč as a “literally, ‘mediator’, [who] no doubt represents Wisdom […], the victory of Wisdom certainly pertains to the foundation myth” (Pynsent Reference Pynsent1994, 171). The idea of an ordinary (small) Czech man is reflected in the title of Ladislav Holy’s book — The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation. When stressing the point about the ironic saying “our strength is in the average,” Holy quotes a line in the play by Voskovec and Werich: “the author of the saying was most probably himself below average so that he would profit even on that average.” (Voskovec and Werich in Holy 1995, 90).

This saying illustrates the prevalent influence of averageness in Czech narratives, which includes praise for Czech cunningness. The idea of “average” is also related to the representation of an ordinary, normal Czech man. This is, for example, how one of the most famous Nazi resistance fighters, Josef Mašín Sr., is often depicted: “Mašín’s noble descent is derived from his peasant origin. Roots of the Czech nation are traditionally associated with the peasantry, and often in opposition to aristocratic German-speaking elites” (Švéda Reference Švéda2012, 76).

The idea of humble origins has historical significance; the first Czechoslovak president, Masaryk, echoes this line since his mother was an ordinary servant, and his father was a stableman. Havel, on the other hand, comes from a wealthy background, having been born to one of the most influential families in the Czech real estate and film industries in interwar Czechoslovakia. However, it was his life under communism, deprived of the family property of his early childhood, denied access to education or employment appropriate to his talent, and later imprisonment, that re-interpreted his background into a position of someone living “below.” Just as the large number of “ordinary” Czechs, he was not enjoying the privileges of the ruling elites. Moreover, Havel is also portrayed as an outcast fighting on people’s behalf — see, for example, Jan Čulík’s review of James Pontuso’s biography (Čulík Reference Čulík2005), in which dissidents are referred to as “spokesmen of the nation” (Čulík Reference Čulík2005, 1245).

The representation of the Czech nation as deriving inspiration and its leaders from the common citizen, and in opposition to the elite in control of the state administration, can also be found in Jan Patočka’s What are Czechs? Here, Patočka highlights a linguistic difference between the lay Czech-speaking people and the German-speaking people who had greater “access to power and culture” to use Gellner’s words (Gellner Reference Gellner1983, 9–11) in pre-industrial Czech lands. “Modern-day Czech is a society coming from this split, in fact, built from ‘below’ because upper classes usually did not maintain the [Czech] language […] “Small” Czech history is the struggle of a society built from ‘below,’ and rising for equality” (Patočka Reference Patočka1992, 11).

This influential imagining of the Czech nation as rooted in the ordinary people precedes Babiš’s speech. Despite his privileged position both before and after November 1989, Babiš can resort to such an imagining of the Czech nation in 2019. Conversely, bestowing extraordinary qualities to Havel also separates Havel from the ordinariness of the masses, interpreting him as a role model figure with qualities too difficult to come by in “ordinary” life. Havel is thus endorsed as a hero, but with an implicit acknowledgement that heroes possess qualities that ordinary folk do not. In this interpretation, Havel is easily seen as the “elite” (Mudde Reference Mudde2004, 544), unlike Babiš (ironically), by virtue of Babiš having compromised with the pre-1989 regime, as many other people did.

From the Leadership of Hard-working Managers to the National ‘We’

In the greater Czech political environment of 2019, it is necessary to acknowledge that by this time, Babiš and his ANO Party had undergone “a key shift in ANO’s discourse from 2013-2017,” an era marked by ANO’s first participation in the government. This 2013-2017 ANO discourse is described by Seongcheol Kim as “the privileging of ‘hard work’ as a nodal point to set itself apart from ‘traditional’ parties and politicians” (Kim Reference Kim2020, 628). ANO and its leader adopted this discourse to differentiate themselves from the nearly two-decades-long era of political hegemony of neoliberal ODS and social democratic ČSSD, an era which ANO renounced as elitist and corrupt.

