The Stranger at Hand: Antisemitic Prejudices in Post-Communist Hungary (Jewish Identities in a Changing World, 15)

The Stranger at Hand

Jewish Identities in a Changing World General Editors

Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorny, and Judit Bokser Liwerant

VOLUME 15

The Stranger at Hand Antisemitic Prejudices in Post-Communist Hungary

By

András Kovács

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kovács, András, 1947– Antisemitic prejudices in post-communist Hungary / by András Kovács. p. cm. 1. Antisemitism—Hungary—History—20th century. 2. Antisemitism—Hungary— History—21st century. 3. Hungary—Ethnic relations. 4. Hungary—Politics and government—1989– 5. Right and left (Political science)—Hungary—History—21st century. 6. Jews—Public opinion. 7. Public opinion—Hungary. I. Title. DS146.H9K68 2010 305.892’40439—dc22

2010029482

ISSN 1570-7997 ISBN 978 90 04 19194 5 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Preface ..........................................................................................

vii ix

Chapter I The Antisemitic Discourse after the Fall of Communism ............................................................................. 1. Antisemitism on the Margins ............................................... 2. Antisemitism in the Center .................................................. 3. The Fight for the Past: Struggles of Identity Politics ............ 4. The Chain of Rounds of Discourse .....................................

1 2 6 22 27

Chapter II Antisemitic Prejudices in Hungarian Society between 1994 and 2006 ............................................................ 31 1. Previous Research ................................................................ 32 2. The 1995 Study .................................................................... 40 3. The 2002 Study .................................................................... 92 4. “Old” and “New” Antisemitism: The 2006 Study .............. 123 Chapter III Antisemitic Prejudice and Historical Remembrance of the Holocaust ............................................... 1. Knowledge on the Holocaust ............................................... 2. Holocaust Denial and the “Holocaust Business” Libel between 1995 and 2009 ....................................................... 3. Summary ..............................................................................

137 141 149 176

Chapter IV From Anti-Jewish Prejudice to Political Antisemitism? ............................................................................ 181 Index of Names ............................................................................ 205 Index of Subjects .......................................................................... 207

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In writing this book, I received invaluable help from numerous institutions, fellow researchers, and friends. My research would not have been possible without significant support from Hungarian and foreign institutions, to which I owe special thanks. The 1995 research was supported by grants from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the Soros Foundation, the Hungarian Ministry of Culture, the City Council of Budapest, Budapest Bank, and the American Jewish Committee. The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (SICSA) assisted with the processing of data. The J. and O. Winter Foundation, New York, supported the processing of data on the Holocaust. The analysis of antisemitic discourse in post-transition Hungary was undertaken under the auspices of one of SICSA’s international comparative projects led by Leon Volovici. The 2002 survey was funded by OTKA, while research in 2003 and 2009 was supported by the Holocaust Documentation Center and Memorial Collection Public Foundation, Budapest, as well as the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. The comparative analyses were made possible by a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the hospitality of the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technical University of Berlin. I am indebted to the Central European University and the Research Institute of Ethnic and National Minorities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for allowing me time to undertake the research. Thanks are also due to Gallup Hungary, in particular György Fischer and Róbert Manchin; to MEDIÁN Opinion and Market Research, in particular Endre Hann and Timea Venczel; and to Ipsos Media, Advertisement, Market, and Opinion Research Institute, in particular Ádám Levendel and Tibor Závecz, for conducting the surveys and for providing me with access to data collected during other surveys. When planning and realizing the various research projects on prejudice, I have always been grateful for the advice of Róbert Angelusz, György Fischer, and Róbert Tardos. Researchers Ferenc Ero˝s, Zsolt Enyedi, and Zoltán Fábián involved me in the planning of their projects and selflessly made their data available to me. Consultations with them contributed greatly to the development of the analysis criteria

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used in this book. Mária Székelyi conducted the lion’s share of the analysis of data from the 1995 survey. Szilvia Balassa assisted in analyzing data from the research projects of 2002, 2003, and 2006. József Hack, Attila Novák, and Vera Pécsi undertook the processing of sources in preparation for the analysis of antisemitic discourse. I am extremely grateful to Elizier Ben-Rafael and Yosef Gorny who encouraged me to update my previous writings on the subject and transform them into a book in English. I would like to thank Jennifer Pavelko and Katelyn Chin from Brill for their editorial assistance. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the colleagues and friends whose support and criticism over the years contributed to the writing of this book: the late György Bence, Werner Bergmann, the late Mihály Hamburger, Viktor Karády, Péter Kende, Gábor Klaniczay, Mária M. Kovács, Mónika Kovács, Mihály Laki, Péter Tibor Nagy, Vera Pécsi, Anton Pelinka, Julius H. Schoeps, Gábor T. Szántó, and Ruth Wodak.

PREFACE After the fall of communism, overt antisemitism resurfaced in Hungary. Some observers believed this change was simply an unpleasant consequence of the introduction of free speech: continually existing, but previously hidden antisemitic attitudes and ideas were being expressed more openly, they argued. Others, however, were shocked by what they saw: they feared that the social upheavals of the transition were reviving and strengthening anti-Jewish prejudice, which had undergone a significant decline in earlier decades. The transformation of the political system undoubtedly led to a dismantling of the taboo surrounding antisemitism. Thus, after 1990, there was great anxiety that antisemitism might rapidly gain ground in Hungarian society as it faced the economic and social challenges of the transition. In the two decades since 1990, ordinary observers and the media have noted many instances and forms of antisemitism in Hungary. Nevertheless, opinion remains divided about the significance and weight that one should accord to such occurrences. Some observers consider the fears to be justified: in their view, post-communist antisemitism is a dynamic phenomenon, which could easily gain ground in society and politics if circumstances deteriorate. Other observers, however, are inclined to agree with Anthony Lermann1 that antisemitism is less significant and dangerous in the post-communist era than it was under communism, when it was sometimes supported by the regimes, as in Poland or the Soviet Union. According to their argumentation, the feeling of danger is nurtured above all by the literature on antisemitism, which often ignores fundamental differences between the context of the “new” antisemitism and that of the antisemitism that led to the Shoah. Between the two world wars, antisemitism was one of the central ideologies of ruling totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and powerful totalitarian movements. Today, however, in a democratic and unifying Europe, antisemitic views and movements are

1 Anthony Lermann, “Post-Communist Antisemitism,” in Jews and Antisemitism in the Public discourse of the Post-Communist European Countries, ed. L. Volovici (Lincoln, NE and Jerusalem, forthcoming).

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marginal and in decline. How could antisemitism have much chance in the new Eastern European democracies, they ask, when their heads of state line up to attend the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., offer their unanimous support to the Stockholm Declaration, and when the Red Army Chorus sings the Israeli national anthem, HaTikva, in Hebrew at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Indeed, in modern European societies antisemitic prejudices are tenacious and stubborn, while antisemitic political movements are active almost everywhere, but they have not been able to get close to the center of political power. Even in Eastern Europe, where overt and covert antisemitism has been part of the extreme right, the Polish, Slovak, Romanian, and Hungarian parties representing these attitudes could not influence mainstream politics in the past decades. In 2010, in Hungary, however, something unprecedented happened: an extremist party with openly racist anti-Gypsy demands, using barely concealed antisemitic language, received 17% of the votes in the parliamentary elections. Did the fears of the early 1990s prove prescient? How to explain the awkward developments of recent years? The coexistence of antisemitic prejudices and marginal antisemitic movements is not necessarily an explosive mixture, leading inexorably to political antisemitism as a decisive political factor. The following analysis is based on the premise that while anti-Jewish prejudice is an important factor to be considered in any society, it is more likely to be a prerequisite and indicator of the dynamic of antisemitism rather than its cause. The development of this dynamic is the consequence of the combined effects of several external and internal factors, only one of which is anti-Jewish prejudice. It gathers momentum if, in societies where anti-Jewish prejudices have been present more or less continuously, a “culture” and a language arises that makes use of opinions, myths, and phantasmagorias “about Jews” to interpret situations that are unrelated to Jews or to the role of Jews in society. If, in addition to the antisemites, other people who feel no personal antipathy toward Jews are inclined to use the vocabulary of this language for debating changes, conflicts, decisions, and existential issues, and if antisemitic arguments become, for such people, a considerable though not necessarily acceptable explanation of different events, then the various forms of anti-Jewish hostility can indeed constitute an explosive mix. These factors are considered as the development of anti-Jewish prejudices in Hungary is explored in light of the empirical studies of

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the past twenty years. The principal aim is to reconstruct the range, intensity, and content of anti-Jewish prejudices as well as the changes affecting such prejudices. This book also seeks to establish whether, behind such prejudices, one can identify tendencies indicating the dynamic growth and politicization of antisemitism and the presence in post-communist Hungarian society of an antisemitic group that does (or could) organize scattered prejudice into systematic political antisemitism. The book does not offer a political analysis of the two decades after the collapse of communism in Hungary: Its purpose is to reveal the social background against which the newest political developments should be analyzed, and to determine whether in Hungary today antisemitism is an ephemeral, temporary phenomenon or a gradually articulated, dynamic ideology. Chapter One examines how antisemitic discourse made its appearance in Hungarian public life between 1990 and 1994, a period that preceded the empirical surveys and their subsequent analysis. In the pre-1990 period, antisemitism was expressed in public only rarely and in coded form. Evidently, the anti-Jewish prejudice that surfaced after the political changes of 1989/1990 was strongly influenced by the content and nature of the public antisemitic language that arose following the emergence of a free press and by the public role and prestige of the individuals expressing antisemitic views. This book hypothesizes that changes in popular prejudice reflected changes in public antisemitic discourse, and also indicate its efficiency and the degree of the survival of the antisemitic language as a “sunken cultural asset,” that is, the strength of the dynamic of antisemitism. Chapter Two analyzes the results of empirical studies carried out between 1994 and 2006. Research on prejudice was conducted using five national representative samples (1994, 1995, 2002, 2003, and 2006) and various other studies. Analyzing the relevant database, this chapter offers a composite picture of the intensity, content, and motives of old and new anti-Jewish prejudice and antisemitic groups. Chapter Three deals with the historical memory of the Holocaust and its relationship to antisemitism. It examines whether antisemitic views are concealed behind various seemingly nonantisemitic positions that are often expressed in debates on the wartime persecution of the Jews. It also examines the relevance and current significance of the Holocaust in Hungary. The data collected over fifteen years provide a rare opportunity to demonstrate changes in prejudice over time.

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Chapter Four uses a longitudinal analysis of data to examine the dynamics of antisemitism. This chapter deals with the extent to which the antisemitic prejudices that were identified and measured were transformed into political antisemitism, and whether political antisemitism might become a mainstream political ideology in Hungary.

CHAPTER ONE

ANTISEMITIC DISCOURSE AFTER THE FALL OF COMMUNISM The direct and indirect effects of public antisemitic discourse on antisemitic prejudice are well known. Several historical analyses have demonstrated that it is in this particular milieu that antisemitic vocabulary, language, and discussion topics are established, which are then transformed by members of the social elite into a coherent discourse. Antisemitic intellectuals create the associative links between tensions in society and the “Jewish question,” thereby introducing the language and forums that turn these associations into discursive schemes, which are accepted even by people who would otherwise reject them. The content of antisemitic prejudice and the types of statements that are regarded by prejudiced people as the mainstream view will depend largely on the kind of antisemitic texts that are expressed in public. In what follows, we examine antisemitic literature published in the initial years of the post-communist period (1990–1994), the context in which antisemitic discourse made its appearance in Hungary’s fledgling democracy, and the extent to which this discourse was linked with the major issues and conflicts arising in the course of the country’s political and economic transition. We know from public opinion research that ordinary members of the public are inclined to agree with opinions voiced by leading public figures in authoritative forums. Since the spread of antisemitic (and other) prejudice and its public acceptance are greatly influenced by the extent to which such prejudice is legitimated by society, we shall not only examine the topics of antisemitic discourse but also attempt to ascertain whether it appeared at the center or on the margins of public life and whether it was conducted by leading public figures or by outsiders. We also inquire into the relationship between the antisemitism of the center and that of the periphery. We do not seek to reveal what specific individuals— the authors of the texts—think about Jews. Instead, we focus upon the texts themselves as the object of our analysis, in order to reveal the cognitive structures, linguistic forms, and conceptual contexts established by influential antisemitic commentators during the period. It is

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such structures, forms, and contexts that determine, in the long run, the discursive schemes used to construct antisemitic prejudice. 1. Antisemitism on the Margins 1.1. Fascist and Neofascist Groups Several radical and overtly antisemitic groups appeared on the margins of Hungarian political life in the initial stages of the period under examination: neo-Nazi groups, organizations established by Hungarian fascists living abroad, and Hungarian versions of the skinhead movement. These groups, most of which enjoyed foreign patronage, became the local branches of Western fascist and neofascist organizations.1 The vocabulary, topics, and issues of antisemitism were transposed from the West to the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The literature of such groups, which tended to receive public exposure only indirectly by means of otherwise inaccessible media channels, was characterized by the most primitive racism, Holocaust denial, Nazism, and attempts to rehabilitate the Arrow Cross movement. There was one successful attempt to break out of complete isolation: at a meeting of the neoArrow Cross, the former editor of the Catholic Dominican weekly newspaper declared that the wartime deportation of the Jews had been an act of self-defense and that, after the war, communists had killed people out of malice. Following this event, a newspaper published an interview with the Provincial of the Dominicans in Hungary in which the Catholic leader not only defended the statements already made but also signaled his support for the Arrow Cross movement, which he regarded as having been a natural reaction to excessive Jewish power.2

1 This includes the Gyo˝r-based Magyar Nemzetiszocialista Akciócsoport [Hungarian National Socialist Action Group] and its publication Új Rend, the neo-Arrow Cross group called Magyar Nemzeti Arcvonal [Hungarian National Frontline] and its successor the Világnemzeti Népuralmista Párt [World-National People’s Power Party], as well as various skinhead groups such as the Magyar Nemzeti Mozgalom [Hungarian National Movement] and its publications Kitartás and Pannon Bulldog. 2 “The Arrow Cross regime had positive features. . . . The Arrow Cross regime did not include the extermination of the Jews as claimed. Instead, it included defense against Jewish intellectual values and excessive Jewish power, which stems not from

antisemitic discourse after the fall of communism

3

1.2. Extreme Antisemitic Publications A form of antisemitism that was more “intellectual” than that promoted in the leaflets and flyers of the marginal groups could be found in extremist magazines with no direct links to any political or subcultural groups. Founded after 1990, these publications generally strove to re-open the issues of traditional antisemitism, combining it with elements of postwar antisemitism, including Holocaust denial. Two periodicals, the weekly Szent Korona and the monthly Hunnia Füzetek, played a particularly important role in the systematic revival of these topics of antisemitism in Hungary. The antisemitic content of the two newspapers included articles on the “continuity of Jewish rule” in Hungary, the “self-defensive nature” of anti-Jewish hostility, a denial of the Holocaust in general or of Hungarian participation in and responsibility for Jewish deaths, the revenge of Jews and communists for the persecution of the Jews, and internationally backed Jewish expansionism in the post-communist era.3 “Just by way of reminder, who were those people that, 70 years ago, let bolshevism loose upon our country and our nation?” asks one author. “Béla Kun, Ottó Korvin, Tibor Szamuely and Béla Vágó. There wasn’t a single Christian Hungarian among them. They, the Jews, were holding a burial feast above the Hungarian people.”4 And the “rule of the Jews” did not disappear even after the failure of the post-World War I revolutions. Even under Horthy, they held the top positions: “Horthy’s Hungary was a secure refuge for Jews, where they were not hurt by anyone until the German occupation,

Arrow Cross ideology but from much longer ago.” See “Zsigmond atya Takács testvérro˝l: Két holocaust, vagy egy sem” [Father Zsigmond about Brother Takács], 168 óra 6, no. 5 (February 8, 1994): 10–11. The cited sentences appear on page 11. Following protests, the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (February 15, 1994) dissociated itself from the statements of the Provincial and announced that they contradicted the statement made at the conference on October 26, 1992 concerning antisemitism and racial discrimination. 3 Szent Korona [Saint Crown] was published between 1989 and 1992, Hunnia between 1990 and 1993 regularly, later occasionally. On the antisemitic journalism of these years see: László Karsai, “Mítoszok, rágalmak, pártpropaganda” [Myths, slanders, and party propaganda], Kritika, no. 12, 1990 and no. 1, 1991. 4 See Gyula P. Bujdosó, “Megbékélést!” [For reconciliation!], Szent Korona 3, no. 13 (April 3, 1991): 2. The listed personalities were leaders of the short-lived revolutionary government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. All of them were of Jewish descent.

