The legacy of Jan Hus and the reality in the Persian Gulf: The West is losing influence and moral superiority over the rest of the world

Today we commemorate the burning of Jan Hus.

These days, millions of people gathered in Iran for the funeral of the religious leader Ali Khamenei, who was murdered by Israel and the US, along with his family (the little coffin is his 14-month-old granddaughter).

Some kind of youthful donkey from the position of an expert today onCNN Prima NEWSclaimed that military forces hold power in Iran, but the "Iranian people" want peace with the US. It's like if in 1420 some papist claimed that Bohemia was controlled by a few paws with chalices on flags, but the Czech people wanted peace with Emperor Sigismund. (Perhaps someone really claimed that at the time, because stupidity is eternal - and the reality only became apparent when Zikmund tried to come for the Czech crown).

If you have a moment, watch the film Jan Hus and the rest of the Hussite trilogy by Otakar Vávra today. This is a timeless work that may give you more insight into the nature of current conflicts, including the one in the Persian Gulf, than crappy TV. The current world and the time of Jan Hus really have some similarities. But we are now on the side of "Zigmund" - the empire and ideology of the West, originally successful and powerful, but now internally rotting, similar to the Empire and the Church in the times of the late Middle Ages.

Is correction, reformation possible? So far we are silencing our own heretics and spreading "Western values" around the world by fire and sword - but it is not working. Netanyahu and Trump apparently thought in the Persian Gulf, like Zikmund in the Czech Republic, that it would be enough to kill a few rags with flails and awls - but the commanders of the aircraft carrier unions at Hormuz were misled just like the iron lords at Sudoměř, Vítkov or Ústí.

The Hussites were finally defeated at Lipan, but the world was never the same after that and the ideas of the Reformation were not erased. How the conflict in the Gulf will turn out, we do not know now. However, we know that there was a defeat of American military power, and if we pay attention, we also see that most of the world was no longer on the side of the West in this war - on the contrary, the USA has lost most of its "soft-power" (persuasiveness) and Israel is a pariah everywhere except the USA and part of Europe due to the Palestinian genocide. The military power of the Western powers still exists and inspires fear, but for how long? And do we, the Czechs, want to be on the side of the crusaders and then run away with them like from Domažlice? Donald Trump will ask us this tomorrow in Ankara and threaten us with the end of cooperation in NATO if we say no. Before we answer, we should ask him and ourselves two questions: Are you fighting for the right cause? And do you have enough strength to win?

Before we answer ourselves, let us learn from Samuel Huntington's famous Clash of Civilizations: "The West did not achieve world influence by the superiority of its ideas, values ​​or religion, but rather by its superiority in the use of organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, but members of other cultures never do."

If you ask, what am I doing in this matter as your MEP? Well, I vote against wars and interventions in foreign countries, against forcefully imposing our culture and values ​​on those who have their own, against organizing coups and regime changes. And also against spending hundreds of billions, trillions of crowns from your taxes on these projects. On the contrary, I am always in favor of cooperation based on the principles of the UN Charter, mutual respect, including respect for the cultural and social differences of other civilizations. Because we are in the minority with this vision of the world in the European Parliament, we are unfortunately outvoted, but we will not be silenced; I am now on my way to Strasbourg, from where we will try to at least make our opinion heard.

And since just voting is not enough, I have been working for two years to understand the "rest of the world", which already exceeds the "West" many times over in terms of population and new production capacity. So that we don't "burn in Constance", but are able to dialogue with Jany Husy, Jany z Rokycan and Jiříky z Poděbrady from one hundred million, billion nations, who see the world differently than Leyenová, Kallasová, Trump or Netanyahu. From their side, even this limited attempt at dialogue is received positively, I can say with enthusiasm - it is not an exception that thirty or forty ambassadors from countries representing the majority of the world's population will gather at our lectures.

Perhaps this is a futile effort and our destiny will be a real Clash of Civilizations, into which our current leaders will lead us with their fanaticism and blindness; I'm not really sure it's right, and what's worse, I'm not sure we're going to lose him. But maybe our effort to avoid the Clash of Civilizations will succeed, also thanks to your interest and support. And our future will be peace and common prosperity, with tolerance of diversity of beliefs and ideologies.