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The article examines the position of Roma youth in Czech rap music. We focus on the role of cultural translation of hip hop culture in general and rap music in particular and the accompanying notions of authenticity. The findings challenge the romantic notion of hip hop as a platform for oppressed marginal communities to express their lived experiences and opinions; rather, we analyze the invisibility and misrepresentation of the Roma in Czech rap music. Using qualitative research methods (in-depth interviews, discourse analysis of rap lyrics and participant observation at hip hop events) we first look at the attitudes of 'white' (majority) Czech rappers towards the Roma community. In the second part of the article, we focus on the Roma presence in Czech rap music, in particular on two case studies of Roma youth groups, as well as on the roles of youth workers and educators and their appropriation of hip hop as a form of Roma integration. Finally we discuss the threat of the burden of a 'triple inauthenticity' of Roma youth in Czech rap music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slačálek and Svobodová's paper focuses on the ideology of the Czech Islamophobic movement as seen during the 2015-16 migration crisis. In their analysis of interviews with demonstrators and speeches by leaders of the movement, they discuss first how the movement imagined its enemies, and then describe its vision of positive core values. They conclude that the movement's key ideological features are: an emphasis on social and civilizational decline (declinism); a return to an assumed naturalness in economic and gender relationships (naturalization); and the open evocation of violence and severity (brutalization). In terms of Rogers Brubacker's distinction between xenophobic ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, and the xenophobic defence of liberal values in the West, Slačálek and Svobodová find that the Czech case fits the allegedly western pattern better than the eastern one, which may cast doubt on the whole essentialization of distinctions between 'western' and 'eastern' populisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]