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and most of them managed to survive the Nazi period here.”5 The Holocaust “helped many Jews to get well-paid jobs” and continuity was assured by the “foursome”—Mátyás Rákosi, Erno˝ Gero˝, Mihály Farkas, and József Révai—leaders of the Communist Party between 1945 and 1956, who had returned from Moscow. In the meantime the “enemies of the Hungarians” repeated the allegations “incessantly in order to justify the atrocities of the last four decades and in order to divert attention from those who were responsible for such atrocities. And also to justify the merciless practice of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”6 Whoever spoke of the tragedy of the Hungarian nation was immediately labeled a fascist. Yet, the struggle against the Jews and the passing of anti-Jewish legislation amounted to no more than “intellectual self-defense” on the part of Hungarians. This was also the case elsewhere, beyond the borders of Hungary: “[t]he great war had in any case been a battle between two moralities, two philosophies, and two mindsets. The Jews recognize no limits; they are rootless, egocentric, and have no ‘family and domestic’ concerns. Further, despite representing just 2 to 7% of the total population, they control economic and cultural life, and thus politics too.” Antisemitism is the defense of “host folk,” a kind of “racial egoism” declares the author. “When it came to making collective sacrifices as part of the transition, the Jews, who comprise on average 2–7% of the population disposing of 40–80% of national income and national resources, were not prepared to accept a 40–80% share of the burden, nor one of just 2–7%. And when this was forced upon them, either by a ‘Nazi’ state like Germany or by a civilian state like Hungary after 1939, this was called ‘racial persecution,’ against which the whole world was incited to rebel.”7 The Jews could not expect to gain anything from a German victory, for their positions would have collapsed. For this reason, the Jews worked for the enemy: “The plain truth is that there was a real war between some states and their Jewish populations, who were intervening on the side of the enemy. And if the Jews were entitled to spy, pass on news, commit acts of sabotage, destroy supplies, endanger the currency, spread defeatist propaganda, plan armed assaults, and pray György Stirling, “Szemet szemért, fogat fogért. . . .” [An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth], Szent Korona 2, no. 14 (April 11, 1990 ): 5. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 7. 5

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for the victory of the enemy (i.e., the destruction of the country), then the state surely had a right to insure against this,” he argues.8 “[T]he struggle against [spies, traitors, and collaborators], that is, against those belonging to the fifth column of combat, is just one area of national self-defence.”9 Hungarians came out of World War II as losers, but the Jews came out as winners. After communist Jewish rule, the change of regime did nothing to change this. Indeed, following the political changes, thanks to support from the Alliance of Free Democrats (the liberal party) and the “bolshevik-liberal” media, hostility toward Hungarians rose to the political level.10 This explains the political program: the “mud that has been flung upon us by the Jews” has to be wiped off and we cannot allow a dwarfish minority to tell the “Hungarian nation what we may do in our own country.” For this reason, we may not permit “people of other nationalities to hold any type of leading position in any area. This applies particularly to the press, radio and television, and the MTI (Hungarian News Agency). The press and media should be made Christian, national and Hungarian.”11 Thus, in such extremist right-wing publications, the legitimate and defensive nature of anti-Jewish hostility became a recurring and central theme. The most important discursive-strategic element was the continuity construction: it was this construction that formed a direct link between “the self-defensive war being fought against the Jews for decades” and the political and party struggles of the post-communist period, for which it provided the interpretative framework. Although—as we shall see—the continuity-construction and the legitimacy discourse also comprised an important element of the antisemitic discourse of the center, the articles published by the far right drew the legitimizing sphere too broadly for the latter. Such articles included material on the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust, which was unacceptable to the discourse in the center.

Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. 10 Dr. János Fodor, “Magyar-zsidó együttélés: Múlt és jelen” [Hungarian-Jewish co-existence: past and present], Hunnia, no. 22 (). For Fodor’s views, see also “Sumerológus fordított sárga csillaggal” [Sumerologist with a reverse yellow star], A Hon 3, no. 8 (1991): 12. Here, in response to Ferenc Kunszabó, the editor-in-chief of Hunnia being called an antisemite, he declared: “This is often used, since newspaper making became an extreme liberal and cosmopolitan monopoly.” 11 Gyula Bujdosó, op. cit. 8 9

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chapter one 2. Antisemitism in the Center

We may regard the discourses in the center as the next sphere of antisemitic discourse. The texts analyzed below were written by wellknown intellectuals who had exercised considerable influence on Hungarian cultural life since the 1960s. They had taken part in the activities of intellectual groups working against the communist regime, and they had played a key role in political life in the immediate postcommunist period. Their statements concerning the “Jewish question” did not surface at marginal public forums but in mainstream media. And it was in such media that the issues were debated—with an audience of many tens of thousands. Accordingly, these texts substantially contributed to establishing the language of antisemitism and ensuring that a discussion of the “Jewish question” became part of the “public discourse” in the post-communist era. 2.1. “Us” and “Them” Ever since the end of the First World War, Hungarian intellectuals have been divided by what has come to be known as the urbanist-populist antagonism. This antagonism between the two groups of “urbanists” and “populists” also existed during the communist era among the loosely organized networks of intellectuals who were opposed to the system. In the political dimension, the differences between the two groups revolved around their different reasons for opposing communist rule. The “urbanist” opposition—which included many Jews—had turned against the Communist Party primarily because of the absence of human, civil, and democratic political rights, setting the value system and political reality of western liberal democracy against communist dictatorship. Meanwhile, the “populist” opposition had become averse to the communist system mainly because, as the “representatives” of national traditions, values, and goals, they were opposed to the system’s “internationalist” ideology. Thus, they had turned against the communist system because of its policy of ignoring national interests and neglecting so-called vital national issues such as the situation of the Hungarian minorities living in neighboring countries, rapidly declining population levels, and falling standards of public health. Despite such differences of perspective and occasional friction, the relationship between the two groups was not adversarial during this period: both groups considered the achievement of national independence and the

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abolition of the communist system to be fundamental components of their political program. Nevertheless, the two groups always viewed each other with suspicion. Moreover, the urbanist opposition was more radical, expressing its ambitions by organizing illegal publications and protests. For its part, the populist opposition, although sometimes participating in the protest campaigns, never excluded the possibility of achieving some of its aims through negotiations with “nationally oriented” factions within the Communist Party leadership. In addition, those Jews who were active or passive supporters of the democratic opposition were of the view that the terminology used by the “nationalist opposition” might have an antisemitic aspect. They feared that by restricting the use of the term “national priorities” to its own political goals, the nationalist opposition was in effect suggesting that other goals were “nonnational.” However, the accusation of cosmopolitanism or insensitivity to national issues has in turn traditionally been part of the vocabulary of political antisemitism in Hungary. Meanwhile, the “national opposition” suspected that the reason members of the democratic opposition had incorporated “national demands” into their program was because their political weakness had forced them to seek allies. The “national” opposition believed that the urbanists were in general distrustful and suspicious of any group that promoted national goals—even when the national slogans were free of any form of antisemitism. In 1989, both opposition groups were gradually organized into political parties: members of the urbanist group tended to join the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ, AFD), while most populists became members of the Christian-conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF, HDF). The mutual suspicion that had been essentially concealed during the years of communist dictatorship surfaced during this transitional period. As early as 1989, the New York Times claimed, on the basis of information from its correspondent in Hungary, that the Hungarian Democratic Forum’s opposition to the Alliance of Free Democrats was motivated by the fact that several leading members of the latter party were Jewish. The head of the Hungarian Democratic Forum’s office immediately refuted this claim on behalf of the whole party.12 Shortly

12 “Nyílt levél a New York Times magyarországi tudósítójának” [Open letter to the Hungary correspondent of the New York Times], Magyar Fórum 1, no. 1 (1989). The

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afterward, the historian Iván T. Berend, chairman of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and former member of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP, i.e. the Communist Party), allegedly stated the following in an interview with the New Yorker: “Antisemitism is strong in the Democratic Forum, although they are still very wary about expressing it. . . . They have been counting the number of Jews in top positions and the number of Jews working in the media, claiming that these people are destroying Hungarian culture. They use the word ‘cosmopolitan’.”13 Although there was no evidence for these charges, the national opposition also placed the issue within the context of a political conflict. On January 14, 1990, writer István Csurka, a leading member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, greeted listeners to a radio show in the following way: “Wake up, Hungarians! They’re misleading you once again! . . . This is now the period of Béla Kun and his like, even if the new Lenin boys have been vilifying Lenin.”14 Of course, a strong anticommunist tone does not necessarily imply antisemitism, but the language used by Csurka and the rhetorical tradition evoked by his words—the topos of “Jewish communism”—is clearly antisemitic. The argumentative strategy of suggesting, within this context, a link between the radically anticommunist Free Democrats and the former communists was antisemitic, too, since their common denominator could only be the “Jewish” background of both. Even so, the “Jewish question” topos was soon to appear in debates listened to by the broader public. One of the most prominent arguments about Jews and antisemitism in the transition period broke out in the early autumn of 1990.15 The dispute revolved around an essay published by the well-known

paper did not publish Dénes Csengey’s reply. Dénes Csengey, “Mérgezett mögöttes tartalom” [Poisoned background content], Magyar Hírlap 22, no. 294 (December 14, 1989): 3. 13 “Berend T. Iván, az MTA elnöke nyilatkozik a The New Yorkerben” [Iván T. Berend, chairman of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, makes a statement in the New Yorker], Magyar Fórum 1, no. 8 (1989): 2. 14 Cited by Zoltán Farkas in “Állóháború” [Trench warfare], in Magyarország politikai évkönyve 1991 [Political yearbook of Hungary, 1991], ed. Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor, and László Vass (Budapest: Ökonomia Alapitvány and Economix Rt, 1991), pp. 207–12. The “Lenin-Boys” were a paramilitary unit of young communists in 1919, who suppressed opponents of the communist government. 15 The debate was summarized by Béla Márkus, “Egy cikk, egy ország, egy álom” [One article, one country, one dream], Alföld (1991/7): 41–62.

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Hungarian writer and poet, Sándor Csoóri, in the weekly magazine Hitel entitled “Nappali hold” (Daylight Moon). Some paragraphs of his essay provoked a sharp reaction.16 In the ominous parts of the text, Csoóri begins by describing the dangers of national nihilism. “In many places,” he writes, “even inside this country, those who are proud to be Hungarian have to feel ashamed. ‘What does it mean to be a Hungarian?’ I have heard people ask superciliously even in intellectual circles. And what does patriotism mean? Tears? The national anthem? At times one already starts loathing one’s own feelings, let alone these public stupidities. Only a devout believer in the company of atheists can be as quiet as I am when this happens.”17 He went on to suggest that it is no accident, however, who the ones are that “have had enough of the eternal Hungarian laments”: people who are incapable of identifying with the existential problems of the nation, people for whom such problems are alien: they are “different.” Csoóri makes two contentions about the Jews. In the first, he posits a “Golden Age,” between emancipation and World War I, when the relationship between Jews and Hungarians was harmonic. But the first two decades of the twentieth century were the last period in which Hungarian Jews were still able to identify with the most vital issues of the Hungarian nation. After 1918, however, “[T]he Council’s Republic [the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919], the Horthy era, and especially the period of bloody Nazi persecution, have destroyed the possibility of a spiritual and emotional bond [. . .] Today attempts at a reverse assimilation have been becoming increasingly apparent in our country: the liberal Hungarian Jews are now seeking to ‘assimilate,’ in style and thought to the Hungarians. With this aim in mind, they could scaffold a parliamentary spring-board—something they had never been able to do before.”18 In Csoóri’s text, the existence of Them and Us, difference and competition between Jews and Hungarians, is presented as a self-evident fact. After the grave historical grievances suffered by the Jews, the relationship between the two groups is automatically one of conflict.

16 All four were published in the weekly magazine Hitel, the first on August 22, 1990 (3, no. 17), pp. 2, 4–6, the second on September 5, 1990 (3, no. 18), pp. 4–7, the third on September 10, 1990 (3, no. 19), pp. 4–6, and the fourth on October 3, 1990 (3, no. 20), pp. 4–7. 17 Sándor Csoóri, “Nappali hold,” Hitel 3, no. 18 (September 5, 1990): 6. 18 Ibid.

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The mistrust of the minority and its self-defensive reactions are quite understandable in light of their bitter experiences, but this does not mean they are right. Furthermore, members of the minority have different priorities and different aims. Logically enough, they are attracted to different political organizations. It is not merely a case of competition, but rather a case of war: “Them” represents a permanent source of danger. The “national forces” lack any great talent and are therefore defenseless: “If we had a new Endre Ady, a Bartók, a László Németh, an István Bibó, or an Illyés, this challenge would come in very handy: it would be no bad thing for outstanding forces to compete with each other in the task of solving problems in Hungary that stretch back for centuries. . . . But [we have] neither our Ady nor our László Németh nor our Bibó.”19 For this reason, the danger is acute: a state that realizes the values of “Others,” and does so under the leadership of “Others,” will exclude—forever—any possibility of solving the existential problems of Hungarians, because, having already been assimilated to the Alien, members of the next generation will be thinking with the heads of “Others,” and they will not even be aware of these problems. In Csoóri’s text, the identity-strategic function of the construct of the Jewish alien—dichotomization—is manifested in a most pregnant manner. Both the immediate message of the text and its linguistic fabric rest upon the dichotomous structure of “Them” and “Us.”20 The presence of a hidden dichotomizing identity strategy is demonstrated, for example, by the use of first- and third-person plural: “Many people are living in this country—and why should they not be living here—who are tired of the eternal Hungarian laments . . . of course, this does not mean that (these laments) will disappear from among our unresolved problems.”21 The linguistic juxtaposition of the “Hungarian nation” with “others” was repeated in the course of the debate that followed Csoóri’s article. Several of the arguments put forward in defense of the article went further than the original: “[W]henever the recovery of the prostrate nation came up in conversation, there was always someone 19 Ibid., p. 7. Endre Ady (d. 1919) was a symbolist poet and founder of modern Hungarian poetry; István Bibó, Gyula Illyés, and László Németh were spiritual leaders of the populist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. 20 For more details, see Mónika Kovács, “Kategorizáció és diszkrimináció: Az antiszemitizmus mint csoportnyelv” [Categorization and discrimination: Antisemitism as a group language], Világosság (May 1993): 52–59. 21 Sándor Csoóri, op. cit., p. 6. Analyzed by Mónika Kovács, op. cit., p. 55.

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who cried out: ‘watch out, antisemitism!’”;22 “certain sections of the Jewish community, possessing the important centers of life in the modern state, have been conducting a campaign against Hungarians;”23 “the all-piercing voice (cawing) of the loud minority sours and destroys the remaining faith and optimism of those eager to take action;”24 “well, let us see, who is the Hungarian who does not cast his eyes down, even when we are spanking the national mascot.”25 Csoóri’s article, which was followed by more than one hundred responses, above all repudiated the paradigm of nineteenth-century Hungarian liberalism and Hungarian Jewish assimilationism, which had perceived the Jewish community as a mere religious group within the Hungarian nation. In this way, the threat posed by the Jewish minority to the Hungarian majority became an external danger. If this is so, inevitably the question arises: how and where should restrictions be placed on the minority’s attempts at self-assertion? 2.2. Minority—Majority This branch of antisemitic discourse is directly linked to the traditional branch of Hungarian antisemitism. The main subject matter of most antisemitic writings in the second half of the nineteenth century was the “incursion” of an “alien”—Jewish—minority and the establishment of the rule of this minority over the “national” majority. In the era of liberalism, such antisemitism limited itself to calling upon Jews to “restrain themselves.” However, during the crisis of liberalism and following its collapse after World War I, antisemites also demanded state-sanctioned restrictions on Jews (e.g., the limitation of their numbers among university students and the “restriction of their role in economy and society”). These demands were, then, realized by the antisemitic legislation of the period. Some of the rhetoric pursued after 1990 returned to this ideological tradition. The first step in this direction was a reinterpretation of the motives for “Jewish incursion” and “lust for power.” In this discourse, these 22 Dénes Csengey, “Búcsú az ördögto˝l 2” [Farewell to the devil 2], Magyar Hírlap, October 31, 1990. 23 János Fodor, “Kirekesztés vagy kirekeszto˝dés: Olvasói levél” [Exclusion or elimination: Reader’s letter], Magyar Nemzet, October 11, 1990. 24 György V. Domonkos, Reader’s letter, op. cit. 25 Dénes Csengey, “Búcsú az ördögto˝l 1 ” [Farewell to the devil 1], Magyar Hírlap, October 30, 1990.

