Tag Archives: Orbán regime

A German football club fires an intolerant Hungarian coach

In my early internet career only two political discussion groups dealt with Hungary. One was in Hungarian and the other in English. Both were organized and maintained by a couple of Hungarian Ph.D. candidates who were studying in the United States at that time. The majority of the Hungarian-language group could be described as belonging to the extreme right. In fact, one of the ringleaders later became a regular contributor to kurucinfo, the notorious anti-Semitic internet site still in existence. As I later learned, the English-language group was created by those who could no longer stomach the hate speech permeating the Hungarian-language bunch.

These right-wing extremists were naturally horrified by the liberalism of the few who still stuck around for a while, but what distressed them most was that these liberals also voiced their treasonous opinions on the English-language site. It was bad enough that they maligned “national values” in Hungarian, but that their unpatriotic views could be read in English irritated them to no end. They foolishly believed that Hungarian was a “unique language” that no foreigners could possibly know.

Every time the foreign press reports on an embarrassing Hungarian story that took place only a couple of hours earlier, I have to recall our naïve right-wingers in the discussion group. Even today, when the editors of Magyar Nemzet know full well that in our fast-moving internet world news travels with lightning speed, I still sense surprise and annoyance at those antagonistic foreigners who keep too close a tab on the affairs of the Orbán regime.

This time, it was DPA, the German News Agency, that spotted a Magyar Nemzet interview with Zsolt Petry, a former professional football player and a goalkeeping coach at the Hertha Berliner Sport Club. In it, he shared his political opinions, which led to his firing from Hertha.

To understand this ill-fated interview, we must go back to a Facebook comment by Péter Gulácsi, a high regarded goalkeeper of the Red Bull Leipzig, who was among the over 800 football players who offered support to their LGBTQ colleagues and who took a stand against homophobia. On his Facebook page, Gulácsi declared that “family is family—it cannot be an issue!” and spoke out for tolerance and against hatred. What happened in the world of football in Hungary,  where homophobia and racism are the order of the day, was predictable. Within 24 hours, the hero of Hungarian football became a traitor to the nation.

But that wasn’t all. János Hrutka, a former professional football player, who in the last few years has been a football announcer with Spíler TV, “the channel of masculine entertainment” of TV2, a television station in the service of the Orbán regime, made an innocent comment that cost him his job. He dared to say that “it took Gulácsi a lot of courage, knowing the conditions” in the Hungarian world of football. After his firing, pro-government publications accused him of almost bankrupting Ferencváros TC 20 years ago because he demanded such a high salary as a star player between 2000 and 2002. For good measure, they added that Hrutka was once close to Jobbik and that, following his party, he became a left-liberal. This is what happens to you if you cross the ruling forces in Orbán’s Hungary.

With this background in mind, it’s time to return to the interview, which began as a discussion about the sad state of Hertha, whose place in the Bundesliga is shaky at the moment. After talking about football at home and abroad, the sportswriter came to what he wanted to hear all along. “What does a former junior European Champion winner, member of the national team, and a goalie in the spotlight” think of Gulácsi’s role in the “family is family campaign?” Petry seemed to be well prepared. First of all, he declared himself to be “a member of the national side” who expects a hearing from the other side. “The majority of Hungarian society doesn’t share Gulácsi’s liberal opinion on rainbow families.” Petry believes that Gulácsi “shouldn’t be condemned in principle just because he expressed his opinion. It is another question whether people agree with his position or not.” However, as a sportsman, he should concentrate on his game and leave social and political questions alone.

Zsolt Petry, goalkeeping coach of the Hertha Berliner Sport Club

After saying that a football player shouldn’t poke his nose into social and political matters, he went on to do exactly what he thought was a mistake on the part of Gulácsi. To the question of whether he sympathizes with the “conservative side,” his answer was unequivocal. “Absolutely. I don’t even understand how Europe can sink as deep morally as it is now. Immigration policy for me is a manifestation of moral decline. We should continue to live in Europe with the national values that we have learned over many years. Europe is a Christian continent, and I’m reluctant to watch the moral decay sweeping across the continent. Liberals exaggerate the opinions of the other side: if you don’t think migration is good because Europe has been inundated with an awful lot of criminals, they label you a racist. This shouldn’t be allowed. The opinion of the other person is less often tolerated, especially if the person represents conservative views.”

