Thread by @FistedFoucault

For 4 long years the USA had a collective meltdown because some Russians spent $55k on Facebook ads during the 2016 US POTUS Election Campaign (which cost $2.4 Billion overall!).

In 1998, US gov't+billionaires outright bought an election in Slovakia.

Thread:

Interwar Czechoslovakia was seen in the West as an island of liberal multi-party democracy in a sea of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, USSR).

Its dismemberment at Munich in 1938 was followed by Soviet-era communist one-party rule.

In 1968, the Prague Spring saw a liberalization of Czechoslovak politics and society, but it would not last as the Warsaw Pact (minus Romania) invaded and shut it down.

For the next 21 years, Czechoslovakia would be ruled by a quasi-Stalinist clique.

In 1989, The Velvet Revolution saw Czechs and Slovaks take to the streets to overthrow the regime, one severely crippled by Gorbachev's refusal to buttress the Warsaw Pact states of Central and Eastern Europe.

The regime fell and multiparty democracy quickly filled the vacuum.

The Czechs are the most liberal of all Slavs (and the most atheist, as well). They took to western liberal democracy like fish to water.

Dissident and intellectual Vaclav Havel was the perfect template for a politician that western liberals could back and support.

A humanitarian, environmentalist, political liberal (in the classical sense), writer and intellectual, Havel embodied all the values that western liberals were convinced were what those Europeans who overthrew communism wanted in 1989.

As Yugoslavia collapsed into violence, Czechoslovakia was supposed to show the world that multi-ethnic states and liberal democracy could go hand-in-hand.

The problem was that Czechs and Slovaks couldn't agree to how this new democracy should be governed.

The Czechs sought further centralization of the national state, while the Slovaks wanted a looser federation in the form of a confederation in order to maximize their own, hard-won autonomy.

What resulted was the "Velvet Divorce", where the two shook hands and agreed to split.

The Czechs proceeded along the approved, liberal path towards EU and NATO membership.

Slovakia, jealously guarding its independence, also sought EU and NATO membership, but was unwilling to play ball in other matters.

Meet Vladimir Meciar, the 3-time Slovak PM during the 90s.

A supporter of the Prague Spring in 1968, he was labelled an "enemy of the socialist regime" by the Central Committee of the Communist Party after Warsaw Pact forces moved in.

He re-entered gov't in 1990 and became the Slovak PM later that year, pushing for economic reforms.

A backer of both EU and NATO accession for Slovakia, he managed the Velvet Divorce and tried to put his country on a western path.

...but then he made a "big mistake" in the eyes of the West: he rejected economic shock therapy for Slovakia.

Having seen what "shock therapy" had done to the Russian economy (and other post-communist ones), Meciar and his party rejected selling state assets to foreign interests, preferring instead to conduct its own privatization to create a class of Slovak capitalists.

Why sell off your entire economy to foreign interests?

It was at this point where pressure began to be applied against Meciar and his government, with accusations stemming from "rejecting rule of law" to "corruption", "populism", and so on.

Sound familiar?

Post-communist regimes in Europe were supposed to follow a simple set of rules:

1. multi-party democracy
2. primacy of individual rights
3. separation of powers
4. free market economics
5. economic shock therapy
6. do whatever the USA tells you to do

In short: Meciar had to go.

Both the EU and NATO said that Meciar's "autocratic behaviour" would stall accession.

Meanwhile, western NGOs began to ramp up activity in Slovakia to unseat Meciar and his party, the most popular one in Slovakia.

Madeline Albright, then Secretary of State, attacked Slovakia as "the hole of Europe".

Hillary Clinton, then First Lady, joined the chorus to denounce the country's gov't as well.

Western financed NGOs were mobilized en masse to unseat the government aka "regime change":

Meciar's gov't was wise as to what was going on, and tried to expose what these NGOs were doing, and who was backing them. They knew that goal was regime change, and they pointed the finger at many, including Mr. George Soros:

"You're just saying that. You're a conspiracy theorist, & you're an anti-semite because you mentioned George Soros".

Okay, let's take a look at who was funding them, based on research conducted by pro-west NGOs and academia.

Ford Foundation
Soros' Open Society
USAID, etc.

Read that again:

Over 90% of funding of anti-government NGOs came from western sources like the ones mentioned above.

But what about foreign interference in elections?

In this excerpt, they brag about how George Soros did it:

As the gov't kept fighting against this foreign interference, these western-backed NGOs raised the temperature (thanks to new injections of funding) and got big name politicians to denounce Meciar and his gov't.

...and then came the OK '98 campaign to unseat Meciar and the gov't, where western money created the most impressive campaign ever seen in the country, with the un-stated but transparent aim of regime change.

Please note the bolded portion in the second image.

Meciar's party went on eek out a victory in the election, but could not form a government and fell out of power.

Western gov't and billionaire money achieved final victory: a more pliant government in Bratislava.

Post-victory, NGOs were rewarded by becoming a "gov't partner".

Although not a Colour Revolution, this was the first regime change in post-communist Europe that succeeded. It went on to provide a template for the upcoming Colour Revolutions in Serbia and Georgia.

Click here to read more in this series:

niccolo.substack.com/p/regime-chang…