Hungarian Politics

[Martinus]

Yesterday, Arpad Goncz, the first President of post-communist Hungary died. Possibly the only truly decent man in politics in the last 80 years or so.
You can read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_G%C3%B6ncz

The bulletpoints of his life:

Can't finish university because he is conscripted in 1944. His unit is taken to Germany, but he flees and back home joins the underground movement, saving Jews and helping the opposition in general.

He joins the Farmer's Party in 1946, the one which won the election and formed a (moderate right) government. The dismantling of the party by the communists force him out of politics, but he remains active in opposition.
In 1956 and 1957 he helps with activist work and is imprisoned for a few years.

Released from prison, he finally wants to finish univeristy just to learn that is forever closed from him.

He learned English in prison and makes a living as a translator until the late 80s. He translated a lot of complicated novels but his main work is Lord of the Rings.

In the late 80s he joins the liberal party, and in 1990 is elected (by the Parliament) as President.

He becomes immensely popular, and remains so through his second term as well.

I really liked him. He always remained true to his (liberal, modern democratic) convictions, fighting the Nazis, the Communists for them, and also fighting for them as President. As nominal commander in chief he prevented the government to use the army to disperse the huge Taxi Blockade of Budapest at the start of his term, and also prevented (or tried to prevent, rather) the hostile takeover of the public media by the government.

And above all he was always humble and friendly. That very rare kind of man, who is determined, strong, talented, yet seemingly devoid of any (publicly shown) arrogance or agressivity, and always having an aura of unassuming dignity.

I read a necroloug that truly captured the essence of why his death so upset me: He represented the Hungary That Could Have Been.

He had such a strong conviction and respect for a modern civic society, and democracy, that was not only his during the fall of communism, but got totally lost out of public figures and public discourse over the years.

He was the embodiment of the hope of building a society on mutual respect and dignity.  That hope died several years ago, but now the symbol of it died as well.

That's cool. I knew him for a decent man, but I did not know he translated the Lord of the Rings into the Dark Tongue. RIP. 

[Martinus]

It's really sad Hungary ended up a cautionary tale for the rest of the Eastern Europe. It used to be a rather cool nation (I am nearly half-Hungarian as my mom used to have a Hungarian boyfriend before going for my dad).

I really hope Poland does not follow suit in the elections in 2 weeks (but it looks bleak).

[The Brain]

Yesterday, Arpad Goncz, the first President of post-communist Hungary died. Possibly the only truly decent man in politics in the last 80 years or so.
You can read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_G%C3%B6ncz

The bulletpoints of his life:

Can't finish university because he is conscripted in 1944. His unit is taken to Germany, but he flees and back home joins the underground movement, saving Jews and helping the opposition in general.

He joins the Farmer's Party in 1946, the one which won the election and formed a (moderate right) government. The dismantling of the party by the communists force him out of politics, but he remains active in opposition.
In 1956 and 1957 he helps with activist work and is imprisoned for a few years.

Released from prison, he finally wants to finish univeristy just to learn that is forever closed from him.

He learned English in prison and makes a living as a translator until the late 80s. He translated a lot of complicated novels but his main work is Lord of the Rings.

In the late 80s he joins the liberal party, and in 1990 is elected (by the Parliament) as President.

He becomes immensely popular, and remains so through his second term as well.

I really liked him. He always remained true to his (liberal, modern democratic) convictions, fighting the Nazis, the Communists for them, and also fighting for them as President. As nominal commander in chief he prevented the government to use the army to disperse the huge Taxi Blockade of Budapest at the start of his term, and also prevented (or tried to prevent, rather) the hostile takeover of the public media by the government.

And above all he was always humble and friendly. That very rare kind of man, who is determined, strong, talented, yet seemingly devoid of any (publicly shown) arrogance or agressivity, and always having an aura of unassuming dignity.

I read a necroloug that truly captured the essence of why his death so upset me: He represented the Hungary That Could Have Been.

He had such a strong conviction and respect for a modern civic society, and democracy, that was not only his during the fall of communism, but got totally lost out of public figures and public discourse over the years.