The interview was published on Easter Monday, and on that very same day DPA indicated that the management of Hertha would have a chat with Petry about its content. It looks as if the club was unhappy about the critical comments on Hertha’s Facebook page, not just about Petry but, by extension, about the club as well. Today came the club’s official announcement: Petry was being dismissed. The management explained that Hertha BSC had signed the charter of diversity and tolerance, neither of which were exhibited by Petry in his interview.

Naturally, Magyar Nemzet and other government publications found Petry’s ouster staggering. Pesti Srácok tried to put a positive spin on the story, voicing its great satisfaction that “the plucky goalkeeper dealt a blow to the liberal opinion terrorists.” According to Vasárnap, Petry’s interview was outright moderate, which according to the other side only shows how far Hungary has moved to the right because this alleged moderation strikes Germans as being unacceptable. The coach of Hertha is also a Hungarian, Pál Dárdai, who first played for the club and later served as an assistant and eventually its full-fledged coach. Vasárnap suggested to Dárdai that if he has any decency he would offer his resignation because of the unfair treatment of his friend.

Some skeptical commenters on Facebook are not at all worried about Petry’s future. They predict that he will end up being the goalkeeping coach of the Felcsút team or get some equally lucrative job for his “plucky” stance on migrants, same-sex marriage, and Gulácsi’s “unfortunate” remarks.

April 6, 2021

Students in Pécs on SZFE and the “system”

Today’s post, on the student response at the University of Pécs (PTE) to the student-faculty revolt that broke out at the University for Theater and Film Arts (SZFE), was inspired by a report by Tamás Ungár, Népszava’s correspondent from Pécs, titled “This is how the system works.”

Pécs, a city that has lost most of its industry in the last few decades, is by now a typical university town with a student population of 20,000, 5,000 of whom hail from foreign countries. One would assume that the students of PTE are well aware of the situation at SZFE and that they would show solidarity with their fellow students. Unfortunately, the local response to the events in Budapest, similar to the response elsewhere in the country, has been meager.

Blikk, a nationwide tabloid, reported that “present and past members of the faculty of Fine Arts [of PTE] condemn the political measures that are interfering with the autonomy of the universities, endangering the professional independence of the institution.” They declared solidarity with the students and faculty of SZFE. Note that the declaration came from the faculty. The students were nowhere. The same was true about the Department of Communication and Media Studies. Only faculty members raised their voices. Other departments didn’t even bother with that much.

The local internet site Pécsi Stop, being on the spot, had a little more information. It reported that, in addition to the faculties of the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of Communication, the faculty of the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature also wrote an open letter expressing their concern over the flagrant violation of academic freedom at SZFE. In the end, it turned out that about 50 present and past students of the Department of Fine Arts did sign a letter in solidarity, in addition to nine members of L!FT, a specialty college for aspiring young artists. Thus, out of 20,000 students of PTE, a tiny fraction, about a quarter of one percent, bothered or dared to stand by SZFE.

And now let’s turn to Tamás Ungár’s report to Népszava. He spent two days in front of the buildings of PTE in the hope of ferreting out student opinion about the student-faculty revolt at SZFE. According to Ungár, about 25% of those he approached refused to talk to him, claiming either that they were in a hurry or that they didn’t know anything about SZFE. About half of the students admitted that they had heard something about the events in Budapest, but they didn’t know enough to say anything worthwhile on the subject. And even those who claimed to be interested in the question turned out to know little about the issue because the fate of SZFE is simply not one of the topics they talk about among themselves.

Reading some of the answers, my first thought was that these students are incredibly confused. One of the “better informed” students described the events at SZFE as a landmark in the Orbán government’s war against Hungarian culture in the following manner: “A man got into the leadership of the school whom the students didn’t want,” but he didn’t remember the name of this man.

Solidarity seems to be a foreign concept for most of these young men and women. A student who is planning to be a teacher of history and geography said: “Let each man fight for his own truth.” That to my mind means that each person is alone in this world without the support of anybody else. He continued: Of course, it is possible that the SZFE students don’t have right on their side, but, I guess out of some minimal student camaraderie, he is still keeping fingers crossed for them. He is hoping for negotiations and an agreement. Obviously, he cannot comprehend that there can be no compromise on such matters as academic autonomy and the freedom of thought.

