Fico’s Slovakia: Satire vs. Reality

We don’t even have to invent jokes, just retell reality. Slovakian politics today produces so many absurd situations that satire often just catches up with the news. Drag performer Martin Talaga, the author of the Piatoček podcast Adam Blaško and the creators of the Zomri site show why humor has become one of the most powerful tools for part of society to “not go crazy” in Slovakia under Robert Fico’s government. Slovak satire is addressed in the bonus fifth volume of the Smér Fico audio series.

“Our political scene throws up so many topics that I don’t even have time to film them. Every week there is something to choose from,” Martin Talaga, recent laureate of the Czech Thálie Theater Award, tells me.

The Slovak queer dancer, choreographer and performer received an award for his performance in the production “PiNKBUS Slovak and none other”, in which he performs as drag queen Venice.

In his show, Talaga got folklore elements: costumes, bagpipes and fujara, and he bases it all on political satire, singing and stand-up comedy. According to him, Venice itself mixes elements of the Orava aunties, but also pop culture “icons” of Slovak social networks Nora Kabrheľová (formerly Mojsejová) or the Slovak Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová.

Laughter at the expense of Fico’s government is taken by the artist as a valve. “We did it in order not to go crazy from it all and to find a way out,” he tells me shortly before his December performance at Prague’s Venus Theater in Švehlovka.

It is said that the audience feels the same way, and even the voters of the ruling Smér party laugh at the show. In addition, when traveling in Slovakia, Talaga helps to break down one “taboo” of a more conservative society: distorted ideas or fears about queer people, which are spread, for example, by Minister Šimkovičová and many other politicians of Fico’s coalition.

“When they meet queer people in person, it stops being a threat, a scarecrow and ‘LGBT propaganda’ for them. When they have queer people right in front of them, they see that they can have a beer with them, talk to them and that there is actually nothing demonic about them,” he says.

In addition, according to Martin Talaga, the current “hostile” political environment in Slovakia gives Slovak artists the impetus to create.

The Sme Piatoček daily podcast has also been working with political satire in Slovakia for the sixth year. In it, Adam Blaško glosses the events of the last week every Friday. It builds on the fast pace and ability to name the absurdity of Slovak politics. And so that it is comprehensible even to Czech listeners.

But Blaško doesn’t take credit for it, on the contrary – he says he has doubts whether he or the Slovak politicians themselves are behind the script and the joke. “I don’t actually do satire, but reporting, and people laugh at it. I put explosions, a lot of noise, a lot of music and the like, and people laugh at the reporting, at what, unfortunately, is really happening,” he says, alluding to the endless supply of Slovak political oddities.

“Creating a script for political satire should be a pain. I wish that political satire is also something that is very difficult to create in your country and that may not be that funny. If political satire is not very funny in a certain state, even though it is done by really qualified people, it means that it is not so much fun in that state, and that is good, so that the state works,” he adds during an interview in the studio of the 5:59 podcast.

In satire, this sometimes leads to a dead end.

“I don’t know where else to move the moment when Rudolf Huliak declares that homosexuals cause global warming when they have sex because they produce a lot of greenhouse gases. I don’t know what to do with it, I’m really confused,” Adam Blaško gives the example of today’s Slovak sports minister.

The website Zomri also publishes satire on a daily basis in Slovakia. A strong community has grown around the original Facebook page, which was created in 2016. Zomri has over 450,000 followers on Facebook alone, i.e. “Zomričat”.

There are more site administrators and they remain anonymous in public. When they take pictures, they wear canvas bags with the inscription Zomri on their heads. The trio introduced themselves by their nicknames, under which they appear on social networks: Bufeťák, Knedlík and Korytnačák.

Jokes, memes, but also political and social criticism appear on Zomri several times a day. However, the administrators point out that the content is not actually from their heads.

“The Zomri community is so huge today that we receive hundreds of messages every day with suggestions for jokes, with alerts about various things that people see around them. Those people are actually also admins. They will always have a part in it,” says Bufeťák.

According to statistics, people read their site mainly in the evening while sleeping. This is often how they find out what happened during the day. In a way, Zomri functions as a lighthearted and already ironic alternative to news.

The site also has influence and intervenes in politics. For a long time, she has been critical of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s policies, but during his administration she did not spare even the chaotic Prime Minister Igor Matovič. And he also tackles today’s opposition – sometimes there is a complaint that the opposition does not respond to Fico’s government’s initiatives or its causes quickly and adequately enough.

This year, Zomri also featured memes reacting to serious railway incidents. However, as the authors themselves admit, they are encountering a special effect of their own popularity.

“An acquaintance criticized me a little for this and had a pretty good point. We are getting into a strange paradox,” says admin Korytnačák, adding that even situations where nothing actually happened, people automatically started sending as “another trouble on the railway”.

In this way, Zomri may unintentionally reinforce the impression of a permanent crisis, although, according to some, similar situations have happened before, only no one systematically recorded and forwarded them.

At the same time, the site also fulfills the role of important social criticism. In this way, cases that have been dismissed by journalists, as well as the real state of Slovak health care and infrastructure, are better brought to light. Hmatatelna Zomri helped with the collection for the reconstruction and retrofitting of neonatology in Košice, which we filmed about in the fourth part of the Směr Fico series.

Zomri also works as a quick translator of absurdity. Politics in Slovakia is often so overwrought that classic news coverage doesn’t have time to name it. Zomri readily does it with one picture, one sentence, one meme. No explanation. And the point fits right away.

He makes fun of the powerful, of nationalist pathos, of macho poses and hypocrisy, and of false morality. This takes away some of their authority from politicians – and quite a few of them take it hard. Therefore, Zomri also pays for one of the enemies of the current government set-up. They unmask and humanize politicians to the point of politically lethal embarrassment.

And where are the limits of a joke?

“We already have quite a feeling for what is too much, but we have almost completely reduced swear words, we practically do not use them in memes. For us, a joke must mainly carry something to make people think and laugh, or be simple, short and striking. But where the line is, what is too much, is very difficult to determine today. We can’t even tell you exactly, it’s a kind of alchemy,” Bufeťák and Knedlík say about how they decide about the content of the page.

And the admins also offer a forecast for the Czech Republic. “We live in a time when the news itself is often funnier than memes, collages or cartoons. We say it everywhere. Soon you will experience it too, in fact you are already experiencing it in the Czech Republic with the new government,” they mention.

“We have a minister of culture, a minister of the interior, a minister of foreign affairs and, of course, a minister of finance, who, as part of the famous consolidation, advises people to bake cakes and cook jam at home. We then proceed from that. You have, for example, Filip Turk,” the Zomri administrators conclude.