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motives were presented as psychologically fully understandable, as natural consequences of the experience and memory of the persecution: “On the one side, fears stemming from history, suspicion, convulsive cohesion, a permanent watchful attentiveness received from the survivors of the atrocities or else inherited, and a ‘pathological’ but legitimate fear—and on the other side, a ‘Hungarianness’ which, although it exaggerates Jewish-conceived features of Hungarian culture, is nevertheless embedded in real Hungarian everyday life (in its language, politics, and everyday social life, including its distortions).”26 This embeddedness, however, gives rise to a conflict: “In recent decades, Hungarians of Jewish descent have occupied the key positions of mass communication in unusually large numbers. Always as the leaders, always in a reprimanding and condescending manner, from a position of power.”27 The power strategy of the Jews is to over-insure . . . that is, the Jewish minority obtains too many positions for itself: “All this is quite understandable and natural. On the other side, this appears to be the ‘taking of power,’ whereas it is in fact just a mass of safeguards.”28 Although the acquisition of power is not the immediate purpose of Jewish strategy, the final result is the same: “If I have been humiliated and defiled, I will do everything to raise myself above others and to rule over others, so that I may never be humiliated or defiled again by anyone . . . [and if ] I heard ‘hey you! Jew!’ [I would also] immediately shout out antisemitism. . . . I would not allow, for instance, anyone to try to draw a conclusion or seek an explanation for why there were so many Jews among the leading figures of communism both at home and abroad—far more than might be explained by their share of the population. I would cry antisemitism, because this would be the only way I could prevent people from finding out that we really do hold together and that we really do seek to rule in order to survive.”29 The process of acquiring power is a concealed one that takes place beneath the surface; power is exercised in spite of the majority and to its detriment. “I attempt to gain publicity, or more precisely, the means of publicity. At the same time, I do not allow people to find out my

26 Gyula Kurucz, “Üldözo˝k és üldözöttek” [Chasers and chased], Hitel 2, no. 20 (October 11, 1990): 19. 27 Ibid., p. 20. 28 Ibid. 29 György V. Domonkos, “A kisebbség és a zsarnokság” [Minority and tyranny], Népszabadság 48, no. 100 (April 29, 1990): 29.

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numerical strength and importance and that of my companions in the largest media, in television, as well as in radio, and in the press field. Or in the economy, banking, and financial world. Or in the cultural sphere or health.” This is a problem because if the Jews have a decisive influence on the decisions and events determining the life of the majority, the interests and values of the majority cannot be represented: “strong links to their community” and “survival attitudes eliminate from Jews any receptiveness towards views and ideas that differ from their own; in its place [. . .] there is an uncritical bias.”30 Against the excessive power of “Them”—the minority—it is natural that the self-defensive reactions of “Us” should become stronger. Therefore, the demand for proportional representation is a natural pretension of the majority. Although the main criteria for selecting experts should be the employment of good, well-qualified people, “nevertheless, when it comes to political affairs, i.e., to things affecting the lives of others and of the majority, I consider it desirable to take account of numerical ratios too. The history of the recent past has clearly shown just how dangerous and harmful it is when a minority attempts to force otherwise beautiful and just ideals onto the majority using fire and iron, violence, and intrigue (stridency and manipulation).”31 At this point, the argument is directly linked once again with party politics, and it advises the Jews to show self-restraint: “they have to understand and acknowledge that, despite the fact that the ideal they represent has found a footing among broad circles—owing in part to their own influence and in part to other influences—this ideal [radical liberalism— A. K.] is still a minority position, as the elections have shown!”32 2.3. World Conspiracy and National Self-Defense The introduction of the dichotomy of “Them” and “Us”—Jews and Hungarians—and its subsequent interpretation as a conflict between a power-hungry minority and a squeezed-out majority was followed by the elaboration of a conceptual system that could be used to interpret the change of political regime and all subsequent political conflicts.

Ibid. Ibid.: he continues, “there exists, there could exist the tyranny of the minority, even if in a more hidden and invisible manner. But even then tyranny begets ill blood—i.e., strife.” 32 Ibid. 30 31

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This may best be reconstructed from the writings of István Csurka, the successful writer of the Kádár era, who became a leading figure in the populist opposition and then deputy chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and chief editor of Magyar Fórum magazine.33 The initial step on the path to an antisemitic interpretation of the change of political regime was the reactivation of a traditional language code and its reintroduction into public discourse. After the already-cited radio debate “Awake Hungarians!”34 other codes of the old antisemitic language resurfaced: the “bloodsucking financial lobby,” the clan of the bankers, the “lying press,” and the “city state of Budapest.”35 The second step was the elaboration of conceptual associations identifying the old elite that sustained the communist regime with the current seemingly anticommunist liberal opponents and the coded inference of the reason for the continuity:36 “Because the slogans, the ideologies change of course, sometimes communism, sometimes socialism, sometimes liberalism, but the main point is always the same, give me the power!”37 This power has been seized by a “dwarfish minority,” which “can get the whole of society to accept that only its truth is the truth, and that everything coming from outside its circle is to be rejected, and, as long as this line of thought—now called radical liberal—shown to the Hungarian nation is nourished by the same Marxist-Lukácsist 33 After the 1956 revolution, István Csurka, who had been interned for a short time, signed a statement with the political police in which he agreed to be an agent. When József Antall and other HDF leaders began efforts behind the scenes to force Csurka out of politics using documents on his activities as a secret agent, Csurka decided to publish his own story of that part of his life. In his newspaper columns, he alleged that, although he had signed the statement, he had not written reports about anyone. In 1993, Csurka left the HDF and founded his own party, the extreme right MIÉP [Party of Hungarian Justice and Truth]. In 1998, the party received 5.5% of the votes and sent 14 representatives to Parliament. In the 2002 and 2006 elections, the party could not get enough votes to meet the 5% threshold and get into Parliament. Magyar Fórum has been the party’s official organ since 1994. 34 First published in Elso˝ kézbo˝ l papíron 2, no. 4 ( January 27, 1990): 6–7. See István Csurka, Vasárnapi jegyzetek [Sunday notes] (Budapest: Püski-Magyar Fórum Kiadó, 1991), pp. 35–37. 35 For a collection of the writer’s notes between 1987 and the summer of 1991 see Csurka, op. cit. 36 This argument rapidly appeared in the political battles: In the course of the election campaign in March 1990, the Magyar Fórum published an article called “Apák és fiúk” [Fathers and sons], which suggested that the Hungarian Democratic Forum’s main rival, the Alliance of Free Democrats, included politicians and supporters whose political choice was directly linked to their descent and the left-wing political past of their family members or themselves. 37 Op. cit., p. 66.

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roots as in the era of Kádár and Aczél, it is very unlikely that the great masses of Hungarian people will feel good in their own country.”38 The line of the “dwarf minority” toward “Hungarians,” behind which “the global citizen merges with the comrade/gentry,”39 is a child of the era that came from Kádárism (called by the author as the Kádár-Aczél regime). This line “with its deluge of slander discredits true Hungarians with a national will” and for it “anything that comes from the people is bound to be suspicious.” The third step in the process of reinvigorating the old antisemitic topoi is to reinvoke the image of a powerful Alien behind the domestic aggressive minority. When, in 1990, Csurka had to cancel a planned trip to Israel following protests from a group of Israelis of Hungarian descent, he wrote the following: “There is always a group that seeks to squeeze Hungarians out of Hungarian public life by referring to abroad and by having them condemned from abroad. In the old days, Moscow was the supreme Hungarian forum. Now the former bolshis are looking for new Kremlins.”40 In this argument one can identify anti-Zionism, in a purely antisemitic explanatory framework: there can be no moral basis to a protest made by people who live in a country where—perhaps even the protestors in question—“are shooting down dozens of unarmed Arab protestors,” not because they are commanded to do so, but out of hate, and they do not let UN representatives into the country—obviously for good reason: “I recall how Kádár also refused them entry after fifty-six. There were many dead on the paving of the streets.”41 The reviving of old antisemitic models and their introduction into political discourse and democratic debate by a leading intellectual and politician went beyond what the public consensus considered to be the boundary of legitimate public discourse. For this reason, from the outset, the above discourse elements appeared in association with a “legitimacy discourse,” which distanced itself at the level of direct

38 Ibid., p. 37. The term “Lukácsist” hints at the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s some members of the “urbanist” opposition, among them the later leader of the liberal party, belonged to the group around the oppositional Marxist philosopher, György Lukács. György Aczél was a leading communist politician of Jewish origin in the Kádár era. He was responsible for cultural affairs. 39 Op. cit., p. 50. 40 István Csurka, “Egy ‘szent hír’ életrajza” [A biography of a ‘holy message’ ], Pesti Hirlap 1, no. 161 (October 21, 1990): 11–12. 41 Ibid., p. 12.

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speech from antisemitism and its historical consequences. “I am not an antisemite,” wrote Csurka. “I have never offended a person or group because of race, religion, skin color, or ethnic background: I consider what happened to the Jews prior to and during World War II to be the shame of 20th-century Europe; as a human being and a writer I considered it my moral duty to salute the memory of the victims, and that is what I have done.”42 The antisemitic discourse elements, which appeared in sporadic fashion from 1990–1992, coalesced into a coherent narrative during the subsequent period. This narrative was fashioned above all in Csurka’s essay-long leading articles and speeches. His main argument was that the history of Hungary’s change of political regime and subsequent years was the history of a final struggle for survival between “Us”—the Nation—and “Them”—the Alien. “Finance wants to take possession of the world, and everything that was good, beautiful, and humane in it, it seeks to use for its own purposes and subjugate everything. All of this is not just happening to us. We are becoming the subjects of an enormous world empire, the global empire of finance.”43 The aim of the Alien can only be realized by means of the intentional destruction of the Nation: “Hungarians are being decimated today by this kind of financial tyranny, and they are becoming more defenseless with every passing day. And this is no coincidence; it is a purposeful and calculated destruction of the nation. Others need the space.”44 The Enemy is faceless: “a financial Mafia or oligarchy, often composed of unknown individuals, which penetrates into every aspect and every element of national life, which rules above all, and which disembowels everything, while also destroying everything.”45 “The aim is that the nation should never know who is ruling it. That the same people are always in power. The people must always be in the belief that they are choosing a better one. So emotions, hate, and anger are always directed at the person who is appointed [for this purpose], and the real beneficiaries remain hidden from view.”46 Whatever appears in 42 See “Csurka István nyilatkozata és válaszlevele” [István Csurka’s report and letter of response], Magyar Nemzet 53, no. 17 ( January 20, 1990 ): 7. 43 Csurka István, “Magyarnak maradni!” [To remain Hungarian], Magyar Fórum, March 21, 1998. 44 Csurka István, “Lesz felemelkedés!” [There will be a rise], Magyar Fórum, March 23, 1995. 45 Csurka István, “Magyarnak maradni!” 46 Csurka István, “Lesz felemelkedés!”

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public—the political adversary—is no more than the domestic agent of a faceless Alien: “There rules in Hungary a corrupt and deceitful power, which makes fewer and fewer efforts to conceal its hostility toward Hungarians.”47 “Even today, the country is held in check by several hundred former secret policemen, Muscovites, and Béla Kun– like financial hunting associations; of course all of them have become liberals.”48 The consequences of their operations are already disastrous, and they could be fatal in the future. “If a country has a leading class and a beneficiary elite that does not consider the interests of its own people to be the most important in this global life-and-death struggle, an elite that constantly fraternizes with alien forces, which is willing to force its own people into accepting colonial rule, which places its own interests above those of the nation, then the people of this country will bleed to death in this struggle.”49 “In this process of change, the only ones that will remain standing are those who are capable of defending their own interests by strength and determination.”50 The Manichean worldview that is established around the apocalyptical struggle between Good and Bad does not remain a mere abstraction. It appears as an interpretative framework for understanding everyday problems and burdens and an easily understandable explanation of the complex problems that destroyed the optimistic expectations of the immediate post-communist period. “We have to pay interest for everything. We have to pay interest if we are sick, we have to pay interest if we send our children to school, we have to pay interest if we buy bread or sugar.”51 “We shall pay our electricity bills, our gas bills to outsiders or to Fotex52—which is just the same thing. And if someone cannot pay, they will be left in the dark. The whole country lies in darkness, and whoever cannot pay, will freeze.”53 Meanwhile the “people” foolishly put up with it, because the faceless “Alien” has taken possession not just of their material assets but also of their thoughts: “The only way to make sure that people do not realize what is happening to them is to take over the supply of information,

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Csurka István, “Magyarnak maradni!” Fotex is a large Hungarian firm owned by a well-known Jewish businessman. Csurka István, “Lesz felemelkedés!”

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news, and culture. . . . The Hungarian people should never find out that the historical hunt is after their lives.”54 In this pictorial description of the hidden Alien, the purpose of the language, metaphorical system, and thematic is to persuade the audience about the real identity of the group concealed behind the disguise.55 The rule of finance, the international conspiracy against the Nation, immigration and the occupation of space, the power of the media and the press—all of these are traditional key topics of antisemitic rhetoric, just as the traditional aspects of this language are biological metaphors used in description of the enemy that lives in concealment. But the “Jewish question” also appears directly in the texts—particularly in the context of the political struggles that followed the collapse of communism. 2.4. Jews and the Change of Political Regime Csurka describes the period from the latter half of the 1980s until the establishment of the first democratic government of József Antall and, later, the expulsion of Csurka and his supporters from the governing party as a single process revolving around a struggle between a changing group of anti-Hungarians and “national forces.” The first sign of the hidden alien’s manipulation of power was the pact established between the Christian-conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF/MDF) and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD/SZDSZ) immediately after the elections, which was “forced upon” Antall’s government: “For some reason, it [a pact] has to be made.”56 The reason for the pact lies, according to Csurka, in Ibid. Various analyses have drawn attention to the coded communication in articles by Csurka and published in Magyar Fórum. See János Zolnay, “The Role of the Press in Contemporary Antisemitism in Hungary,” in Anti-Semitism in Post-Totalitarian Europe, ed. Jan Hančil and Michael Chase, (Prague: Franz Kafka Publishers, 1993); Gábor Csillag, “The Rhetoric of Xenophobia, Authoritarianism and Nationalism and its Associations with Antisemitism within the Public Discourse of the Hungarian Radical Right Wing” (unpublished manuscript); Áron Monori, “Egy antiszemita lap és szellemi elo˝futára” [An antisemitic journal and its intellectual forerunner], Médiakutató, Spring 2002. 56 For a fully elaborated version, see István Csurka, “Néhány gondolat a rendszerváltozás két esztendeje és az MDF új programja kapcsán” [Several thoughts two years after the change of political system and about the new program of the HDF], Magyar Fórum 4, no. 34 (August 20, 1992): 9–16. The two parties’ pact was necessary to enable a smooth functioning of the legislation. 54 55

