Abstract
ABOVE: Budapest at night
Credit: Art Kowalsky/Alamy
In this section
Insider state IRENA MARYNIAK 88
Poland and the rise of new anti-semitism KONSTANTY GEBERT 96
Stories of the shutdown GRETCHEN GOLDMAN 101
Turkey’s Twitter army KAYA GENÇ 106
The day the earth moved MARC FRARY 112
Blogging, blasphemy and bans SALIL TRIPATHI 119
Legal eagle RACHAEL JOLLEY 123
Change your tune? PETER TATCHELL AND TOPHER CAMPBELL 128
Give me liberty? PADRAIG REIDY 133
Secret signals ANDREI ALIAKSANDRAU 136
Thinking allowed JULIAN BAGGINI 140
The beautiful game? ANTHONY CLAVANE 145
Lights, camera, cut TOM FEARON 148
On the ground in Israel DANIELLA PELED 153
On the ground in India PRAYAAG AKBAR 156
Hungary’s right-wing government has become the pariah of Europe because of its nationalist rhetoric. Ahead of the election
Inside Pest’s grand and crumbling apartment blocks the heat is flavoured with a hint of gas, but energy providers take scant interest in minor leaks. People open windows, smile apologetically and prepare to field my routine questions on the state of the nation.
Is Hungary a rising neo-fascist state? “You mustn’t misunderstand. It’s a form of populism…”
And the racism? The intolerance? “There’s a growing gypsy population. In some villages they haven’t worked for generations. We have Roma crime. It’s a self-perpetuating situation. There’s no real anti-semitism, you know.”
What about the new memorial to Miklos Horthy, a pro-Nazi leader who oversaw the Hungarian Holocaust? “Pure provocation from extremists. But his contribution needs to be objectively reassessed. Remember the Treaty of Trianon. They dismembered us in 1920. Before that we were occupied by the Turks, the Austrians, the Soviets… Surely you understand?”
And those vigilantes with licence to rough up and intimidate? “You mean ‘keepers of the peace’ – just a traditional gendarmerie. Though there are others…”
Authoritarianism? Autocracy? Totalitarianism? “Oh for Chrissake, wasn’t it ever thus? Look, you won’t quote me will you? It could be awkward. I might get letters. Let me show you out – the doors are a bit heavy. There’s a barred archway beyond the inner courtyard. I’ll get the electronic key.”
Hungary is engaged in a cold war over its own story. As the 2014 parliamentary election approaches, the struggle is for the legitimation of narratives – cultural and social, tolerable and intolerable – in a society that has lost its ambling, mellow disposition and seems perilously on edge.
The formerly centre-right governing party, Fidesz – which has long since abandoned any vestige of centrism – holds a two-thirds majority in parliament and has a storyline that dominates Hungarian politics, couched in a combination of nationalist and radical rhetoric. Voters are wooed with emotive catchphrases conjuring images of an ordered, value-based society adrift in a waning Europe infested with exploitative capitalist monopolies.
But at the helm, setting the country firmly on course, is a straight-talking freedom fighter: Prime Minister Viktor Orban. On the eve of his landslide victory in 2010, he spoke of “a revolution in the ballot box”. A declaration issued shortly afterwards referred to “a new social contract for the country”, a “shared new system of national cooperation” representing “a requirement for every Hungarian at home and abroad”. In January 2012, a new constitution was brought into force for a national community bound by “intellectual and spiritual” fabric.
The notion of an ethnically and culturally defined society pervades the education system: previously suppressed writers with far-right connections, including Joszef Nyiro and and Albert Wass, who both had links with the fascist regime of the 1940s, have been introduced into the school curriculum. It is reflected in widespread displays of the national flag (currently flying on parliament alongside the banner of a Hungarian minority in Romania); in the image of that archetypal family gathered around a pot of steaming stew; in the increasing emphasis on the role of women as home-makers and mothers. The government has devoted massive resources to its communications machine.
It is hard to be sure how far the call to close ranks is intended as a boost to flagging spirits in a country of just 10 million, and how far it may be serving a more sinister purpose. The economic crisis left Hungary badly hit. The government has no room for manoeuvre in terms of austerity measures; unemployment among the young is at 28 per cent (10 per cent overall). The fact that many of the jobless are ethnically Roma only adds to a suppressed anxiety and tension.
Fidesz’s bid to unite and strengthen Hungarian culture in the Carpathian basin might attract greater external sympathy if its legislative action and approach to the economy was more inclusive and less blatantly partisan. The government has established itself as the strongest voice in public media and reinforced its position through the financial and administrative control of institutional frameworks and of the arts. A new constitution, known as the Fundamental Law, adopted in 2012, seems designed to distance, muffle or suppress voices and groups that might impede the entrenchment of a crony-based “soft” dictatorship: minorities, the poor, the homeless, artists and intellectuals, the media, the judiciary and the constitutional court.