Interestingly, women seemed to be better informed than their male colleagues. A female student of archaeology knew a fair amount about Attila Vidnyánszky, who, she said, is not at all popular at the university among those who know something about him. She herself knew that Vidnyánszky taught at the University of Kaposvár, where he turned out to be a negligent teacher and a destructive member of the faculty. Another young woman, a psychology major, objected to Vidnyánszky’s eight jobs, which, in her opinion, one man cannot handle responsibly. She was also one of the few who was able to grasp the essence of the matter. As she put it, “at SZFE, young people have been learning acting according to a liberal approach. Now, they want to change that, and the Christian and national approach will be dominant. Students have been following their teachers and their approach so far. I understand the students. Freedom is the essence of art.”

A few PTE students objected to the demands and methods of the students of SZFE. One was a second-year medical student who wouldn’t reveal his name. In his opinion, “the left and the liberals have brought politics to the university. They are the ones who are moving the kids.” A third-year Hungarian student who studies economics in the English-language section of the university is a true Fidesz follower. In his opinion, “the university until now belonged to a liberal group of friends. Now that it is taken away from them, they are inciting the young people.”

In brief, most of the students are oblivious to what’s going on in the country, even though the matter is widely discussed on the internet that they use daily. Moreover, the subject under discussion should be of direct interest to them because what happened to SZFE could easily happen at their own university. Of the many respondents, only one, a design major, realized that they might be the next victims. As he put it, “If they were to replace our teachers, we would stand up for them.” When Ungár interjected that at SZFE they hadn’t removed the professors yet, he and two women, also design majors, smiled. He said, “if politics doesn’t want that school, sooner or later they will get rid of them. This is how the system works.”

Of course, our design student is correct, but it is really heartbreaking to hear this young man’s resigned reaction to something he feels cannot be changed. “The system” has the power; it mows down everything and everyone that’s in its way.

September 18, 2020

“Observer”: The Simonka affair

During the last ten years we have become numb to the rude, offensive, aggressive, outrageous statements of the leading and not so leading Fidesz politicians. We have often speculated about what these characters are actually thinking beyond what they publicly express, what their sectarian, inbred world looks like, but we rarely have the opportunity to get a first-hand account of their world.

Now we have been given such an insight, compliments of the investigative journalists of Magyar Narancs and some Fidesz members.

Here it is from the horse’s mouth: “Touring the area, talking to Fidesz members, I was shocked by the fear and dread I witnessed among them. Many stated that they did not dare to express their views publicly on this matter, due to the existential and physical threats by György Simonka. It is amazing that 30 years after the change of regime, an elected representative uses the methods of the Rákosi period, known to us only from history.”

Márton Ruck, President of Fidesz in Medgyesegyháza, wrote these words in a letter to the Chairman of the Fidesz County Organization, the latest salvo in the internal war among the ruling party’s South Békés branch. He called for the expulsion from the party of György Simonka, a Fidesz member of parliament, former mayor of Medgyesegyháza, and the local party strongman. In Ruck’s opinion, the expulsion of Simonka is “absolutely justified.” “Such a person has no place in the family of our party.” The proposal is supported by “several times the number of signatures needed for the expulsion,” claimed Ruck.

Although Ruck expresses his adherence to “the Fidesz set of values,” he informs his party comrades in the letter that he will not send the proposal for expulsion to the Pusztaottlaka organization, of which Simonka is still a member, since he does not want to expose the signatories and their family members to “the risk of losing their jobs, the destruction of their businesses, or the physical abuse of their family members.”

The Fidesz city organization president signed his letter about the Fidesz MP for his region with the following dramatic sentence: “As a Catholic Christian believer, I conclude with the words of Pope John Paul II. Fear not!”

Before anyone starts speculating about the authenticity of the letter and the veracity of its statements, note that Magyar Narancs got in touch with Ruck, who confirmed the authenticity of the official letter and said he stands by all of its contents, “I have described everything, everything has been justified, and I do not want to say anything else for the time being,” he said.

In view of the above statements about “Rákosi methods,” fear, intimidation, and threats among the party “family,” one can’t help musing about that “Fidesz set of values” and where they are to be found, since intimidation and fear are widespread throughout the entire organization. Moreover, the criminal acts have not been confined to small town or county Fidesz organizations but have gone all the way to the top of “the party and state leadership,” to use the term of the earlier communist regime.

I’ve included the above photo of the Godfather with the small capo to highlight the fact that, upon the initiative of Simonka, two laws were amended to practically facilitate what was known to be and what has now been formally prosecuted as criminal activities, confirmed by the Chief Prosecutor himself.