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the period of communist dictatorship, in the activities of an influential group within Hungarian society that was representing foreign interests. It was this group that had control of the communist leadership, and by infiltrating the opposition urban-liberal group it was able to prevent the development within the opposition of an independent organization representing Hungarian interests alone. The means of doing this was to make a claim of antisemitism: if an organization arose, it was immediately condemned as antisemitic. “The real problem was that we dared to establish our own organization. This achievement dispelled the idea that had been cherished for so long in the Beszélo˝ and in certain offices of the party headquarters, that there would be just one large common ‘opposition’ body into which we—the so-called populist writers and other poor souls—would bring the masses, the country’s middle classes that paid attention to us, while they would occupy the leading positions, keeping their ‘professional’ political privileges and thus offering complete comfort to their friends and relatives who had become a part of the communist regime and were now being tossed around by doubts.”57 At this point in the train of thought, the author leaves the intentionally obscure notions and metaphors and moves on, in his text, to the “Jewish question.” The Jews, he says, did not just join the Communist Party en masse after 1945 because they saw in the party a guarantee that the former antisemitic system would not return. They evidently had another reason, since communist Jews also enjoyed the support of non-communist Jews: “the left-wing in Hungary, even the communist remnant, enjoyed the financial support of the former middle-class liberal Jews.”58 The explanation for this was the collective defense of interests—a Jewish strategy that spanned [political] systems and was unchanging despite its changing appearance. And it is not any different today: Jewish fears give rise to a desire to control all major political organizations: “If an organization arises in which they have no delegates, and there is no assurance that an immediate signal would be given if the organization began taking measures threatening the hegemony of Hungarian Jews, then the organization is dangerous,” writes Csurka.59 The Jews possess effective means of putting pressure Ibid., p. 11. Beszélo˝ was the clandestine journal of the “urbanist” democratic opposition. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 57

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on such organizations: when after the second round of the 1990 elections, Antall made it clear that he was going to leave the two liberal parties (the AFD and the LYD-League of Young Democrats, Fidesz) out of the coalition, the National Bank’s sum total of deposits suddenly fell by half. Csurka alleged that “[t]his operation must have been directed—or at least proposed—by someone and for some reason.”60 And it is here that the author mentions “the messengers from New York and Tel Aviv.”61 In this antisemitic narrative of the history of communism and the change of political regime, the strategy of the “legitimacy discourse” is not realized in the denial or historical relativization of the Holocaust. On the contrary, horror at the persecution of the Jews appears as a motive for postwar Jewish strategy. Csurka loudly condemns the horrors of the Holocaust and he acknowledges that terrible things happened to Jews in 1944, claiming, however, that this was the work of the Germans and their Hungarian henchmen, the Arrow Cross, and that it did not involve those writers and publicists who were concerned for the fate of the nation—a reference to the cultural antisemites of the period before the Second World War—and who had previously drawn public attention to Jewish expansionism. “The horrors of Nazism and World War II had to happen in order to remove the problem of what the Hungarian Jews meant from the columns of the newspapers and periodicals and replace it with reports about the seizure of property, yellow stars, and deportation. We have always acknowledged and still believe that this was a tragedy for the entire Hungarian nation and that this should not have been allowed to happen [the italics are from the original—A. K.]. . . . After the period of evil men gone wild with their execution squads, came the era of Rákosi, Gero˝, Révai, and Farkas, with its own unrestrained bolshevist terror, among whose beneficiaries were significant numbers of former Arrow Cross members as well as former persecuted Jews. But it is also true that the Muscovite Jews persecuted the survivor Jews.”62 The descendants of those Jews who served alien interests are now the representatives of liberal politics. Their masters no longer live in Moscow but in New York and in Tel Aviv. The motif of their politics

Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. 62 István Csurka, “Minden, ami van” [Everything that exists], Magyar Fórum, special ed., Választási Különszám, October 1998. The listed politicians, all of Jewish origin, were leaders of the Communist Party and the regime after the war. 60 61

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is fear. For the Jews, who have been living in constant fear ever since the Holocaust, anything that happens in the interest of the nation is threatening, and the defensive reactions are immediately set in motion. Whenever organizations representing national interests appear, they immediately have to be subdued or incapacitated. If personalities make an appeal in public to the nation, then they have to be silenced. This is possible with the support of international Jewish financial and media power. Hungarian Jews also mobilize such support when they feel threatened. But those who are responsible for the crimes of the old communist regime—including many Jews—have also seized this opportunity. Their strategy is to misrepresent actions taken against communism as antisemitism, and to mobilize Jews who fear antisemitism but are not necessarily communists, as well as the international Jewish organizations and the potentates of the media and financial world. There is no problem with religious Jews or with Jews who have the nation at heart. The problem revolves around those who become an instrument of the above manipulations on account of their own communist past or because they acquiesce to the communists’ strategy of holding onto power. The denunciation of this phenomenon is anticommunism rather than antisemitism. The first step in the structural differentiation of antisemitic discourse was thus to challenge and illegitimize the language of the Jewish-Hungarian, liberal-universalist, emancipation-assimilationist tradition: the new language brands the Jews as an alien group. The next step was to define the relationship between the two groups as one of conflict—as a battle between nationals and anti-nationals. Finally, this conflict was placed in a global context, in which the struggle of the Hungarian people for survival is one concrete example of similar struggles against the “globalizing” conqueror of the world, as is also the struggle of Palestinians against Israel or the struggle of the entire Arab world—and even of Europe—against America.63 Later on, this conflict becomes the general conceptual framework for explaining the difficulties of the post-communist period and for offering remedies. Thus, the immediate post-communist period saw the reintroduction of a conceptual structure and language that many had considered to be dead. Antisemitic discourse moved quickly from reviving old anti-Jewish stereotypes to a establishing a structured antisemitic worldview—familiar to us from

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This argumentative strategy was frequently used for such topics in later years.

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the nineteenth-century history of antisemitism. And the resurrected language of antisemitism started to serve as political language. 3. The Fight for the Past: Struggles of Identity Politics The discourses examined in the following are not classified as antisemitic discourses. These struggles for transforming historical memory were natural accompaniments of the post-communist period. They often touched, however, upon the narratives analyzed above. A particular problem faced by Hungarian political parties and organizations after 1989 was the task of establishing clear and distinct identities. This was because their historical traditions—if they existed at all—had become blurred. Additionally, it was not clear which groups in society supported them, and their political programs were in many respects identical. This was understandable, since almost all the parties had entered the political arena with the intention of winding up the communist system and replacing it with a parliamentary democracy. Therefore, attempts to forge an identity were made primarily on a symbolic level. There existed two fundamentally different methods of creating identity at the symbolic level. The parties’ first method was to position themselves somewhere along the western political spectrum, by indicating an allegiance to a Western political group. The second method for manifesting identity was to express a relationship with certain emblematic periods, events, or individuals from Hungarian history. Among the various parties, there was thus a struggle to appropriate history and to demonstrate historical tradition and continuity. As one commentator stated at the time, the parties exhibited “a rage for the past, an obsession with history.”64 An important aspect of this struggle for political identity was the relationship to the politics of the post–World War I period, including that of the Horthy regime. It was almost inevitable that the state-sanctioned antisemitism of the interwar period, Hungary’s participation in World War II, and Hungarian responsibility for the persecution of the Jews would become issues in the debate. This trend was strengthened by the presence of a large number of historians, philosophers, and sociologists among the

64 Vilmos Csaplár, “Múltak osztogatása” [Distribution of pasts], Ring, March 26, 1991.

antisemitic discourse after the fall of communism

23

newly active politicians for whom this area of identity creation was a natural sphere. These identity debates share structural similarities with two debates conducted in Western Europe: Germany’s “historians’ dispute” and the antifascism–communism debate, conducted mainly in France and in Germany.65 In the 1970s and 1980s, the point of departure for German historians and writers arguing for the historical embeddedness and legitimacy of modern conservatism in Germany was that, after Nazism, one could only legitimize the continuity of Germany’s conservative tradition if one demonstrated that the extreme right wing in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Party, and the Third Reich were not inevitable historical and political consequences of the imperial authoritarian state and pre-1933 conservatism. The argumentation of Nolte and various other historians in the conservative camp was directed at interpreting the development of fascism as a pan-European response to the crisis of classical liberalism and at viewing its manifestation in Germany— Nazism—as a reaction to Bolshevik dictatorship, and thus not as the inherent consequence of German history but as a development spurred on by external factors. Associated with this train of thought was a criticism of “antifascism”—particularly the version that functioned as the official ideology of the German Democratic Republic—according to which the historical approach that was based on the continuity of German conservatism and fascism (which thus placed conservatism within the scope of antifascist criticism) was a means for legitimizing the communist dictatorship. A similar argumentation was constructed by conservative historians in Hungary after the change of political regime. Like their counterparts in Germany’s “historians’ dispute,” conservative participants in the Hungarian debate sought to recreate the continuity of the conservative national tradition. In order to do so, however, they had to make a distinction between national conservatism (defined as the mainstream ideology of the post–World War I era) and the long period of collaboration with Nazism, anti-Jewish legislation, persecution of the Jews,

65 The basic texts of the German “Historikerstreit,” see Rudolf von Augstein, Karl Dietrich Bracher, and Martin Broszat, Historikerstreit (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1987); on the antifascism debate, see Antonia Grunenberg, Antifaschismus—Ein deutscher Mythos (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993). The French debates are covered in Stéphane Courtois, et al., eds. Le livre noir du Communism (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997).

24

chapter one

and the historical developments that led to Arrow Cross rule. From this perspective, both the pro-Nazi extreme right wing and Sovietstyle communism were interpreted as tendencies alien to the Hungarian national tradition, which could acquire power (or the vestiges of power) only through external pressure and assistance. This struggle was determined by the limited nature of the country’s possibilities. In the discussion of the limited historical possibilities, the “small-country” discourse was deployed in both cases. Accordingly, both extreme right wing and communist power could develop because of the country’s geopolitical position and the insensitivity of the major Western powers to Hungary’s western Christian commitment. In this discourse, the “derailing” of Hungarian history is the result of the unjust peace treaty signed at Trianon after World War I, a treaty dictated by the Western powers. This calamity explains the failure of Hungarian liberalism and the increasing dominance of radical antiliberal politics. Attempts to achieve a legitimate revision of Trianon forced honorable Hungarian conservatism into an alliance with Germany, and pushed it into the pincers of German demands and the ambitions of the domestic pro-Nazi extreme right wing. The antisemitic laws were consequences of this alliance: they were concessions made to the Germans in order to prevent a more brutal persecution of the Jews; they were also a means of silencing the Hungarian extreme right wing. Thanks to these laws—and to the fact that the Horthy regime resisted demands for Jewish deportation until the country’s occupation by German forces—the largest Jewish community in the German sphere of interest could more or less survive in Hungary until the German invasion of the country in March 1944. Responsibility for the Holocaust is therefore borne solely by the German occupiers and the collaborators of the Arrow Cross, who formed a minority and were radical opponents of the conservative governments. Participation in the war on the side of the Nazis was, on the one hand, a geopolitical necessity and, on the other, acceptable even from a moral point of view, since the war was being fought against another totalitarian dictatorship (the Soviet Union). The predominant view of the postwar decades, the total condemnation of the entire Horthy era as a type of protofascism or semifascism and its exclusion from the set of acceptable and valuable historical traditions, serves only the apologist aims of Marxist-Communist historiography: in the name of antifascism, such a view justified the violent destruction of the traditional Hungarian Christian conservative forces after 1945.

antisemitic discourse after the fall of communism

25

The successive waves of identity-politics debates were stirred by a variety of issues.66 Such disputes were lifted into the political sphere, because, on the conservative side, contributions were made even by some with leading political roles in those years, such as Prime Minister József Antall and Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky. It was Antall who most clearly summed up the basic argument of the conservative narrative: “The compelling circumstances were able to force us into alliances, to force us into wars, which Hungarian people did not feel to be their own, which they did not want to fight, but which they had no choice but to do. . . . But let nobody reproach us for being on the wrong side, because usually we were forced onto the wrong side. With our suppressed wars of independence and our proud national revolutions, we sought always to show our real intentions, and when we were abandoned and we stood alone, we were forced into frameworks of state and political alliances, as a logical consequence of which we were placed on the wrong side. Thereafter, punishment was our lot.”67 In this discourse, its purpose is discerned by contrasting the “internal” and the “external,” the “organically developed” and the “forced,” and the “historical national substance” and the “accidents, alien to the nation.” Within this model, the most difficult task for the conservative narrative is undoubtedly to separate the Holocaust in Hungary and the path leading up to it from the “substantial,” and its interpretation as an “external” and enforced consequence. In a lecture at a conference on the Holocaust, Géza Jeszenszky interpreted the Holocaust as a consequence of the Trianon Peace Treaty, which had been forced upon Hungary.68 József Antall used the same argument in a speech in memory of Pál Teleki (the Hungarian prime minister who supported antisemitic laws while opposing Nazi Germany, and who eventually committed suicide after admitting that it was impossible for Hungary to leave the German alliance). Antall said the following: “Between the 66 For a historical review, see László Karsai, “A Shoah a Magyar sajtóban 1989– 1991” [The Shoah in the Hungarian Press 1989–1991], Zsidóság, identitás történelem, ed. Ferenc Ero˝s, M. Mária Kovács, and Ytizhak Kashti (Budapest: T-Twins Kiadó, 1992), pp. 59–84; Randolph L. Braham: “Assault on Historical Memory,” in: Hungary and the Holocaust: Confrontation with the Past. Symposium Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001). 67 József Antall, Modell és valóság [Model and reality], (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1993), 2: pp. 270–71. 68 See “Jeszenszky—kitapsolt párhuzam: Holocaust-tanácskozás Budapesten,” Magyar Hírlap 27, no. 79 (April 6, 1994): 4; and “ ‘Kitapsolták’ Jeszenszky Gézát,” Magyar Nemzet 58, no. 79 (April 6, 1994): 1, 5.

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chapter one

two world wars, Pál Teleki’s name was linked to laws and regulations that have raised doubts and given occasion for unilateral judgment. Let us be clear: we are talking about the numerus clausus or Act IV of 1939. Pál Teleki was the representative of a conservative philosophy, but not of some kind of backwardness. Instead, he represented traditionalism and the preservation of values. Moreover, acknowledging the country’s geopolitical situation, he sought compromise solutions to the great political challenges of the era, and any search for compromise may at times be accompanied by appeasement policies and temporary setbacks.”69 On another occasion, he said: “Legislation against the Jews . . . cannot be explained or accepted. From a legal or human standpoint, it is never acceptable; historically, however, it may be reasoned for in a variety of different ways.”70 The great majority of conservative participants in the identity-politics debates were not antisemitic. There was no hidden antisemitic message behind the arguments of Antall, Jeszenszky, and the others. The restoration of the Horthy era was not the aim of their policy either—as their agitated partners in the debate often claimed. Nevertheless, the neoconservative image of history did undoubtedly have certain elements that, in a different context, may have formed part of an antisemitic discourse. Against such attempts at re-contextualization, conservative discourse often proved defenseless. Thus, willingly or unwillingly, it provided a point of reference for those who sought to renew and re-legitimize antisemitic discourse. The immediate political significance of the identity-politics debates had a further consequence. Since the debates about history took place in a political context, their political utilization rapidly ensued. For the conservatives’ opponents, the most effective means of shattering the legitimacy of the conservative position in the eyes of the public was to call attention to the possibility of a hidden antisemitism behind it. Meanwhile, the conservatives—employing a similar strategy—

69 He then continues, “There is nothing more ahistorical than to take one or two sections from the life works of Pál Teleki and to view and judge them from the perspective of events that happened subsequently and from the perspective of political principles that were later compromised,” in Antall, Modell és valóság 2: p. 109. For an interpretation of Hungary’s role in the Second World War, see also “Dr. Antall József miniszterelnök beszéde a Hadtörténeti Múzeumban 1992 január 11-én” [Prime Minister Dr József Antall’s speech in the Museum of Military History on January 11, 1992], Magyar Fórum 4, no. 4 ( January 23, 1992): 11–13. 70 Antall, Modell és valóság 2: p. 582.

