THE convincing victory of Marián Kotleba (pictured), a 36-year-old Slovak who became notorious for his praise of the Slovak collaborationist government during the second world war, in a regional governor race has shocked even the most prescient observers. Mr Kotleba came a clear first in central Slovakia’s Banska Bystrica region. In a runoff on November 24th and 25th he took 56% of the vote, defeating the incumbent Vladimír Maňka, who doubles as a member of the European Parliament for Smer, the party of Robert Fico, the prime minister. “It is a surprise to me in Bratislava, but the people I know that live in the region kept telling me he might win,” says Pavol Baboš, a political scientist at Comenius University.

Once fond of wearing uniforms in the 1930s and 40s fascist style, Mr Kotleba has since softened his image just enough to widen his appeal. He used to openly and loudly praise the Slovak Nazi puppet state; now he focuses on a topic more in the mainstream: a dislike of the country’s socially isolated Roma minority. He has referred to the Roma, of whom there are up to half a million in a country of just over 5.5m, as “parasites”. And he used to be leader of Slovenská Pospolitosť (Slovak Solidarity), a party that was banned by the interior ministry for inciting racial hatred. In Banska Bystrica he ran under the banner of the People Party—Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), of which he is the chairman.

As Mr Kotleba sought to move his own image toward the mainstream, the mainstream has also come closer to him in recent years. Nationalism, often targeting Roma as well as the significant Hungarian minority, has become part of Slovak politics. In Mr Fico’s first government of 2006-10, his party allied with the Slovak National Party and its cartoonish leader Jan Slota, who once promised his party would “get in our tanks and go flatten Budapest”. In capturing an outright parliamentary majority in the 2012 election, the nominally left-wing Smer successfully adopted a watered-down form of nationalism to subsume nationalist voters. Mr Fico himself is not immune to the odd bit of flag-waving rhetoric now and again, including a speech in which he noted that the country had been “established for Slovaks, not for minorities”.

If there is any bright side to Mr Kotleba’s victory, it is that he will end up wielding minimal formal power. Smer controls a majority in the Banska Bystrica regional council, not to mention the governor post in six of Slovakia’s other seven regions. (The business-friendly centre-right controls the Bratislava region.) No mainstream politician appears willing to co-operate with Mr Kotleba. But even this isolation could prove a double-edged sword, perhaps allowing Mr Kotleba to portray himself as a persecuted martyr.

Mr Kotleba’s win was enabled partly by very low turnout of just 17%, as well as the depressed economy of the sparsely populated Banska Bystrica region. Mr Baboš, who studies voter discipline among various parties and social groups, notes that “racist parties are more disciplined”. Still, it would be foolish to ignore larger trends in the country. Heightened race-based political rhetoric has been followed up by action. Since 2008 no fewer than 14 segregation walls have gone up throughout Slovakia, isolating Roma from their neighbours. The United Nations condemned a violent police raid on an informal Roma settlement earlier this year. As Robert Kalinak, the interior minister and Mr Fico’s right-hand man, noted in an interview, such heavy-handed police actions are popular.

The Slovak political establishment is reeling as it tries to come up with a response to Mr Kotleba’s victory. The media are alternately branded as having provided too much or too little coverage of Mr Kotleba’s campaign. Politicians who acknowledged Mr Kotleba are said to have given him legitimacy; others are accused of not being vocal enough in exposing his venal nature. “It was the words of the right wing, which said that the Antichrist, Satan, Hitler, Mussolini, whoever, is better than Smer,” Mr Fico said, seeking to place the blame on his own political opponents.

An editorial by Matúš Kostolný, the editor of the Slovak daily Sme, may have come closest to the truth, noting: “We all have to admit that today we are not able to tackle Marián Kotleba. His success smells neither of the left, nor of the right. It is simply the result of a combination of hatred, helplessness and anger concerning those in power.”