For those who missed earlier reports in Hungarian Spectrum or don’t know Hungarian, let me add some notes about the “Simonka case.” Starting in 2012, our local strongman built a network of companies and foundations, all of which invariably won state grants for projects in fields from road building to media, even to a peacock farm. Relatives, party comrades, and clients managed those entities, none of which grew into a real competitive business. Typical for the new “national capitalists,” largely a fiction touted by Fidesz.

By 2015 there were obvious signs of the ever more brazen corruption thinly disguised by unfeasible and fictitious projects, estimated to have burnt between 7 and 16 billion HUF in the roads to nowhere projects alone.

Simonka (center) with another Fidesz “luminary” Gyula Budai (right).
The illegal watermelon cartel episode brought the Simonka name to national attention.

Things went as usual in these cases, but here the brazen misappropriations, embezzlement, or whatever you want to call it, were accompanied by aggressive methods and arrogance, as noted by the local Fidesz organization president, which obviously surpassed the “standard” Fidesz methods.

The signs of serious trouble for Simonka & Co. began in 2017 when an investigation was launched into some of their projects. At the beginning of that year, charges were laid against a group of 33 defendants for fraud (költségvetési csalás) committed within the framework of a criminal organization (bűnszervezetben), for which the prosecution asked a 8.5 years jail sentence for our protagonist (but watch this space).

There is a lot of speculation about how the local Fidesz strongman came to the point of being charged with what we consider to be a routine practice in the grand corruption system of the Orbán regime. For lack of reliable evidence, I won’t go into these theories. Suffice it to say that this is as rare a case as a white crow. And in view of the damning evidence which was bound to come to light and embarrass the party and regime, it is quite inexplicable, to me at least.

In conclusion, I would like to return to the main point of this post—the methods and the environment of intimidation and fear even among the Fidesz lower ranks. One can hardly imagine how the powerless and often impoverished ordinary folks in the countryside feel, living at the mercy of the Orbán mafia, with God too high and King too far.

August 30, 2020

 

 

 

Márton Kozák and Bálint Magyar: “If you don’t like the system . . .”

Ignoring Viktor Orbán’s latest delusional vision of the future of Hungary within an alliance led by Poland, the admiral’s ship, which includes the countries of Central Europe and the Balkans, I’m turning to a remarkable piece by Márton Kozák and Bálint Magyar titled “If you don’t like the system …,” which appeared in Élet és Irodalom on August 7.

I’m sure almost all of my readers are familiar with the name of Bálint Magyar, whose work on the “mafia state” of Viktor Orbán has been discussed numerous times on the pages of Hungarian Spectrum. Márton Kozák may not be so well known, but he also played an important role in the political life of the democratic opposition during the crucial years of the 1980s and 1990s. He, like Magyar, is a sociologist who was active at the birth of SZDSZ.

Magyar and Kozák cover a lot of ground. First, they tackle the often-heard accusation that the responsibility for Orbán’s autocratic rule lies with his predecessors and their dreadfully bad governance. Magyar and Kozák admit that mistakes were made during the Medgyessy and Gyurcsány governments, but they convincingly argue that the autocratic turn in 2010 did not come about as a result of political errors committed earlier. The Slovak Mečiar, the Croatian Sanader, and Ponta in Romania didn’t govern any better than Orbán’s predecessors, but they were not followed by a Slovak, Croatian, or Romanian Orbán and his political system. Only their governments fell, not the whole democratic system with them.

The problem lies, Magyar and Kozák argue, in two legislative mistakes made during the transition period of 1989-1990, which legislators failed to correct later. The weakest part of the legislative structure was the deeply disproportionate nature of the electoral system, which was then capped by a serious shortcoming which allowed for the modification of the constitution by a mere two-thirds parliamentary majority. No such mistake was committed in any of the countries that emerged either from right-wing dictatorships or from Soviet-type socialist systems. In addition, an inordinate number of laws required two-third majorities, a provision that was envisaged as a guarantee of individual liberty but that was skillfully exploited by Viktor Orbán during Fidesz’s eight years in opposition between 2002 and 2010. As János Széky, a political analyst, argued in 2015, because of these deficiencies the Hungarian system as it was created in 1989-90 self-destructed.

