A nagy álvita – avagy a Magyarországról szóló „vita” koregráfiájáról

Amióta kirobbant a vita a magyar médiatörvényről a nemzetközi sajtóban, és amióta a Fidesz kétharmadot szerzett, több külföldön megrendezett vitán is jelen lehettem, ahol természetesen Schöpflin György is védte a mundér becsületét. A nagyjából két éve zajló vitasorozat sok kérdést felvet, sok mindenen elgondolkodtat. Leginkább a(z ál)vita és vitakultúra állapotát illetően, az érvelés minőségét és szintjeit, a vádaskodás és cáfolat lehetetlen koreográfiáját, a meggyőzés és manipuláció összemosását, az érzelemvezéreltséget – a legtöbb esetben ezek az érzelmek negatívak, indulatosak – , és nem utolsósorban a személyeskedést, és a másik totális megsemmisítésének élvezetét.

A külföldi Magyarországról szóló nyilvános (ál)vitáknak van egy állandó koreográfiája, és valahogy a benne részt vevők is hasonló szerepeket játszanak el. Itt hozzátenném, hogy a külföldi vita idegen nyelven zajlik, ami valljuk be, nem éppen egy fair állapot. A helyzet interpretálásában tehát nem csak egy egynyelvű közvetítés van, hanem az idegen nyelv sajátos kulturális szövete, és ráadásul kevesen vannak ezen tudások birtokában.

A koreográfia azonban már a kiindulópontban megbicsaklik, csak ezt valahogy soha nem sikerül leleplezni, nevezetesen, hogy nem az ártatlanság és a jószándék az előfeltevés, hanem a vádak. Az ártatlanság vélelme a Magyarországot ért kritikákban meg sem jelenik. Ahogy voltaképpen a folyamatok sem érdekelnek senkit, és a nemzetközi összehasonlítások sem igazán hatásosak. Magyarország egy egyedül álló jelenség. Érdekes...

Tehát a meghívott előadó elmondja az általa valóságnak vélt igazságot, vagy az igazságnak vélt valóságot. Ez amolyan kinyilatkoztatás szerű, és a mondanivaló szent szövegként funkcionál. És ez a második banánhéj a vitában. Szent szövegeket nem szokás kétségbe vonni, a szakralizáltság pedig komoly dolog. Pláne, ha ezt hiteles, „objektív”, el nem kötelezett személyiség mondja (előny, ha nem magyar, de természetesen a térség szakértője, vagy esetleg külföldön élő magyar, és még nagyobb előny, ha az illető újságíró), ezzel a trükkel le lehet szerelni bárkit, hiszen mégis csak egy kívülálló tárgyilagos értékítéletét hallja mindenki. Sőt, még jobb a helyzet, ha „áldozatokat” sikerül megszólaltatni. Az áldozatiságot sem szokás kétségbevonni; sajnálkozni, együttérezni, fejet csóválni viszont annál inkább, már csak azért is, mert az áldozati az erkölcsi magaslat. És íme a nagy álvita harmadik csavarja, az érzelmi motiváltság, a tények szabad alkalmazása és az ebből eredeztethető szabad asszociációs zsibvásár.

A beszélők által elmondottak tökéletességet jelentenek, és ebben a tekintetben egy zárt rendszert alkotnak. A zártság azonban nem csak a beszédet jellemzi, hanem a beszédet követő vita során sajnos kiderül, hogy maga a kognitív szint is zárt: nem befogadók, hanem kirekesztők a szereplők. A vitázó felek egymás érveléseire nem igazán szoktak reflektálni, ami nem meglepő, hiszen igazságok, valóságok és ezek interpretációjának egymással való ütköztetése zajlik. Csillagok háborúja. A vita így egy hatalmas egymás melletti elbeszélésbe sodródik – amolyan csehovi dráma-szerűen, de nem rezignáltságban, hanem a teljes hergeltségben.

És mikor már majdnem elértük a katarzis állapotát, ekkor kapcsolódhat a vitába a közönség. Csak sajnos katarzis helyett, egy újabb ismétlés hullám következik: a vitázó felek echói hangzanak el újra, amolyan önmegerősítő rítusként. Újból leképeződik az eddigi álvita, annyi különbséggel, hogy most már az érzelmi tölteten lehet a hangsúly. Kérdések, álkérdések és provokációk hangzanak el, terepet adva a személyeskedéseknek. Az érvelés, mint módszer szertefoszlik, világossá válik a vita végcélja: a partner diszkvalifikációja és megsemmisítése. Természetesen a vita után sem történik semmi drámai, mindenki épségben marad, hiszen a zárványok, igazságok és valóságok sértetlenül megmaradnak, és folyamatosan újratermelődnek.

Sajnos, ami ebből a koreográfiából hiányzik az a humor, az önreflexivitás képessége, és az esetlegesség elfogadása. Amíg a legtöbb vitázó fél az egyetlen létező igazságban gondolkodik, mindezt objektívnek véli és képtelen önmaga kritikájára, addig minden vita fölösleges. Amíg nem figyel oda a partnere mondanivalójára, és nem tud a mondandó és a személy között különbséget tenni, nem is érdemes nekikezdeni.

Az álvita pedig egy jó módszer a hergelésre, de nem a megbeszélésre.

kng

Transitions, some general thoughts

The Sixth Annual Lennart Meri conference, organised by the Estonian International Centre for Defence Studies, was held in Tallinn on 11-13 May. I was asked to speak at a session entitled “Stolen Promises? Learning from the Ukrainian and Egyptian Revolutions”. This is an edited text of my contribution.

The central objective of institution building must be to bring formal and informal institutions as close to each other as possible. This is much more difficult than appears at first sight, not least because the models – both explicit and implicit – are derived from the alien experience of Europe and US.