As Ondřej Císař and Václav Štětka (Císař and Štětka Reference Císař, Štětka, Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Strömbäck and Vreese2016) and other authors such as Seán Hanley and Milada Anna Vachudova point out (Hanley and Vachudova Reference Hanley and Vachudova2018), ANO was able to tap into the discontent over the mounting corruption affairs, which marked the end of the ODS-ČSSD hegemony and saw the ODS-led cabinet of Petr Nečas collapse amid an all-time low popularity.Footnote ¹⁰ “The political elite is presented as lazy and corrupt,” while ANO’s discourse styles Babiš as a “competent leader” who, together with “his party managers, will lead the ‘hard-working people’ more effectively” (Císař and Štětka Reference Císař, Štětka, Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Strömbäck and Vreese2016, 288).

By 2019, Babiš and ANO discourse had evolved further by seeking to “rein in the populist (and partly also nativist) dimension of [the far-right and anti-EU party] SPD’s discourse” (Kim Reference Kim2020, 629). After establishing itself in Czech politics in the 2013 elections, ANO has largely maintained its position as the country’s most popular party. Furthermore, after its initial 2013 anti-corruption narrative collided with its own corruption scandals — “irony and perhaps the genius of one of the most powerful oligarchs in the Czech Republic using an anti-corruption platform to win and maintain power” (Hanley and Vaduchova Reference Hanley and Vachudova2018, 277) — ANO began to adopt a more nationalist discourse, albeit milder than that of the far-right SPD. During its 2018–2021 government, ANO even relied on SPD backing in the parliament in several legislative motions.

At the time of the 2019 Velvet Revolution anniversary, Babiš and ANO had already made the nationalist shift. Moreover, in his speech, Babiš taps into the national symbolism of 17 November, linking it to his and ANO’s previous political discourse. As Babiš’s speech reaches its second half, the then-PM identifies himself with the Czech people and switches from addressing “you,” all the Czechs, to the unifying “we,” the Czechs (Babiš Reference Babiš2019). It is the work in the interest of the country which serves as the point of national agreement: “I work as, and I want to continue to work as, Prime Minister for all the people. Because the most important thing is that we are all Czechs. Citizens of the free and democratic Czech Republic. Citizens of a country which has great, creative, and hardworking people” (Babiš Reference Babiš2019). The trope of the “hardworking” people also enables Babiš to maintain the link to the origins of ANO as a pro-business (and anti-corruption) party arising from the neoliberal free market zeitgeist in the region in the 1990s, and which remains influential in wider public discourse. The adoption of neoliberalism in the 1990s was marked by a remarkable “confusion of democracy and capitalism” into one whole, as Pehe observes, together with Jan Stern, of the Czech media and artistic production in the 1990s (Pehe Reference Pehe2020, 40).

In the culminating point of the speech, Babiš describes “patriotism” as the word “we all feel”, but which is “shunned by many” (Babiš Reference Babiš2019). The reference to those who turn away from “patriotism” is also the only point of rupture in what MF DNES described as “coming-to-terms and peaceful” (Hromková and Janouš Reference Hromková and Janouš2019, 1) and Právo as “humbling speech” (Právo 2019, 1). Those who do not feel patriotic are externalised as the ‘Other’. Here, true “Czechs” are those who feel patriotic about their Czech home and are defined in opposition to those who have an issue with patriotism. This form of othering is noteworthy also because of its reinvigoration of nationalist sentiment.

Defining Czech national identity in opposition to other national ideas has, of course, been practised since the heyday of the nation-building era. As Kateřina Čapková writes in her study of Jewish identity in interwar Czechoslovakia: “In the early decades of the 19^th century, the first Czech patriots managed to agree only on one thing — that Czechs are not Germans” (Čapková Reference Čapková2013, 9). Moreover, historiographic narratives of numerous events from the history of the Czech lands, such as notably the Hussite wars, frequently posit the local actors against the ‘foreign’ Other. As Petr Čornej notes, the Czech-speaking population in the Czech lands during the 19^th century identified “with Hussite warriors as models of the [then] contemporary progressive national, political and social efforts […] creating the Hussite myth” (Čornej Reference Čornej2003, 382). Moreover, this myth has led to “the Hussite movement becoming the symptom of Czechness” (Čornej Reference Čornej2003, 15). Curiously, one of the culminating points of Andrej Babiš’s speech is the defence of the very structure of modern nationalist, or in Babiš’s words, “patriotic” and exclusionist narratives. “Czechs” are synonymous with Czech patriots, while those who do not share the Czech patriotic feelings are ‘othered.’

