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POLITICS-HUNGARY: Rightward Swing Has Fascist Overtones

Analysis by Apostolis Fotiadis

BUDAPEST, Apr 18 2010 (IPS) - In the autumn of 2006 Hungary was rocked by a series of anti-government protests triggered by the release of a tape in which then prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány confessed to his Social-Democratic Party (MSZP) having lied to win elections that year. Now it is payback time.

On Apr. 11, the centre-right Fidesz party won a landslide victory, winning 206 seats in the 386-member parliament and reducing the MSZP to dust with only 28 seats. Significantly, the extreme right-wing ‘Movement for a Better Hungary’ (Jobbik), born after the 2006 protests, entered the parliament with 26 seats.

The remaining seats will be allocated after the second phase of the elections is held on Apr. 25, when Fidesz is expected to enlarge its victory. Should it gain a two-thirds majority it will have the right to rewrite the constitution of the country. Jobbik may end up holding more seats than the MSZP and become the main opposition party.

Julius Horvath, an economist and head of European Studies at the Central European University in Hungary, said recession alone did not explain the trend.

“For years Fidesz has attacked every single policy put forward by the socialists. Its methods involved extracting and leaking information to the press in order to damage the MSZP,” Horvath said. ”The leak of Gyurcsány’s speech itself is the most characteristic example. The result has been not only to raise people’s expectations for the post social-democratic era but also to open space for Jobbik.”

Jobbik has often been accused of indulging in hate speeches and racism, directed against the Roma people and their “predominant and overwhelming association’’ to ‘’certain criminological phenomena”. Allegations abound that members of its civil neo-fascist ‘Hungarian Guard’ are linked to increasing attacks on the Roma in the countryside.

Jobbik has also been associated with anti-semitic sentiments and openly propagates the irredentist cause of a ‘Greater Hungary’ to restore Hungary to its pre-World War I borders, an idea popularised earlier by Fidesz.

Balasz Barcoszi, a researcher of information networks and cyber communities, says that Jobbik has utilised the Internet better than any other party to transmit its ideology. ‘’The party encourages and supports a wide network of sites and blogs which are not directly political but are all connected and constantly reproduce messages and information in favour of the party’s cause. This is the classical way in which far-right parties in Europe dominate cyber space”.

The party appears to win over voters even within traditional liberal strongholds of Hungarian society, like the Corvinus University. A third-year social sciences student, Lazlo Nagy, told IPS that 30 percent of his fellow students had planned to vote for Jobbik. “It is the first time I participated and I voted for them,” he told IPS.

“The radical politics they propose is the only way to exit the vicious circle of corruption and political inaction. Many accuse them of racism but I am not a racist, I just don’t think that Roma criminality and abuse of the state will stop unless someone enforces necessary policies. As far as I’m concerned there is a clear distinction between radicalism and extremism. What we ask for is solutions not a pogrom against the Roma,” Nagy said.

Robert Balogh, an analyst for the progressive organisation Generacia 2020, told IPS that during the last four years the two parties have gone beyond competing for votes. “Jobbik is a new force with a very specific and very simplified populist policy package. Fidesz hardly campaigned given the certainty of victory. Still, the two parties are close. Their methods of defaming political opponents and capitalising on serious problems, like the Gypsy issue and the economic turmoil, are very similar.”

One indication of the new trend towards negative politics in the country is how the pejorative term ‘Gypsy’ has replaced ‘Roma’ even in the discourse employed by liberal and progressive people like Balogh.

One of the few public figures who still sticks to the term ‘Roma’ is Jeno Kaltenback, the man who introduced the ombudsman institution in the country and now heads the board for the European Roma Rights Centre. According to him the Roma issue is important for understanding politics in Hungary today.

“One would expect that the killing of six Roma [in 2008 and 2009] would cause an outcry or some kind of strong reaction,” Kaltenback told IPS. “Shockingly, if not unexpressed satisfaction, there is surely absence of concern and emotion. A big proportion actually believes that Roma deserve what has happened to them.”

The Roma issue dominated the pre-election campaign. “Liberal candidates have avoided touching upon the issue out of fear of losing voters, while radicals use hate speech openly. Oscar Molnar, a local mayor of Fidesz in the district of Edeleny, went as far as to accuse Roma women of harming their foetuses in order to claim more state benefits,’’ Kaltenback said.

Unofficial estimates place the Roma at between 6 – 11 percent of Hungary’s population of 10.8 million plus people.

Horvath believes that once the elections are complete it will be the turn of Fidesz to address serious economic problems, says Horvath. Last year, Hungary began to implement austerity measures, curb tax evasion and reduce public spending to bring down public debt. But Hungary has a long way to go and Horvath believes that ‘’family life is getting harder and people are left in serious debt after the obsession with consumption that followed the liberalisation of the market in the nineties”.

To some extent this has benefited the right-wing parties who have managed to convert public dissatisfaction into radicalisation, though that may not stop after the elections.

Fidesz has promised to solve everything with a magic wand but ‘’solutions will not come soon enough and it is very likely that people will go out to demonstrate again,’’ Horvath said. ‘’Then many things will depend on who rules the streets.’’