Fascism? Or Just Not PC? You Be The Judge.

Duly Noted

About a misuse of the media in the service of the challenged “Political Class”.

The international press and the TV stations that serve the world are full of news that pillory an otherwise neglected Hungary. These reports bemoan that country’s new 2012 constitution. The charge is that this legislation creates a dictatorship. It is alleged to empower permanently a two-third majority that is the product of a free election. 

hungary-constitution.jpg

The accusations emphasize only a few themes. One is the lowering of the retirement age of Supreme Court judges. The second issue is the fusion of the directorate of the National Bank and of the organ, which controls financial institutions. Third, the document holds that life begins at conception. Fourth is that, marriage involves a male and a female partner. Fifth, the size of the national debt and the budget’s deficit are capped and a flat tax is imposed. In sixth place is the preamble of the fundamental law that causes most of the indignation. 

There is outrage due to the non-PC nature of the legislation, and opposition to some formulations that are judged as improper is formulated. Encouraged by Hungary’s leftist opposition, the EU is contemplating action against Hungary. The investigation and the pre-programmed finding might lead to the suspension of Hungary’s membership in the EU. That conforms to the demand of  the Socialists, the Greens and the left-Liberals. Their sister parties happen to be the losers of the elections in Hungary and find that the new constitution impairs their privileges.

Indeed, some provisions are not necessarily suitable to be incuded in a constitution. Furthermore, a reasonable person can also criticize some provision that make sense by other standards. Nevertheless, some “concerns” are exaggerated. An example is the case of Mr. A. Simor who is the Socialist-appointed head of the National Bank. Mr. Simor will keep his job, but the NB that makes monetary policy and the institution that supervised commercial banks will be merged. Not without reason. 

Part of the country’s historical inheritance is too much bureaucracy, too many officials, too many offices. The job Mr. Simor holds will disappear in its current form. The case is used to loudly deny Hungary credit guarantees and to justify other sanctions. Ironically, the payments owed are to service a debt caused by the politically motivated and financially careless extension of credit. With it, the Socialists covered the costs of palliative payments to their clientele. The denial of stand-by guarantees reduce the credit worthiness of the country whose government wishes to finance itself from the market and not through international givers. The refusal depresses the value of the Forint and makes hard-currency obligations more expensive. The intention is, of course, economic “check mate”. That would be followed by “imposing” a new government.

Lastly, to that “Fascistic” preamble that is used to raise the charge of authoritarian and chauvinistic rule by reactionary revisionists. The text is slightly edited and is presented so that the reader can render his own judgment. Occasionally, explanations are added in parentheses.

 

God, Bless the Hungarians! 

(This is the opening phrase of a very old anthem that even the Communists have used.)

 

We, the members of the Hungarian nation, bearing responsibility for all Hungarians, declare:

We are proud that our King St. Stephen has, a thousand years ago, placed our country on a firm fundament and that he has made our nation (through his conversion)  a part of (Western) Christian Europe. 

We are proud of the survival of our country, of its freedom and our ancestors that struggled for her independence. (For long, the Hungarians were called “the rebel nation”.)

We are proud of the outstanding intellectual achievements of Hungarian individuals (such as 14 Nobel prizes).

We are proud that our people have fought to defend Europe (from the Mongols and the Turks) and that it has, through its talent and diligence, contributed to our shared (European) values.

We acknowledge the nation-preserving role of Christianity. We also appreciate the various religious traditions represented in our country. We promise to preserve the spiritual and intellectual unity of our nation that has been torn apart by the storms of the past century. The ethnic groups that live with us are part of the Hungarian political community and are therefore nation-forming factors here. 

We accept the obligation to protect and enhance our inheritance, our unique language (Magyar is not an Indo-European language) Hungarian culture, the language and culture of Hungary’s national minorities as well as the nature-given and man-made treasures of the Carpathian Basin. We have a responsibility to our descendants. For that reason, we maintain the conditions of existence of the generations that will be following us through the careful use of our spiritual and natural resources. 