Letná 2019 Demonstration

Another dominant “event” covered by the 2019 front-page articles is the Letná demonstration. Without analysing the coverage of the event in detail, a couple of points will be made in order to locate Babiš’s speech within the wider political context of the 17 November 2019 coverage. This brief excursion also illustrates the powerful symbolism of November 1989 and discursive battles over access to and possession of this symbolism. In Bourdieu’s terms, “a symbolic struggle […] aimed at imposing the definition of the social world that is best suited” to the interests of different classes and class fractions engaged in the struggle (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu2003, 167).

The 2019 Letná demonstration made a clear association with the largest of the November 1989 demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, which took place at the Letná plateau on 25 November 1989. Organised by the protest movement Million Moments for Democracy, it rallied the largest crowd seen in the streets since November 1989 around the criticism of the then-cabinet of Andrej Babiš. The movement, initiated by Mikuláš Minář and his fellow Charles University students on 17 November 2017, with a pamphlet titled Moment for Andrej, had been drawing large crowds to its demonstrations since the spring of 2019 (Britské listy 2017). These were sparked by the cabinet reshuffle, including the appointment of Marie Benešová to the justice portfolio and fears of meddling with the judiciary.

Coverage of the demonstration was comparable to the coverage of the Babiš speech, with Právo running a story and a picture of the filled Letná plain as its top article. The two tabloid dailies, Blesk and Aha!, also featured front-page headlines accompanying photographs of the crowd at Letná waving Czech flags (Blesk 2019, Aha 2019). However, these were dwarfed by the lead article of Gabriela Soukalová and Karel Gott, respectively, and other celebrity and crime stories headlines on the front pages, which do not contain texts. By contrast, Právo and MF DNES front pages nearly exclusively focused on the anniversary. Images from Letná or the National Avenue were present in all four dailies.

The Letná 2019 demonstration’s symbolic play with the November 1989 demonstrations can be seen as an effort to position itself as the natural successor to the interpretation of November 1989, when students played an instrumental role. Minář is quoted extensively in Právo’s article “A quarter million people raged against Babiš” covering the demonstration, particularly his allegory of “a democratic playground” where “rules are supposed to be upheld”, and criticism of Babiš who trespassed these rules, or “crossed red lines,” as covered in the article, in the domains of “media, judiciary, issuing of pardons and conflict of interests” (Seďová Reference Seďová2019, 1). Minář called on Babiš to account for his conflicts of interest, meddling with the judiciary, his ongoing criminal investigation, and his bypassing of the division of power with his close ties to President Zeman, at Letná Plain in a symbolic lineage between November 1989 and November 2019. November 1989 is set as the inception of a democratic standard in the country, when “widespread metaphors of cleansing and rebirth expressed a perception of ontological transformation, as did representations of students as knights, Václav Havel as saint, and the people as gods” (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 17). In the 2019 demonstrations, the 1989 standard is framed as needing to be upheld against the trespassers Babiš, Zeman, and Benešová.

This lineage is further underpinned by the selection of speakers and performers who took to the stage in 2019. These included Bishop Malý and several other pre-1989 dissidents, or a blind girl, Nicol, singing the famous protest song Modlitba pro Martu , a powerful symbol of November 1989.Footnote ¹¹ In this respect, the Million Moments for Democracy protest builds on some of the key ideas of Czech national identity and its ties to the present-day Czech Republic. National identity is interwoven with what signified a conflict over the nature of democracy, assigning Czechs the role of democracy lovers.

