Hungarian “patriot” wants to destroy books
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer
In Hungary open and aggressive racism is rampant.
One of the worst antisemitic and racist rags is the Budapest weekly Magyar Demokrata: favoured by Viktor Orbán the chief of the conservative Fidesz opposition party.
The editor in chief of this far-right weekly is András Bencsik, sponsor of the infamous Hungarian Guard. He started his career working for Népszabadság the official daily of the communist party during the Kádár Period responsible for party news. It would take too long to explain how a dedicated communist like Bencsik became editor-in-chief of Magyar Demokrata (MD) and a Hungarian Guard activist.
Orbán asked often his followers to support Bencsik’s rag in spite of its obnoxious character.
One of the authors of MD is Ádám Pozsonyi, who two weeks ago published a call to the readers to steal books and to destroy them.
Ádám Pozsonyi argues openly that the Hungarian “intellectual life is under foreign direction” and that “our political and intellectual elite is foreign”. His conclusion is that his readers should act as follows:
“Let’s form commando groups of 3-4 persons and comb the libraries and let’s steal and then destroy the tasteless and cancerous centre of the left liberal traitors to our Homeland. If it is not possible to smuggle them out, we should tear or scrawl all over the pages.”
The unsuccessful scribbler Ádám Pozsonyi is also full of envy against those Hungarian writers who are recognised and translated into other languages. His venom, in particular, is reserved for three “traitors to the homeland” who are all Jewish:
“Spiró is a scab, Konrád I curse, and Nádas makes me want to puke”
How bad are things in Hungary now?
Here’s a picture that I’ve just been sent. It shows a Hungarian racist and admirer of Hamas whose T Shirt makes it clear what he is hoping for.
Comments
| 3 November 2009, 12:20 pm |
Unlike during 1941, there is a place to which Hungarian Jews can emigrate if and when the time comes. The weather’s better there too.
| 3 November 2009, 12:58 pm |
Greg,
I do not think that emigration of Jews would solve the problem. Would the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA take in about half a million gypsies?
Should we replace the fight against racism with proposals to the victims to emigrate?
| 3 November 2009, 1:14 pm |
Mr Pozsonyi is not wholly serious in his proposal: his joke is one which is de rigueur in Nazi circles, alas, very large now in Hungary. But it is a sign of the times that friend and foe alike has taken him at his word. Hatred for intellectuals is a customary sign of fascism. Reason (and modern aesthetics) seen as a Jewish cabal is nothing new. What is new, however, is the considerable influence these characters enjoy in Eastern Europe, especially our poor, poor country.
| 3 November 2009, 2:10 pm |
Won’t be long before ‘Dave’ C joins them in anti federalist solidarity and explains that the book burning has to be ‘put in context’.
Oh and Mesquito will be along any minute to explain why all ultra right nationalists are all really very liberal left wing really and not at all conservative or right wing in any way and any statement by a right wing ultra nationalist saying just how right wing and conservative they are is all the fault of the liberal media or something.
| 3 November 2009, 2:16 pm |
Nationalism is rampant in Eastern Europe but don’t think we’ll escape.
After all, ‘a coward has no country’ which I understand is a Hungarian proverb but correct me if I’m wrong G M Tamas.
Bloodnokk
The Bunker
Virginia Water
| 3 November 2009, 3:58 pm |
Just looking at that moron in the picture, do we need any more proof that fascists always flock together.
Supporters of Hamas are fascists whether they want to admit it or not.
Live long…
| 3 November 2009, 4:25 pm |
Should we replace the fight against racism with proposals to the victims to emigrate?
There’s racism, and then there’s persecution. Fighting racism is great; but once the line’s crossed into state-santioned persecution one would be a fool not to consider strongly upping sticks and going somewhere that would love to have you.
I agree that the Roma don’t have the luxury of Israel to which to emigrate. So for as long as it’s possible their fight is our fight.
| 3 November 2009, 5:34 pm |
G M Tamás
Did Pozsonyi also joke when he wrote an absolute racist comment on the former Gypsy MEP Viktoria Mohácsi on an extreme right Website?
