Member-only story
Batshit politics in Latvia, Part II?
This is kind of a continuation of my article on the efforts of businessman, alleged oligarch, and former government minister Ainārs Šlesers to return, yet again once more to politics with yet another new political party. Just to be clear, the “batshit” in the headline doesn’t refer to Šlesers, not even to his politics, but rather the electorate that he may be using deliberately or (possible, but unlikely) dragging along as a kind of inadvertent embarrassing political tar baby.
I am referring to the loonazoids that literally stood next to and around him at the September 18 antivaxxer rally that Šlesers claimed was not really an antivaxxer rally. Still, he had Memory Water hawker and “vaccines are genocide” Jānis Pļaviņš standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the man who brought shopping malls to Latvia and burned through three political parties before starting his latest — Latvia First. The real leader of the loon flock, who left Šlesers to be serenaded by an off-key singer with “the pandemic doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist” is disbarred lawyer and self-proclaimed next Great Leader of Latvia — Aldis Gobzems.
Gobzems came to some public prominence in 2013 after the collapse of a Maxima store in Riga that left more than 50 people dead — the single largest catastrophe since Latvia regained its independence in 1991. Gobzems quickly moved to…