antisemitic discourse after the fall of communism

27

attempted to portray their liberal and left-wing opponents as covert or overt apologists for the communist regime. They accused them of hiding behind the veil of antifascism, which, in certain cases, they considered to be motivated by the memory of the Holocaust. In this manner, by means of the identity-politics debates, antisemitism became the direct focus of the political debate. Consequently, by virtue of its symbolic significance, the position taken in this debate became a code of political identity. 4. The Chain of the Rounds of Discourse In the course of our analysis, we have distinguished and examined three rounds of discourse. The first round comprises overtly antisemitic, Nazi, Arrow Cross, and neo-Nazi manifestations. In this extreme and overtly antisemitic discourse, modern Hungarian history and world history is presented as a continuous and righteous struggle against Jewish rule. The world war and the persecution of the Jews, as well as current world politics and Hungarian political battles are considered mere episodes in this struggle. During and since the period under examination, this discourse has continued to remain on the margins. Its topics, tenets, and argumentative strategies were unable to pass into mainstream antisemitic discourse, which in turn has often and publicly sought to dissociate itself from this discourse for reasons of legitimacy. The second round comprises the antisemitic discourse of the center. This discourse is dominated by the theme of traditional Hungarian antisemitism: the nightmare vision of an alien and excessive Jewish power, based on an international concentration of forces, which endangers the substance of the Hungarian collective. Variations on this main theme appear in several older and newer contexts. The common feature of these views is that while they recognize the illegitimate nature of overt antisemitism in the post-Holocaust era and in the Hungarian public sphere, they characteristically deny any antisemitic orientation and protest the charge of antisemitism. Typically, they do not deny the Holocaust: in general they acknowledge and condemn the wartime persecution of the Jews. They also condemn the perpetrators: the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators, members of the Arrow Cross. Nevertheless, they are not prepared to accept that the antisemitism of the murderers had anything in common with the antisemitism

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that enjoyed widespread support in Hungarian culture and politics before the physical persecution of Jews began. On the contrary, they consider “traditional” Hungarian antisemitism to have been a reasonable reaction to specific social problems. In this discourse, acknowledgment and condemnation of Jewish persecution serves to legitimize the antisemitic content. As regards the period after World War II, the general conduct of Jews and the specific roles played by communist politicians of Jewish descent are considered understandable and explicable, but nevertheless harmful and vicious. This round of discourse willingly acknowledges that the communist Jews were not “real Jews” and that these Jewish communists also persecuted their fellow Jews. Nevertheless, Jewish communists were able to exploit the fears of the Jewish majority for their own manipulative purposes. After the fall of the communist system, this section of the Jewish community, employing the same method—that is, the manipulation of fears concerning antisemitism both in Hungary and abroad—was able to maintain its previous power: the charge of antisemitism de-legitimizes the anticommunist national forces and places them in a disadvantageous position both in politics and in public life. Jews who supported the communist regime were linked by a secret thread to Jews who opposed it. In both cases, the experiences of persecution produced in them the same reaction under different circumstances: a disproportionate concentration of power over the majority. This constitutes the continuity between the two systems. The exposure of this power politics and the struggle against attempts at preserving communism are not considered antisemitic but as constituting a struggle for real political change and the self-defensive struggle of the majority. A frequent tactic of the coded antisemitic discourse of the center is to draw attention to statements and conclusions of similar content appearing in sources that are above suspicion—the writings of foreign and domestic Jewish individuals or Israeli publications—to comparisons of the Holocaust with other historical examples of genocide, to the place in history of “traditional” Hungarian antisemitism, to the relationship between the Jews and the communist movements and regime, and to many other widely disputed issues. The second round of discourse was not strong enough to legitimize the language it used. The number of people participating in this discourse was small: statements were made by only a dozen or so individuals,

antisemitic discourse after the fall of communism

29

and their main forums had an outreach far smaller than that of the left-wing, liberal, and moderately conservative media. Nevertheless, this round of discourse may not be regarded as completely marginal. One reason is that between 1998 and 2002 some of its representatives were members of the Hungarian parliament and thus had far greater media access. A second reason is that political opponents and public opinion attached greater significance to these statements, which, owing to the anger they inspired, reached a far broader circle than did the original publications themselves. As a consequence of the vitriolic debates about the danger of antisemitism, more and more people were inclined to publicly consider certain political and cultural phenomena in conceptual terms that had been dictated by antisemitic discourse— even if they rejected antisemitism itself. Moreover, as a consequence of these debates, antisemitic code was re-taught to sections of society whose awareness of the code had faded during the forty years that it was considered taboo. One of the repercussions of this development was that after 2006 the resurgent extreme right could easily revive the vocabulary and narratives of the antisemitic discourse of the 1990s as discursive tool for identity construction (see chapter 4.). The third discourse that we have examined is the conservative political discourse. This discourse took place at the center of political and cultural life. In terms of intention and content, it was not antisemitic. Participants in the discourse sincerely and repeatedly condemned antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews, expressing on more than one occasion the view that the Holocaust had been a tragic event in Hungarian history. Nevertheless, an important part of their argument, which aimed to demonstrate the historical continuity of anticommunist conservatism, was that political antisemitism had been an historical appendage rather than an integral part of the Horthy regime, and that responsibility for the persecution of the Jews should be placed primarily on external agents. Moreover, they considered any attempts to link the Horthy regime with fascism as veiled justification of the post-1945 communist system. The reified form of this argumentation can be seen in the widely debated exhibition of the Terror House Museum (opened in 2001), which presents the history of the two dictatorships—the Arrow Cross and the communist—as the result of the loss of the country’s independence first in 1944, then in 1948. The clear message of the exhibition is that without foreign dominance Hungary would not have left the world of European democracies and

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that consequently the responsibility for the Holocaust and for the misdeeds of the communist regime lies with the two totalitarian regimes that had forced the country to derail. The validity of such arguments could be the subject of a “historians’ dispute” in Hungary. However, historical identity discourses follow a different logic from academic debates: here, “re-contextualization” allows some of the items in conservative discourse to be made part of antisemitic discourse. The tendency of left-wing and liberal forces to “re-contextualize” these items before interpreting and attacking them is not specific to Hungarian debates. The “re-contextualized” interpretation also served the interests of participants in the real antisemitic discourse, since they were thereby able to present their own discourse as a consistent consideration of and reflection upon the views of respected public figures in the political center. Through “re-contextualization,” the linguistic space available for antisemitic discourse was greatly expanded. Using linguistic means, this space can easily appear continuous: radical discourses disassociate themselves from even more radical discourses, and less radical discourse is used as a point of reference. Thus, both strategies are used to strengthen legitimacy. Discourse A has no shared point with Discourse C, but if both of them touch Discourse B they appear to be parts of a family of discourse. This chain-like connection between the discourses provides an opportunity to further legitimize antisemitic language.

CHAPTER TWO

ANTISEMITIC PREJUDICES IN HUNGARIAN SOCIETY BETWEEN 1994 AND 2006 Many people were surprised and worried by the antisemitic discourse that emerged after the collapse of communism. There was much debate about how to react to anti-Jewish hostility and how to deal best in public with anti-Jewish views. At the same time, nobody knew the degree to which Hungarian society was inclined to adopt the reemerging antisemitic ideology. Reliable research data on the tenacity and strength of antisemitic prejudice in post-communist Hungary was not yet available. Nor did we know the extent to which antisemitic rhetoric could influence social actions and which sections of society would be the most susceptible. Moreover, during the decades prior to the political changes of 1989, there had been no examination, based on social scientific methods, of changes occurring in historical consciousness in Hungary in the course of the fifty years since the Holocaust. The history of the Horthy regime, Nazism, Jewish persecution, and the responsibility felt for the Holocaust, were all issues that were either wrapped in a veil of silence or were discussed—in school textbooks and in public—in accordance with the requirements of the Communist Party state. Nobody knew the extent to which historical memory could provide an antidote when faced with the challenge of reemerging antisemitism. All these questions and considerations led us, in 1995, to begin empirical research on antisemitism in Hungary. Our study was the first in-depth examination of this problem in Hungary since World War II. The most important aims of the study were to gain an impression of the extent, content, strength, and influence of antisemitic prejudice, to reveal the structure of antisemitic ideology and the social characteristics of antisemitic groups, and to draw conclusions, based on the data gathered, about the dynamics of anti-Jewish prejudice and the potential for the development of political antisemitism.

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chapter two 1. Previous Research

Although our examination is the first comprehensive sociological survey of antisemitism in Hungary, questionnaires drawn up in the course of previous sociological studies have included questions that offer some indication as to the strength of antisemitic prejudice—above all the size of extremist antisemitic sections of society—in post-communist Hungary. The first such study was a comparative analysis initiated by the American Jewish Committee in 1991.1 The researchers did not attempt to measure antisemitism in general. Instead, they chose just a few questions on which to focus their analysis. Nevertheless, based on the responses of participants in the survey, it is possible to form an impression of the size of entrenched antisemitic groups in Hungary and other countries in the region. The results of this earlier survey were the following: Table 1. “Do you feel that the following groups have too much influence, too little influence, or the right amount of influence in our society . . . and Jews?” (percentage)

Hungary Poland Czechoslovakia Czechs Slovaks Austria

Too much

Too little

Right amount

Don’t know

17 26 11 5 25 28

13 5 21 23 16 7

51 27 27 28 25 48

20 42 40 44 34 17

Table 2. “Would you like to have some Jewish neighbors, would it make any difference to you, or would you prefer not to have any Jewish neighbors?” (percentage)

Hungary Poland Czechoslovakia Czechs Slovaks Austria

Like to have

Wouldn’t matter

Prefer not

Don’t know

16 3 5 5 5 7

65 51 62 66 52 54

17 40 23 20 32 31

2 7 10 9 11 8

1 “Attitudes toward Jews in Different Countries” in Data from American Jewish Committee-Sponsored Surveys (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1995).

antisemitic prejudices in hungarian society

33

Table 3. “Do any of the following groups behave in a manner which provokes hostility in our country . . . and Jews?” (percentage)

Hungary Poland Czechoslovakia Czechs Slovaks Austria

Yes

No

Don’t know

6 19 6 2 14 14

64 65 64 70 51 –

30 16 30 28 35 –

Table 4. “Which statement comes closer to your opinion: Jews are an integral part of our nation, or Jews are outsiders to our society?” (percentage)

Hungary Poland Czechoslovakia Czech Slovaks

Integral

Outsiders

Neither

Both

Don’t know

75 44 52 54 49

10 16 11 12 9

3 11 13 12 14

4 8 5 3 7

8 21 20 19 21

The AJC study indicates, therefore, that about 10–17% of the Hungarian population is inclined to agree with antisemitic statements indicating that respondents feel a significant social distance between themselves and Jews living in the country, but that this is not coupled with a perception of serious conflicts. Thus, in 1991, antisemitic prejudice was perhaps slightly stronger in Hungary than among the Czechs, but weaker than in Slovakia, and considerably weaker than in Poland and in Austria. Another impression is gained, however, from a study conducted by researchers in the sociology department at the University of Vienna in the autumn of 1995 and spring of 1996.2 These researchers also avoided a complex measurement of antisemitism. Instead, examining the relationship between patriotism and nationalism, they tried to ascertain the level of anti-Jewish prejudice among the surveyed

2 Hilde Weiss and Christoph Reinprecht, Demokratischen Patriotismus oder ethnischer Nationalismus in Ost-Mitteleuropa (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), p. 85.

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population by posing a number of questions in a manner similar to the AJC project. Table 5. Measurement of antisemitic prejudice (percentage and averages); (1 = strongly agree, 4 = strongly disagree) 1 Hungary Czechs Slovaks Poland Hungary Czechs Slovaks Poland Austria

3 3 3 4

2

3

– As Christians we should reject the Jews 7 21 6 26 6 24 9 29

– Jews have too much influence in our country 18 20 31 3 10 37 8 18 36 13 24 35 14 23 35

4

Average

69 65 67 58

3.6 3.5 3.6 3.4

31 50 38 28 28

2.7 3.3 3.0 2.8 2.8

– Jews have too much influence in the international financial and business world Hungary 30 25 25 20 2.4 Czechs 15 32 32 21 2.6 Slovaks 29 35 24 12 2.2 Poland 19 29 30 22 2.6 – The annihilation of the Jews also had positive consequences for the country Hungary 6 9 29 56 Czechs 3 8 29 60 Slovaks 4 11 32 53 Poland 9 25 35 31 Austria 5 14 29 53 Hungary Czechs Slovaks Poland Austria

15 7 21 16 23

– Jews control international politics 24 32 23 40 31 31 28 33 32 26

28 31 17 23 19

3.3 3.5 3.3 2.9 3.3 2.7 2.9 2.5 2.6 2.4

– Many exaggerated statements have been made concerning the persecution of the Jews and the concentration camps Hungary 7 11 23 59 3.3 Czechs 2 5 22 70 3.6 Slovaks 4 10 28 58 3.4 Poland 4 8 29 60 3.4 Austria 6 14 26 55 3.3

antisemitic prejudices in hungarian society

35

Table 6. Support for anti-Jewish discrimination (percentage and averages; 1 = yes, 2 = no) yes

no

average

– Should the employment of Jews in important professions be subjected to controls and restrictions? Hungary 19 81 1.8 Czechs 12 88 1.9 Slovaks 21 79 1.8 Poland 31 69 1.7 Austria 28 72 1.7 – Should the enrichment of Jews and their ability to found businesses be limited by law? Hungary 23 77 1.8 Czechs 14 86 1.9 Slovaks 23 77 1.8 Poland 35 65 1.6

Although the responses to these questions cannot be evaluated in isolation from the meaning these statements had in the specific historical context in which the “Jewish question” emerged or from the role it played in debates at the time of the survey, certain trends are, nevertheless, discernible. According to the University of Vienna’s survey, antisemitic prejudice is strongest, in general, among Poles and Austrians and weaker among Czechs and Hungarians, but the survey also indicates that the attitudes of the Hungarian population on this issue are rather polarized: based on the responses given to the eight questions, Hungarians rank first among the antisemitic respondents on three occasions, while among non-antisemitic respondents Hungarians rank first on one occasion and second on five occasions. Among the surveyed populations, a majority of respondents had antisemitic responses on three occasions: once the Slovaks, once the Austrians, and once the Hungarians. It seems that religious anti-Judaism is not particularly strong among the surveyed populations. On the other hand, there is a high degree of acceptance of stereotypes relating to “Jewish cohesion” and “Jewish influence.” It is noteworthy how support for statements that cast doubt on the veracity of Jewish persecution is strongest in those countries— Austria and Hungary—that themselves bear historical responsibility for such persecution. Among Hungarians, between 10% and 55% of respondents gave antisemitic answers, and 10–20% of respondents

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apparently belong to the extremist antisemitic core. The data of the study do not allow for more precise estimates. In 1994, Hungarian researchers studied the relationship between prejudice and authoritarianism in post-communist Hungary. In the course of their examination they posed questions that were also connected to antisemitism.3 The questionnaire, comprising 27 questions, did not aim to measure the strength of antisemitism, but strove instead to determine the types of value-systems around which antisemitic prejudice forms. The final result of the study was that religious, ethnocentric, and political forms of antisemitism can easily be distinguished from one another in Hungary today.4 Moreover, the researchers also found that the inclination or tendency toward discrimination represents an independent factor within the system of attitudes; thus, this inclination alone is not an automatic consequence of prejudice. It is worth examining the distribution of responses given to the various questions used in the study. As the tables 7–8 show, 17–39% of respondents to the questions measuring political and discriminative antisemitism chose an antisemitic reply. In addition to the above nine questions, the questionnaire posed a further nineteen questions concerning Jews. By examining nine of these further questions (table 9) we may gain a more precise impression of the extent to which antisemitic views are accepted in Hungary. If—on the basis of the responses to the eighteen questions—we wish to form a scale that is capable of measuring the strength of antisemitism, as a first step we can simply total the scores of the various respondents on the four-point scale. Thus, we can say that those respondents who totaled less than 36 points for the eighteen questions are nonantisemites; those who totaled more than 54 points are extreme antisemites. Those with between 37 and 53 points are positioned somewhere between the non-antisemites and the extreme antisemites. Employing 3 This research was conducted by Zsolt Enyedi, Ferenc Ero˝s, and Zoltán Fábián. See Zoltán Fábián and Endre Sik, “Az elo˝ítéletesség és a tekintélyelvu˝ség a mai Magyarországon” [ Prejudice and authoritarianism in Hungary today), in Társadalmi riport [Social report], ed. Rudolf Andorka, Tamás Kolosi, and György Vukovich (Budapest: TÁRKI – Századvég, 1996), pp. 381–413. 4 The survey was conducted among a sample of 1,000 people (representative of the Hungarian adult population). The analyzed sample: N= 988. Each of the four questions was measured on a four-grade Likert-scale. A higher average expresses more prejudiced attitudes. In general, the 1994 survey measured a much higher level of antisemitism than all subsequent surveys. Momentary factors—i.e., the electoral campaign—likely influenced the results.