(http://barikad.hu/node/26424)
Pozsonyi is a racist scribbler, who envies Hungarian writers and I can’t see any humour in what he published in Magyar Demokrata. It is the usual drivel of Hungarian extreme rightist, Hungarian neo-arrow-cross riffraff. Only when the courageous Hungarian journalist Iván Andrassew to whom I owe the debt of mentioning, that he was the first to react to this, Pozsonyi’s defenders came out, with the statement, that he did not mean it seriously. However in a country, where extreme rightist can shout in court “bloody judge”, in a country where people like G M Tamás fought for liberty of opinion for Nazis – I remember when he defended the Hungarian Nazi Diana Bácsfi in a TV discussion with me, one should take seriously such statements.
Clear Pozsonyi wants to be known, he is a free-loader, therefore he mentioned prominent Hungarian writers, and believes probably that because of his attacks on those writers he will become known abroad. So he must be really grateful, that I mentioned his boorish instigation.
Greg,
there is no danger that the Hungarian state will persecute Jews. However the political atmosphere is very similar to that of the thirties and the early forties. And believe it or not some non-Jewish Hungarian intellectuals are deeply ashamed for the fact, that the racist, antisemite riffraff is gaining ground.
| 3 November 2009, 7:43 pm |
All these crazy groups who think that aligning themselves with the most anti-democratic forces around (Nazis in 1930s, Communists in 1940s-1980s, Jihadis in 1990s to now) could possibly benefit them should realise that they sup with the devil. Those they sympathise with are far more ruthless and sophisticated than they can imagine, and would be quick to weed out any that they even suspected might be off message. Khomeini killed 100000 in his first year, including all the socialists who had supported him. If you cannot swim with piranhas, stay out of the water.
| 3 November 2009, 9:46 pm |
Pozsonyi:” … let’s steal and then destroy the tasteless and cancerous centre of the left liberal traitors to our Homeland.”
Hmm, sounds like someone who listens to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
(Now if that doesn’t bring Mesquito to this thread, I do not know what will.)
| 3 November 2009, 10:43 pm |
Karl Pfeifer – “there is no danger that the Hungarian state will persecute Jews. However the political atmosphere is very similar to that of the thirties and the early forties. And believe it or not some non-Jewish Hungarian intellectuals are deeply ashamed for the fact, that the racist, antisemite riffraff is gaining ground.”
It is a trivial quibble I know, but how can there be no chance of state persecution and yet be like the thirties and forties? You mean there was no danger of state persecution of Jews in the 1930s and 40s?
| 3 November 2009, 11:44 pm |
Were one naive, one might think that the EU would think about addressing the rising tide of racism within Europe before it gets to a point of no return….again.
| 3 November 2009, 11:53 pm |
“Spiró is a scab, Konrád I curse, and Nádas makes me want to puke”
I regret to admit that all three names were unknown to me until this moment. Amazon.com lists a few books by Peter Nadas, including A Book of Memories and Fire and Knowledge. Is this the same Nadas?
I couldn’t trace the other two, because Amazon.com lists too many books by authors who have Spiro or Konrad either as a forename or a surname.
| 4 November 2009, 7:44 am |
@So Much For Subtlety@
The explanation is very simple. The political conditions have changed. While in the late thirties and early forties Hungary had the “Third Reich” as neighbour, now no such neighbour exists. And I do not think that EU which tolerates racist, antisemitic and homophob incitement also by Oszkár Molnár a MP of the main stream Fidesz party, would tolerate any European state to exterminate part of the population.
@Joe Camel@ Thank you for your observation. I should have added the first name of both Spiro and of Konrád is György. Konrád’s books are translated to German and he is well known in Germany and Austria, Spiró is well known in Poland. The first name of Nádas is Péter he is also well known in Germany and Austria.
| 4 November 2009, 10:33 pm |
ap right you are, but unfortunately I speak only Hungarian and in Hungary
last year 8 Gypsies were murdered and the situation is probably worse than in most other easteuropean countries
| 7 November 2009, 3:22 am |
Pozsonyi is a real PUNK, not an antisemitic bastard, as you set him.