He was the embodiment of the hope of building a society on mutual respect and dignity.  That hope died several years ago, but now the symbol of it died as well.

RIP

Sounds like an awesome dude.

[citizen k]

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff on Thursday rejected criticism of the Hungarian government by the U.S. ambassador to Budapest, saying her remarks amounted to interference in Hungary's affairs.

"For me as a voter it is downright irritating that a diplomat should come here and tell us how to live or how our voters should live," said Janos Lazar, one of Orban's top lieutenants.

Since assuming power in 2010, Orban's government has come under fire from the European Union and the United States for curbing media freedoms, its reforms of the court system, centralization of power and a crackdown on NGOs.

U.S. ambassador Colleen Bell said on Wednesday that corruption in Hungary was still a serious concern, using the secrecy surrounding Hungary's deal with Russia over its nuclear plant in Paks as an example.

"Increasing centralization of power creates conditions that mean that many of the big decisions that will impact Hungary for generations to come remain opaque," Bell said.

"We urge an immediate end to heavy-handed tactics against civil society organizations."

The ambassador also criticized Hungary's attitude towards refugees amidst the migration crisis in Europe.

"We can relegate nationalist, intolerant rhetoric to the dust heap where it belongs," Bell said.

Lazar was asked at a routine news conference about Bell's remarks.

"As a country we are not subjugated to the United States of America, and we do not want to be either," he said. "Diplomats delegated here ought to get used to this after five years (of the Fidesz party in power)."

"It is not us that need a reality check, but the Embassy of the United States of America, in view of how they interfere in Hungary's domestic politics, what hasty and simplistic judgments they pass on a society," Lazar added.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Marton Dunai; editing by Andrew Roche)

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/28/hungarys-500-year-old-victim-complex-nazis-habsburgs/


BUDAPEST, Hungary — In the summer of 2014, a bronze statue suddenly appeared in Szabadsag Square in Budapest, a few blocks from the parliament. The statue featured an angel, a male figure with his tunic open to his breast, menaced by an eagle whose talons clutched a bar just overhead. The angel was Hungary, and the eagle was the Nazis, who had entered Budapest on March 19, 1944. The statue had been commissioned and installed on the orders of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Orban's opponents in the Budapest intelligentsia understood very well that this image of Hungary — noble and helpless victim of the malevolent forces of history — was not only a falsification of the past but an instrument for the politics of the present. On the other side of a walkway near the statue, a group of activists have erected a protest that includes pictures of Jewish victims as well as the humble personal items shown at Auschwitz and elsewhere — suitcases and shoes. A placard in French observes that Orban's statue seeks to absolve the Hungarian people of their role in the death and deportation of 600,000 Jews. In fact, the sign notes, Hungary's right-wing government passed anti-Semitic legislation as early as 1920, and "the Nazis were welcomed not with bullets but with bouquets of flowers."

"We wish to note," wrote the authors, who identified themselves as members of "civil society," "that with the installation of the memorial, the government takes a step toward the extremist, nationalist, racist, and xenophobic Jobbik," referring to Hungary's far-right party.

The spectacle reminded me of something I had been told earlier in the week by the head of a human rights organization: "History is so traumatic for us that it's always present." History, of course, is present practically everywhere and certainly in Eastern Europe, which endured first the Nazis and then the Soviets. What is distinctive about Hungary, however, is how the question of historical culpability so utterly shapes contemporary debate.

Hungarians share a collective pathology known as the "Trianon syndrome." This refers to a post-World War I treaty that very few people outside of Hungary have even heard of. Inside of Hungary, however, "Trianon" has the same resonance that "Sykes-Picot" does in parts of the Middle East. Hungary was on the losing side of World War I (as it was again in World War II). At the end of the war, French and English diplomats exacted their revenge by shearing off two-thirds of what had been a large country at the heart of Europe. Hungary lost pieces of itself to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria, and even Italy.

