Abstract
Two men kiss during the annual Pride parade in Budapest
Credit: Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
Activist and former Hungarian MP
As Hungarian slam poetry has become a place where people can come together to challenge society’s attitudes, I asked slammer friends: “What are taboos in our country and how do they relate to the events we experienced in the last century?” Several slammers felt that in today’s Hungary there were no taboos. Among them was István Zoltan Csider, who is also a journalist. “We can talk about anything we want to address,” he said.
Others tried to find some examples. Krisztián Bokor said: “Vagina. Vagina is taboo.” But a few seconds later he changed his mind: “No, we can talk about that as well.”
Kristóf Horváth Színész Bob, the former national slam-poetry champion, had an example of a taboo: “Domestic violence.”
When I argued that domestic violence has become part of public discourse, he said that “for victims it is still often a taboo to talk about domestic violence”.
Another woman slammer talked about the lack of openness around gay relationships. She said that when she was talking about her sister’s partner who is a woman, she did not automatically feel she could tell her friends.
In all these examples, the impact of breaking taboos could be social disapproval. But taboos are not that simple in the Hungarian mind.
About a year ago, the Kettos Merce blog argued in a post about Budapest’s annual LGBTQ Walk that promoting tolerance reinforces a lack of equality for those who tolerate and those who are tolerated. It goes on to say that is more important “to permanently question and break social norms”.
But the willingness to acknowledge gay rights or sexuality is not apparent in certain parts of society. Recently when a well-known human rights activist died, his homosexuality was not mentioned at his funeral against the wishes of some. An old and ingrained taboo proved very strong; the taboo that bans challenging the decision of the closest family members at a funeral not to talk about an element of someone’s life.
Domestic violence is similar. While in some settings there are discussions about the subject, perceived shame and other societal pressures often bar victims from speaking up.
Wanting to name a violent, or threatening parent, or partner, may “collide” with the “fear” of being disrespectful. If the victim calls the police, the police may rather reinforce the taboo against questioning the authority in the family, instead of taking action.
Lydia Gall, Balkans and eastern Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The very people who should help – police, doctors, prosecutors and social workers – often leave victims with no choice but to go back to the abusers, exposing them to further violence.”
Hungary’s attitudes and taboos are, of course, formed by its history and public opinion. It’s five years since a law allowed the creation of a regulatory body, the Media Council, where all five members were picked by the current governing party.
This, and other restrictions on press freedom, has made a public discussion of taboos through the media very difficult.
Thus, there is freedom of speech, but there’s no over-arching media platform where a really wide-ranging public discussion of taboos can take place. In addition, the current government is trying to re-write the past, and that too makes the discussion and understanding of taboos difficult, because any discussion of them presumes a shared understanding of history or what was important in the past.
As Yale Law School’s Robert Post has said: “…if they don’t have the resources for collective memory… it will be very difficult to create the normative resources for public discourse …”
Some examples of the government’s attempt to replace one idea of the past with another are reflected in policy on public statues and memorials.
A decision recently was taken by the government to substitute the statue of Mihály Károlyi, prime minister and then president of the Hungarian Democratic Republic from 1918-1919, which stood outside the parliament with the statue of István Tisza, the conservative prime minister of Hungary in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Another controversy about the nation’s past was fired up by a new statue being erected of an angel being attacked by an eagle. The memorial is supposed to reflect the Nazi occupation of Hungary, but some critics have accused the current government of using it to try to airbrush out the complicity of a large section of society in the deportation of Hungarian Jews.
In my opinion, speaking about the Hungarian Holocaust (including the Roma Holocaust) in any way that can be offensive seems to fall under a justifiable taboo. Yet, this taboo has been broken in multiple ways by politicians with words that were said as if the Holocaust did not take place in Hungary.
Building on the worthy free speech tradition in Hungary, with the guiding principle of equality and equal freedom for all, I would argue that justifiable taboos on prejudiced speech should be enforced, not by criminal law, but by clearly set and always reinforced community norms, while unjustifiable taboos should be clearly rejected.