We hold that our national culture amounts to a rich contribution to a multi-faceted European unity. 

We affirm our respect for the liberty and culture of other peoples and wish therefore to cooperate with all other nations.

We affirm that the foundation of human existence is respect for the dignity of man.

We affirm that personal freedom can only be secured in cooperation with others.

We affirm that the decisive framework of community is the family, and the nation, and that the fundamental values of our sense of community are loyalty, faith, and love.

We affirm that the foundation of the community’s strength and of the honor of every individual is labor and the achievements of the human mind.

We affirm the obligation to extend help to those in need.

We affirm that the common goal of the state and the citizenry is the good life, security, order, justice and the unfolding of liberty.

We affirm that people’s sovereignty is present only where the state serves its citizens and when it handles their affairs without prejudice, abuse and with fairness.

We pledge to honor the achievements of our historic constitution (1222) and the Holy Crown that articulates the continuity of Hungary’s state system and the nation’s unity. 

We do not recognize the conditions created by the suspension of our historical constitutional order by foreign occupations. We deny the applicability of a statute of limitations in the case of the inhuman crimes committed against the Hungarian nation and its citizens during the National Socialist and Communist dictatorships. (This provision is likely to be the Left’s main reason to resent the document.)

We do not recognize the Communist constitution of 1949 because it has served as a foundation of tyrannical rule. For this reason that legislation is hereby invalid. 

We agree with the first free national assembly (after the formal abandonment of Socialism in 1989) that has proclaimed that the new freedom issues from our 1956 revolution. 

We choose to regard the restoration of the self-determination our homeland that had been lost on March 19, 1944 to have been restored on May 2, 1990 with the first freely elected popular assembly. (The date in 1944 refers to the occupation by Germany.) We consider this date to mark the beginning of our country’s new democratic order and of its constitutional democracy.

We avow that a spiritual renewal has become indispensable since the last century’s developments had undermined moral values. 

We have faith in a mutually determined future. We believe that our children and grandchildren, through their perseverance and spiritual strength, shall make Hungary great again.  

Our Fundamental Law is the foundation of our legal order. As such, it is a contract among the Hungarians of the past, the present, and the future. It constitutes a living framework that expresses the nation’s will and it determines the shape of the system within which it wishes to live. 

We, the citizens of Hungary, are prepared to base the public order of our country upon the cooperation and consent of our nation.

 

The independent evaluation of the foregoing should suffice to let the reader render his own judgment in the case “Hungary vs. EU”. This being the case, an evaluative conclusion, even if it is tempting, should be avoided. Therefore this piece of writing can end with the observation that, whatever the opinion created, there is something seriously wrong with one of the contending parties of the dispute.

Know Your Enemy - Hungary's Foes and Quislings

The fact is that Hungary and the Hungarians embody what the EUSSR most loathes, traditional European values.

Our expat conservative blog has posted on this frequently, urging solidarity with Budapest against Brussels.

Nor is it only Brussels, as this post says - http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/hungary-three-good-reason...

 

If Hillary Clinton is lined up with the likes of Commissar Reding, and has Amnesty tagging along, we know instinctively that Viktor Orban is doing something right.

It's not the judges or the financial measures that get right up Brussels' nose, but the defence of decent values, viz. marriage law, and the vigorous refusal to legitimise the Communist regime and its current heirs.

And how many Hungarians must have thought back to the murder of Nagy and Maleter, after another batch of quisling characters sought outside intervention in 1956?

http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/pinko-magyars-play-the-qu...

Yestrday the USSR was the enemy, today, it's the EUSSR!

Different methods, but the same threat of supranational hegmony, with the enemy within to cheer that threat on. 