But if the gap between the formal and the informal is too great, then the formal institutions will not work as they are supposed to. They are very likely to be captured by informality and, in consequence, they will not generate trust. Crucially, the institutions that are supposed to mediate power between rulers and ruled will be deployed to the advantage of one group against others.

Closing this gap between the formal and informal is especially vital in the construction of legality and the rule of law.

Understanding the sociology of the society in question is essential, otherwise the solutions will not work well. Distinguishing between structural factors and contingent ones is also vital. The world is very diverse, so beware of the one-size fits all universalism.

Thus in societies that are based on extended family systems or patron-client networks or ethno-religious communities, Western-type citizenship concepts will be a façade. Those operating these systems will become adept at using the language that the West expects to hear, but matters will remain at the level of words. Note too that such concealment is well understood in the non-West. It is particularly misleading to refer to these phenomena as “sectarianism” or “nepotism”, because that conceals the sociological reality of the society in question, as well as importing an external normativity.

Design questions.

[1] Deal with the past rapidly, open all the secret police archives, the pain will not last more than a couple of years (GDR). Otherwise, the past will poison the political atmosphere. A lingering sense of injustice is corrosive.

[2] A caesura is very helpful, a revolution or a narrative of revolution is useful here (the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic is one example). A radical break between the past and the future can also help to marginalise the members of the ancien regime. If the carry-over from the past is too great, then this can be a serious brake on political development and carries with the dangers of some kind of a restoration.

[3] A citizenship concept should be formulated early on, not least as part of the new constitutional order. It should be inclusive, but not wholly open otherwise people will conclude that it’s not worth that much. If religion is a part of your society, then make it explicit, give it a formal role in the system. The secularised West finds this very difficult to understand.

[4] Crucially, start from the existing social structure and from ideology or aspirations or wish fulfilment fantasies. Do not accept unthinkingly what Western advisers tell you (read Janine Wedel’s book Collision and Collusion). The straightforward import of institutions is seldom successful anyway.

[5] Note that society’s expectations of change will intensify (rising expectations) and these cannot all be met. The lack of society’s political experience can mean expectations that are impossible to meet in practice; the result can be a kind of naïve cynicism.

[6] Do not neglect the symbols and rituals that sustain political systems (the West, with its mythic narrative of rationality does not really understand this). They are a way of including quite disparate groups.

[7] Equality and inequality. Once you reach a certain level of economic wellbeing, equivalence is a better goal. There will never a wholly equal distribution of power, but access to power, opportunity and status can remain open, even in plural societies, i.e. ethnically divided. The quest for full equality is dystopic and can legitimate authoritarian patterns of redistribution.

Sch. Gy.

 

From Occupation to Occupation: Hungary’s Brief Encounter with Democracy 1944-1947

A conference was held in the European Parliament on the 9 May with the title “Occupation after Liberation”. This is a somewhat expanded version of my contribution .

Hungary was a German ally in the Second World War from 1941 and took major losses – around 100,000 casualties – at Voronezh. In exchange, as it were, it received back some of the (mostly) Hungarian-inhabited territories that it had lost under the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. At the same time, Hungary was not a Nazi state. While constrained to undertake forced labour and subjected to other forms of discrimination, Jews were not threatened with extermination. More remarkably, the Social Democrats were still sitting Parliament and, given wartime conditions, the press remained relatively free. Clandestine negotiations with the Allies continued and was a source of growing irritation to the Germans. In March 1944, they occupied Hungary, launched the extermination of the Jews that claimed over half a million victims and eventually allowed a Hungarian Nazi regime (the Arrow Cross) to take power (October 1944).

The Red Army entered Hungary in the same month, began the siege of Budapest in December, and ended hostilities on Hungarian soil in April 1945. There were enormous losses and terrible devastation.

The Hungarian communists were weak with perhaps 800 members at the end of the war. They had the unique distinction of having run the only failed communist regime, the 133 days of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, to look back on, hence it had to rely very extensively on Soviet backing to achieve its aims. The Allied Control Commission was largely run by the Kremlin and was a primary actor in this process. The communists’ appetite grew with the eating. They began expecting a major success in the November 1945 elections, but gained only 17 percent.

A kind of partial democracy existed until 1947, though it was constantly attacked by the communists with the active support of the Soviets. The 1945 coalition government was a decidedly strange institution in that it included its own opposition, the left. The communists did what they could to destabilise the government from within, above all to destroy the unity of the majority Smallholders – this was the so-called “salami tactics”, destroying the Smallholders slice by slice. The communists simultaneously took control of the machinery of state when and where they could and repeatedly sabotaged the policies of the democratic forces. The communists had two further advantages – they were untainted by the failures of the interwar years and, equally, given their association with the Soviet Union, they basked in the reflected glory of being on the winning side in the Second World War, something which could not be said of the right. Their actions were marked by great dynamism, unscrupulousness and a readiness to employ terror against their opponents.

As against this, strategically, Hungary was of secondary significance to the Kremlin and probably it had not definitively decided what future Hungary (and Czechoslovakia) should have in the communist system. This allowed the non-communists some hope that they could survive as political forces. It was not to be.

By late 1947, it was made clear (at Szklarska Poręba) that full communist control in the Stalinist mode was to be the future. This situation was exacerbated by the breach with Tito in 1948 (Hungary was the front line against Jugoslavia and a planned invasion would have used Hungarian territory). The Social Democrats were “merged” with the CP in 1948 and other parties, not least those which had performed well in the 1947 elections, were banned. The CP itself was purged, Moscow style, beginning in 1949 with classical show trials, torture, confessions, executions, the lot – they can be seen as a purification ritual, carrying the message that the party was omnipotent and omniscient. The brief encounter with democracy was well and truly over.