antisemitic prejudices in hungarian society

37

Table 7. Political antisemitism (Responses on a four-grade Likert scale, 4 = fully agree; percentage and averages) N Jews have always had great influence on the left-wing movements Jews even try to gain advantage from their own persecution Jewish intellectuals control the press and cultural sphere There exists a secret Jewish network determining political and economic affairs Liberal parties represent primarily Jewish interests Jews are the ones who have really benefited from the change of system

fully or average partially agree

621

33

2.56

837

39

2.40

761

30

2.22

583

23

2.22

612

21

2.15

827

28

2.13

Table 8. Discriminative antisemitism (Responses on a four-grade Likert-scale, 4 = fully agree; percentage and averages) N

fully or average partially agree

It would be better if the Jews lived in their 940 own state, in Israel Marriages between Jews and non-Jews are 850 not good for either of the partners In certain areas of employment, the number 924 of Jews should be limited

24

1.90

17

1.72

18

1.72

Table 9. Expressed agreement with statements concerning Jews (Responses on a four-grade Likert-scale, percentage) fully or do not know/ partially agree no answer Jews generally disdain the Christian faith The crucifixion of Jesus is the unforgivable sin of the Jews The suffering of the Jewish people was God’s punishment In the 1950s, the ÁVH (secret police) was used by Jews to take revenge Jews are all the same

29 26

21 20

25

20

26

34

40

9

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Table 9 (cont.) fully or do not know/ partially agree no answer Jews are always unsatisfied and critical The existence of anti-Jewish feeling is primarily the fault of the Jews themselves Jews in Hungary have many strange customs There is something strange about Jews

25 30

17 13

38

30

38

12

this calculation, we find that the proportion of extreme antisemites among respondents is 5%, while that of non-antisemites is 70%. However, these results are immediately open to dispute. It is obvious that the low score of some respondents on the scale is due to the fact that they gave no reply to some of the questions. Indeed, if we look at the distribution of replies, we may observe that there were certain questions that more than 30% of respondents refused to reply to. Therefore, the results must be adjusted by the number of missing responses. We did this by grouping the respondents into three groups according to the number of missing responses (0–5, 6–11, 12–18 refusals), and into four groups according to the number of points scored (0–18, 19–36, 37–53, 54–72 points). Then we examined the extent to which the number of missing responses may have affected the number of points scored. Those who gave no reply to fewer than six questions (73%) were classified into three groups on the basis of the number of points scored on the scale—non-antisemites, antisemites, and extreme antisemites. Those, on the other hand, who gave no reply to more than two-thirds of the questions (5% of total respondents) were not classified into any of the groups. The main problem was posed by the 22% of respondents who gave no reply to between six and eleven questions, i.e., to about half the total number of questions. Respondents in this group who scored high points even though they answered relatively few questions, were classified into one or another antisemitic group. The greatest uncertainty—as the table 10 shows—involves classification of those who on the basis of 7–12 answers scored a maximum of eighteen points. Based on their scores, members of this group are placed among the non-antisemites, but the high number of missing responses leaves open two other possible interpretations: no reply could be a sign of latent antisemitism, or it might mean a lack of any attitude whatsoever.

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Table 10. The relationship between the score on the antisemitism scale and the number of missing responses (percentage) number of missing responses 0–18 points 19–36 points 37–53 points

0–5 4 (non-antisemite) 40 (non-antisemite) 23 (antisemite)

54–72 points 6 (extreme antisemite)

6–11 8 (non-antisemite) 13 (antisemite) 1 (extreme antisemite) 0

12–18 5 (unclassifiable) 0 0 0

Whatever the case, based on the survey performed by Zsolt Enyedi, Ferenc Ero˝s, Zoltán Fábián et al. we may conclude that in 1994 about 7% of Hungary’s population could be considered as extremely antisemitic, while about 50% was non-antisemitic, and 40% possessed some form of anti-Jewish prejudice. Among the antecedents of the 1995 research, mention should also be made of the studies that I had conducted in previous years. Between 1992 and 1995, in the course of various public-opinion research projects—which were primarily concerned with party preferences—I regularly asked participants in the surveys to state whether or not they belonged to certain groups. Among the classified groups, there was one made up of those who “bear hostility toward Jews.” Irrespective of changes in political preferences and opinions, 8–11% of respondents classified themselves in this group.5 This figure indicates that at the beginning of the 1990s, 10% of the adult population in Hungary could be considered—to a lesser or greater degree—consciously antisemitic. More detailed results were provided by the survey that I conducted in 1993 on the strength of antisemitic prejudice among members of a specific social group—university and college students. The choice of this group was not arbitrary: the study sought to disclose the strength and extent of antisemitism among members of the country’s future

5 The Gallup Institute posed the same question during its yearly polls. The antiJewishness that they measured was somewhat higher than in the survey described in note 4, above.

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elite. This study—the results of which can be reviewed in detail elsewhere6—demonstrated that about 8% of present Hungarian college and university students are extreme antisemites, 18% are antisemites, 32% accept some antisemitic stereotypes, and 43% are non-antisemites. 2. The 1995 Study 2.1. The Measurement of Antisemitic Prejudices In March 1995, we held interviews, each lasting about 60 minutes, with 1,500 individuals. The group surveyed was representative of the Hungarian adult population (over 18 years) in terms of gender, age, place of residence, and education.7 The primary aim of the study was to provide a more precise impression of the extent and strength of antisemitic prejudice in Hungary in the 1990s. On the one hand, the results of the surveys performed between 1990 and 1995 indicated the approximate strength of antisemitism in Hungary after the collapse of the communist system. On the other hand, they revealed areas in which research still needed to be done. The surveys presented above showed the presence of a hard antisemitic core representing about 10% of the adult Hungarian population; the proportion of non-antisemites was 40–50%. However, where to place the 40–50% of the population that did not belong to either group remained an open question. This question leads to one of the basic problems of empirical research into antisemitism, a question that we have also had to face in the course of our examination.

6 For details of the results of the research, see András Kovács, A különbség köztünk van: Az antiszemitizmus és a fiatal elit [ The difference is between us: Antisemitism and the young elite] (Budapest: Cserépfalvi Könyvkiadó, 1997), “Antisemitism and the Young Elite,” Sociological Papers 5, no. 3 (November 1996): 1–74, Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem, and “Jews and Hungarians: Group Stereotypes Among Hungarian University Students,” East European Jewish Affairs 23, no. 2 (Winter 1993) 51–60. 7 The survey was conducted by Gallup/Hungary Közvéleménykutató Intézet. The research was sponsored by OTKA (National Scientific Research Foundation), the Soros-Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Budapest City Council, Budapest Bank, and the American Jewish Committee. The analysis of the data was supported by the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am grateful to Professor Mária Székelyi for her active participation in the data analysis.

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Some researchers of antisemitism—especially in the opening stages, that is, in the 1940s and 1950s—applied the additive method. When making their measurements, these researchers simply added up the number of antisemitic statements—present in the questionnaire—with which survey participants agreed. Use of this method generally permitted researchers to identify definitely antisemitic groups and definitely non-antisemitic groups; the questionnaires always included statements with which only antisemites could agree, and there was always a group that rejected most of the antisemitic statements—whose members, therefore, could not possibly be antisemites. However, a constant difficulty lay in the fact that—as in the case of the Hungarian surveys already mentioned—a large proportion of respondents were positioned between the two extreme groups, and therefore any further differentiation within this intermediate group based on the additive scale could seem—quite rightly—arbitrary. The second general problem associated with the additive scales is connected to the statements that measure antisemitism. It is immediately obvious that agreement with, for example, the statement that “Jews are all the same” does not express the same strength of prejudice—if indeed it expresses any prejudice at all, and does not simply indicate a tendency to stereotype—as does agreement with the statement concerning “the existence of a secret Jewish network determining political and economic affairs.” On the additive scale, agreement with any statement is of the same value, and this makes it even more difficult to differentiate between groups of varying degrees of prejudice. A number of solutions to these problems of measurement have been proposed in recent decades, and these solutions have gradually squeezed out the additive method from studies on prejudice. The introduction of the tripartite model of prejudice had the greatest effect on the new methods and procedures. Theories of social psychology on prejudice long ago drew attention to the fact that there are three dimensions of prejudice: its content, its emotional intensity, and the inclination to discriminate on the basis of prejudice—i.e., the cognitive, emotive, and conative dimensions of prejudice. It was only later, however, that empirical research on prejudice began to attempt to measure prejudice in each of the three dimensions and then—after some kind of aggregating of the three independent results—position members of the surveyed population somewhere on the scale of prejudice. We attempted this in 1993 when performing the

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survey among university students, and in 1995 we once again based our measurement of antisemitism on the three-dimensional model.8 The other fundamental problem of measurement is how to form a scale. As we have seen, simply adding up the responses is not sufficient if we are to obtain a differentiated impression of the extent and strength of antisemitic prejudice. However, other solutions are not without problems, either. When we conducted the survey in 1993, the replies of survey participants to the questions on three scales of measuring prejudice—scales measuring the cognitive, emotive, and conative dimensions—were weighed in proportion to the number of replies expressing agreement, i.e., when the final scores were being calculated, prejudiced opinions shared by many were given less weight than opinions with which few agreed. Subsequently, we calculated the scale scores in such a way that the scores received for the various replies were simply added together. Having standardized the scales, we used cluster analysis to place the survey participants into groups according to degree of prejudice: those who had achieved less-thanaverage scores on all three scales were placed in the non-antisemitic group; those who had achieved much higher-than-average scores on all three scales were placed among the extreme antisemites, while, on the basis of the results of the cluster analysis, the rest were placed among those with an inclination toward antisemitism (above-average score on cognitive scale, below-average scores on the other two) and in the group of antisemites (somewhat above-average scores on all three scales).9 This form of measurement undoubtedly gave a more accurate and precise impression of the strength of anti-Jewish prejudice than methods employing additive scales had done, but with this technique we

8 In the past few years, a theoretical debate has developed in the field of socialpsychology over whether the three-dimensional model of prejudice is redundant and the use of two dimensions (cognitive and affective) would be enough for measuring prejudiced attitudes. However, since most of the large antisemitism surveys in the last decades (i.e., in Austria and Germany) used the three-dimensional model, we applied it, too. See Alphons Silbermann and Herbert A. Sallen, “Latenter Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 28 (1976): 70–723; Hilde Weiss, Antisemitische Vorurteile in Österreich (Vienna: Braumüller, 1984); Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb, Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Ergebnisse empirischer Forschung von 1946–1989 (Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 1991), pp. 41–57. 9 For details of the survey procedures and results, see Kovács, “Antisemitism and the Young Elite,” pp. 4–15.

antisemitic prejudices in hungarian society

43

also relativized our means of measurement in two ways. First, the weight of the various statements became dependent upon the degree of acceptance of the given statements within the surveyed group. In addition, the scale of measurement established was not absolute, but measured antisemitism in relation to average prejudice. Even though one could argue in favor of this technique,10 we did not exactly apply that method in the 1995 survey. Assuming that in a sample representative of the entire population replies would tend to be more inconsistent than among a population of university students—that is, in a group with uniformly high educational qualifications—we dispensed with the weighing of replies. We thought that, while among university students prejudice could be expected to be ordered in accordance with the Guttmann scale—in other words, those who agreed with statements of prejudice shared by a few would also accept prejudices harbored by many, prejudice patterns in the population as a whole would not be so consistent, and therefore one could not assume that prejudices shared by many would be of less weight than those accepted by a few. During the 1995 survey, we established antisemitism scales using factor (principal component) analysis. Prejudiced stereotyping (the cognitive dimension), the degree of emotional saturation of prejudice and social distance (the emotive dimension), as well as the inclination to discriminate were measured using those questions that appeared in the same principal component in the course of the three independent factor analyses.11 The essential distribution of the replies to the questions forming the three scales is as follows:

Ibid., p. 9. We also measured the coherence of the scales using Cronbach alpha. The scores for each scale were the following: 1. The “prejudiced stereotyping” scale: .7820 2. The “emotional saturation of prejudice and social distance” scale: .7204 3. The “inclination to discriminate” scale: .4769 In the first two scales, the indicator also shows the coherence of the scales, i.e. the two scales do measure just one dimension. In the case of the “inclination to discriminate” scale, the indicator shows weak coherence, but based on factor analysis and correlation analysis, we concluded that for our analyses this scale could be considered coherent. The mutual correlation between the factors was strongly significant (p = .000). 10 11

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Table 11. The scale of prejudiced stereotyping (State whether, in your opinion, the following traits are characteristic or not characteristic of Jews); (percentage)

Rapacious Pushy Materialistic Greedy Aggressive Supercilious Vengeful Cunning

characteristic

not characteristic

don’t know/no answer

62 66 78 45 21 22 13 63

23 19 9 37 62 60 67 23

15 15 13 18 17 18 20 14

Table 12. The emotional saturation of prejudice and social distance scale (percentage)

Accept Jew as a neighbour Jews are nice/likeable One should always be a bit careful with Jews It is important to know whether a colleague is Jewish It is important to know whether a friend is Jewish It would be better to avoid marriages between Jews and non-Jews Jews tend to look down on others It is better if one has little to do with Jews It would be best if the Jews left the country

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

81 43 35

15 28 53

4 29 12

8

89

3

12

86

2

14

72

14

22 17

62 70

16 13

7

81

12

Based on agreement with the statements chosen by factor analysis, scale scores were attributed to the respondents in three ways. First, we employed the additive method, i.e., we totaled arithmetically the replies given by the various respondents to the scale questions. In the second and third cases, we formed principal components out of the scale items, and thus the replies of respondents were given appro-

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Table 13. The inclination to discriminate scale (percentage)

It would be better if fewer Jews were politicians, journalists, and bankers The extent of the Jews’ say in the affairs of the country should reflect their proportion in the population The Jews should have no influence over political developments at all Jews should be encouraged to emigrate from Hungary When doing business with a Jew, one cannot be too careful

rather agree

rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

35

55

10

53

35

12

10

78

12

5

88

7

41

40

19

priate scores in all three dimensions. Missing responses were treated differently in the second and third procedures: in one case we employed missing pairwise technique while in the other case missing responses were substituted by the mean of the total replies (mean substitution), and thus were included in the calculations. As can be seen, therefore, just as in 1993, we once again measured the strength of antisemitism against the average for the whole population, because we standardized the additive scale and got standardized scores on the factors. Having established the scales, we performed cluster analysis on all three scales. Based on the results of this analysis, we classified the survey participants into groups according to the strength of antisemitism.12 We formed cluster groups by classifying those who achieved negative, i.e., below-average, scale scores on all three scales into the non-antisemites’ group; those who achieved positive scores on the scale of prejudiced stereotyping but negative scores on the distance and discrimination scales, into the stereotypers’ group; and those who achieved positive scores (i.e., above-average scores) on all three scales or much higher-than-average scale scores were classified into the antisemites’ group 12

For the cluster analysis, we used the SPSS quickcluster program.