One would presume that king

One would presume that king Stefan and his Christian elite already would count as civilized Westerners, therefore the year 1000. As you confirm, most Hungarians were very humble peasants until mid-19th century. Assimilation is not the same as integration, as you should know from the current Muslim debates in Europe. In short, people do not get civilized, there's always the whole bandwidth – from poets to madmen – in Hungary, the US, Norway, Germany, anywhere. I believe you are pissed off because the mentioning of American 'pioneers' and their berserk manners. No need to be, almost every country or people have similar historical events. I could have mentioned lots of them and I cannot detect 'propagandistic false simplicity' unless the count of buffaloes was wrong. That Hungarians are as civilized as British or Russian, should be obvious. On the migration processes we have a little dispute, I believe. You first mention that Slovaks and Romanians could/should go back to their ancestors, then you quote Polish migration to Ireland, English to Spain and Jewish to Israel, all rather recent movements. The minorities in Hungary live there for hundreds of years, their ancestors lived there, so it would be rather an expulsion of people, things that happen during/after a war. With 'sufficient strength' we might migrate to the Bahamas. Cheers.

@ kappert

The ethnic quilt of Hungaria was imposed on them by the Habsburg empire, it was not a "natural" ethnic development. The nationalistic Hungarians, who fought for hundreds of years to gain their independence don't believe in "ethnic mixing" or "multiculture", they had enough of that during their whole history.

I had a lot of personal experience in communist ruled Hungary and saw the resilience notwithstanding the suffering.

Good luck if you want to convince the Hungarians to drop their nationalistic feelings.

It will not happen, they just survived because of their nationalism.

Kappert writes: “So in 955

Kappert writes: “So in 955 the Hungarians were ‘canny barbarians’ and in 1000 they were suddenly ‘civilized.’ That reminds me of US-Americans killing Indians and buffaloes as ‘canny barbarians’ on the prairie, by reaching a town they suddenly became ‘civilized’ and went to church.”

My remarks give no special date when the Magyars ceased being barbarians and settled down to participating in Christendom.  Undoubtedly a dominant minority among them was the first to see the advantages of rooted existence; undoubtedly a large Hungarian peasantry did not acquire literacy and enter into historical self-consciousness until the nineteenth century.  All mortal processes take time.  So what?   Unless Kappert means that the Magyars never achieved integration into the civilized life of Central Europe (another word would be “assimilation”), then he, or she, must agree that at some date they became civilized.  Adopting Christianity had much to do with it.  Let him, or her, tell us when the precise date was or affirm that it never happened.

Why the progress of the Magyars from nomadic raiders to members of Christendom reminds Kappert of pioneer-settlers killing, to quote from the Kappertism, “Indians and buffaloes” on the Great Plains of North America, I have no notion.  I remark, however, that Kappert’s construction is in the typically obfuscatory liberal style, mixing categories that have nothing to do with one another and converting annoying complex actuality to propagandistic false simplicity in the hope that emotive images (evil American Cavalrymen killing noble Apaches) will short-circuit the reasoned discussion of facts.  

Kappert also writes: “I think your advice to ‘transfer themselves to their ancestral nations’ will not be applauded by the minorities, specially the Roma minority continues to fight for their rights. And assimilation is surely the wrong way to deal with people.”  Kappert is in fine form once again.  My sentence was conditional: “Should individuals… feel the call with sufficient strength.”  In fact, contemporary Europe has seen large numbers of individual self-transfers, for all sorts of reasons, each one of them corresponding to a “call with sufficient strength.”  Think of the Poles in Ireland or the Englishmen in France and Spain.  Or think of all the Ashkenazim in Israel!

Best to Kappert.

