Oto Klempíř was for many years the frontman of JAR, a popular Czech funk-rock band. He was expelled from the band last year, not over creative differences, or even because of his collaboration with the secret police in the 1980s, but after he declared his intention to stand for parliament for Motorists for Themselves, a populist, nationalist, climate-sceptic party that is closely aligned with Maga ideology.

Klempíř is now Czechia’s culture minister and a leading figure behind an intensifying set of culture wars promoted by Andrej Babiš’s ruling coalition as it seeks to tighten its grip on power. Increasingly the government is borrowing methods favoured by Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia.

With tensions rising, thousands turned out to protest last month against measures proposed by Klempíř that could undermine the independence of the media. Klempíř is fast-tracking legislation that would bring funding for public service media under greater government control.

This is the most serious attack on civil society led by the Motorists party since its initial political breakthrough last year, but Klempíř is fighting on two other fronts as well. The culture minister has decreed new conditions under which literary journals will be awarded state subsidies for the coming year. Funded projects will not in future be allowed to publish “political news, commentary on current political events, or other political journalism”.

It is not yet clear who will monitor compliance or carry out the censorship that may follow. But the measure clearly opens the door to the silencing of projects that are critical of the government, and in this, it carries dark echoes of........

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