Filip Turek, honorary president of the Motorists Party, in Prague, October 13, 2025. ONDREJ DEML / AP
When launching a political career on social media, it's important to remember that nothing online is ever truly forgotten. Filip Turek, the honorary president of the far-right Motorist Party, which made a breakthrough in the Czech Republic's legislative elections on October 3 and 4, learned this the hard way. On Friday, October 10, the website Denik N published numerous anti-Romani, sexist, and homophobic comments that Turek, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, thought he had permanently deleted from his Facebook profile.
These posts, in which he referred to former US president Barack Obama using a racial slur and mocked a young Romani woman burned in a 2009 neo-Nazi attack, derailed coalition negotiations between his party and ANO, the populist billionaire Andrej Babis's party. ANO won 35% of the vote.
On Tuesday, October 14, Babis, apparently reluctant to include controversial figures in his future government, called on Turek "to convince the public" that he is not a racist flirting with neo-Nazism before naming him foreign minister, as initially agreed in post-election talks between the two parties.