Notably, Andrej Babiš’s response to the criticism voiced at the demonstration also invokes November 1989. In the same article, he reacts by saying, “it is great that we have freedom and democracy, and that is exactly what we wanted 30 years ago” (Seďová Reference Seďová2019, 1). Babiš is positioning himself within the “good” of the same elementary ideological delineation of post-1989 developments, on the side of those seeking democracy and freedom, and against the “evil”, that is, the riot police and the state authorities of the pre-1989 communist regime in the discursive battle Krapfl analysed (Krapfl Reference Krapfl2013, 25). Babiš makes this narrative positioning very explicit by adding that “it is truly great that we have a free and democratic election in which we can elect our representatives freely” (Seďová Reference Seďová2019, 1). Despite being at the centre of the criticism, Babiš plays into the symbolic contest over the November 1989 events, praising the freedom of expression and democratic election, implicitly reminding his interviewer that he was democratically elected. Just like in the speech he delivered the next day at the National Museum, Babiš uses “we” implicitly, connecting with those to whom freedom of expression and free elections are dear.

Communist Past and Breaking Away from It

Contrasting the media discourse in November 1999 and in November 2019 in lieu of a conclusion.

Babiš’s reproach of his communist past and the coverage it received is one of the most apparent contrasts with the discourse of the 1999 front-page articles on the 17 November anniversary. Although these are to some degree related to events specific to the year 2019 – that is, demonstrations against Babiš — a distinct discourse emerges in the November 2019 articles and images in their treatment of November 1989. Below are some of the key characteristics that differentiate it from the discourse of the 1999 coverage.

First of all, it needs to be noted that discourse about Václav Havel as the (then living) symbol of the November 1989 events was already in place in 1999, and in that way, the figure of Havel also serves as a point of continuity. Both in 1999 and in 2019, there was a deliberate effort on behalf of various political and civic actors, be it Prime Ministers Zeman and Babiš, the parliamentary chair Klaus, or the leader of the protest movement Minář, to refer to Havel as the key figure of November 1989 in order to secure a strong narrative position at the centre of the 17 November symbolism. In other words, to partake in Havel’s – as the leading figure of the Czechoslovak dissidents — “monopoly over symbolic political capital” (Blaive Reference Blaive and Norris2020, 225) of November 1989.

In the 1999 articles, this race to the symbolic heart of November 1989 is quite literal in the comments made by Zeman and Klaus, who at the time effectively divided control over government and public institutions through the so-called “opposition pact”, delivered to the press as well as demonstrated through their physical proximity to Havel when lighting candles at National Avenue. The Právo daily, which in 1999 had the largest circulation,Footnote ¹² featured a photograph accompanying its reporting of the commemoration on National Avenue, in which Klaus occupies the largest share of the frame, and Havel ends up leaning over to Klaus to light his candle from the one already lit in front of the parliamentary spokesperson. Klaus also received larger commentary space in the text, although it was Havel who received the “warmest welcome” at the National Avenue (Götzová Reference Götzová1999, 1).

Both Klaus and Zeman were quoted as positioning themselves firmly on the side of the 1989 demonstrators and in opposition to the communist-era riot police assaulting the demonstrators on 17 November. Klaus said, “hopefully, the next ten years will lead to completely forgetting what happened in the past. Even today’s discomfort in society will be behind us.” Klaus’ remarks refer to his signature neoliberal break with the communist past, positing his ODS Party as the supposedly authentic opposition to communism. This had become a common political trope since the early 1990s, an “era when condemnation of the previous regime ruled public debates [… and] when various ‘mnemonic warriors’ were battling over the radical break with the past, mostly in line with the increasingly prominent political force of Klaus’ ODS” (Pehe Reference Pehe2020, 51).