The round-table discussion, 1989

The Hungarian state at present is functioning without any checks and balances. It can be described, according to Magyar and Kozák, by any or all of the following terms: (1) a clan state because of the shape of its ruling elite, (2) a (neo)patrimonial state on the basis of the system’s usurpation of public institutions for private use, (3) a predator state because of its relation to public and private property, (4) a criminal state because of its relationship to legality, and (5) “Since all these characteristics are present at once, we can call it a mafia state” which, as we know, is Bálint Magyar’s favorite designation.

These appellations are of crucial importance because the opposition must treat the political system of Orbán “as an illegitimate criminal state and not as a simple deviance, because otherwise willy-nilly we get stuck within the framework of government criticism” instead of excoriating the system itself.

There have been many attempts to label the current Hungarian regime. Fidesz calls its own modus operandi the “System of National Cooperation,” which is a grotesque name for a system that seeks exclusive rights for itself. “Illiberal democracy” is utterly inappropriate because such an animal doesn’t exist. Magyar and Kozák also discard the “fascistoid, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi” tags because Orbán’s political system, unlike the current Polish one, is not ideologically driven. They also reject the term “neo-feudal” because that medieval system was based on legal contracts, not on criminal circumstances. There was a period when “hybrid system” was fashionable. In fact, I devoted an article to the subject, titled “Is the Orbán regime a ‘hybrid political system’?” in which I rejected the concept, arguing that “a hybrid is an admixture of two elements, in this case dictatorship and democracy,” but as the political scientist of the theory admitted, democratic institutions in Hungary “have been hacked” by the Orbán regime. Magyar and Kozák also discard this description because they find it nebulous and meaningless.

I hate to stop here, but this fascinating article cannot be reduced to a short post. It deserves another round. Tomorrow I will  address how, in the opinion of the two authors, Orbán’s system can be defeated.

August 20, 2020

Two views on justice after Orbán

Six days ago, I was writing this post when we lost power. Since we were expecting a storm (though not of such a great magnitude), I carefully saved my 400 some words, but since then so many days have gone by that, when I sat down to my computer after the power was restored late this morning, I wasn’t even sure what my next thoughts would have been.

During my enforced “vacation,” when I wasn’t venting about the sorry state of American infrastructure (and I did a lot of that), I read several fascinating books about Hungary in the 1970s and 80s. Where relevant, I’ll weave some of my new-found knowledge into subsequent posts. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

The Orbán government’s appointment of Attila Vidnyánszky, director of the Budapest National Theater and professor of dramatic arts at the University of Kaposvár, to the post of chairman of the five-member board of the foundation that from here on will determine the fate of the University of Theater and Film Arts (SZFE) caused quite an upheaval in the theatrical world as well as in the independent media. A few professors resigned in protest and the university’s student union (HÖK) has refused to accept the appointment.

The resignations of a couple of instructors and some student demonstrations will not, of course, be able to prevent the takeover of SZFE by Attila Vidnyánszky. On the other hand, as we have seen, the joint action of approximately 100 journalists pretty well put an end to the functioning of Index, Hungary’s leading internet news site. The only hope of foiling the hurriedly devised plan of the government would be a near-unanimous decision, arrived at by the teaching staff and the student body, to boycott the university come September. Whether SZFE, with the support of the theater world, is ready for such a drastic move only time can tell.

Ferenc Gyurcsány, chairman of Demokratikus Koalíció, has made sure over the years that Hungarian society is aware of his party’s unrelenting opposition to the Orbán regime, with which not even dialogue is possible. As we know, Gyurcsány as a politician is anything but cautious, a quality that in the past has gotten him into major trouble, for example when in 2006 he admitted that the MSZP-SZDSZ governments had lied to the electorate by not divulging the hard realities of the Hungarian economy.

A couple of days ago, at a special session of parliament which Fidesz-KDNP refused to attend, he called the present government profligate. A few hours later on his Facebook page, after complaining about the disappearance of free art and culture, he called for “preparedness” after Viktor Orbán and his regime are gone. “Vidnyánszky and his friends will stay as long as Orbán does. After which they will be gone. More than that, they will become outlaws [földönfutók] in all meanings of the word. There won’t be any burying of the hatchet. A confined world is waiting for those who killed freedom in this country. And this is how it should be. Calmly, rationally, firmly. Those of you who are still swithering, it is time to find yourselves, to wake up, to live! You either fight for the homeland or you will be a collaborator. Either-or.”