The outraged response of the EU to constitutional amendments introduced in March 2013 is well documented. The changes seemed a flagrant assault on democratic rights and liberties. In June, the Council of Europe noted “the sheer accumulation of reforms that aim to establish political control of most key institutions while in parallel weakening the system of checks and balances”. Rather than open a monitoring procedure, however, it chose “closely to follow the situation in Hungary and take stock of the progress achieved”.
Critics say the fundamental law was adopted without serious debate, following a “national consultation” that consisted of 12 multiple-choice questions posted with a barcode that made identification possible. Given that, in 2010, Fidesz party director Gabor Kubatov suggested the existence of an online database with voters’ details (“I can point to the Communists in the city,” he said), a comment that was leaked to the public on the right-wing portal kuruc.info and in the English language newspaper Budapest Times, many felt there was good reason to be troubled.
“Those who do not support Fidesz have the perception that, although the elections are supposed to be free and fair and secret, ultimately some people have these databases and they know who is voting for whom,” Petra Bard, visiting professor at the Central European University, observes.
ABOVE: Members of the far-right Hungarian Guard stand next to the unveiled bust of Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s World War II ruler, Csokako, Hungary, 2012. The erection of the statue met with criticism from the country’s liberal contingent
Credit: Bela Szandelszky/AP/PA
This spring, a majority of a little over 50 per cent would give Fidesz absolute supremacy in parliament. Few doubt that it will get it. Hungarians living outside the country have been offered citizenship and the vote. A traditionally conservative group, they are expected to rally behind the government. Last year energy bills were cut by 20 per cent – which has raised support further. All this, combined with alleged gerrymandering in some districts and an election law that favours large parties over small, is likely to benefit Fidesz. To make a protest vote count, people will have to opt for the Socialist Party (MSzP), which has its origins in the pre-1989 (Communist) Socialist Workers Party (MSzMP). With memories still fresh of eight years of disappointing rule by a socialist-liberal coalition (2002-10), voters will almost certainly shy away from this. The MSzP is still hampered by its association with communism and is further disadvantaged by the absence of allies on the left.
Previously suppressed writers with far-right connections have been introduced into the school curriculum The openly anti-Roma party Jobbik, in parliament since 2010, has the support of about 15 per cent of the electorate
In response to European pressure, the government grudgingly introduced a few corrective measures to the constitution. The media have been given the right to broadcast political advertising – provided they do so for free. Observers are doubtful that economically hard-pressed commercial television channels will be in any position to screen meaningful political debate. News stories are centralised and controlled through the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) and, since 2010, broadcasts have been regulated by the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH), whose president holds a mandate for nine years. The NMHH also controls the budget, and its jurisdiction covers broadcast, print and online public and private media including blogs. It has the power to assign frequencies, monitor content and impose fines. In 2011, penalties for media providers came to 1.4 million euros. “There are more and more cases where the court fines in favour of politicians who are applicants and who allegedly have been defamed,” says Petra Bard. Since new media laws came into force, more than 500 journalists from public broadcasters have lost their jobs.
Journalists refer to an all pervasive culture of political loyalty. A liberal former minister of education, Balint Magyar, talks of blackmail and threats to commercial media, alongside the enforced nationalisation and subsequent privatisation of business in favour of friends and cronies. “You can see it in the field of public utilities, in the bank sector, the land sector, effectively everywhere,” he says.
Loyalty can be coerced and dissent punished through tax inspection, for example. Businesses are intimidated or rewarded with government contracts and licences – whether for tobacco sales, or broadcasting. Most commercial channels prefer to stay out of politics. The threat of lost state-dependent advertising – by the national oil company MOL or the OTP banking group, for example) – serves as a lever for controlling the private broadcasting sector. “There’s no need for direct political pressure or Soviet-style telephone rule,” says a journalist (who asks not to be named). “You know what you can and can’t do. It’s the same system as in the 1970s and 80s. There’s an ingrained cultural sensitivity.”
In some circles there is talk of disgruntled opposition figures outside the country stirring up western European suspicion and giving Hungary a bad name. In January 2012, a group of internationally known liberal intellectuals, including Miklos Haraszti, the former MP and UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus, and Gyorgy Konrad, the writer, published an appeal which referred to the end of genuine debate and accountable governance in Hungary, calling on Europe to help prevent a slide into dictatorship: “Victor Orban’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances and pursuing a systematic policy of closing all autonomous institutions…At no point since the regime changes of 1989…has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.”
The push by liberals to draw the rest of Europe into the Hungarian political picture is viewed with intense suspicion among government sympathisers. In a deeply polarised political community, liberal views are widely perceived to be associated with the Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz) a party in coalition with the socialists between 1994 and 2008. “It’s hard to take their criticism as an honest critique,” says Mark Szabo, an analyst at the right-wing think tank, the Central European Policy Centre. “It’s misleading to portray their views as the views of independent intellectuals. They are people institutionally identified with SzDSz. They have a bias – which is natural. What is not acceptable is that they criticise as though they were neutral players in the game, which they are not.”
Today the SzDSz barely exists as a political force – in 2010 the party won just 0.25 per cent of the vote – but the voices of its former representatives and sympathisers count. These are the people who present an ideological challenge to Fidesz.
