About 50% of the Hungarian youth voted for Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), a neofascist movement revindicating Hungary's pre-Trianon borders. They are planning to annex areas of Slovakia, Croatia and other countries with ethnic Hungarian minorities. As consequence of growing fascism and warlike atmosphere, 20-30 thousand Hungarian Jews (including dependents) will immigrate to Israel during the coming years. I hope.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Fascism Rising in Hungary
About 50% of the Hungarian youth voted for Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), a neofascist movement revindicating Hungary's pre-Trianon borders. They are planning to annex areas of Slovakia, Croatia and other countries with ethnic Hungarian minorities. As consequence of growing fascism and warlike atmosphere, 20-30 thousand Hungarian Jews (including dependents) will immigrate to Israel during the coming years. I hope.
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17 comments:
There are that many Jews in Hungary?
I happened to look up the NY Times article relating to an incident in 1975 where Carlos the Jackal (on behalf of the PFLP) shot at an El Al plane at Orly Airport in Paris. The RPG missed and hit a Yugoslav plane (not only was the Jackal a bad shot but the Russian ammo was a dud - the shell went clean thru the Yugoslav plane and out the other side without exploding, causing only a nice neat hole and no injuries.) My parents were on that El Al flight - the first time they had been back in Europe (if an airport tarmac counts) for 25 years and immediately someone tries to kill them for being Jews again - Europe was just bad Karma for them.
Anyway, what caught my eye in the article was that credit for the attack was immediately claimed by several organizations (not including the true sponsor), mostly Palestinian but one of them was the Croatian Liberation Front or somesuch, (falsely) blustering that this was an attack on Tito. So this kind of nationalism never really disappeared, it was just below the surface for many years.
K
This is why after WW2 the Western Allies and Russia expelled the Germans from what would become Poland. Poland as a country would never be secure as long as it had a German minority and Germany was willing to protect that minority.
As part of the long term partition of Europe the Hungarian minorities in the surrounding countries will have to be expelled to Hungary. If Hungary attempts military action against these other countries and loses such an expulsion may happen as brutally as it did in Eastern Europe.
Recovering these territories will only be possible with the help or permission of Germany. I don't think Germany would be willing to sanction such an attack as long as the current political order holds. But if the current order breaks down then the Germans may decide to allow the Hungarians to take the desired lands.
While Tito and Communism merely put a lid on nationalist ambitions in the Balkans (and apparently in Hungary too) and never really fully quenched them, I think that nationalism in Germany is well and truly dead - the Germans understand (in the way that Palestinians do not) that that way lies horror and destruction while the current path means a social democratic state where all your needs are taken care of cradle to grave. You would have to be nuts to prefer the former to the latter. Germany does not need lebensraum for its prosperity - if you export enough BMW's you can buy all the Ukrainian grain and Russian gas that you want, and NATO's defense umbrella (now extended East to the Russian border, even better than during the Cold War) provides a territorial buffer. What Germany does not prescribe for itself it would not sanction for Hungary either.
K
Right. Those matters of trade and of international feelings were somewhat different in the 30s, in ways not completely clear to me. Germany was not in a position to be an autarky, and, for whatever reason, wasn't willing to be a vassal of the Western Allies, who, to the extent that they could all coordinate with each other (and Russia?), could have suborned Germany on any given occasion by threatening to withdraw trade. That seems to have been the key issue, rather than the matter of ethnic Germans living in non-germanophone countries or the matter of Austria. After all, there weren't no Germans in Russia, Hitler's main target.
The question is, why did they feel that way; why start a giant war instead of being a Western vassal? Did they fear the Western Allies would fail to protect them in the event of a German-Russian conflict? Did they simply value a chance at supremacy even at a great risk of national destruction, because they took up a sort of Nietzschean philosophical position along those lines? Did they want to do something to the German Ashkenazim that the Westerners might find unacceptable, such as massacre them or expel them to a foreign land? I realize that Hitler had some high hopes for certain things to go well for him, namely that the Westerners wouldn't intervene and that the USSR would readily undergo sociopolitical collapse when attacked. But surely he didn't believe that either of those things were certain.
I dont think Germany has the will to intervene militarily in Hungary. She did nothing when the breakup of Yugoslavia caused a war between Croats, Serbs, Albanians and other minorities. It only stoppen when the USA intervened.
Hungarian Fascists are crazy enough to start "liberating" pre-Trianon Hungary. They are teaching the Trianon injustice in elementary schools, they are fomenting a Sudeten situation.
The difference between the '30s and now is the German people see where these policies lead and have no intention of repeating the same mistakes. If anything they have drawn the lessons too well and as J says, it's not clear what if anything would be sufficient to motivate the Germans to undertake any sort of military intervention. Certainly the genocide in the Balkans was not. Even their efforts in Afghanistan have been half-hearted at best even though the Taliban are as clear and unambiguous an enemy of social democracy and the West in general as you will ever find. They couldn't be any more clear if they beheaded infidels on TV - no wait, they've already done that.
K
The situation in Hungary is certainly disturbing but as Mark says, based on historical precedent, without German endorsement the Hungarians would neither be capable or willing to undertake military action on their own, regardless of whether Jobbik comes to power or not. What you would have would be a sort of return to the '30s situation where Bethlen and Horthy talked a good game to satisfy the useful idiots on the right but really did nothing of substance until Hitler came to power (and even then dragged their feet - thank God).
