There are politicians who defend the traditional family. Then there are politicians who apparently need the police to prevent them from returning to their own.
Jaroslav Foldyna, a Czech MP for the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), has built his political identity around nationalism, conservative values and hostility toward much of the liberal West. He has also maintained conspicuously friendly relations with Russia’s political orbit.
Now Foldyna is leading SPD’s ticket in the October municipal elections in Děčín despite being investigated over suspected domestic violence. Police removed him from his family home for 14 days in July and confiscated several legally owned firearms. Foldyna confirmed that police had removed him from the house but maintains that he is innocent. He has not been convicted of domestic violence.
Apparently, nothing says “traditional family values” quite like a police order telling you to stay away from your traditional family.
The defender of the traditional family
SPD presents itself as a defender of the traditional family, and Foldyna has been associated with precisely this conservative political message. The contradiction has been sufficiently obvious that Czech media have already mocked the spectacle of a politician defending the traditional family while being legally prevented from approaching his own.
The allegations themselves are serious.
Prosecutors confirmed that criminal proceedings were opened over suspicion of two offenses: abuse of a person living in a shared household and abuse of a person entrusted to someone’s care. Czech Radio reported that the suspicions concern Foldyna’s wife and children. The potential sentence for the offenses under investigation is two to eight years.
Foldyna denies wrongdoing.
His wife subsequently sought a court injunction connected with alleged domestic violence. A district court granted protective measures, and Foldyna’s appeal was unsuccessful. She later requested another extension. None of this constitutes a finding of criminal guilt, and Foldyna remains entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Politically, however, SPD apparently sees no insurmountable difficulty.
Foldyna remains number one on its officially registered candidate list in Děčín.
Putin, Motorcycles and Traditional Values
Foldyna’s politics also make the story unusually rich in irony.
Calling him simply “pro-Russian” requires some qualification because Foldyna himself rejects that characterization. His record, however, includes longstanding ties to the Night Wolves, the Russian nationalist motorcycle organization closely associated with Vladimir Putin.
He attended their events years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As recently as 2025, Foldyna said he intended to participate again in a Czech ride associated with the Night Wolves. The Russian organization is under EU sanctions, and its members participated in Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.
Foldyna has also repeatedly advanced arguments favorable to Moscow’s interpretation of the war. In an SPD interview after Russia invaded Ukraine, he questioned Western information, argued that countries cannot simply choose where geopolitically they belong and suggested that Russia had been provoked into conflict.
It is an interesting political package: Russia, nationalism, traditional values and the traditional family.
Then the police arrive and confiscate the guns.
Donald Trump could learn something
And this brings us, naturally, to Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that political scandals which once might have destroyed a career can instead become part of a political brand. Criminal convictions did not prevent him from returning to the White House. Allegations and controversies that would have ended previous politicians instead became incorporated into an extraordinarily durable personality cult.
Foldyna’s continued political prominence suggests that the principle may be internationally transferable.
The satirical lesson for Trump is therefore obvious: perhaps political invulnerability has not yet reached its theoretical maximum.
A politician could theoretically beat his family, get removed from his house, have his weapons confiscated, proclaim himself a defender of the traditional family—and still lead an election ticket.
To be absolutely clear, Foldyna has not been convicted of beating his family, and the allegations remain under investigation. That distinction matters.
But satire hardly needs to invent the contradiction. Reality has already done most of the writing.
Trump may inspire and beat his family
So perhaps Donald Trump should pay attention.
Not because we have any evidence whatsoever that Trump intends to assault or kill members of his family. We don’t. The suggestion is deliberately absurd satire.
The point is political. Imagine the impossible becoming possible.
Trump beats his family? His supporters explain that the liberal media hate strong fathers. Trump shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue? We already know the famous hypothetical.
Trump kills his entire family? Somewhere, somebody will presumably announce that the real scandal is the politicization of the investigation.
And then comes the poll:
Trump approval among Republicans: 94 percent.
Satire works when exaggeration exposes something real. The joke here is not that Trump is going to murder his relatives. The joke is that modern personality politics increasingly invites us to wonder whether anything at all could finally matter.
The traditional family, politically defined
There is a larger point behind the joke.
“Traditional family values” are frequently presented by populist movements as something society must defend against LGBT people, feminism, immigration, secularism and cultural liberalism.
But the most basic family value imaginable should surely come before all of these ideological battles:
Do not terrorize your family.
Whether Foldyna committed the alleged crimes remains for investigators and, potentially, courts to determine.
Politically, however, we already know something extraordinary.
Police removed him from his home. His firearms were confiscated. His wife sought court protection. A court imposed protective measures. He remains under investigation for serious suspected offenses involving his household.
And SPD still put him at the top of its Děčín candidate list.
Maybe that is the modern definition of the traditional family:
The family is sacred. The politician is even more sacred.
