A people divided by narrative.
Good day, it is perhaps fitting that today – 7 December – is very day the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1917, and a short 24 years later, also on this day Japan committed the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Oahu Island, Hawaii, apparently prompting the United States to enter the Second World War.
Last time we left Hungary in a dark state, with first “regent” Horthy, finally Ferenc Szálasi in charge of a country at war with the East. The governing Arrow Cross Party that came into power near the end of the war – October 1944 – was a brutal, openly f*scist one, that not only continued to sacrifice young Magyar men’s lives to the folly of Germany near the Dneiper river – yes that Dneiper – but in parallel managed to murder 10,000 – 15,000 Jewish people at home – called the White Terror – estimated authoritatively by the Hungarian Zionist expat historian Raphael Patai ( born Ervin György Patai ). But the tide of war was turning, and the Red Army was approaching.
Szálasi, like all of his ideological brethren, was of course a coward. As our liberators approached Budapest, he and his little kleptocratic cabinet ran with as much national treasure as they could carry, planning to go through Vienna to München ( Münich ). While the Red Army was joined by the most heroic Hungarians – called the Buda Volunteer Regiment, led by Oszkár Váriházi – liberated Budapest, he and his ilk were running, blowing bridges up in their wake. He took the “holy” Hungarian crown with him, and disbanded his party on 7 May 1945 a day before Germany’s surrender. In a rare case of historic justice he was intercepted by American troops in Mattsee ( in Salzburg, Austria ), and was sent back to face justice in Budapest, at the hands of the People’s Tribunal. Many of his ideological ilk in Germany did not face this same justice, but that’s another topic. He was sentenced to death for war crimes and high treason.
But as all American justice invariably is, his was also incomplete. The crown had found a new home in Fort Knox, Kentucky and it had to wait for thirty years to finally return home, much to the dismay and protestation of the vast crowd of right-wing Hungarian expats – who used to be called Gilisztas, our word for earthworm, or Gusano – in the United States. It returned home on 5 January 1978, a few years before I was born.
And we have now come to the country I was born in, one that I have described many times, the People’s Republic of Hungary. It’s relatively few cities were smoldering ashes, resembling Dresden in 1945, but led by the Communists – for years working underground – and with massive Soviet Aid – much of which was given for free, as a large chunk of our war reparations were forgiven – rebuilt them all in a decade. They nationalized the banks, gave millions of people land for the first time in almost a thousand years. I don’t want to repeat all that I’ve already said about my country, suffice it to say that it was a livable, humane, albeit imperfect nation for the working majority, but for the magnates and industrialists of old – almost all of them fled to the West in 1945 – it was a so-called brutal dictatorship. As it should be, to be perfectly honest. We developed in a few decades, our industry trundling along and expanding, the people’s standard of living rising, until the fall, when they were all reversed or gone.
But there was a peculiarity with the advent of daily and weekly news ( both broadcast over radio / tv and written ) after the war, and it had a major effect on Hungarian psychology. There was the evening news, and Népszava – People’s Word – the printed news that people in general digested, but as the well-being of Hungarians rose, so did a new, rather comfortable class of society relieved from the drudgery of hard work. Students and intellectual workers had time to spare, and they tended to spend their time in the café, the bistro, later the discotheque. They began to listen to other voices, to Radio Free Europe, and foreign magazines which were in circulation, unlike today when RT is banned from the European internet in its entirety. This was the voice of those dispossessed former princelings, industrialists and cardinal expats amplified by their newfound Western sponsors 24 hours a day. It was a subtle message that increased in intensity over the decades : Dream big, dream Las Vegas, Coca Cola, dream Sports Cars, but dream Alone. Not like your shady neighbor, that annoying co-worker, or that horrible government keeping you from all this wealth. Dream because YOU deserve better. It started subtly enough and increased in intensity until the main event in 1956, the so-called failed Revolution. It is apparently illegal to question this narrative, but when did I care about that?