Fundamental Law

They missed to be proud of the 'Ungarnsturm' (Hungarian raids, ca. 905-955), when hordes of Magyars invaded central Europe and destroyed many town and villages.
'We acknowledge the nation-preserving role of Christianity.' Does that mean, the Christian leitmotiv of 'all men are brothers' is not true in Hungary? Instead we want tribal Christian fundamentalism?
What do Slovaks, Romanians and Roma say to be acknowledged as 'Hungarian political community'? Don't they have nation-preserving feelings?
Family and nation as framework for community can only be a partial aspect of a country's sociology. Loyalty, faith and love are hardly values of a community, at best we may call it 'believe'.
'We affirm that people’s sovereignty is present only where the state serves its citizens and when it handles their affairs without prejudice, abuse and with fairness.' Again, what do the Roma say to this?
What 'Holy Crown'? Has Orbán aspirations to be king?
If Hungary was 'occupied' by the USSR, why don't we say that Germany was occupied by the Four Powers? Rhetorical question, sorry.
'We avow that a spiritual renewal has become indispensable since the last century’s developments had undermined moral values.' Funny statement. Proved on what? Lies, crime and corruption in contemporary Hungary?
A lot of crap for just one page. I miss a comment on the Romanian Ice Hockey Team, too (Insiders will know what I mean!)
Handléry George does not comment on the reasons why the EU is in discomfort with that constitutional paper. The political control of national bank, no checks and balances, the restrictive and biased new media law, the dominance of Fidesz party, Fundamental Law (what a joke) ...

Ungarnsturm

On the topic of the new Hungarian Constitution, with its references to the Hungarian people and their nation, Kappert writes: “They [the document’s authors] missed to be proud of the ‘Ungarnsturm’ (Hungarian raids, ca. 905-955), when hordes of Magyars invaded central Europe and destroyed many town and villages.”  But there are no civilized people that did not begin as a barbarian people, from the destroyer-successors of the Mycenaeans in Bronze-Age Hellas to the dismantler-successors of Roman Dominion in Western Europe.  The point is not therefore that the Magyars were at one time Invaders from the Steppe; it is that the Magyars were canny barbarians who, like the Goths in Western Europe, saw the advantages of civilization and became civilized.  Like the Orthodox Bulgarians, the mainly Catholic Hungarians protected their Jewish countrymen as a point of policy during the war.  As for Slovaks and Romanians, they have nations.  Should individuals of the Slovak or Romanian minorities in Hungary feel the call with sufficient strength, they can transfer themselves to their ancestral nations.  Hungarian-speaking minorities in Slovakia and Romania can, similarly, transfer themselves to Hungary.  The Gypsies are a startling people, perhaps admirable in their peculiar ways, who have persistently refused to adopt civilization and who fail to constitute a nation in the sense in the sense of an integrated community speaking a common local tongue and rooted in a particular place, where they have raised up permanent and lasting institutions.  Not that the effort has never been made to assimilate them.  And in this, the Hungarians have done as well as any others.  A George Soros-sponsored pan-European organization exists with the express purpose of Building Roma Pride, of whose activities I would wager Kappert approves.  “Roma Pride,” yes!  But Magyar Pride?  No!  Who ever heard of such an offensive notion?  And speaking of George Soros – according to his biography, he owes his life to the Hungarian official who identified him, once Germany had occupied Hungary in 1944, as his godson and who brought him adoptively into his own family until the danger abated.

hop from barbarism to civilisation

Quite a rush through history you present. So in 955 the Hungarians were 'canny barbarians' and in 1000 they were suddenly 'civilized'. That reminds me of US-Americans killing Indians and buffaloes as 'canny barbarians' on the prairie, by reaching a town they suddenly became 'civilized' and went to church. It's a small step for man ...
By studying the history of Austria-Hungary, we should come to the conclusion that a very small elite of Hungarian aristocrats build a feudal system to rule over the peasants. Hungary only entered in civilized Europe after the failed revolution 1848 and the following proximity of the empress with Gyula Andrássy. Only in 1918, after dismantling the Habsburg empire, Hungary became an independent state, yet with uncertain borders to Slovakia and Romania (hence the ongoing conflicts).
I think your advise to 'transfer themselves to their ancestral nations' will not be applauded by the minorities, specially the Roma minority continues to fight for their rights. And assimilation is surely the wrong way to deal with people.

