In sweltering heat and despite the summer vacations, thousands of Slovaks took to the streets of Bratislava on Monday, August 12 and Tuesday, August 13 to condemn a new step in the disturbing purges carried out by the populist government of Robert Fico, who has been in power in this small Central European country since October 25, 2023. The processions, held on two consecutive days and largely made up of artists, called for the "resignation" of his Culture Minister, Martina Simkovicova, a figure of the pro-Russian far right who, one by one, is dismissing artists who refuse to align themselves with her vision of culture.

Simkovica, a self-proclaimed "defender of Slovak culture and nothing else," has launched a veritable cultural war against "LGBT ideology," which she accuses of participating in "the extinction of the white race" in Europe. Having already dismissed several heads of public institutions in recent months, this anti-vax conspiracy fighter made waves on Tuesday, August 6 and Wednesday, August 7, when she fired the director of the Slovak National Theatre, Matej Drlicka, and the director of the Slovak National Gallery, Alexandra Kusa, on the spot. Both were accused in a statement of "progressive-liberal political activism," not in line with the government's "cultural program focused on traditional values and the heritage of our ancestors."

"An official from the Ministry rang my doorbell early in the morning to tell me I'd been fired," said Drlicka, who had headed Slovakia's main public stage, which includes a theater, opera and ballet, since 2021. "Ever since I expressed my disagreement with what's going on in Slovakia at the ceremony for the Slovak equivalent of the Oscars, I'd been told I was a goner," said this clarinetist by training, who has also just been awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France for his career.

Although he prides himself on having made his venue "a mirror of Slovak society," with numerous political plays in the repertoire, Drlicka insists that he "has never declared his political opinions, nor told people to vote for anyone." But in a country that is increasingly copying Viktor Orban's neighboring Hungary, with a government that attacks the independence of the judiciary, the police and the media, and dismisses troublesome civil servants by the dozen, it is now enough to appear as an artist with a taste for protest to be targeted by the authorities.

In a press conference called to defend these dismissals, the highly influential Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture, Lukas Machala, sharply attacked the protesters, openly promising to dismiss other heads of cultural institutions in the near future. "We will never be intimidated, nor interested in the cries, lamentations and yapping of those who live off your taxes," said this close friend of the minister, who is known to have gone so far as to question whether the Earth was really round.

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