Stalinisation followed rapidly, with Soviet advisors to lend a hand when and where the Hungarian comrades were proving inadequate. From 1950 onwards, the bourgeoisie was deported to the countryside in appalling conditions (many died). Collectivisation drove tens of thousands of peasants into newly established factories, again in appalling conditions and coercion continued to be the CP’s primary instrument of power. Between 1952 and 1955 (four years), 1.1 million people were interrogated by the forces of coercion, and some 450,000 were interned or imprisoned, i.e. 5 percent of the population.

There is no time to examine how 1956 Revolution came about, but the event was, indeed, revolutionary. Its objectives were the rejection of all previous systems, the creation of new institutions (like the workers’ councils) and mass participation. The revolution was committed to freedom and to democracy through multiparty elections, though without any return to capitalism. It’s another question whether this would have worked. The Red Army returned to suppress the revolution, trials and executions followed (c.500 people), and around 250,000 persons left the country (c.100,000) returned. This was the third communist takeover in Hungary ((1919, 1948, 1956) and the fourth time that a Russian army invaded the country (1849, 1915, 1944, 1956).

But the revolution, though it had failed, left a deep mark on Hungary. It set up limits for both rulers and the ruled. The party was thoroughly traumatised by its evident collapse as an institution and the realisation that the people – workers, peasants, intellectuals – were utterly hostile to communism. Hungarian society, on the other hand, understood that it was powerless against communism as long as the USSR was prepared to use the Red Army (cf. Czechoslovakia 1968). Change came only in the 1980s when Gorbachev signalled that the Red Army would no longer shield the CP against the people.

The communist mindset, however, lives on, it influences the communist successor party (the rebranded socialists) and takes the form of not accepting alternative views of the world, as well as regarding power as something to be monopolised. At the same time, the fact that the Western left has unthinkingly embraced the former communists means that the Western left has uncritically accepted the communist past and mindset.

Sch. Gy.

Multiculturalism

The Minorities Intergroup of the European Parliament recently discussed multiculturalism. This text is an edited version of my contribution; it draws on the chapter on the same topic in my recently published “Politics, Illusions,Fallacies”.

Multiculturalism was regarded as one of the sacred, not to say sacralised elements of Europe’s social-cultural processes and this is still largely the case, although it has been pronounced dead by both David Cameron and Angela Merkel. But this immediately raises a much more difficult question – how do we know that multiculturalism has failed?

First of all, the success/failure criteria of multiculturalism were never properly defined, indeed a great deal about multiculturalism has never been defined and that is where the problems start. So what exactly is it, is multiculturalism a process or a state of being? Does it have an end-goal, a social product that can be identified? Has the identification of multiculturalism changed over time and does it vary from country to country? We can’t tell, for the reason stated above.

What follows is an attempt to make sense of this phenomenon. There are various options, which can overlap or be in contradiction, but that is a part of the story and, it may suggested, is the price to be paid for the initial lack of clarity.

= So, multiculturalism can be said to be a strategy to integrate non-European migrants into the European majority population.

= Then, multiculturalism is a form of cultural sharing, whereby majorities make room for immigrant minorities and “celebrate” diversity together, but then what is to be shared, what is not? What areas and forms of diversity are open to be pursued? Because these were never defined, and probably never could be defined with complete precision, notionally any cultural practice could be freely pursued, sometimes even when these collided with the law and certainly when they might be in conflict with the norms of the majority.

= Generally, multiculturalism is treated as a morally virtuous process, because it makes ethnic identity – the ethnic identity of majorities – impossible or at any rate invisible, as the minority cultures dilute those of majorities. Ethnicity is seen as evil, because it produces nationalism and nationalism causes war (as in the collapse of Jugoslavia). Note: that minority ethnicity is (somehow) virtuous. Who decided this?

= Alternatively, multiculturalism is (maybe) motivated by a dream or project of a single humanity, in which cultural differences are secondary and are bound to disappear; if so, we are looking at a really major social engineering project, and it is not clear whether those promoting it are aware of the implications of what they are doing. There is a strange similarity here to Khrushchev’s project, of the merger of the Soviet population through a threefold or three-stage process, “flourishing, coming together and fusion”, (razvitie, sblizhenie, sliyanie).

= Then, arguably, multiculturalism is actually something rather less virtuous than it appears: it is, in fact, a strategy for ensuring that European majorities do not have to accept immigrants as their cultural equals, and simultaneously denies migrants the possibility of becoming full members of the majority’s community of cultural intimacy, because they have to remain multicultural. In effect, this revives racial – not necessarily racist – differentiation via the backdoor.

However, there is a good deal more.

There is a tacit assumption in multiculturalism that immigrants arrive with only the surface aspects, the folkloric aspects of a different culture, like dress codes and cuisines, but not that every culture is structured around a deep-level code of ethics and ways of life. Furthermore, multiculturalism as practised entirely ignored the class aspects of the migrants, above all their mostly peasant status. The journey from peasant to citizen was largely completed in Europe by the 1960s and the lessons learned were not applied to the immigrants in question – the reality that immigrants brought their rural values with them, that integration was a multi-dimensional process

Nor was there any attempt to understand the role played by the extended family outside Europe. Europe is deviant here. Hence the primacy of family relationships and obligations tends to be dismissed as nepotism, cronyism and corruption.

Religion: in an alien context, this becomes a key resource for sustaining identity. Again, Europe is deviant in being substantially more secular than any other part of the world, the US included. European modernity is defined by its secularism, its anti-religious, a-religious and irreligious attitudes. This is not at all true for other parts of the world.