 The argument concerns the

The argument concerns the legitimacy of the new Hungarian constitution, which offends the left and the partisans of the EU because it stipulates in unambiguous language that Hungary is Hungarian and that the civilized achievements of Magyar society are meritorious and admirable – including explicitly Hungary’s Christian tradition.  The same “fundamental law” affirms the sovereignty of the Hungarian nation against dictatorial encroachments by the EU.  This also infuriates those of the left because it exposes their agenda, which is to obliterate the sovereignty of the nation-states through non-representative bureaucratic intervention.  (Or what remains of that sovereignty in the dehumanized bleakness of contemporary Europe.)  Attempts to steer the discussion away from these central issues serve no honest purpose.  Unless someone can offer reasoned, factual statements why the authors of the new Hungarian constitution are wrong to stipulate that Hungary is Hungarian and that the achievements of Magyar society are meritorious and admirable – including explicitly Hungary’s Christian tradition – then the matter is resolved in favor of legitimacy.  In Kappert’s increasingly personal, because increasingly non-argumentative, rhetoric, regrettably, no such forensic articulation is forthcoming.

Best even to Kappert, who once responded positively – to an earlier Brussels Journal item on that Hungarian of civilized accomplishments, Franz Liszt.   

Orbán's tricky nationalistic

Orbán's tricky nationalistic approach in his 'constitution' is only one piece of his disastrous policy. So, back to the central issues. His 'risky game' (Zoltán Árokszállási, economist) with EU and IMF provoked an inflation of 14% since July last year. The Hungarian economy is weak, nobody dares to buy or invest. Unemployment rose to 11%, state debts rose to 82% GDP. Rating agencies treat Hungary as trash, new money costs the Hungarians 10% interest rate by now (that's more than Greece, Spain or Italy have to pay).
Orbán's non-communication attitude seems to be a problem not only for 'lefties' and the EU, but also for investors. The disempowerment of the central bank, substituted by a board of Fidesz loyals makes Brussels and Washington angry.
Meanwhile Hungarians can't pay their rent, 20.000 homeless in Budapest is a new record. The new 'church law' restricts funds for the parishes, sleeping outside is prohibited (up to 480 Euro fine), searching in garbage cans is also prohibited (imagine that in NYC). Social degradation sharpens, fostering a splitting society.
Faced with these realities, the 'unambiguous language that Hungary is Hungarian and that the civilized achievements of Magyar society are meritorious and admirable' are nothing but a cheap misleading phrase. Your words of 'dehumanized bleakness of contemporary Europe' appear in a new light in Budapest. I hope that I have delivered some forensic articulation to think about.
And Ferenc Liszt has nothing to do with it.

@ kappert

Sure, Liszt has nothing to do with Hungary's problems, the socialists who were in power when the crisis started in 2006 had everything to do with it.

The socialists took the so-called cheap Swiss Franc credits and the IMF credit.

They borrowed Swiss Francs at 160 Forint and today that same Franc has to be repaid at 254 Forint.

Further were all those loans borrowed via the foreign banks who own 80 % of the Hungarian banks, sold by the socialists.

Today Lagarde insists that Hungary accepts the ukases of the IMF and Europe which basically means: pay the banks in full and shut up.

If Hungary sticks to its nationalistic views of the problems, created by the socialists, the foreign banks and the imposed restrictions of the IMF, the IMF refuses to help Hungary to come out of the crisis created by the socialists.

 

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/hungarys-rhetoric-clashes-economic-reality

Same old story.

