Antisemitism in Hungary

 When you read about antisemitism in Europe, Hungary always comes up in online conversations: the accepted wisdom (for whatever reason...) is that Hungary is a very antisemitic country. The fact that there are hardly any incidents (-and none of them were violent, compared to the "non-antisemitic" UK), does not really matter.

Interestingly, certain rabbis have a very opposing view to this narrative. Perhaps we should listen to them.

European values, West vs East in the EU, and the rank hypocrisy

It is interesting to see the contrast between reports of alleged Hungarian brutality towards migrants (with no actual proof, but in the he-said-she-said game we of course can take anything a migrant or an NGO says on face value), and the way they report on brutality by the cultured and civilised Western European countries.

Let's see...

We all remember when migrants rushed the border at Roszke, and threw stones at the border guards; the response was, not unexpectedly, some water jets to drive them back. The video footage was heavily edited leaving out the attack, and the footage of the poor kid his/her parent was dragging towards the violence, so later the child could be paraded as an innocent victim. The videos usually have shown the water cannon first, then the stone throwing, and the crying children last. (Here's the full video, by the way. You can see a child being dragged towards the tear gas at 1:29...  which makes the whole farce even more comical. Most of the condemning articles you can find in this blog, but here is a collection by a Hungarian news portal.)

International condemnations, talks of overall racism in the whole country; the furore was real. Facts were taken quite liberally, but the whole incident was used to paint the whole country as the racist black sheep of the EU. Even the UN Secretary General had some harsh words.


In contrast, this is how an Italian use of the water cannon was reported upon.

The report is more like a factual description, and the Guardian had no thundering opinion piece on it. It kind of happened, and that was that.


Same thing about alleged violence against migrants/refugees in Hungary.

Apparently guards have been taking selfies with beaten migrants. Proof of any of these are obviously missing (even though these things tend to come out as we have seen with the US soldiers who took selfies in front of corpses they tortured to death), but let's not let facts get in our way.

In contrast, there are just dispassionate descriptions of the horrors if they are perpetrated by Western countries. No broad generalisations, no bleating about "European Values", no finger pointing to the highest level of power; I've yet to see anyone accuse Macron of being a horrible human being because of the well documented brutality of the French police, and the inactivity of the French government to help these people. (Who, let's just mention it, left the migrant processing centers without registering hoping to get through a richer country.)

The point is: Western media, and the Western world in general loves virtue signalling with the Eastern members of the EU. The political elite, the media are blatantly biased. It's not exactly a big revelation, but something that is worth recording.

Racist Hungarians -Discrimination in the EU in 2015 report

Thanks to the media abroad Hungary seems to have acquired quite fame as a nation of the worst racists you can imagine. Articles, comments, reddit posts, google searches- all point to this notoriety, and none of them seem to be bothered by things like facts.

Rising antisemitism threatening all Jews in Hungary? Check. And check. And check. And check. And check. And check. (Again, which country are Jews fleeing from, and asking for special permits to carry weapons? I forgot. Perhaps someone could remind me.) It's so bad, we even need to lie about it to make it look bad.

They hate Muslims, too, of course. Who said they did not?

Racism everywhere? Check. And check.

Bigotry? Of course!

Second most nationalistic country? Check. (Even though the answers made no sense whatsoever: they asked if being born in Hungary was very important to be Hungarian in a country which is surrounded by areas where one third of Hungarians still live. There is something seriously fishy with these results when the most nationalistic Hungarians are the ones who are the most aware of -and most care about- the Hungarian minorities living outside of the country.)

Is the Far Right taking over everything? Do I hear goosestepping blackshirts every day? Check. And check.

Fascists? Of course! Are they downright Nazis? Check. Even their football fans are Nazis? Of course they are!

The question is: how deserved all this? Are Hungarians really just Nazis, waiting to fire up the ovens to destroy anyone who is not like them? (As if in such a mixed nation it makes sense talking about racial purity.)

Well, according to this survey, not very. I might point out that this was done in 2015, at the height of the migrant/refugee crisis.

Here's an imperfect map representation of the results.

As we see Hungarians are not special in any way; they fall into the middle of the pack when it comes to tolerance/intolerance; hardly the country in the brink of a Nazi takeover.


The question rather is: why so many articles pushing distorted half-facts or straight-out lies to support this agenda? Why do they spend so much time and effort to demonise a small, inconsequential country?


I have to say I have no idea. If you know the answer, please let me know.