“The problem is that Fidesz has its own language through which it creates its narratives. Until now the opposition has been in an exclusively defensive position,” says Balint Magyar. “It had no language to describe the real nature of the regime. If you cannot describe or name what you oppose you are bound to be defeated. You have to decide: are you fighting within the structure of liberal democracy for government change or does Hungary have a new form of regime which is neither ‘liberal’ nor ‘majority’ democracy but something quite different – a mafia state.”
“Mafia” is a hackneyed word in the eastern European context, but it offers a framework to challenge the Fidesz narrative. The idea is developed in a selection of essays by liberal academics, some of them former politicians, published in a book edited by Balint Magyar, Hungarian Octopus: The Post-Communist Mafia State. The book has been reprinted three times since its publication in November 2013. The model is familiar in many post-Soviet republics, including Russia. What the traditional mafia achieve by threat and murder, Magyar contends, the “mafia state” state can achieve through parliament, the tax office, the chief attorney, and all the organs of the state. “They distort the conditions of free elections, of freedom of speech, the neutrality of state organs, public procurement procedures. There is brainwashing and money laundering, power concentration and concentration of personal wealth. Western Europe has to face the fact that tax payers are subsidising the Hungarian mafia state, and its adopted ‘family’. Traditional categories of ‘corruption’ cannot explain or describe the situation and western European countries have no effective means to sanction it. Hungary is a Trojan Horse in the EU.”
“There is brainwashing and money laundering, power concentration and concentration of personal wealth”
Magyar advocates greater international involvement in decision-making, and in committees for the evaluation of EU tenders, but among the Hungarian population the issue of outside involvement in Hungary’s affairs is highly sensitive. People often fear “the outside”: centuries of occupation are not that easily forgotten. To the horrified delight of many, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has appeared to draw parallels between the EU and the Soviet Union.
A 40-something lawyer, who asks not to be named, speaks of a sense of shame associated with Hungarian identity, which only Fidesz has successfully dispelled. “If I had Hungarian thoughts – about the loss of Transylvania for example – I used to be called irredentist or racist. Now I can have my own thoughts. Our generation was taught we were a loser nation. We were all but criminals. We had a right to be punished. It was a communist trick. They tried to make people feel guilty. Fidesz was the first to say this. Now people can be proud of their history and their achievements, proud to be here.”
There is a flip side to this. Earlier failures to objectively examine issues associated with national self-perception and historical trauma – the Horthy era between 1920 and 1944 or the “goulash communism” of Janos Kadar
Orban himself thrives on his bold challenges to foreigners and European bureaucrats
The openly anti-Roma party Jobbik, in parliament since 2010, has the support of about 15 per cent of the electorate. The party has spruced up its image recently, offering itself as a cool, hard-talking alternative to Fidesz. It is increasingly popular among young voters. People at the centre of the political spectrum express anxiety, because there have been surprises – not least the election on 15 December of a notorious neo-Nazi as mayor of Asotthalom, a village close to the Serbian border. Laszlo Toroczkai took 71 per cent of the vote in a contest with a Fidesz candidate. Some years ago he declared he would be prepared to shoot former socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.
With Jobbik representing a real political threat, Fidesz also plays to the far-right gallery, while distancing itself from some of the more extreme manifestations of fascism (such as the public burning of poetry books by the Holocaust victim Miklos Radnoti in the north-eastern city of Miskolc last November). Orban himself thrives on his bold challenges to foreigners and European bureaucrats, and his supporters suggest European officials critical of Hungary are generating the very anti-European sentiment that could empower anti-EU forces and the far right.
How is the public responding to all this? “Most Hungarians simply want a strong leader,” says one journalist. “They don’t want the difficulties of capitalism, having to decide their own personal and financial future.”
Fidesz has learnt from the past; the left is tarnished by it. Attempts to form an opposition alliance, called Together 2014, have reaped few dividends, not least because of an absence of persuasive or charismatic leadership. But, despite the government’s efforts to constrain the outreach of independent media, it would be misleading to suggest that its opponents have been wholly silenced. The private channel ATV is the main television platform for broader discussion on politics, along with the news and talk radio station Klub Radio – which was threatened with closure in September 2011 but survived after an international outcry and a series of court battles. There are several independent press outlets: newspapers Nepszabadsag, Nepszava, and the economic weekly HVG. NGOs take some comfort in coverage by internet-based news portals. The most popular of these, Index.hu, has 1.3 million readers monthly.
Any hope for Hungarian democracy and politics almost certainly lies with online media and a new generation of activists. In 2013, students throughout the country protested against cuts in funded university places, increases in tuition fees and the introduction of a contract obliging them to work in Hungary after graduating. Demonstrations against the media law and electoral legislation favouring Fidesz, in 2011, were followed by protests against the new Fundamental Law the following year. Tens of thousands participated in the rallies. Rapper Dorottya Karsay’s soundtrack of the protest movement, “Nem tetszik a rendszer”, has clocked up over 1.3 million hits on YouTube.
The title and the refrain could scarcely be clearer: “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t like the system.”