Equally crucial was that the terms of multiculturalism and integration were invariably defined by the majority. This meant that the majority determined which bits of the minority culture qualified for recognition as a part of multiculturalism and which did not. Transmission and reproduction of the language were definitely not a part of multiculturalism. Attempts by immigrants to transmit the language to the next generation and to sustain it are dismissed as “divisive”.

It is worth noting that the consent of the European majorities was never sought, multiculturalism was and remains an elite project; its democratic legitimacy is doubtful, though majorities mostly accept it.

Besides, immigration was sold to the public as an economic device, as a way of enlarging the labour force especially for jobs that majorities were no longer willing to do, but this not only failed to recognise immigrant cultures, but treated the immigrants as economic units and not much else, as empty vessels. This is deeply dehumanising.

Note, too, that multiculturalism never applied to intra-European migrants. Is there a whiff of racism, about this? Thus intra-European migrants, who are “white” could, should and did assimilate. Think about Italians in the UK or Croats in Germany or Poles in France.

Nor did multiculturalism apply to historic minorities, and again the question arises, why not? Notionally because it was a rather muddled strategy for dealing with non-European immigrants, but then what concept of culture are we dealing with?

Multiculturalism further raises the question of citizenship, and indeed this is a central issue in the area of integration. The normative principle is that citizenship concepts in Europe are and should be alike. Tacitly they should provide the individual with a set of rights, to regulate the relationship between the individual and the state in a more or less identical fashion. This position seriously ignores the diversity of cultures that serve as the underlying basis of citizenship even within Europe, it assumes that the functioning of the state is a culture-free zone and that policies are implemented in much the same way.

A moment’s thought will show how untenable this proposition is. The cultural assumptions of the majority will inform the quality of the state to a very large extent and infuse it with what are, in effect, ethnic norms. Not least, every state machinery has its own past, its own tradition and memory, its own norms, its own attitudes towards society; interaction with society necessarily means the adoption of the history, values, narratives of the latter, otherwise the state will be regarded as an alien power. For what it’s worth, this was, broadly, one of the problems of communism, that it was regarded as alien and operated in many respects as a colonial system.

It is simply untrue, as the assumption has it, that majorities have no ethnicity; they do and to say otherwise is nothing more than denial.  Thus thought-style theory shows that the French state is very French, the British state is English and so on. There is nothing surprising about this - the problem lies in the denial made necessary by the adoption of multiculturalism.

Hence what we have is a kind of pretence, one that also has the consequence that ethno-linguistic minorities, historic minorities, are dangerous, because they show up the ethnic quality of the majority; they make it difficult  to administer the state evenly, as the uniform distribution of authority is constantly challenged; the language issue implies a contest over the primacy of high culture within one state and raises the question of whether there can be two or more? Can there be two public spheres in the same state, cf. Belgium?

So basically there are several flaws in multiculturalism as understood and practised. The majority decides what multiculturalism actually means. At the same time, the collectivity into which immigrants are to be integrated is, to some extent, being denied its own cultural identity, so there is much less into which migrants can be integrated. A civic identity is “cold”, the bonds of cultural intimacy and solidarity do not come into being, resulting in types of exclusion.

Hence the migrants, to make sense of the world in which immigrants now find themselves, they will use whatever raw materials are available to construct and reproduce a collective identity to offer answers, these are:

(a) parallel societies and networks, to provide security;

(b) the extended family, with corresponding codes of obligation, honour, regulation and exclusion, irreconcilable with citizenship;

(c) religion: notably Islam, Hinduism, certain forms of Christianity;

(d) “racism”. Whatever negative experiences immigrants encounter can be explained by the racism of the majority; note too that reverse racism is not a part of how “racism” is defined. This process is encouraged by a section of majority elites, and some have invested heavily in the “racism” concept. Behaviour by the majority can invariably be viewed through the lens of “racism” even when it may have nothing to do with it, but in essence any differentiation by majorities made by the attribution of cultural traits is now classed as racism. Note further that this does not work in reverse, as minorities appear free to discriminate against majorities. This creates a dichotomous concept of majority and minority, and incidentally undermines the idea of sharing and celebrating diversity.

Racism as a concept, process and social construct does have two important though unintended consequences – it provides immigrants with a high level of security by significantly redefining their identity against the majority, reducing it to a single factor and thereby excluding ambiguity and doubt. Racism, in the sense used here, functions as a boundary mechanism and filter. At the same time, it potentially offers an explanation for everything that affects an individual (in contact with the majority world) and creates a simultaneous obstacle to understanding it, by making it possible to define the lifeworld in terms of racism and not much else. Ironically, of course, this means that the social role played by racism ends up severely delimiting the very diversity it is supposed to underpin and protect. Single factor explanations tend to produce outcomes of this kind.

The outcome has been the construction of a European-immigrant identity. This can probably be further broken down on a state-by-state basis, with the result that immigrants remain estranged from their host community and, at the same time, from their countries of origin.

So, what to do? Accept that the multiculturalism concept as evolved has failed. In so far as it had an otherwise undefined “integration” as its success criterion, it has not attained it. Clearly, there is a need to rethink what to do with the second and third generation of immigrants, where the estrangement is more acute than with the first.

In thinking about this, it is best to begin by defining what one wants to attain, the failure/success criteria, in other words. Start from existing sociological realities, not from ideological assumptions (like majorities being “inherently racist”). Make it clear, in the light of the failure, that the rules of the game have changed, that a new design is to be elaborated, above all that integration means just that, acceptance of the majority’s rule-making, obligations and moral codes. In exchange, immigrants must be offered full membership of the community of cultural intimacy and solidarity. Some members of the majority will certainly resist this. So will some (many?) immigrants, who have come to accept their parallel societies. These cannot be dismantled coercively, but they must accept majority regulation where appropriate.

