A priest from Trnava, a city 40 kilometres to the east, offered his blessing to Kotleba, his party and its supporters — intoning that they could “save our beloved country”.

“When we fail,” Kotleba said, “Slovakia will simply fall and give in to the miasma that is destroying Western Europe already.”

The decadence of the West, the destruction of Slovak culture, traditions and values and his party’s status as the only true saviour of the nation — these are themes that have defined Kotleba’s politics for over a decade.

And as Slovaks cast ballots in a parliamentary election on Saturday, they are themes likely to prompt many to vote for Kotleba’s party, which has consistently polled in second or third.

Analysts have long described Kotleba’s ideology as “fascist”. Kotleba rejects the label, revelling in a Supreme Court decision last year not to ban his party.

But he faces criminal charges related to the alleged use of neo-Nazi symbols, and several of party colleagues have been convicted of extremist crimes.

In a biography, reporter Daniel Vrazda describes the young Kotleba as a quiet boy who shunned troublesome crowds. He was born in 1977. His father worked in the army. He has two brothers. Besides the fact that all the siblings’ first names started with “M”, there was nothing unusual about the Kotleba family.

Kotleba studied computer science at a university in the central Slovak city of Banska Bystrica and started working at a local high school in 2001.

“I first noticed Kotleba around 2005, at the torch parades in uniforms in the squares of Zvolen and Banska Bystrica,“ Vrazda told BIRN in an interview. “I admit, I found him pretty ridiculous in that stiff pose with statements from the 19th Century. It was like he had been frozen in time and had just woken up with the same ideas.”

Vrazda knew right away that Kotleba’s views were dangerous, but he concedes that he underestimated his political potential.