Czech censors stoop to another low

A junior high school teacher in Czech Republic’s capital, Prague, has become the latest victim of outright harassment. She dared share information on the Ukrainian conflict not in line with the strict official story.

Her students (Grade 8, making them 14-year-old teens) recorded what the teacher was telling them and then, they shared a copy with the school’s principal.

The teacher was fired on the spot.

And Czech mainstream media, in their reports on the event, have been praising the students to high heaven for their mature consciousness.

They are basically hailing a Soviet myth of a kid who snitched on his parents and was killed by his village’s rich farmers.

Pavlik Morozov was his name, and the official story has it that his parents, in league with rich farmers (named kulaks in the Russian propaganda lingo) hid grain that Soviet authorities were about to confiscate to take it to help the needy working class in cities.

Post-Soviet archives of Soviet secret police seem to indicate that yes, Pavlik Morozov did exist, but he died at the hands of the secret police who then framed his parents and some of the kulaks and had them all shot.

The idea was to scare the village into submission.

Adolf Hitler’s Germany had a similar hero, portrayed in a book named Hitlerjunge Quex (for those keen to know the meaning: Hitler’s Youth Quicksilver).

Anyhow: when the poor teacher suggested not all is as portrayed on the official state-controlled television channels, her students began recording her. After all, what are smartphones for, right?

The recording is 18 minutes long. It includes words such as, “Well, I have received pictures from (Ukraine’s capital) Kyiv yesterday, and it seems nothing’s going on.”

Some students (Czech mainstream media do not say how many of them) began protesting: they saw in the news that Kyiv is burning.

The teacher told them they should be looking for information in more sources than one, and added a bomb: “ČT 1 (Czech state-owned television’s main channel) is part of media linked to the billionaire Soros. And we know precisely whom he reflects.”

Czech mainstream media, up in arms, went to a person they name education specialist. That he also speaks for an activist group that calls itself Czech Elves, thus facing an almost perfect conflict of interest, mattered not.

This group’s official website is mum on how they can dare claim theirs is the truth and nothing but, so help them nature. It doesn’t say either who authorised them to be the sole judge and jury whose word is law.

Unusual decision-makers

Considering that verdicts on what is and what is not permissible information published on the web in the Czech Republic are made by a non-government organisation with links to another such group in the U.S., nobody questions the Czech Elves’ authority. Not the Czech mainstream media, anyway.

So, when the alleged expert explodes, he’s quoted verbatim: “This borders on or is beyond the border of basic awareness, information literacy.”

That was the opener. There was more to follow: “Here the teacher obviously gets herself into a situation when she claims pure nonsense.”

Bravo. Any proof?

Are you kidding?

So far as the Czech Elves expert is concerned, he said so.

The recording, according to him, is proof enough that the teacher is deeply convinced about the disinformation sources’ trustworthiness.

One of the mainstream media reporters tried to pretend a hint of objectivity by asking the teacher what she had to say.

The teacher first replied by mentioning atrocities committed by Ukrainian security forces against the Russians in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas.

She followed up by saying that she only told her students facts that had been proven. She also briefly touched upon the history of both countries, the teacher added.

Her principal reacted without delay: the teacher wouldn’t be allowed into classes forthwith, and will be terminated once the Easter holiday is over.

The principal went further: she characterised the teacher’s words as filled with hatred and untruths. Again, without a single proof to support her statement.

One of the students who had made the recording and shared it with the principal has shown what the modern culture of political correctness creates in all age groups: admitting his part in the fiasco with pride, he added that a new classmate, a girl from Ukraine was present. She speaks some Czech, he said, and that must have been the worst part for her.

Czech government has recently announced that quoting news from the conflict other than official government-approved reports would become a criminal offence. Perpetrators can spend five years behind bars for the crime of trying to find balanced reporting.

Czech history has shown that a popular saying that a turn-coat is worse than the real thing (Poturčenec horší Turka) couldn’t have been coined anywhere else.