Another widely reported event of the 1999 anniversary is the visit of the former StB agent Žifčák to National Avenue. Žifčák’s visit was often covered together with that of the former chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Vasil Mohorita (Götzová Reference Götzová1999, 1). Ondřej Štindl commented in LN on the “victims of capitalism,” referring to the only sentenced communist official, Miroslav Štěpán, and his fans at National Avenue (Štindl Reference Štindl1999, 1). All these articles highlighted angry reactions from the crowds on National Avenue towards the people associated with the pre-1989 regime, or the exchange of emotional comments on the street. These were also accompanied by images setting the stage for the democrats versus communists narrative field in the media.

Velvet Revolution as a European District Theatre and as the Czech Centre Stage

Another contrast between the discourse of the 2019 coverage and the 1999 one is that in 2019, it is more domestically oriented. The 1999 discourse locates domestic events in a broader international perspective. Právo quotes Havel in describing the November 1989 revolution as “not falling from the sky” (Právo 1999, 1) but as part of a greater process of dismantling one system. This depiction was also shaped by the profile of events commemorating November 1989 in 1999.

One of the most frequented headlines from the 18 November 1999 title pages refers to the conference Ten Years After — on the threshold of the new millennium organised in Prague by the East West Institute, the Presidential Office of Václav Havel and Society 89, with key politicians of the 1989 changes such as Lech Walesa, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush participating in the event, and moderated by Timothy Garton Ash, who covered the 1989 events in Central Europe as a reporter. The conference brought key international actors of the 1989 events in Europe to Prague, setting a more international tone for the subsequent media coverage. Domestic political actors interacted with world-famous former politicians, such as when Miloš Zeman met with Mikhail Gorbachev to discuss Russian politics and the war in Chechnya.Footnote ¹³ Another example is Margaret Thatcher’s meetings with Czech politicians and the unveiling of Winston Churchill’s monument in Prague’s formerly proletarian Žižkov quarter (MF Dnes 1999, 1).

The most impactful example is Havel’s speech, covered on front pages in Právo, MF DNES, and published in full in LN as “The hardest coming to terms with is the destruction sown into our souls.” Havel delivered the speech when presenting the highest Czech awards to domestic and international recipients, some of whom also participated in the conference Ten Years After. He refers to the difficulties with which the political plurality, the rule of law, democratic institutions, and the market economy are being born and to “all the bad that was resting inside us, and which the newly regained freedom released” (Havel Reference Havel1999, 1). The negativity and “everyday worrying, often hopelessly poisoning our days, is, of course, nothing and nearly negligible in comparison to the historical significance of the fall of communism in the world and against the backdrop of which the Czechoslovak November 1989 occurred” (Havel Reference Havel1999, 1). Unlike in Babiš’s speech, in which Czechs are occupying centre stage, Havel depicts Czechs as participating in the greater play outside of their own country, with their pains and worries dwarfed by this greater picture.

Naturally, front-page comments from foreign former politicians set the international tone of the 1999 discourse. The sole front-page headline about the November anniversary in HN focused on Gorbachev rejecting the idea of KGB orchestration of the November 1989 events in Czechoslovakia. Gorbachev’s line from the conference: “I have not ordered the KGB to instigate a process which would lead to a revolution in [the] then Czechoslovakia,” is one of the most cited references throughout the texts (Hospodářské noviny 1999, 1). Gorbachev reacted to Lech Walesa’s stress on 1989 protesters not being supported by the West. This was echoed by George Bush, who said that his administration “was very careful” and “did not want to provoke Gorbachev” or the radical wing inside the Soviet Communist Party (Hospodářské noviny 1999, 1). It is as though Gorbachev wanted to assure the public that political changes in November 1989 were driven entirely by domestic actors in Czechoslovakia.