I assume I don’t have describe the government media’s reaction to this Facebook note, but criticism also came from the left. Origo’s headline read: “Gyurcsány threatens Vidnyánszky with confiscation of property.” Bálint Borbács, a regular at the paper, quoted Dániel Deák, perhaps the most vacuous pro-government “political scientist” and a favorite of Mária Schmidt, who believes that both DK and Momentum are showing signs of radicalization, whose source is “the overseas radical, far-left movement which is ready to use violence, claiming many lives every week.” These two parties, Deák claims, want to have violent demonstrations similar to the ones in the United States, where “blood flows, garbage cans burn, windshields are broken, party headquarters are detonated.” Origo then called on the usual pro-government spokesmen like Zoltán Lomnici, Jr., an expert from Századvég, who described Gyurcsány’s Facebook note as “a certified case of political crime,” and Bánk Levente Boros, director of Médianéző Központ (Media Watch Center), who pointed out that Gyurcsány threatened not only Attila Vidnyánszky but also practically everyone who did not support him.

From the opposition, TGM, who likes to express contrary opinions, argued against Gyurcsány’s categorical views on the fate of those who were party to the massacre of Hungarian democracy. As you know, there is a widespread belief among those who would like to see an end to the Orbán regime that the political structure Viktor Orbán has created cannot be altered by democratic, constitutional means. Thus, true democrats are at the mercy of the current semi-dictatorial political setup. Their hands are tied. Even if Fidesz loses the election, the new government will not be able to function for the simple reason that all other political institutions, the constitutional court, the whole prosecutorial hierarchy, the ombudsman’s office, and hundreds of other vital establishments are in the hands of Fidesz loyalists.

TGM disagrees with the pessimists. Instead, he depicts an ideal world after the fall of Viktor Orbán. “If Hungary has a more decent, more democratic government than the current one, Attila Vidnyánszky will not be an outlaw but a theater director. If his troupe and his university choose him, he will be the director-in-chief and a department head because a decent, democratic government will not meddle in the affairs of the National Theater and the University of Kaposvár. There is one thing he will not be, the president of the board of the University of Theater and Film Arts, because it will not have a board and a foundation. The whole network of universities will return to the bosom of the Hungarian democratic state, which will grant them autonomy just as the Hungarian Academy of Sciences will regain its network of research institutes.”

Basically, on a personal level, all will be forgiven. Although the alternative “absurd research institutions” will also disappear, no harm will come to those who are “the betrayers of the Hungarian intelligentsia and culture, the Bodolais, the Szilárd Demeters, the Tamás Freunds, the Miklós Maróths, the László Palkovicses and their ilk who brought shame on themselves and their friends in the dark days of the Orbán regime.” TGM doesn’t cover the thousands of economic crimes that have been committed by Viktor Orbán and his enriched supporters, but I assume that he would not be so generous with them as he is with the gravediggers of historical research, literature, education, and many other facets of intellectual achievement.

The saying that “Hungary is a country of impunity” has become commonplace, and I have encountered many Facebook comments indicating that, with the next political change, people would like to see a reckoning, starting with opening the files of the secret police and investigating illegal business activity over the past ten years. But holding people accountable is a complicated matter, with many levels of “sinfulness,” on which there must be consensus when the time comes.

August 10, 2020

The birth of a new Hungarian past: The history textbooks arrive

It was about 30 years ago that a four-volume semi-popular history of Hungary was published under the title Magyarok Európában (Hungarians in Europe). The first volume of the series was written by Pál Engel, a medievalist and archivist, who died far too young in 2001. The idea behind the undertaking was to abandon the Hungarocentric portrayal of the country and instead to treat it as part of Europe. Engel called his own introductory volume to the series Integration into Europe from the beginnings until 1440. Although many years have gone by since I read Engel’s volume, I kept thinking of it as I  read with growing unease about the new history and literature textbooks for grade five and grade nine students.

A few months before his death, Engel wrote an article on self-destructive nationalism as manifested by the hopelessly ill-informed history that began to spread during the second half of the 1990s, mostly written by amateurs who dabbled in history and linguistics. I wonder what he would think had he lived long enough to see how low Hungarian civilization has sunk in the last 20 years. In his introductory volume to Magyarok Európában, he spent a few pages on the origins of the Hungarians. He categorically stated that “the Finno-Ugric origin is a fact that no linguist questions, although a not insignificant minority doubts its validity.” And now this minority has taken over the education of Hungarian youth.