I have said it before, I’ll say it again, it was the dress-rehearsal of Tiananmen, the very first color revolution where color was actually a hole in our beloved flag where the party seal was. And as for the main – imported – ringleaders, they shared the ideology of Szálasi. It’s still documented how they strung both communists and Jewish people from lamp posts. The ideology, the old way of thinking was still with us. But they failed, thanks to our brave Worker’s Guards and our Soviet friends. This event however, became a grand trial in the burgeoning US propaganda industry, associating our defense from a criminal uprising with Soviet tanks, splitting the International Communist cause even further than Khruschev’s secret speech, between those in support ( now named Tankies ) and those opposed ( basically SocDem reformists ). And it also split Hungarian popular opinion, giving rise to a brand new wave of traitors merrily sailing abroad. Although unintentionally, this created yet another event already familiar to the Magyar : Another perceived loss, another long-held grudge.
It was out of this great contradiction of narratives that I was born. While it is noteworthy that the Buda Volunteer Regiment still has in-tact memorials in Vérmező ( Bloodfield ), and Nyugati Pályaudvar ( Western Trainyard ) in Budapest – some of the few that still survive – they aren’t the ones that define my life. On the cover you see two memorials close to where I live in Pécs, and they represent the roots from which I grew. My two grandfathers, because we’re still traditional like that in Hungary. The pointy one on the right commemorates the Royal Air Force pilots who fell during the War, adorned by Horthy’s motto “Istennel Hazáért”, or With God For Homeland. My grandfather was one of these aces at the rank of lieutenant, and despite being shot down and erroneously taken to a German concentration camp, he survived the war with his old convictions intact, and was present when the memorial was unveiled. To him the People’s Republic always represented a loss of status, whereas the other memorial – two streets away – simply says Oreminer and that one is my communist Dyedushka from my mum’s side. He was born into post-war poverty rising with only his two hands, mining Uranium Ore from mount Mecsek among a great many other labors. No two people are more different, and yet by some miracle, out of this massive conflict of narratives a family was born. This is just a minor illustration of what must have been huge fractions in Hungarian society after 1956, barely held together by Kádár.
Finally, as the Soviet Union went through a complex set of difficulties – too complex for this article – and by 1988 her illegal dissolution began – creating the worst loss of life expectancy during Peacetime in human history – our country began to fail too. Our Kádár died two years before the events in Moscow concluded, and it was time for the Plan to spring into action, but not as brutally, one could even say “gently” compared to the Russians. The era of Decommunisation began – blame everything on the commies, and don’t shy away from outright lies and confabulations – and our new alternate history was written. People who poured everything into the party saw their entire life’s work evaporate as the organization was banned and looted. Suicide, homelessness, poverty and drugs appeared gradually. The New Approved History tells us about Bolshevik Imperialism – funny considering our standard of living in Budapest was consistently higher than Moscow for the entire period – so-called brutal repression of Speech – also quite funny today if you think about it – and the PR went from one to ten during the nineties. The message from abroad was amplified on television which had not two but twenty, then two hundred channels! Start a business, chase wealth, and f*ck the other guy! Make a fool of yourself for a prize! Compete, and all will thrive!
I saw none of this at the time, since I was a teenager. And like most teenagers I thought it was all very innocent, and quite colorful. It took me decades – even an expedition into the Giliszta life that I was lucky enough to turn back from – to discover the depth of this sensational, hypnotizing lie. And to rediscover my forgotten roots. It was all so tragically successful. On every miniscule issue – not to mention the big ones – people are against one another, almost at each other’s throats, almost incapable of discussion and now add some real pressure to this explosive mix – like inflation and fuel shortages – and you basically have Hungarian society as it is today. My own fate aside, this is the first time in ten months that I am truly worried about what may happen to us. And Orbán – as we will get to in Part 3 later today – was a product of all this just like I was. He was nurtured by People’s Republic, took a very active part in Her dissolution, finding himself in the middle of a vortex of contradictions today. I know I’m repeating much of what I said before, but I promise you the key takeaways ( loss, grudges and meddling in public consciousness ) will all matter in the end.
Have a lovely Wednesday morning, afternoon or evening whatever sky looks down on you reading these lines.
Peace, Land and Bread
From Facebook Archives : 7 December 2022