The luminaries of Europe’s rightwing movements congregated on a recent spring day in Prague’s historic center to preach to their army of devotees about what they see as wrong with the continent. No to migrants. No to multiculturalism. Yes to populism.

Taking center stage alongside Marine Le Pen from France and Geert Wilders from the Netherlands was one of the more unlikely rising stars within the anti-European Union, nationalistic movements taking root in Europe: a Tokyo-born Czech businessman whose savvy use of information warfare has built his four-year-old party into a new political juggernaut.

Born to a Czech mother and a Japanese father, Okamura says he was bullied as a child both in Japan and his adopted European home because he looked different. Yet after building a successful business built on globalization, he now brands himself the posterboy for discontented Czech voters who subscribe to his message centered on illiberalism and xenophobia.

“Europeans are literally fighting for survival,” Tomio Okamura told journalists after the rally. “There is not just the threat of migration from Muslim countries but also the growing pressure from the EU to de-nationalize Europe and to create a single, multi-cultural superstate.”