Losers, of course, pay a price. But that's not the Hungarian narrative, which blames Austria, the dominant force in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also known as the Dual Monarchy. A sign at an exhibit in the National Museum describes Hungary ambiguously as a "voluntary captive of Dualism" that was "swept into the world war" by Vienna. Trianon, in turn, set the stage for Hungary's role in World War II. The museum's curators admit that Hungarians elected right-wing governments that joined the Axis but offer the caveat: "Aside from the expansive Italian Fascist movement and the foreign policy of the German National Socialist state, there were no other powers from whom a revision of the Trianon Treaty could be expected." What was poor Hungary to do? The exhibition then proceeds to pass over the Holocaust in silence. The next room shows Hungary's suffering under Stalin (which was very great).

The list of grievances goes back even further. Hungary had a wonderful 1848, with mass uprisings against its Habsburg rulers. But, like monarchs across the continent, the Habsburgs ruthlessly repressed the revolt, forcing Hungarians to accept the role of junior partner in the Dual Monarchy in 1867 — which was, to be sure, a major upgrade from its prior status as subject nation, but it was not independence. There's a wonderful room of history paintings from this period in the National Gallery in Buda Castle. They depict not the barricades of 1848, but the heroic martyrdoms of centuries past — an early struggle against Habsburg rule in 1700, the death of Janos Hunyadi at the Battle of Belgrade against the Turks in 1456 (which the Christians won). History has a meaning, and the meaning is injustice, nobly opposed.

But, of course, history does not have intrinsic meanings; we impose the ones we prefer. The 50-year period of the Dual Monarchy, for example, constitutes one of the most astonishing cultural and economic flowerings of European history. Virtually all of Budapest, a stunning city of cupolas, balconies, and trellised bronze doorways, was built during that time. The city hatched a remarkable population of scientists, industrialists, poets, painters, and philosophers. John Lukacs offers a glorious evocation of this era in his book Budapest 1900, a more lyrical version of Carl Schorske's magisterial Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Perhaps the greatest surviving monument of the time is Budapest's immense, neo-Gothic parliament building, with its soaring, cathedral-like interior. Lukacs quotes an essayist of the day: "The Parliament played the role in public interest that was later taken up by the entertainments of the theaters and then those of spectator sports." The Hungarians, prosperous and educated, were mad for public debate. What a wonderful tribute to the liberal spirit!

Orban does not dwell on Hungary's Golden Age. He does not like liberalism and does not think Hungarians have liberalism in them. (See my earlier column.) Rather, he directs his people's attention to their victimization and to their ancient crusades. He has compared himself to Hunyadi and the knights who guarded the vegvars, or border fortresses. Here, he wishes to evoke Hungary's role as a Christian force defending Europe from Muslim invaders — an antecedent to today's confrontation with the Islamic hordes, which is how he has characterized the refugee flight from the charnel house of Iraq and Syria. He is Hungary's knight at the border fortress.

It is, of course, the 20th century that offers the most contested terrain. Is "Trianon" the name of a terrible misfortune, at least partly deserved? Or a grave and ongoing injustice? Orban himself has no doubts; one of the first things he did after taking office was to decree June 4 National United Day, a day dedicated to the calamity of Trianon. Maria Schmidt, a right-wing historian whose work Orban often cites, described the treaty to me in the present tense. "It's how the West always treats us. The West always treated Eastern Europe as a kind of colonial region." It was insufferable then; it is unacceptable today.

And this is why the Holocaust is still so contested. After the trauma of World War I and Trianon, Hungary adopted right-wing authoritarian rule well before Germany did, joined the Fascist Axis powers, and then became a willing participant in the Final Solution. In the three months of the summer of 1944 — before the Nazis installed their own regime, known as Arrow Cross, that fall — 450,000 Jews were deported from Hungary. At Auschwitz, you can learn how the endless ribbon of cattle cars coming from the south strained the camp's killing machinery. If Hungary was responsible, then that is part of what Hungary is today.

Germany's politics are, of course, wrapped around an immensely greater historical guilt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's generous response to the refugees is surely conditioned by this acceptance of past evil-doing. Orban, by contrast, requires a sense of collective innocence — better still, of angelic victimhood — in order to create the political space for his repudiation of Merkel's position. When I told Schmidt that Merkel seemed to view the refugee crisis as a matter of universal moral principle, she snarled. "What was the universal responsibility of the world when we were under Soviet occupation?" Precisely. A nation that has stood alone against injustice for half a millennium need not apologize to anyone for anything.