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or the extreme antisemites’ group. Thus, the above procedure enabled us to place each respondent into one or another of the groups three times. The results of the three placements are as follows: Table 14. The proportion of antisemites among respondents (number)

Non-antisemitic Stereotyper Antisemitic Extreme antisemitic Unclassifiable Total

additive scale

pc/miss pair

pc/meansub

384 492 291 93

414 488 255 103

400 650 333 90

213 1473

213 1473

1473

As table 14 shows, the three different types of classification produced groups of differing sizes. Therefore, as a next step, we examined how many had been classified into the same group in the course of each of the three procedures. With the help of the above procedures, we could place 65% of respondents into one or another group with a considerable degree of certainty; however, the remaining 35% were classified into different groups in the course of the three various procedures. Classification of this group was performed in a separate procedure. As a first step, we formed a secondary principal component from the principal components that were formed from the items comprising the three scales. An aggregate antisemitism factor was formed on the basis of scores reached on the three scales. Then we examined how many points Table 15. Definitive group classification following the three measurement procedures (N and percentage)

Non-antisemitic Stereotyper Antisemitic Extreme antisemitic Total

N

percentage

319 378 184 61 942

22 26 13 4 65

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were scored on this aggregated antisemitism factor by those classified into the various groups as a result of the various procedures. We also examined to which group they were closest, based on the three forms of classification. We then decided whom to place into which group on the basis of whether in the course of the three procedures they had been classified into one group twice, or whether on the aggregate antisemitism scale they had achieved the appropriate score for this group. As a final result of this procedure, we received the following figures: Table 16. The proportion of antisemites in the Hungarian adult population in 1995 (N and percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites Unclassifiable Total

N

percentage

420 478 246 116 213 1473

29 32 17 8 14 100

According to these figures, 29% of the Hungarian adult population is explicitly non-antisemitic, 25% are antisemitic, and 32% accept some of the economic stereotypes formed about the Jews over the centuries without these stereotypes being accompanied by any particular antisemitic feeling.13 The attitudes of a further 14% cannot be measured owing to the high number of missing responses; given their indifference, this group is also classed among the non-antisemites.14

13 Those placed into the stereotypers’ group received high scores on the stereotyping scale on the basis of significantly higher-than-average acceptance of five stereotype attributes—cunning, greedy, materialistic, pushy, and rapacious. They did not, however, tend to accept the other three stereotype attributes—vengeful, supercilious, and aggressive. Apart from acceptance of the traditional Shylock-stereotypes, members of this group do not accept other anti-Jewish stereotypes and opinions; indeed, they tend to reject antisemitic statements. If we disregard the above five stereotypes, the opinions of this group are more or less identical to those expressed by the non-antisemites’ group, and thus this group can be defined as more non-antisemitic than antisemitic. 14 In this group, the proportion of village residents, poorly educated people, and people of low status and relatively low income are significantly above average.

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Based on the above, we may state that in 1995 one-quarter of the contemporary adult population of Hungary might be described as antisemitic. 2.2. Sociological Determinants of Antisemitic Prejudices The next step in our analysis was to identify the sociological factors giving rise to antisemitic prejudices. Most theoretical explanations of antisemitism consider the origins of antisemitic prejudices as a combination of the following factors: • • • • • • •

demographic and social indicators: age, education, place of residence, mobility lack of economic and social resources feeling of subjective deprivation personal, social, and political frustration, feelings of anomie consequence of certain ideological attitudes symbolic expression of certain political-ideological convictions a manifestation of general xenophobia

In what follows, we examine the degree to which such hypotheses can explain the presence of antisemitism in Hungary. 2.2.1. Socio-Demographical Indicators As a first step in our research, I sought to determine whether there was a correlation between degrees of antisemitism and the basic social and demographic indicators of respondents. Data of surveys undertaken in Western Europe and North America indicate that there is such a connection: prejudice was generally stronger among older, less-educated groups with low social status.15 Our previous research, however, had cast doubt on the existence of such a correlation in Hungary. When conducting the survey of university students, we did not find a significant correlation between the strength of students’ prejudice and the social back-

15 See Gertrude Jaeger Seltznik and Stephen Steinberg: The Tenacity of Prejudice: Antisemitism in Contemporary America (New York: Greenwood Press Reprint, 1969); Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb: Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 1991), pp. 69–113; Weiss, Antisemitische Vorurteile, pp. 54–60; R. Cohen: “What We Know and What We Don’t Know about Antisemitism: A Research Perspective,” in Antisemitism in America Today, ed. Jerome R. Chanes (New York: Birch Lane Press Books, 1995), pp. 70–79.

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ground of their families. Such trends as there were did not suggest the presence of a linear correlation between prejudice, on the one hand, and age, education, social status, or wealth, on the other. Instead, there were signs that anti-Jewish prejudice was stronger among the lowest and highest sections of society than among the middle classes. These relationships are examined for the whole population in the tables below.16 As table 17 shows, in Hungary there is no difference between the strength of antisemitic prejudice among men and women. This result coincides with the results of surveys in Western countries. In Hungary, however, the correlation between antisemitic prejudice and age does not conform to the Western model: although there are slightly fewer antisemites than average among the younger age group—and slightly more than average among the older age group—these differences are not significant in statistical terms. Table 17. Antisemitism by gender (percentage)

Full sample Male Female

non-antisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 33 33

38 38 38

20 19 20

9 10 9

Table 18. Antisemitism by age (percentage)

Full sample 18–29 30–49 50–69 70+

non-antisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 31 36 33 34

38 43 38 37 35

20 19 15 21 21

9 7 11 9 10

16 Data in the tables relate to that part of the population that we were able to place in one or another of the antisemitism scale groups (N=1260)

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Full sample Budapest City17 Town Village, farmstead

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 22 32 40 36

38 33 42 38 39

20 27 20 17 17

9 18 6 5 8

Table 20. Antisemitism by education (percentage)

Full sample < 8 grades 8 grades Vocational High school University, college

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 36 37 35 28 35

38 35 34 35 43 42

20 20 17 19 22 17

9 9 12 11 7 6

There are statistically significant differences between the residents of the various types of settlement.18 As table 19 demonstrates, the proportion of extreme antisemites in Budapest is twice the national average, and while for the whole population the proportion of antisemites and extreme antisemites is 29%, in Budapest—where the great majority (90%) of Hungarian Jews live—this same proportion is 45%. On the other hand, in provincial towns the proportion of groups harboring antisemitic prejudice is lower than the national average. The table showing the relationship between the level of education and prejudice indicates that in Hungary—in contrast to Western countries—there is no significant difference between the various educational groups. Although the antisemitic ratio is below average among university and college graduates, stereotypers are overrepresented in this group.

17 18

Residents of county towns were included among city residents. Significance of Chi-square test = .01.

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Table 21. Antisemitism by social status19 (percentage)

Full sample Lower Lower-middle Middle Upper-middle Upper

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 37 36 28 32 28

38 35 33 41 46 49

20 18 20 23 15 23

9 10 11 8 7 0

Table 22. Antisemitism by income groups (monthly per capita income in Forints; percentage)

Full sample Under 6 thousand 6–12 thousand 12–20 thousand 20–30 thousand 30 thousand or more

nonantisemites

Stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 37 35 33 26 40

38 37 36 37 45 52

20 13 20 20 23 4

9 13 9 10 6 4

There is a moderately significant correlation between social status and antisemitic attitudes:20 extreme prejudice declines among groups of higher social status, while at the same time the proportion of stereotypers increases. Examination of groups of varying wealth21 and income levels again indicated that—as among the social status groups and obviously not unrelated to status—only among the highest income groups did the strength of antisemitic prejudice differ from the other groups: in such 19 The indicator of social status was formed on the basis of educational achievement and position in the employment hierarchy. Thus, highly educated people in management positions were placed in the upper status group; poorly educated people in lower category jobs were placed in the lower group. Groups in between were formed on the basis of combinations of the two indicators. For the construction of the scale we used five educational and eight professional categories. 20 Significance of Chi-square test = .02. 21 The wealth indicator was formed on the basis of household fixed property and durable consumer goods.

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groups there were far fewer than average antisemites and a greater number of people inclined to accept stereotypes. 2.2.2. Socioeconomic Status In order to provide a more refined analysis of the relationship between social status and prejudice, we devised a social-resource indicator. We developed this indicator as a factor from the three variables analyzed above: status, per capita income, and wealth.22 Subsequently, we examined the differences between the antisemitism scale groups according to their access to economic-social resources. Table 23. Economic-social resources of the antisemitism scale groups ( factor score averages, standard deviation)

Extreme antisemites Non-antisemites Antisemites Stereotypes

Average

SD

–.2282 –.1141 .0832 .1215

.8840 1.0040 .9314 1.0079

The table 23 shows that there is no linear correlation between economicsocial resources and the strength of prejudice. While extreme antisemites are over-represented in groups lacking economic-social resources, non-antisemites also achieved a below-average score. However, all indicators suggest that groups disposing of a great amount of economicsocial resources are highly represented among the stereotypers. In general, it would seem that only the highest-status and highest-income groups differ from all the other groups: in this group anti-Jewish prejudice is less common, while economic stereotypes relating to the Jews are more frequent.23 Finally, we examined whether social mobility influenced antisemitic prejudice, as a number of theoretical and research works had earlier

22 The resource-factor (non-rotated principal component) Eigenvalue: 1.77380; Explained variance: 59.1%. Loading: status: .82640 wealth: .75254 income: .72426 23 Group average differences are statistically significant between the stereotypers, on the one hand, and the extreme antisemites and antisemites on the other (.05 significance).

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concluded.24 Comparing the social status of respondents with the social status of their parents, we found that intergenerational mobility had no effect whatsoever on the strength of antisemitic prejudice. Our impression of the correlation between antisemitism and the social and demographic indicators can be refined somewhat on the basis of our analysis of the causal relationship between the strength of antisemitic prejudice and the social-demographic data or disposable economic-social resources. Regression analysis, in which we defined as the dependent variable the secondary factor formed from the three dimensions of antisemitic prejudice—stereotyping, social distance from the Jews, and the inclination to discriminate against the Jews—and in which we included as independent variables gender, age, place of residence, status, and economic-social resources, demonstrated that all these variables explain only to a negligible extent (R2 = 2.5%) the variance of the dependent variable. Two variables play a significant role in the explanation, namely, place of residence and access to economicsocial resources.25 We can, therefore, conclude that while residence in Budapest and a lack of economic-social resources do to some extent play a role in explaining antisemitism, the explanatory weight of these factors is not particularly great. Summarizing the results of the analysis, we may say that among the social-demographic and resource-linked variables it is primarily the place of residence that influences the degree of antisemitism: antisemitic prejudice is much more common among Budapest residents than among residents of other settlements. Characteristically, antisemites are to be found in groups having limited access to economic-social resources; but the economic-social resources of non-antisemites are also below average. Concerning economic-social resources, the highest average score was measured in the group of stereotypers.26 All these data point to the existence of two different types of prejudice: one

See, for instance, Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice (New York: Harper, 1950), p. 164; Theories and research on mobility and prejudice are treated in Werner Bergmann, “Group Theory and Ethnic Relations,” Error Without Trial: Psychological Research on Antisemitism, ed. Werner Bergmann (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 155–61. 25 The result of the regression analysis (stepwise method): place of residence: beta = –145, Sig.T= .000; resource: beta = –116, Sig T = .0001. 26 As the standard deviation values in table 23 indicate, among the various surveyed groups the antisemites were the most homogeneous and the stereotypers were the most heterogeneous. 24

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spreading among the middle classes and one among the lower sections of society. Even though a direct correlation between deprived sections of society and antisemitism has often been supposed, the results of our survey coincide with the conclusions of other surveys according to which it is not the objective amount of disposable economic-social resources but the subjective feeling of deprivation, insecurity of status, and the feeling of anomie that can generate antisemitism. Rapid and profound changes in society—and the associated changes in status and crises of values—in particular can lead to a prejudice-based rationalization of events in the case of certain groups. The fall of the communist systems and its consequences have doubtless represented such social changes. The political transition that followed the collapse of the old system placed great burdens even on those whose economic circumstances did not deteriorate dramatically: people’s positions in society and the identities that were founded on these positions were severely shaken; the chances of certain groups moving upward or downward in society were altered; earlier social regulations and norms lost their validity; previously unknown conditions developed; and frequently the consequences of various formerly effective social actions and life strategies became unpredictable. It was these considerations that led us to examine whether the strength of antisemitism depended on the subjective impact of social changes occurring in the course of the political transition. 2.2.3. Subjective Deprivation First, we examined the relationship between the subjective feeling of deprivation and a susceptibility to antisemitic prejudice. When interviewing people, we posed four questions about their view of changes—negative or positive—in their own and in most other people’s financial position since 1990; we also asked whether they expected an improvement or a deterioration in the future for their own group and for society as a whole. As table 24 demonstrates, while the proportion of extreme antisemites among those who believed that the situation of their own group or that of other groups had deteriorated significantly in recent years is greater than for the whole sample, the differences between the groups are either hardly significant or insignificant. This was also demonstrated by the fact that when we combined the four questions into one factor and calculated the factor score averages of the various prejudiced groups, we found that, although the average for the antisemitic

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Table 24. Subjective deprivation in the antisemitism scale groups (percentage)

Full sample

non- antisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33

38

20

9

– How has your personal financial situation developed since the change of system? Worsened 32 34 21 13 considerably – How has the financial situation of the majority of people developed since the change of system? Worsened 32 37 20 11 considerably – How do you think your personal financial situation will develop in the next five years? Worsen 36 33 19 12 considerably – How do you think the financial situation of the majority of people will develop in the next five years? Worsen 33 36 21 10 considerably

group was higher than that for the other groups, the differences between the group averages were not statistically significant.27 The prejudice-enhancing role of subjective deprivation is indicated, however, by another piece of data: while 47% of members of the completely downwardly mobile group (cf. social status of their parents) were of the opinion that their financial position had worsened since the change of political system, among the downwardly mobile antisemites (in the combined group of antisemites and extreme antisemites) this proportion was 60%.

27 Factor-score (non-rotated principal component) averages of the various antisemitism scale groups (one way) Average SD non-antisemites .0272 1.0006 stereotypers .0826 1.0051 antisemites –.0354, .9695 extreme antisemites –.1493 1.0071

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2.2.4. Anomie As a next step, we examined the relationship between feelings of anomie and prejudice, and attempted to adapt the general points of Leo Srole’s anomie scale to Hungarian conditions (Srole 1956).28 Srole measures the feeling of anomie on the basis of acceptance or rejection of five notions: community leaders are indifferent to the needs of the individual, and they neglect the problems of community members; little can be achieved in a society that is basically unreliable and chaotic; social norms and values are losing their validity, and life seems to become meaningless; one’s original life goals cannot be realized, and average people are finding it harder and harder to manage; personal relationships are breaking down and the individual seeks social or psychological support among his fellows in vain.29 These notions portray defenselessness in social and political relations, loss of norms and perspectives, and personal frustration in interpersonal relationships as sources of anomie.30 According to Strole, strong anomie induces prejudices against minority groups. In the course of our survey, we presumed that these feelings became significantly stronger in certain groups after the failure of the communist system. The question we sought to answer was the extent to which such anomic attitudes can account for prejudice in general and antisemitism in particular. As a first step, we attempted to measure the relative strengths of these types of anomic feelings by examining the degree of acceptance of notions that had regularly appeared in Hungarian society in the years following the collapse of the communist system. We hypothesized that the feeling of personal frustration and isolation would mostly appear in the reactions to growing social inequality, the feeling of social defenselessness, and the devaluation of norms expressed as doubts about the state of law and order, the feeling that society is 28 See Leo Srole, “Social Integration and Certain Corollaries: An Explanatory Study,” American Sociological Review 21, no. 6 (1956): 709–16; L. Srole, “Letter to the Editor,” American Journal of Sociology 62 no. 1 (1956): 63–67; L. Srole, “A Comment on ‘Anomy’,” American Sociological Review 30, no. 5 (1965): 757–62. On the Srole scale see Robert Merton: Social theory and social structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), part II. chap. 7: “Continuities in the Theory of Social Structure and Anomie: The Indicators of Anomie,” pp. 167 cff. An important work on anomie and the correlation of anomie and prejudice is Wilhelm Heitmeyer, ed., Was treibt die Gesellschaft auseinander? (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997). 29 See Srole, “Social integration and certain corollaries,” pp. 712–13. 30 On the interpretation of the Srole-hypothesis see Peer Scheepers, Albert Felling, and Jan Peters, “Anomie, Authoritarianism and Ethnocentrism: Update of a Classic Theme and Empirical Test,” Politics and the Individual 2, no. 1 (1992): 43–59.