The Association of History Teachers published a quick analysis of the four history textbooks written for grade 5 and grade 9 students. Why four? Because there is an A and B version of each. All four were written by Péter Borhegyi, a teacher at the Mihály Fazekas Elementary School and Gymnasium, and György Szabados, director of the László Gyula Institute-Magyarságkutató Intézet, who, outfitted in his white shirt and black peasant vest, strikes me as a typical right-winger. Listening to him mouthing off about cosmopolitans on this short video only reinforces that feeling.

How did we end up like this? Easily. In an autocracy, the autocrat and his enablers can force their manias on the whole population. No one can stop Viktor Orbán from building one hundred football stadiums if that is what he wants. Miklós Kásler, if Viktor Orbán gives his blessing to the project, can find people who are ready to rewrite history and indoctrinate a generation of students to accept his maniacal belief in the alleged relations of Huns and Hungarians.

The analysis of the Association of History Teachers is written from the point of view of the teachers who are supposed to make sure that the amount of factual knowledge presented in these new textbooks can be successfully transmitted to the students. Since, thank God, I don’t have to teach from these books, I concentrated on a couple of historically questionable details.

The first 100 or so pages of the fifth-grade textbook are devoted to the ancient world (Egypt, Greece, and Rome), followed by a short chapter on Israel and the Old Testament. A long chapter covers Christianity, the history of the Catholic church, and the papacy and medieval Europe. At which point we arrive at the most dubious part of the textbook. It is here that the alleged Hun-Hungarian relation is presented without discussion or counterargument. I think it is worth quoting the exact wording. “According to our ancient legends, Hungarians are related to the Huns…. But linguists list Hungarian as a Finno-Ugric language…. The archaeologists cannot say anything definitive about the origins of the Hungarian people because, on the basis of the objects found in those graves, we can’t determine what language people spoke.” Thus, our best sources are legends written down centuries after the events. These legends become facts that no linguist, archaeologist, or historian can refute.

The arrival of the Hungarians, a “reconstructed painting” in grade 5 history book

The authors are absolutely fascinated by the clothing the men and women of the period wore as well as by their horsemanship and weaponry. The textbook’s account of the manner of fighting is very detailed, and Hungarians are described as brave and fierce soldiers who kept Europe in awe and fear. To maintain this image, the textbook glosses over anything that might show Hungarians in a lesser light. It neglects, for example, to tell us the real reason for the Hungarian tribes’ move westward, eventually ending up west of the Carpathians. They were running away from the Pechenegs, a Turkic people living in Central Asia.

There is also a tendency to portray the tribes that gathered in their new “country” as forming a full-fledged state and a “grand principality.” In fact, the book talks about Álmos, Árpád, Géza, and István (before he became king in 1000) as “grand princes.” This is a concept with which Hungarian historiography is unfamiliar.

Early Hungarian history, in both the grade 5 and the grade 9 textbooks, is a retelling of the story recounted by medieval chronicles written hundreds of years after the fact. As far as Szabados and Borhegyi are concerned, none of the work of historians, archaeologists, and linguists who dealt with the subject of early Hungarian history is worth a nickel. All that effort spent on research has been a waste of time. We ought to trust the legends, which are the true chroniclers of early Hungarian history. The legends, which explain to youngsters what it means to be a true Hungarian who, let me repeat, kept (and perhaps should still keep) Europe in awe and fear.

June 25, 2020

A burgeoning war against mainstream Hungarian historians

Yesterday I wrote about the NGOs, whose activities Viktor Orbán deems a threat to his government. If it depended on him, he would gladly make them illegal and perhaps even jail their members on some trumped-up charges. His frustration was palpable during his radio interview yesterday. His government lost another round at the European Court of Justice, and now he is working on a “solution” to rein in the NGOs without serious financial consequences.

The NGOs, of course, are not the only “enemies” of the Orbán regime. It turns against anyone who challenges the existing autocratic order and its ideology. It looks as if the next victims will be those historians who don’t agree with the great leader’s totally fictitious version of Hungarian history.