This is part three in a five-part series on Hungary's rightward shift. For parts one and two, click here and here. Check back tomorrow for part four, on Roma and Hungarian politics.

[Valmy]

It's how the West always treats us. The West always treated Eastern Europe as a kind of colonial region

Like when we crushed their revolution in 1849 and when we put them under a puppet regime after WWII...

Oh wait no that was the East not the West. Is Hungary aware of what colonialism is?

[Martinus]

The analysis of Orban's "historical politics" is almost word for word the same as that of PiS: Poland has always been a victim. Always a victim. Never a victor or an oppressor. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor. Unfortunately, this narrative is not only popular with the elderly but, as the latest elections show, also with the youngest voters.

[Valmy]

The analysis of Orban's "historical politics" is almost word for word the same as that of PiS: Poland has always been a victim. Always a victim. Never a victor or an oppressor. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor. Unfortunately, this narrative is not only popular with the elderly but, as the latest elections show, also with the youngest voters.

Funny how styles changed. It used to be countries crowed about their glorious past. Now they rush to brag about how much they are victimized.

[Martinus]

The analysis of Orban's "historical politics" is almost word for word the same as that of PiS: Poland has always been a victim. Always a victim. Never a victor or an oppressor. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor. Unfortunately, this narrative is not only popular with the elderly but, as the latest elections show, also with the youngest voters.

Funny how styles changed. It used to be countries crowed about their glorious past. Now they rush to brag about how much they are victimized.

It's not just countries - that's how most modern politics works, both on the left and on the right.

[The Brain]

In fairness countries used to actually have glorious pasts. Now not so much.

[Tamas]

So the USA ambassador to Hungary had some not-very-nice things to say publicly about the Orban regime.

So the anti-American voices which had to be toned down when the government thought they had made a peace with the 'States can be roam freely again.

One of the "opinion leader" economists of the radical right (he was an economist in communist times, now I'd just characterise him as a mumbling lunatic, but a LOT of people are listening to him), was on the main state TV channel explaining the migrant crisis:

Just so you know, it is happening because the USA wants to use it to weaken the EU. Why? Because the US is seeing the growing cooperation between the EU, Russia, and China, seeing how their economic and cultural aspects are making them a nice fit for each other, turning the United States irrelevant and unnecessary to exist.

Wanted to mention to the Americans here, so they are aware.

[Razgovory]

That would have sounded better 10 years ago.  From over here, the EU isn't cooperating that well with the EU.

[Tamas]

That would have sounded better 10 years ago.  From over here, the EU isn't cooperating that well with the EU.

Well, just a few months ago the same guys declared the EU to be obsolete, irrepairable and ready to crumble and fall apart.

[Duque de Bragança]

The analysis of Orban's "historical politics" is almost word for word the same as that of PiS: Poland has always been a victim. Always a victim. Never a victor or an oppressor. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor. Unfortunately, this narrative is not only popular with the elderly but, as the latest elections show, also with the youngest voters.

Funny how styles changed. It used to be countries crowed about their glorious past. Now they rush to brag about how much they are victimized.

It was always the rule in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe since the age of nationalism. In Western Europe, it's self-hatred über alles.

[Razgovory]

Well, it keeps you guys out of trouble.

[garbon]

So the USA ambassador to Hungary had some not-very-nice things to say publicly about the Orban regime.

So the anti-American voices which had to be toned down when the government thought they had made a peace with the 'States can be roam freely again.

One of the "opinion leader" economists of the radical right (he was an economist in communist times, now I'd just characterise him as a mumbling lunatic, but a LOT of people are listening to him), was on the main state TV channel explaining the migrant crisis:

Just so you know, it is happening because the USA wants to use it to weaken the EU. Why? Because the US is seeing the growing cooperation between the EU, Russia, and China, seeing how their economic and cultural aspects are making them a nice fit for each other, turning the United States irrelevant and unnecessary to exist.

Wanted to mention to the Americans here, so they are aware.

I'm confused are they saying that there have been reasons though that previously necessitated the existence of a America?