Eastern Europe's difficulties

Eastern Europe's difficulties are the result of a blind faith in capitalism. They wanted to be catapulted into the club of the richest countries, ignoring the remarkable system asymmetry that the richest are also the ones with the highest debts. So, within the EU, the high expectations by the integration in the EU were not fulfilled, and the half-breeds of Eastern Europe and other structural poor countries like Greece and Portugal are now an easy bait for the voracious monetary market. It really does not matter whether there were left, centre or right governments ruling at the time of the neoliberal financial crisis.
In Hungary, the social-liberal coalition from 2002 to 2010 did not resolve any of the urgent problems, but self-displayed political struggles, failed economy and corruption. The 2010 elections not only put right-wing Fidesz into government, but 17% voted for the extreme-right Jobbik party.
The result is that populistic and nationalistic fractions are on the move in Eastern Europe. It is obvious that new constitutions are not the priority problem of these countries. This diversion is used to foster so-called nationalistic feelings and fight against the leading capitalistic institutions, like the IMF. Economically, the right-wing governments proclaim an anti-capitalistic way, into isolation and self-austerity. Orbán adopts an authoritarian-nationalistic regime, modelled by Miklós Horthy in the inter-war years. The other Eastern European countries are exhausted by years of never-ending reforms and austerity. While a small old-new elite enriched by dubious processes of privatisation, the big part of the population suffered economic and social shock therapies during many years. People are tired of that 'democracy', Euroscepticism is rising, and the West has totally lost its former glory.
It seems to be a repetition of the disillusioning of socialism in the 70s and 80s. In sheer despair, the population of eastern Poland, Slovakia and Hungary fall into extremism. The frontrunners are in position: Václav Klaus, Robert Fico, Traian Basescu, Orbán and Kaczyski are already leading politicians.
Polls show the climate of hate triggered by the nationalistic and extreme-right discourses in the last years: two thirds of Hungarians believe that the Jews have too much power in Hungarian economy, and that the Roma have a genetic tendency towards criminality. The 'Pireses' also count to the bunch of hated aliens. This group exists in Hungary since 2006 and is an invention by the polling agency Tárki for their poll on racism and xenophobia.

@ kappert

Your typical hodge podge non-answer avoids to put the responsability where it should be: with the left, nobody else was in power.The Eastern European left has done what the left is always doing: spending their way to the elections and borrowing without limits, as long as they can spend their way to victory. Add to that the typical corruption of the marxists, certainly by selling the valuable local banks and industries, collecting the commissions, and the recipe for disaster is complete.

After the disaster becomes nearly impossible to solve the population wakes up and tries to vote a "saviour" to correct the disaster.

Orban was elected and confronted the situation:

- Mismanagement by the leftist governments

- Wrong advise by the EU

- Wrong advise by the IMF

- Malpractice by the banksters (bank gangsters) trying to cover their own created toxic loans through the European fake "solidarity funds= save the banksters funds" and the IMF. 

Under those circumstances Orban had no choice but witdraw radically from the "accepted wisdom" which he realized translated into: suffer and shut up, don't rock our comfortable theft system.

All the rest is total BS and it is extremely sad that our "political thinkers and economists" cooperate in this scam, supported by the MSM.

I predicted that the EU would do everything to demolish Orban, in this case by going on the "nationalistic" tangent, and useful idiots like yourself are cooperating in this scam.

I hope Orban can prove he is right, which would be a disaster for the "EU economists", but I doubt he will survive politically.

Law

Could it be that the preamble actually states that our Fundamental Law is the foundation of Hungary"s legal system,that is becuse Law will be the basis of deliberations rather then whims of the EU,this is the reson EU hates the preamble they hate real law.

The EU...

cannot afford the success of this "new" approach by Hungary. It would be a disaster for those Euro-dictators.

I bet anything you want the EU will do everything to block this development.

Congratulations to the people who composed this document and all my very best wishes for the success of this government.

Stone Age?

When I worked on the 'Stone Age' I don't recall running across any document or artifact like this.

Even though I'm Italian born and would love to live in several European nations, if I were asked to choose a European country to settle in right now, I would consider it an honor to be a Hungarian.  

God, Bless the Hungarians!

Facts and words

This preamble contains many problematic sentences, I think, but the main problem is not so much in this words, as in facts: the new media law, the lack of checks and balances, the absence of debate and opposition within the ruling party, Fidesz. Liberal conservatism in Europe will be pushed back to the stone age by this Hungarian wage of populism, I'm afraid.