Furthermore, it must be made very clear that certain cultural practices will not be tolerated and, if they persist, they will attract maximum penalties – honour killings, female circumcision, intolerance of gender equality all fall into this category, as repugnant to the moral codes of the majority. Such practices can be stamped out, in the way that sati, widow burning, was largely eliminated under British rule in India. Accept, too, that there will loud cries of “racism” when an immigrant community’s cultural practices are challenged, let alone subject to penalties.

Accept finally that there is no easy road to integration, no short cuts; acculturation is complex and, often enough, painful. Look back to the peasant model; this is a major and undervalued success story in Europe. Make the exit from parallel societies worthwhile through full acceptance of those who make this choice.

Sch. Gy.

Some thoughts on liberal universalism

This entry was inspired by a coincidence of two pieces of writing that were published at more or less same time, late March-early April. David Goodhart’s essay on left and right appeared in Prospect, while Frank Furedi’s two pieces were part of his regular output.

Goodhart’s argument is about what the left needs to do if it is to recover the territory it has lost to right, but what is equally interesting (in this context) is his understanding of what being leftwing means in our time. To be fair, both writers are largely embedded in an Anglo-Saxon thought-world without being particularly aware of this, so Goodhart’s model of the left is far more UK-US centred than he recognises, but this is less important than it might seem, given that what happens in the US arrives in one form or another in Europe too, though frequently it arrives in the UK first.

In sum, Goodhart’s assumption is that liberal individualism is universalist, suspicious of national loyalties – indeed, they probably elide the distinction between national and nationalist – put individual freedom above collective loyalties and are uneasy with tradition, authority and the sacred. Further, he writes, those on the left “are usually deeply concerned with social justice and unfairness and also suspicious of appeals to religion or to human nature to justify any departure from equal treatment”. His definition of liberalism is committed to fairness and justice and, similarly, to eliminating harm and suffering; these are the two principal moral intuitions that he attributes to liberalism.  Conservatism adds group loyalty, authority and respect for the sacred. Note that his understanding of the last is remote from Durkheim’s sacralisation and is defined by Goodhart as being “about the idea that humans have a nobler, more spiritual side and that life has a higher purpose than pleasure or profit”. Durkheim’s concept of the sacred, for the record, is that every human collectivity will insist that certain areas are beyond evaluation, as taboo and as dangerous, sacralising them thereby. The left does this just as much as the right, so, by way of example, it is entirely taboo to claim that men and women are hard-wired for certain abilities, as it must be if all humans have the same cognitive equipment and the rest is epiphenomenal.

Goodhart identifies “sociocentrism” as a legacy of the past, one that he believes the liberal universalists treat with disapproval, as they logically must if they believe in a single humanity in which differentiation is insignificant. The problem is that such differentiation is not insignificant at all, far from it, indeed it keeps reappearing – having been expelled with a pitchfork, yet it always returns (tamen usque recurret, to quote the original). Basically group loyalty lives and universalism has no idea what to do with it. In a historical perspective, it never could. The thought that numerous individuals, if not all, prefer to come together in groups and form collectivities as a key constitutive element of their individual identities – the collective and the individual simultaneously – is not only real, but adds up to such a powerful challenge to liberals that they have preferred to side-step it.

That, however, is not where the gravamen of Furedi’s counterargument is located. His proposition is, in reality, far more damaging to the universalist liberals than their failure to accept the wider moral intuitions of the right. No, where the blow is devastating is in his charge (my formulation, not his) that if the liberals believe that they are living in a free society, one where individuals have extensive capacity to determine their lives and are endowed with agency – then, they are wholly and utterly mistaken. Furedi has long been a (fairly) lone voice in arguing that the state has established control over areas of life that have a far-reaching impact on individual freedom, the very thing that, per Goodhart, liberal democracy has provided.

Furedi’s charge is wide-ranging. He notes, inter alia, the creeping tolerance of intolerance – paradox or not – that certain forms of tolerance, like the identification of forms “hate speech” and racism, are suppressed, remarking, “the metaphor zero tolerance also implies notions of zero-judgment and zero discretion. These are policies that are meant to be applied arbitrarily and punish without regard to circumstances.” Then, there is medicalisation and consequent therapeutic intervention in people’s lives by social, psychological and medical professionals who impose their ideas on others without appeal. The secrecy of children’s courts in Britain and their complete arbitrariness is a particularly egregious example. The tendency to pathologise human relationships, notably as between men and women, is underpinned by “modern society’s intense suspicion of the way human beings conduct themselves in their relationships”. In effect, what Furedi is arguing, and this is irrefutable, is that the modern state is not only exercising growing vigilance over society, but has established an official vigilantism, thereby seriously eroding citizenship.

The rise of the UK’s surveillance state is another illustration of the same phenomenon, one that the liberals tend to ignore. There is a fundamental dilemma at the heart of this development anyway, the impossible trade-off between security and freedom. This is as clear an illustration of Isaiah Berlin’s incommensurability of certain values as one could hope for. The liberal left looks at it, maybe utters some feeble protests, tacitly sees that there is nothing it can do about it and carries on, preferring not to deal with such a radical contradiction and threat to liberal values. The foregoing can be extended in yet another direction. Liberal universalists are notionally committed to individual freedom and agency. This ought to mean that liberalism should be entirely hostile to schemes of social engineering. The evidence indicates that contrary. In many areas the state intervenes and liberals simply accept, if not, indeed, support it. The inconsistency is passed over in silence.

In one important respect social engineering projects have been a part of the left’s thought-world since the Enlightenment. There was and is a normative quality to liberalism, or if not a quality then certainly a temptation that liberals act as moral legislators of the universe, as cogently set out in Zygmunt Bauman’s Legislators and Interpreters. Until recently a central plank in the left’s platform was the redistribution of material goods relying on the state as rational actor to secure this. This appears to have been superseded by a shift towards the redistribution of values, but again relying on the mechanism of state power and mostly without countervailing mechanisms to empower society and the individual.