His genre is the grotesque.
His slogans:
“The new is bad”
“Down with the progress! Death of modernity! Death to the West!”
Website of Ádám Pozsonyi:
http://pozsonyiadam.gportal.hu/
A video of Pozsonyi on the Youtube (hungarian):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvuaBJWSz_w
Eh…
| 7 November 2009, 5:09 am |
Karl!
The 8 gypsy victims were killed by a three-member gang, from month to month.
The gang is in pre-trial detention.
The hungarian police did the job badly.
The Jewish Theological Seminary-University of Jewish Studies is located in Budapest, which is the only one Jewish higher educational institute in Europe.
Many israeli real estate investors come to us, and Hungary is popular target to the israeli tourists.
The hungarian right-wing goverment (1998-2002, prime minister: Viktor Orbán) established the Hungarian Holocaust Memory Day (04.16), and supported with a massive amount of the Dohány Street Synagogoue’s renovation (Orbán is visible from right on the linked jpg).
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kAYZT4UUxIQ/SB9HwaMVYiI/AAAAAAAABlI/V4d2Gf8mvkI/s400/kezfogas.jpg
Orbán’s goverment banned all of the right extremist antisemitic meeting (a few hundred bastards like causing trouble to do).
The FIDESZ cooperate with Likud (center-right political party in Israel), his fraternal party.
The most of hungarians refuse all antisemitic speech!!!
Does not become puppet of the unfair, hysterical, failed leftist politicians, and his fans, who prepare the hungarian parliamentary elections!
| 7 November 2009, 5:20 am |
The “scandal” continues in the swedish televison program (Kulturnyheterna, swedish with hungarian subtitle) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0JOUHUJ4a4
(here mixed the gypsy murders, Pozsonyi and the Fidesz…)
| 7 November 2009, 5:58 am |
goverment -> government
| 8 November 2009, 1:24 pm |
Hello People,
You are all forgetting that Pozsonyi is a punk and he often writes like a punk. A verbally less accurate but emotionally more truthful translation of his three-liner would sound like this:
SPIRO SUCKS
KONDÁD IS DAMNNED
NÁDAS IS A BARFBAG
The man is making literary criticism in a less than polite way. Mind you, have any of you actually read Nádas and enjoyed it? Have you not accidentally missed a word, a sentence, or even a page and really notice or care? Did you not sigh with relief that you got over that damned book..? And after reading something from Spiro, did you not feel the overwhelming oppressive nothingness of existence? Konrád writes his books while on pot, and reading and enjoying them would probably also require pot – not entirely healthy, either. These three authors are icons of the left-liberal intellectual masses in Budapest, but they pose a health threat when it comes to mental hygiene. :)
Pozsonyi carried his cynicism further with the book-burning, but my dear friends, this is a joke! He just did not insert his smiley’s.
Without the full cultural and language context it is easy to be mislead, and the political campaign for power is already under way. The governing leftists have little if no performance to show for themselves and their promises fall to deaf ears – the only effective campaign tool left is the spread of basic fear. Pozsonyi unwittingly provided one of the excuses for doing so. Had he published his note a year ago, nobody would have noticed.
In the next 6-8 months you will see lots of “fearful events” from Budapest, so brace yourselves. The campaign has started, fear is a very powerful motivator, and fear mongering is a cheap and effective campaign tool.
(I would appreciate if the editor would not delete this comment. Also, dear readers, kindly refrain from venomous messages to my mail address and consider this comment as I intended – an eye-opener. Thank you.)
| 8 November 2009, 2:31 pm |
Thank you Kata!
You can write in English, i can only read… :)
It would take too long to explain how a dedicated communist like Bencsik became editor-in-chief of Magyar Demokrata (MD) and a Hungarian Guard activist.
Doesn’t need explaining.
Substitute “international” socialism for “national”
socialism .