Ukraine faces decisive months ahead as key allies gear up for crunch elections. While early presidential campaigning in the US and a looming general election in Poland will grab the international headlines, a snap election in Slovakia on 30 September may prove every bit as consequential. 

With Robert Fico — Slovakia’s former prime minister and one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Ukrainian war effort — poised to win the vote, a change of government in Bratislava could have a profound effect on EU policymaking. Fico has promised that if his party makes it into government “we will not send a single bullet to Ukraine,” proudly proclaiming that “I allow myself to have a different opinion to that of the United States” on the war.  

Fico has also claimed on the campaign trail that “war always comes from the West and peace from the East,” and that “what is happening today is unnecessary killing, it is the emptying of warehouses to force countries to buy more American weapons.” Such statements have resulted in him being blacklisted by Kyiv as a spreader of Russian propaganda.  

Yet the former prime minister spearheads a new brand of Left-wing, anti-American populism that has become a powerful force in Central Europe since the war began. Perceptions that “the Americans occupy us” — as one MP in Fico’s Smer party evocatively put it — are shared with a similar groundswell of anti-Western opinion in the neighbouring Czech Republic.  

Yet Smer has been handed a chance to gain power thanks to the chaos which has engulfed Slovakia’s pro-EU, pro-Western forces. Personal grievances coupled with serious policy errors tore apart a four-party coalition formed after elections in 2020, leaving Fico to capitalise on heightened mistrust in establishment politics. Smer is expected to become the nation’s largest party after this month’s election, with an anticipated 20% of the vote.  

Whatever the specific makeup of the new government, if Smer is the largest party it will likely pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. A halt to until-now generous Slovak arms shipments to Ukraine is Fico’s central electoral pledge, while the arrival on the scene of another Orbán-style government prepared to obstruct EU aid efforts for Ukraine would create a serious headache. That is particularly the case as Brussels struggles to win support for both short and long-term war funding commitments. 

Victory for Fico would also amplify Orbán’s scepticism about the overall Western narrative on Ukraine — a scepticism which the Hungarian Prime Minister recently conveyed to Western conservatives during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Orbán portrayed Ukraine’s attempts to win back the territories taken by Russia as ultimately hopeless and claimed that Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly makes him “the man who can save the Western world”. 

Like Trump in America and Orbán in Europe, Fico is hated with a passion by establishment forces. But in Slovakia, the pro-Western establishment itself has become so mistrusted that power may soon pass to a man intent on shattering what’s left of European unity on Ukraine. 

Donald Trump keeps winning. $25 million from Meta. $10 million from X/Twitter. Now, $25 million from YouTube. 

In recent months, the President has been raking in big sums as his legal teams have gone after those who ejected him from their platforms in the wake of the January 6 riots. 

Victory tastes sweet. But what, exactly, has been won? The Trumpists would call it a triumph for free speech, a vindication after years of unfair treatment. But that’s not entirely the case. What it really reveals is the grinding machinery of corporate interests — tectonic plates of power colliding until a bolus of dollars is squeezed out. It sheds no light on the politics of yesterday, but lays bare everything about the politics of today.

Take the most recent settlement. In January 2021, Donald Trump received a “strike” on his YouTube account for violating the platform’s rules — the same sanction that can befall anyone who has clicked the “Accept Terms of Service” box. By 8 January, Meta and Twitter had already suspended his account, citing “public safety” concerns. For a few days, YouTube was left hanging loose, but by 13 January, it had decided to ban him too.

What was the exact nature of his YouTube infringement? We still don’t know. Nor do we know about what particular video the strike was against. The account was simply frozen out, and not resumed. 

Trump’s lawyers focused most of their argument on the fact that he was more than an ordinary user: that social media was a kind of “public square”, in which a prominent political actor had a special right to speak. They hinted that these companies were operating in lock-step, and that by collectively closing themselves off to him, they were indulging in “political discrimination”. 

It’s an interesting argument, but political discrimination is not a concept generally recognised by US courts. And, had it come down to it, it is unlikely Trump’s team would have prevailed anyway. So why did they settle? Because the world seemed fixed, and Trump seemed doomed. They assumed he was a spent political force. 

His return to office flipped their calculations: suddenly Big Tech firms feared their internal communications could be subpoenaed. Unflattering messages about the former president could easily have made front-page news, with all the predictable fallout. At best, the companies might have hoped for a carefully managed PR response; at worst, they risked a sustained conservative boycott that would have hit their bottom line hard. 

Big Tech, of course, has sharp survival instincts. It stays close to the powers that be. Just as Zuckerberg grew his hair, donned a medallion, and chatted with Rogan about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the platforms themselves cultivate legislative agendas they hope to see realised. Looking back from today, 2021 feels like another country. The mood has shifted so completely that revisiting the tone of those days now invites a certain cultural cringe under the new regime.

In effect, the tech firms are making burnt offerings to their new gods: $25 million here, $10 million there. Kiss the ring and go. After all, Trump, much like them, is a figure who only swims forward. Having sealed that loyalty, he too will move on. 

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Gavin Haynes is a journalist and former editor-at-large at Vice.

@gavhaynes

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