Still it is quite disturbing that after 90 years the political discourse in Hungary has not moved past Trianon. Very sad and shows that the Hungarians are not mature adults in the community of nations the way Germany and even Poland are nowadays. Really the best thing a nation can do (absent threatening enemies of which Hungary has none) is to dedicate itself to making cars and microchips and other junk which lead to prosperity and happiness, whereas marching around with nationalist banners and arguing about who is a "true" Hungarian and giving silly salutes leads to nothing but tsuris.
K
I think the Roma issue is not as easily dismissed as the irredentism non-issue. From a thread at Hoste's, involving me, j, and a Hungarian among others, the vital stats, all based partly on hearsay. Good enough for a rough picture perhaps:
Roma = ~9% of the population
Roma total fertility = ~3.0-3.5
Magyar total fertility = ~1.75
Roma unemployment = ~50%
Magyar unemployment = ~10%
I would expect that, also, the Magyar generation time has significantly increased lately while the Roma figure has not. This will make the Magyar population share decline even faster. There could be a serious amount of change over 45 years or so. And in 100 years?
Something's got to give, there. The Roma, not least, will benefit if their population share doesn't get too high - just as American blacks are going to suffer soonest and worst from demographic changes in America. The Hungarian guy on said thread stated that the welfare laws actually provide an incentive for Roma to have kids. This does not do anyone any good. Obviously, any talk of 'managing' the Roma population level is awfully awkward on account of 20th century history. But just blithely watching them become 70% of Hungary would not, realistically, be wise for anyone.
I'm amazed by how strongly fecundity can be altered by money incentives. Putin's cash incentive program has had a real, non-trivial effect, and the emolument is not that huge. I believe it is something like $12,000 per kid. Also, Hoste gives data on Lee Kwan Yu's cash-incentive eugenics program in his review of Lynn's "Eugenics"; again, the effect was not small.
The one-child policy in China appears to be enforced primarily by fines, and/or the partial withdrawal of welfare benefits from violators (which, I admit, could have fairly harsh results in some instances, especially among a population less responsible than the Chinese are). Enforcement of a two-child policy - upon, say, the Roma - would of course require only much smaller disincentives, because human nature would resist a two-child cap much less than a one-child cap. One could simply leave the provision of schooling and medical care the way it is, and cut by 25% or so the cash benefits received by state dependents, if they have more than two children. In other words take it out of their beer and movies, not out of their kids' medical care.
Of course, you can imagine the reaction I would get if I mentioned such an idea in polite society. Even if one were to apply the same policy to welfare-dependent Magyars, there would be a 'disparate impact' because Magyars rarely have 3+ children, and this would hardly go unnoticed. Ludicrously, though, the same polite decent people would staunchly uphold the right of the Roma to multiply until they are 80% of Hungary, driving down Magyar fertility by their effect on real estate prices.
The Roma minority appeared suddenly from nowhere. Such is the power of differencial fertility. From exotic wandering musicians, now you have a sizeable population of State protegees.
There are two solutions to the Roma welfare problem. The first is to restrict welfare to just Magyars. The second solution is to eliminate welfare.
I think that the first solution is probably more workable in Hungary than it is here. Whatever the solution, Hungary needs to act now before the Gypsies comprise 50% of the population.
Hungary wants to be a respectble, humanitarian country a la Germany 2010. No way of limiting welfare.
Today there are about 1 million Roma in Hungary, they will not reach 50% in the foreseeable future.
The quest for respectability instead of status is one of the great causes of ruin in our time. This quest is the same reason Israel limits its treatment of its enemies.
They could be 50% in something like three generations, 70 years. But really, even 33% will really strain the welfare state, bringing matters toward a degree of "white slavery." We can look at the Latin world, and see that it's not really in human nature to want to transfer that kind of dough across racial lines - even when there is a racial cline rather than discrete races.
I think that today, you can stabilize this situation using an incentive structure within welfare. Ie, more welfare vs less welfare. Less, if you have 3+ kids. Remember, people don't just want the things they *need* (for which you can give them vouchers). They also want *liquor* and *cigarettes*. And movies, and blenders.
But what about if you wait until 40 years from now? By then the whole system may be gone or much-beleaguered, the whole social safety net greatly reduced, and consequently there could be some hard fates - say, no state money for HIV treatment (speaking de facto, not de jure)?
Better that those Hungarian Jews should go elsewhere within Europe or come to the U.S. What exactly will they do once they get to Israel, drive taxis or be janitors? Israel does not have the economic or natural resources to care for an ever-expanding population of either Jews or Arabs. Moreover, collecting so many Jews in Israel leaves the world Jewish population open to a population catastrophe in the event of a nuclear attack or major military loss in the future.
What will do Hungarian Jews in Israel? Israeli economy can easily absorb a million of them. They could, for example, grow crabs in ponds and export clean frozen crabmeat, as the Chinese are doing. Or they could work in Intel and Microsoft, as Russian Jews are doing. Unfortunately, there are only a few thousand.
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