Then, whereas the old left focused on class as the primary cleavage, liberal universalism tends to forget about class, indeed it is uncomfortable with such cleavages, as it must logically be – all humans are human first and foremost, not members of a class or ethnic group or anything else that could be divisive. The result that, in consequence, the (new) liberal left ignores the reality and aspirations of a sizeable section of society is neither here nor there. This abandonment of these social strata explains their positive response to the blandishments of the populist left and right, something that the liberal left can only condemn.

Furedi remarks, further, that the emergence of  “the idea that human beings are damaged, that men are innately violent”, is a proposition that is untested and unproved, and for that matter directly contradicts the assumptions of human goodness that underlie liberal universalism. On the other hand, it is extremely helpful in legitimating the constant intervention, regulation and organising undertaken by the state, despite the self-regarding narrative of a commitment to democracy and freedom.

A couple of thoughts are worth adding to this debate. The first is about contingency. Neither the liberals nor the state regulators appear capable of recognising their contingency, their own time-bound and space-bound reality, which incidentally also means culture-bound. They act as if they genuinely did have access to the philosopher’s stone (with or without the help of Harry Potter), so their sincerity is not to be doubted. Except that sincerity is an aggravating condition, because it makes the bearers and agents of these ideas particularly resistant to counterargument. Try debating with a bureaucrat about the regulation in the name of which she is about to deny you something. No, there is no contingency around, those involved are acting in the name of an absolute and refuse to recognise that it has only been defined as an absolute in a thoroughly arbitrary fashion.

There is a deep-seated irony in all this. The liberal left sees itself as the legatee of the Enlightenment and as the guarantor and bearer of rationality in the world. This may be so, but there is one little problem. In the post-Enlightenment world there are not supposed to be absolutes, those went out with religion, did they not? Out through the door, back through the window, it would seem.

The reliance on there being “innate” qualities is also interesting, not to say alarming. On the one hand, liberalism (as defined here) excoriates racism and biological factors as the basis of difference and, for that matter, extends the concept of racism to pretty much anything that it dislikes. The acceptance of the innate, however, completely undermines this excommunication of the biological and, for all practical purposes, says that, yes, well, racism is dreadful, but then there are circumstances – we say what these are – when it’s quite ok. Note too that the alleged innate violence attributed to men is tacitly a feature only of whites; attributing it to blacks would really challenge one taboo too far. And that is what shows up not only the arbitrary quality of the enterprise, but its contradictory nature and, above all, its contingency, the one that its perpetrators will never recognise. Why should they, after all it provides them with a decidedly useful addition to their discursive armoury?

Sch. Gy.

Serbia debate in the European Parliament

The European Parliament held a debate on the report on Serbia written by the rapporteur, Jelko Kacin; I was the shadow rapporteur for the EPP. This was my contribution to the debate.

 

Congratulations to Mr Kacin, this is a thorough and cogent report.

Serbia has been granted candidate status and, at the same time, elections are to be held in early May. Hence this report can serve as a guide for the next Serbian government in its stance towards Europe.

A great deal has been done to make Serbia’s accession feasible, and the country should receive due credit for these efforts. However, and the report makes this clear, this does not mean that all is done and dusted, far from it.

There are many areas where the Serbian system of government and, for that matter, governance, demand a major overhaul before they meet EU criteria. One of these areas is very serious – this is where legal provision is used, indeed abused, to eliminate competition and to stultify the market in favour of insiders. It is all the worse that this practice is undertaken in the name of the fight organised crime.

Then, there is Kosovo. All candidate countries have to come to terms with their neighbours, whatever the antecedents. This means that Serbia has to confront Kosovo’s independence and abandon illusions that somehow, one day, Kosovo will again be a part of the Serbian state. It will not.

Third, while Serbia has made a number of steps in the direction of providing equal status for its non-Serbian minorities, Serbia’s citizenship concept is not yet sufficiently inclusive to provide full rights to some non-Serbian groups, notably the Romanian-speakers of the Timok valley and the Bulgarian minority. The model developed in the Vojvodina, of minority councils, should be extended to the rest of the country.

The next government will have plenty on its plate.

Sch. Gy.

Hungarian Realities

Understanding another country - its politics, society culture, preconceptions - is always more difficult than appears at first sight. Matters are made worse when those whose job it is to "translate" a country don't make a particularly good job of it. One of the factors that make this understanding difficult is what might be called "the discursive deficit". The voice of a small culture with its own very different language is by definition weaker than that of a large cultural community - English is universally understood, Hungarian is not. The result is that what is known about Hungary will necessarily include misunderstandings, blank spots, ignorance, prejudice and an impatience with the explanations that the smaller country provides, especially if these explanations do not fit the expectations of the "translators". The outcome is all too often a set of naturalised, reductionist beliefs treated as fact, and these beliefs are extremely difficult to shake. What we have, in effect, is a wholesale neglect of evidence-based argument and its replacement by ideology, prejudice or ignorance, which can reasonably be called an epistemological closure. In the Hungarian case this attitude has gone so far that we can safely speak of a presumption of guilt regarding whatever the Hungarian government says or does. For all practical purposes, it has to prove its innocence.

The starting point for any accurate assessment of Hungary is that it is a deeply divided society. There are two radically different narratives - one from the left and one from the right - and the two have minimal respect for one another. It is all but impossible for outsiders to recognise or understand or accept this. The concept of there being something like two Hungarian societies, each with its own idea of the truth, is entirely alien to the ideal-typical model of a democratic European state. Yet that is the Hungarian reality. Listening to only one side will automatically distort one's understanding of what is going on in Hungary.