Viktor Orbán offered the latest snapshot of the regime’s view of post-World War I history in his Sátoraljaújhely speech, in which he resurrected the “stab-in-the-back” myth, along with other clichés from the Horthy regime’s account of the causes of Trianon. The autocrat’s vassals, it seems, were set loose to get historians to toe the party line. One result was a frontal attack on Ignác Romsics, whose views are anything but radical; on the contrary, his historical interpretations are moderate or perhaps even conservative.

Romsics is considered to be the doyen of the Hungarian historical community, and his oeuvre is impressive. If one picks up one of his books on Trianon, István Bethlen, or the Horthy regime one can be certain of getting a fair evaluation. Therefore, it was not at all surprising that Népszava asked Romsics to write an article on the Treaty of Trianon in its June 6 weekend magazine Szép Szó (Beautiful Word). In this article Romsics outlines the traditional interpretations of both the left and the right, among them “some fairy-tale-like and divisive explanations.” He adds that recently a theory was put forth, according to which “the disintegration of our country was the result of two decades of a subversive conspiracy, the threads of which lead to the Masonic lodges.”

Ignác Romsics

In the past, I often thought that my Hungarian colleagues were wrong when they didn’t raise their voices against the wholesale historical falsifications which are the everyday fodder of the Orbán regime. But the reaction to this one sentence that Romsics wrote shows what can happen when Viktor Orbán’s henchmen get to work.

Árpád Szakács, who, I believe, hails from Transylvania, published an article titled “Masonic tales of Romsics” in which he stands by the historian Ernő Raffay, who in the past created a false narrative based on the alleged role of the Freemasons in Trianon. He calls upon such experts as Zsolt Semjén and Péter Boross, two politicians, to bolster his claim about the Freemasons’ involvement in the destruction of Greater Hungary. Szakács’s final piece of evidence, I guess the proverbial smoking gun, is a newspaper article from Libertatea, a Romanian daily, in which a high official of the Romanian Lodge claims that his colleagues a hundred years earlier fought hard to gain Transylvania for Romania. This is the sum total of Szakács’s proof of the Freemasons’ involvement in the Peace Conference. For daring to question Raffay’s expertise, he called Romsics a historian “whose place is among the dastardliest international traitors.”

Unfortunately, Krisztián Ungváry, one of Romsics’s many former students, made the mistake of answering Szakács’s article, which naturally prompted him to publish a second, even more outrageous piece. This second article requires closer scrutiny.

Szakács’s first article was a crude but relatively well-defined defense of Ernő Raffay, his hero and the obsessed promoter of the Freemason conspiracy theory. This second piece is truly frightening because it is an attack on the whole profession and its current practitioners. Not only do NGOs form a “network” of hostile forces against the regime. There is also a “network” which considers itself the exclusive interpreter of the past, and this interpretation is not in the national interest. According to Fidesz ideologues, the study of history is more than a professional undertaking. It is a sacred task that ensures “the foundations of national existence.” The goal of historians, as far as Szakács and his friends are concerned, should be to awake national identity and values. Clearly, the current crop of historians are not doing what they are supposed to do, delivering nationalistic propaganda in support of the present regime, and therefore their activities are harmful. They pass on a wrong national self-image.

Who are the members of this network? The answer is simple. Those “communists who ever since 1990 have been given the right and the opportunity to reproduce themselves.” Ideas originating in the Kádár period are perpetuated by the older generation and attract younger historians of the same ideology and mindset. According to Szakács, it is a closed circle spearheaded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which “became sovereign, a state within the state, a communist atavism,” the self-proclaimed “exclusive determining factor of national identity.”

In Szakács’s view, these Marxist leftovers refuse to face the fact that in recent years many studies have appeared that refute their interpretations. What he has in mind are those on the fringes or even beyond the fringes of the profession who supply Fidesz politicians with their outrageous comments about Hungarian history, uttered most frequently by László Kövér and lately by Viktor Orbán as well.

What do “more moderate” Fidesz politicians think about the “historical debate” in Magyar Nemzet? In an interview with Zsolt Németh, András Kósa of Népszava asked his opinion of the Szakács-Romsics affair. Németh praised Romsics and his students, “but, similarly, Ernő Raffay has also produced novel research in recent years.” What a diplomatic answer, typical of a politician, although Németh doesn’t believe in “politicians passing judgment on these issues.” And when it comes to Fidesz’s habit of calling “anti-national” all criticism of the current government, the less strident Németh generously concedes that “even the anti-nationals” are part of the nation. I guess the critics of the Orbán regime ought to be grateful.

June 20, 2020