In the 1999 coverage, it was more common to discuss Czechoslovakia as a small actor on the world stage. In interpreting major domestic events, looking to developments in major power centres in Moscow or Washington, DC, and elsewhere abroad was considered natural. In contrast, even though the Letná demonstration against Babiš took place a year after mass demonstrations in Slovakia against Robert Fico and his Smer Party-led government, the 2019 front-page texts did not locate the protests within the regional context and the political situation in other countries in the region, such as Hungary or Poland. Understanding the politics of the Soviet Union in the 1980s as necessary to interpret the breakup of the Soviet satellite regimes in Central and Eastern Europe seems to be an implicit prerequisite behind many 1999 media texts. In the words of Tony Judt, “Communism was about power, and power lay not in Warsaw but in Moscow” (Judt Reference Judt2010, 590). By contrast, the 2019 discourse is more introspective and concerned with domestic affairs, as the coverage of Babiš’s speech shows.

The 2019 preoccupation with domestic affairs also contrasts with the guest authors on the front pages in 1999. LN ran a commentary by Mikhail Gorbachev entitled: “Americans are playing a dangerous game” (Gorbačov Reference Gorbačov1999, 1). There, Gorbachev refers to the “Velvet Revolution” as one of the changes in Central and Eastern Europe coinciding with “the moment when far liberal monetarist fundamentalism gained the upper hand in the West” (Gorbačov Reference Gorbačov1999, 1). A curious reference can be made here with the literature studying economic change, which followed the fall of communism in the 1990s, and ultimately redrew the ownership structure of the economy, which passed from the control of state elites to a thin layer of private owners, as the neoliberal turn in Central and Eastern Europe. As Pehe and Wawrzyniak write, “it was only at the turn of the millennium that the critics of the [1990s] transformation reforms from the left, as well as observers from abroad, called the reforms ‘neoliberal,’” linking these with wider international developments (Pehe, Wawrzyniak Reference Pehe, Wawrzyniak, Pehe and Wawrzyniak2024, 6). In the 1999 commentary, Gorbachev argues that the end of the Cold War division of the world was a victory for everyone and that it would be wrong to interpret the 1989-1992 changes in a dichotomy positing winners (the West or Washington DC) against losers (the East or Moscow). MF DNES also featured an interview titled “Today, Russia Needs Help” with Lech Walesa (Palata Reference Palata1999, 1). All these 1999 stories contribute to a form of coverage distinct from that of 2019, where domestic policies dominate the media discourse and in which the presence of international politicians is not as much noticed, with the exception of the European Commission Chairman Jean Claude Juncker and Austrian President Alexander Van Der Bellen, who each had a short column published at the lower part of MF DNES’ title page.

Finally, disillusionment with the post-1989 political, social, and economic developments is another prevalent theme of the 1999 discourse. It is not only expressed by quoting Czech and international politicians, but also university students — MF DNES ran a title page story “Some went to the National Avenue, others preferred to go for a coffee” (Jelínek Reference Jelínek1999, 1). The story collected comments from modern language students who complained that the Czech Republic was not yet an EU member country, and political science students discouraged from participating in politics by their fellow students engaged “mostly in right-wing formations” and “speaking like their party bosses” (Jelínek Reference Jelínek1999, 1). Other instances of disenfranchisement are found in the occasional citing of foreign media writing about Czech post-1989 developments as about the trajectory from “expectations to sobering up” (MF Dnes 1999, 1). Moreover, disenfranchisement with the post-1989 developments is also addressed in the articles further within the newspapers and evolves into one of the most important themes in the coverage.

Conclusion: The Power of the Past

The thematization of post-1989 disillusionment is arguably the greatest contrast between the coverage of the two anniversaries. The 1999 discourse is co-shaped by this disillusionment, with politicians and other quoted actors addressing it as an existing constituency. By contrast, in the 2019 discourse, November 1989 is primarily addressed as an event setting the country on a positive and correct course of development. In the 1999 texts, the tone is overall very positive, but also open to the interpretation of November 1989, including criticism of post-1990s developments. By contrast, the 2019 texts present November 1989 as exclusively positive. In the 2019 discourse, November 1989 is firmly enshrined in the imagined Czech national pantheon, whereas in the 1999 discourse, its position in the Czech national pantheon is still being examined — not to judge whether it belongs there (it does), but rather to judge its precise place within this imagined national pantheon.