From the above it follows that the international media represent only one side of the argument, only one of the two narratives is reflected, that which is closer to one's own preconceptions. The narrative that the media have accepted is that of the left, that of the opposition and it adds up to the assumption that what the left says is the sole truth. A glance at The Guardian’s website, for one, will show that the overwhelming majority of articles on Hungary are hostile to the present government – some are neutral – indicating that even the pretence of even-handedness is absent. What the left says and how it communicates unquestionably have a better fit with the prior assumptions of most Western journalists, who are inherently suspicious of power and especially of centre-right governments.

The full list of charges against the Fidesz government is long and invariably based on a distortion or a misunderstanding. Here is a partial list:

- under the new constitution abortion has been banned. No, it has not.

- judges of the constitutional court are obliged to take early retirement. Not so.

- the powers of the constitutional court have been drastically curtailed. No, they remain the same, except that the court may not intervene in budgetary matters which are the preserve of parliament.

- the new electoral law overtly favours Fidesz. No it does not, as several analyses have demonstrated.

- the independence of the central bank has been eliminated. Untrue.

- the institution of marriage is the union of a man and a woman. This is correct, but does not affect same-sex civil partnerships. Besides, this was already established by the 1949 constitution as revised in 1989-1990, i.e. no change.

- the media law has put an end to the freedom of expression. Only someone who knows no Hungarian and does not read the media can say this. The reality is that there is constant, far-reaching criticism of the government published in the media.

- the Media Authority has been filled by Fidesz cronies. The members of the Media Authority are professionals; how they vote is immaterial.

- Klub rádió was denied a new licence because it was critical of the Government. No, Klub rádió’s application for the renewal of its frequency was rejected because it failed to meet the required technical and legal specifications. It would have broken the law to have renewed it.

- the citizenship law, which makes it possible for Hungarians living in the neighbouring countries to acquire Hungarian citizenship, is an assault on those neighbours. In fact, Hungary is bringing its legislation into line with the equivalent Slovak, Croatian and Romanian citizenship laws; these have not troubled anyone.

- Fidesz is covertly in league with Jobbik. No, it is not, and a brief glance at Jobbik’s regular criticism of Fidesz in the harshest terms will demonstrate that there is no collusion between Fidesz and Jobbik.

In this light with such an enormous quantity of misinformation (and even disinformation) in circulation, it is not surprising that it is extremely difficult for non-Hungarian media, for diplomats, for NGOs, civil society to accept the deep divide that constitutes the reality of Hungarian politics. It is even more difficult for them to see that the Hungarian left takes no prisoners where the Fidesz government, and above all the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, are concerned. Hungarian readers and viewers have become used to the extreme language that passes for political conversation in Hungary. Outsiders may discount some of the demonisation that the left routinely allows itself, but will assume that some of it must be true.

This manifest failure to grapple with Hungarian realities, and the readiness to rely on convenient clichés like "populism", "extremism", "xenophobia" and "anti-Semitism" (all used against the Hungarian government), makes a mockery of journalistic objectivity, neutral reporting and journalistic detachment - the assumptions that underpin and legitimate journalism. These clichés establish an opponent or an enemy, with those engaged in the "struggle" against them occupying the high moral ground. Too often, those who report on Hungary accept what their interlocutors tell them and fail to interrogate their sources.

In this light, it is not surprising that the context of Hungarian politics today is mostly absent from the way in which Hungary and the Hungarian government are treated. Crucial here is the absence of any consideration of how and why the centre-right obtained a two-thirds majority in the 2010 elections and what its project has been since.  The eight years in office of the centre-left (2002-2010) were a complete disaster in terms of the welfare of society, the furthering of a democratic political culture and, above all, clean government - on the contrary, the left was unbelievably corrupt. The leftwing parties never accepted or acknowledged their years of bad governance.

The central point here is that both the political and the economic system were in tatters, to such an extent that whoever had won the elections would have had to introduce far-reaching changes. The reality was that the system in Hungary was at best a façade democracy. The left behaved as if its success in winning the 2006 elections gave it the right to rule as if there were no opposition, no civil society, no democratic infrastructure to sustain. In this context it is important to note that the division in Hungarian society was also reflected in civil society; left wing NGOs very seldom criticised the Gyurcsány government. The response of the human rights NGOs to the violent suppression of the 23 October Fidesz demonstrations of that year was virtually inaudible.

Gyurcsány’s so called “lying speech”, in which he admitted that the left had won the elections by lying, not only left his government with next to no legitimacy, but undermined society’s trust in democracy, certainly where the left was concerned. Above all institutional authority was weak, the state machinery worked badly – all too often state institutions were used to the benefit of the left or even as money laundries – and the essential trust between government and society was massively eroded. It is worth adding that in a society as divided as Hungary’s, it is extraordinarily difficult to operate institutions. Neither side accepted the legitimacy and authority of the other, hence institutions and regulation were assumed to be a part of party political activity. Few people accepted the neutrality of the state and local government and saw political motivation in what they did. The spreading corruption only exacerbated this state of affairs. For all practical purposes, there was no uniform distribution of authority.

Fidesz’s two-thirds majority was regarded, therefore, not just as a devastating defeat for the left, but as a mandate to restore good governance and to ensure that the damage done by the left could never be repeated. The left’s disastrous eight years in power had a further, unexpected consequence – the striking strengthening of the radical right in the form of Jobbik. Jobbik has been as much a part of the opposition since 2010 as the left and constant attempts by the left to assert that Fidesz and Jobbik are one and the same only demonstrates the intellectual desperation or the political cynicism of the left or both. For that matter, these attempts by the left to argue that there is no real difference between Fidesz and Jobbik point towards a deeper problem, namely that the Hungarian left appears to have no theory of the democratic centre-right and, hence, to assume that they and they alone own democracy.

Fidesz’s far-reaching reform programme should, therefore, be seen in this light, as a serious project to ensure that democratic institutions work properly, that corruption is rooted out thoroughly and, perhaps most importantly, that trust in politics – at a low ebb by 2010 – is restored, that the relationship between government and society is based on reciprocity. Inevitably, a programme as thoroughgoing as Hungary’s has generated opposition as vested interests are tackled, accountability and transparency are reinstituted, as working habits in the public sphere are upgraded and as the political culture of the country is slowly changed.  History will tell how successful the transformation is.

The neglect of this context, which, of course, is entirely to the advantage of the left, and indeed the easy ride given by international opinion to the centre-left government, are seen in Hungary as the seed-bed of misunderstanding and inconsistency. The latter is a potent source of resentment.

What is highly ironic in all this is that no one seems to have noticed that the Hungarian government and opposition exist in a kind of negative reciprocity. The left has constructed its identity around the proposition that Fidesz is in league with the devil, that it is racist, xenophobic and somehow the embodiment of evil. Fidesz sees the left, and thus derives some of  its own legitimacy, from the proposition that it is irresponsible, corrupt and has never been willing to shed its communist-era baggage, the human rights violations committed during the communist era most of all. This negative interdependence is an aspect of the polarisation that allows the left to ignore the aspirations of Hungarian society and Fidesz to regard the external dependence of the Hungarian left as illegitimate. This assessment seldom if ever forms a part of the picture that the media paint.

Those who deal with Hungary consistently and systematically neglect several other key factors that are vital to understanding realities, notably the solid support that the government continues to enjoy, despite a deteriorating economic situation. The pro-government demonstration of the 21 January saw around 400,000 people in the streets of Budapest. This was severely underreported, whereas the much smaller anti-government demonstration of the 2 January was given far more attention. Many Hungarians are aware of this double standard and resent it.

Nor has anyone noticed - or so it would appear - the effect of these attacks on Hungarian opinion - the marked strengthening of support for Fidesz, but also for Jobbik, the right-radical party which currently enjoys the support of around a quarter of the electorate, about the same as the three left-wing parties combined. So much for unintended consequences. A further such consequence is that the attacks are helpful to the government in providing grounds for arguing that external intervention is distorting the government's strategy. It is clear that even some of the centre-right critics of Fidesz are lining up behind it under the impact of external criticism.

Correspondingly, the left wing opposition is faced with a gravely weakened domestic legitimation (not to mention popularity) and has opted to look for support abroad. This is an odd state of affairs, when the political opposition in a democratic state has come close to abandoning its voters and tries to sustain itself by mobilising allies abroad, whose Hungarian legitimation is negligible. The effect has, again, been to strengthen support for the government, even from among those who may not be particularly well disposed to Fidesz, but resent what they see as foreign intervention. Besides, this constant criticism of Hungary from abroad by reference to European values has had the further consequence of bringing those values into question, if not actual disrespect.

The role of external actors in the internal affairs of EU member states is an increasingly acute issue (technocratic governments in Greece and Italy, the floating of a proposal to impose a budget commissioner on Greece). The project by the European left to launch a procedure against Hungary under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, which would if successful deprive Hungary of its voting rights, can be placed in this context. This raises a number of intriguing questions. Is the EU an internal actor in relation to a member state or an external one? Where is the boundary line between the two? Can the EU act by majority, without broad consent? How well grounded are the charges against Hungary, because if they are weak, then what we are seeing comes close to a simple political declaration of guilt, in which Hungary's voice is all but inaudible. The hallowed principle of hearing both sides, audi et alteram partem, is being ignored.

This level of intervention in the internal affairs of a member state is generating questions of legitimacy, opposition and mounting scepticism about the value of the EU itself in Hungary, not least because there is no question of reciprocity. External actors seem free to intervene in Hungarian affairs and as far as some are concerned, this certainly includes the destabilisation of the Fidesz government and the ousting of the prime minister. On the other hand, it is inconceivable for Hungary to raise of issues of concern with any hope of being heard, like the anxieties about the Slovak language law which impinges on the rights of the Hungarian minority. The real fear is that small states are being bullied by large states in the name of human rights, (some) European values and leftwing preconceptions, as well as power itself.

External actors are evidently unaware of their role in Hungarian domestic politics. Small countries tend to be far more sensitive to external opinion than large ones. This has given rise to a partially reflexive interaction - Hungarian opinion hears what the foreign actors say, but the reverse is not the case. This generates an intensifying resentment. No one likes it when their domestic affairs undergo sustained intervention from abroad; this explains the placards held up during the 21 January demonstration, "We are not a colony".

In assessing the relationship between Hungary and the EU it is vital to separate out the political and legal dimensions of the story. The legal issues are clear and finite, and are thus open to negotiation and resolution. The political ones are vague and unclear as to what the Hungarian government should do. Matters are exacerbated by habit of the critics of Hungary switching between the two. If the legal objections are met, political ones are raised and vice-versa. In this sense, the rules keep being changed in the midst of the process.

Ultimately it comes down to the question of who decides what European values are, can it be the left alone or must there be a broader consensus? If Hungary is, indeed, found to be in breach of these values, is it the only EU member state that is properly singled out in this way? If not, then should not others also be subjected to infringement procedures and the like? Otherwise a double standard is manifestly in operation. And behind all this there lurks the suspicion that Hungary is being used instrumentally, to deflect attention from shortcomings elsewhere, in the West European member states, which appear to be exporting their guilt eastwards. If this last is accurate, then the role allotted to Hungary is all but accidental. Other states are just as likely to be the target. Indeed, there is more than a suggestion that Romania may be the next on the list.

Sch. Gy.