As already noted, November 1989 is addressed as a positive event of Czech national history from conflicting standpoints. The then PM Babiš is invoking November 1989 just like the leaders and sympathisers of the 2019 protests, who ultimately drew wide support for the articulation of criticism of Andrej Babiš and for trying to locate this criticism within a larger social, political, and environmental framework. There is a discernible narrative struggle over the possession of the capital encoded in November 1989, and past narratives and symbols play an important role in this struggle.

In 2019, more nuanced positions towards the communist past are assumed by populists, while the discourse of the break with the communist past is re-enacted by the critics of populist politicians. The imprint of the Million Moments for Democracy protests on the 2019 discourse, especially the criticism of Andrej Babiš’s past involvement with communist regime institutions, is to some extent reminiscent of the mid-1990s as an “era of mnemonic warriors” (Pehe Reference Pehe2020, 51) about the break with the pre-1989 past. This is also echoed in Právo’s coverage (Právo 2019, 1) of politicians laying wreaths at National Avenue, covering chants from the crowd against politicians from Babiš’s cabinet or far-right politicians, and in support of TOP 09 politicians. In 2019, a narrative battle was played out over who positioned himself more firmly in signifying the “Velvet Revolution” as the freedom-defining and one of the constitutive events of the contemporary Czech national identity.

This struggle over the symbolic possession of November 1989 has prompted novel narratives entering the discourse of the 2019 anniversary, including a conciliatory approach towards the communist past assumed by the populists. A political way out of the dictum of anti-communism is sketched out by Andrej Babiš in his 2019 speech. He endorses the depiction of the communist rule as being on the wrong side of history and contrasts it with the figure of Václav Havel as the right side of history. In this way, Babiš proclaims his own guilt, but he also identifies with the Czech folk imagined as ordinary, hardworking, and patriotic. This imagining of the hardworking and patriotic Czech nation celebrating the god-like figures of Václav Havel and the dissidents in the constitutive event of its history — that is, November 1989 — is reinforced by tabloid stories of Karel Gott attracting the ordinary folk from outside of Prague to join the protests. Figures of Gott and Babiš thus narrate the “ordinariness” of people and their lives in the 1970s and 80s normalisation era in Czechoslovakia, despite their own positions as pre-1989 elites.

In his depiction of the operator of a local vegetable store who accepted the “rules of the game” (Havel Reference Havel2017, 111) in Czechoslovakia, Havel’s “Power of the Powerless” famously analysed the power grip the Communist Party had on society during the normalisation era. In 2019, Babiš attempted to reach out to the numerous operators of vegetable stores and other Czechs (and Slovaks) who obediently put up ritual socialist slogans without believing in those. Havel’s biographer Kieran Williams observes: “even though Havel would become internationally acclaimed, it was [author of state television series] Dietl who had the greater effect on how Czechs told stories to and about themselves” (Williams Reference Williams2016, 113). In this way, Babiš’s November 2019 speech can be described as appealing to watchers of Dietl’s soap television series rather than to readers of Havel.

Through the most quoted speech (Babiš) and the towering presence in the tabloid stories (Gott), the feeling of “normalcy” permeates the 2019 media discourse. Czechs are no longer depicted as subjugated by communism but as rationally accepting political reality, be it the reality of the 1970s and 80s or 2010s. Babiš’s conciliatory “thanks to you people” address diffuses criticism against him by attempting to unite post-1989 narratives into a whole along the national identity in a similar fashion to Pehe’s description of nostalgic discourse marketing the pre-1989 Czechoslovak brands such as soft drink Kofola and sportswear Botas. “Retro does not suggest a return to the past in order to resurrect aspects of ‘better’ times; instead, through taking the old and combining it with the new, it posits a linear narrative of progress” (Pehe Reference Pehe2020, 106–7). To rephrase Babiš, you Czechs have much of what you wanted in the November 1989 demonstrations, and you should be proud of that — that which they have been telling you about, that you have already achieved as a result of your own hard work and by being a meaningful member of the Czech national “we.”