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chaotic, rules are unreliable, and personal goals cannot be achieved in an honest way; distrust of politics and fear of the future in the rejection of the new democratic political system; and nostalgia for the “calculable” and “transparent” past, for the homeliness of the familiar, old communist system. Table 25. Measurement of anomic attitudes (percentage) Personal frustration People with university education generally look down on others Rich people generally look down on others People who obtain a little bit of power generally start looking down on others Social defenselessness, loss of norms Laws are of no use; they will be distorted and perverted until those in power are proved right Nowadays most criminals escape punishment Nowadays even the courts do not serve justice to the people In this country, it is only possible to get rich by dishonest means Distrust of politics and democratic institutions Parties exist for politicians to make careers Today there is more freedom than under the socialist system Parliamentary democracy and the multiparty system are not suitable for solving the most pressing problems in an effective manner Since 1990 people have had more opportunity to influence the fate of the country The multiparty system hinders a national joining of forces and the development of national unity

rather agree

rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

33

60

7

67

27

6

62

32

6

rather agree

rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

79

15

6

79

15

6

64

20

16

60

35

5

rather agree

rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

67 67

26 25

7 8

37

48

15

44

48

8

34

50

16

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Table 25 (cont.) Nostalgia Under the old system, it was easier to find one’s way among the regulations and laws than it is now In the socialist system, people could have more confidence in the future Under the Kádár system, the country’s leaders paid more attention to the opinions of ordinary people

rather agree

rather disagree

don’t know/ no answer

69

21

10

68

24

8

45

44

11

As a first step, we formed factors (principal components) out of the statements representing the different types of frustration. Factor analysis substantiated our supposition that we were faced with notions expressing common content.31 Subsequently, we examined the results received by the various groups of the antisemitism scale on the factors. 31 The results of factor analysis were the following: Non-rotated principal components 1. Personal frustration Eigenvalue: 1.79038; Explained variance: 59.7% Loading: 1) .68701 2) .82068 3) .80304 2. Social defenselessness, loss of norms Eigenvalue: 1.75429; Explained variance: 43.9% Loading: 1) .63855 2) .63268 3) .69429 4) .68134 3. Distrust of politics and democratic institutions Eigenvalue: 1.64527; Explained variance: 32.9 % Loading: 1) .43108 2) –.60719 3) .60548 4) –.54137 5) .65657 4. Nostalgia Eigenvalue: 1.63113; Explained variance: 54.4 % Loading 1) .73731 2) .72884 3) .74585

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Table 26. Anomie and antisemitism ( factor-score averages in the antisemitism scale groups)

Sig. F. Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

personal frustration

social defenselessness, loss of norms

distrust of politics and democratic institutions

nostalgia

.0000 –.1358 –.1141 .2132 .5741

.0000 –.0208 –.1465 .1087 .2864

.0000 –.0498 –.1401 .1762 .3253

.0389 –.0396 –.0451 .0926 .2488

As the scores demonstrate, extreme antisemites comprise the most anomic groups in all four cases: in all four factors their group received the highest scores. On the factor measuring personal frustration and social defenselessness, the scores of the group of extreme antisemites and antisemites is statistically significantly higher than the anomie measured in the group of non-antisemites and stereotypers (the result was different in the political anomie factor: here, the average score of the antisemite group differs significantly only from the average of the stereotypers’ group, and not from the average of the non-antisemites). Average scores, however, only increase in line with the strength of antisemitic prejudice on the personal frustration factor; on the other three factors, the average scores of the stereotypers’ group are lower than the scores of the non-antisemitic group. This also indicates that the types of frustration that are more closely linked to the social changes tend to be enhanced or weakened by the availability of disposable economic-social resources—because the indicators of social and political anomie are higher among the non-antisemites than they are among the stereotypers’ group.32 This conclusion suggests that social and economic position influence the degree of antisemitic prejudice primarily indirectly, e.g., by influencing the inclination to anomic feelings. Overall, however, the anomie factors do not explain antisemitism to any great extent, either: in the course of regression analysis performed

The correlation of the resource factor is strongly significant with all four anomie factors (p = .000), but the same factor only weakly correlates with the secondary factor that we established from the three factors comprising the items used to measure the three dimensions of antisemitism (p = .029). 32

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on the secondary antisemitism factor, these factors accounted for 5% of variance. When we included the resource factor in the regression, then the explained variance did not increase—which serves to underscore our statement.33 2.2.5. Ideological Attitudes Theoretical and historical works on antisemitism have discussed the relationship between antisemitism and various ideologies and ideological attitudes from a wide range of perspectives. Empirical sociological studies have demonstrated on more than one occasion the continued existence of traditional Christian anti-Judaism and religiously based antisemitism in modern societies.34 Research, such as, for example, a series of studies on the authoritarian personality, has also frequently shown the intertwining of antisemitism with nationalist sentiment and conservative mindsets. For this reason, in the course of our research we also examined whether there was a correlation between, on the one hand, antisemitism and, on the other hand, religious convictions, strong national sentiment, and conservative attitudes in today’s Hungary. The data in the table demonstrate a correlation between antisemitic attitudes and religious belief. Among those who are not religious, the proportion of stereotypers is significantly greater than among the population as a whole. Among those who are very religious, who abide by the teachings of the church, and frequently attend church there are, on the one hand, significantly more antisemites, and, on the other hand, among those who attend church once a week significantly more extreme antisemites, than there are among the population as a

33 The results of regression analysis on the secondary antisemitism factor (stepwise method) R² = 5 %; Signif. F = .0000 Variable Beta T Sig T Distrust of politics and democratic institutions .115 3.554 .0004 Personal frustration .151 4.643 .0000 The correlations of social defenselessness, loss of norms, and nostalgia with the dependent variable were not significant. 34 See, for example, Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian Beliefs and Antisemitism (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); H. E. Quinley and Charles Y. Glock, Antisemitism in America (New York: Free Press, 1979), chap. 6; Walter R. Heinz and Steven R. Geiser, “A Cognitive Theory of Antisemitism in the Context of Religious Ideology,” Error without Trial: Psychological Research on Antisemitism, ed. W. Bergmann (Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 331–55.

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Table 27. Religiosity, national sentiment, and conservatism, by the strength of antisemitism (percentage) a) Strength of religious convictions nonantisemites

stereotypers

Antisemites

extreme antisemites

Full sample

33

38

20

9

Rather yes Rather no

33 34

– I am religious 36 41

22 15

9 10

– Strength of religious convictions 34 31 35 35

26 20

9 10

Strictly religious Religious in my own way – Don’t know whether I am religious Not religious Atheist Yes No

29

51

17

3

30 40

46 30

15 19

9 11

– Do you consider yourself a church member? 34 37 20 31 42 18

9 9

– How often do you attend church? 41 15 31 24 43 37 36 40 32 40 30 40

36 30 12 18 19 19

8 15 8 6 9 11

Several times a week Once a week Once a month Several times a year Once a year Never b) National sentiment

Full sample

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33

38

20

9

– People with national sentiments should have greater influence Strongly disagree 32 41 20 Disagree 31 43 22 Neither agree nor 36 40 17 disagree Agree 35 34 20 Strongly agree 28 33 23

7 4 7 11 16

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Table 27 (cont.) nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

– More should be done in the interest of Hungarians living in neighboring countries Strongly disagree 30 39 23 8 Disagree 27 43 18 12 Neither agree nor 35 40 18 7 disagree Agree 37 34 19 9 Strongly agree 34 34 21 11 Rather yes Rather no

– (I possess) strong national sentiments 30 36 23 36 41 15

11 8

c) Conservative attitudes

Full sample

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33

38

20

9

- It ought to be possible to abstain from military service on religious grounds Rather agree 35 41 17 7 Rather disagree 33 35 21 11 Rather yes Rather no

– I support the death penalty for serious offenses 33 37 20 37 41 14

10 8

Rather yes Rather no

– I consider homosexuality to be unnatural and immoral 33 36 21 35 42 16

10 7

Rather yes Rather no

– I would impose a strict prison sentence on drug users 32 36 21 35 41 18

11 6

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whole.35 The degree of prejudice, therefore, does not increase in line with religiosity: stereotypers are less religious than non-antisemites, and antisemites are more strictly religious than extreme antisemites. In general, we may say that the strength of antisemitism seems to be directly linked not to religious belief but to the practice of such belief within the traditional framework of religious institutions: whereas the proportion of antisemites is only slightly higher among those who consider themselves to be religious than it is among the nonreligious, the proportion of antisemites is much higher among those who attend church once a week than it is among other groups. A significant correlation is demonstrated between national sentiment and the degree of antisemitic prejudice as well. There are significantly greater numbers of extreme antisemites and antisemites among those with strong national sentiments than there are in the full sample; for extreme antisemites the situation is the same in the case of the other two questions, although in the case of the question about Hungarian minorities there is no real difference between the various groups.36 Conservative attitudes serve to differentiate the groups to the least extent: here, extreme antisemites are significantly over-represented only among those wishing to impose prison sentences on drug users.37 When examining the correlation between ideological attitudes and antisemitic prejudice we performed the same calculation we used in our analysis of the relationship between anomic feelings and prejudice. First, we constructed principal components from the items used to measure ideological attitudes. Then we examined the scores achieved by the various groups of the antisemitism scale on these factors and determined which groups’ average scores differed from each other to a statistically significant extent. The conclusion of this analysis was that in all three factors the lowest scores were received by the stereotypers’ group; this group is thus less religious, less conservative, and less characterized by strong national sentiment than the average. The group’s scores for strength of religious convictions were particularly below average. The group of non-antisemites achieved near average scores in all three principal components. The antisemites are characterized by considerably

35 36 37

Significance of Chi-square test for the four tables, in order: .001; .021; .212; .000. Significance of Chi-square test for the three tables, in order: .009; .421; .001. Significance of Chi-square test for the three tables, in order: .367; .103; .051.

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chapter two Table 28. Ideological attitudes and antisemitism (Factor score averages in the antisemitism scale groups)

Sig. F. Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

religiosity

national sentiment

conservatism

.0097 .0300 –.1199 .1484 .0106

.0002 .0066 –.0965 .1320 .3304

.0004 –.0502 –.0992 .1662 .2596

higher-than-average religiosity and by higher-than-average national sentiment and conservatism, while the extreme antisemites are average in terms of religiosity, but considerably more conservative and nationalistic than the average. Thus, there is no linear correlation between the strength of religious convictions and antisemitic prejudice, although antisemites do tend to be more religious than non-antisemites, and an increasing strength of national sentiment and conservatism is clearly accompanied by an increase in the strength of antisemitism. According to the results of the regression analysis, taken together the ideological factors account for no more than 4% of the antisemitism factor variance.38 2.2.6. Ideological Self-Classification In the above analysis, we examined the relationship between antisemitism and those ideological attitudes that, in the modern era, often accompany antisemitic mind-sets. We identified such ideological attitudes as being the joint content of ideological self-placements and characteristic opinions. Nevertheless, as scholarly works on antisemitism have discussed in depth, antisemitic views may amount to more than the manifestations of certain personality types or certain attitude combinations—they may also serve to evoke in a symbolic manner

38 The results of regression analysis on secondary antisemitism factor (stepwise method): R² = 4 %; Signif. F = .0000 Variable Beta T Sig T Conservatism .1428 4.914 .0000 National sentiments .1130 3.890 .0001 The relationships between strength of religious conviction and the dependent variable was not significant.

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Table 29. The relationship between political-ideological self-classification and antisemitism (percentage) non-antisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

Full sample

33

38

20

9

Rather yes Rather no

33 34

23 16

9 10

Rather yes Rather no

– I possess strong national sentiments 30 36 23 36 41 15

11 8

Rather yes Rather no

32 33

– I hold conservative views 30 41

25 18

13 8

Rather yes Rather no

27 34

– I hold right-wing views 37 39

25 18

11 9

Rather yes Rather no

34 33

– I hold liberal views 40 34

18 22

8 11

Rather yes Rather no

30 33

– I hold left-wing views 40 38

20 20

10 9

– I am religious 35 40

consciously held ideological-political positions.39 For this reason, we examined whether there was a correlation between consciously held ideologicalpolitical positions and antisemitic views in the surveyed population. An analysis of the above data showed that there was no correlation between a liberal or left-wing self-placement and a certain position on the antisemitism scale, although antisemites numbered slightly fewer than average among liberals and slightly more than average among nonliberals. A religious or right-wing self-placement correlates weakly

39 See, for instance, Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as Cultural Code,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XXIII (1978): 25–45; Reinhard Rürup, “Die ‘Judenfrage’ der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und die Entstehung des modernen Antisemitismus,” in R. Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus (Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1987), pp. 93–119, esp. pp. 115–20.

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but significantly with the degree of antisemitism. There was a stronger correlation between self-characterization as a conservative—or as someone with strong national sentiments—and antisemitism: the proportion of antisemites and extreme antisemites was significantly higher than average among people with strong national sentiments and conservatives. Non-antisemites were significantly over-represented among people who did not consider themselves to hold strong national sentiments, while the proportion of stereotypers was significantly higher than average among those who did not consider themselves to be conservatives.40 The power of political-ideological self-placement as an explanatory factor is also negligible: the positions included in the examination explain 3% of the variance of the secondary antisemitism factor.41 2.2.7. Xenophobia Commonly known explanations of antisemitism include those theories that conceive anti-Jewish prejudice as a particular manifestation of xenophobia. Such theories include some of the personality psychological interpretations of antisemitism, the theory of the authoritarian personality, and a good number of social psychological group-conflict theories. In the course of our research, we also examined the extent to which anti-Jewish prejudice is accompanied by other forms of antiminority prejudice, and whether or not it can be explained as a manifestation of general xenophobic attitudes. We used two commonly employed series of items to measure xenophobia. In the first series of questions, we inquired whether or not the respondent would consent to members of various ethnic groups moving into his neighborhood; in the second series, we measured the degree of sympathy or hostility toward these same groups. In addition, we asked whether or not restrictions should be placed on the number of “immigrants of color” entering the country. We received the following distribution of answers to the questions.

40 Significance of Chi-square test for the six tables, in order: .0139; .0003; .0005; .0211; .3024; .6334. 41 The results of regression analysis on the secondary antisemitism factors (stepwise method): R²= 3 %; Signif. F = .0000 Variable Beta T Sig T Conservatism .1089 3.691 .0002 National sentiments .1117 3.785 .0002 The correlation between the other variables and antisemitism was not significant.

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Table 30. Would you restrict the number of immigrants of color living in the country? (percentage) non-antisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 30 36

38 33 42

20 23 17

9 14 5

Full sample Rather yes Rather no

Table 31. Would you consent to a . . . moving into your neighborhood (percentage of respondents who answered “would not”) nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 29 29 31 28 28 31 19

38 34 32 32 33 34 29 25

20 22 24 24 23 23 23 22

9 15 15 13 16 15 17 34

Full sample Arab Bosnian refugee Chinese Black person Romanian Minority German Jews

Table 32. How much do you like or dislike? (average scores on a “1 = dislike strongly—9 = like strongly” scale) nonstereotypers antisemites extreme antisemites antisemites Arabs Serbs Black people Romanians Chinese Jews

3.96 3.68 4.37 3.60 4.40 6.14

3.96 3.71 4.36 3.73 4.38 5.81

3.65 3.34 3.94 3.35 4.02 5.12

2.80 2.92 3.13 2.60 3.51 3.59

average 3.83 3.58 4.19 3.58 4.24 5.54

The table clearly demonstrates that antisemites are significantly more prejudiced—against all of the ethnic groups—than non-antisemites, but the difference is greatest, of course, concerning the Jews. Thus, based on the data of the thermometer scale, respondents “liked” only the Jews (as well as members of the German minority in Hungary, who do not appear in the table). These two groups were the only ones to achieve average scores greater than five. The data also

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Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

–.1197 –.1716 .2316 .8256

indicate that, with regard not only to the Jews but also to all the other listed ethnic groups, the antisemites bear greater antipathy than do the non-antisemites; this difference is statistically significant in every case. But antisemites still harbor less hostility toward the Jews than they do toward the other groups. (Of the two antisemitic groups, only the Germans received a higher average score than the Jews.) The next step in our examination was to establish—applying principal component analysis—a xenophobia factor from the above twelve items (we naturally ignored the questions relating to the Jews). The average scores of the antisemitism scale groups in this factor corresponded to the results already shown above: the scores of the antisemitic groups differed significantly from those of the non-antisemitic groups.42 The relatively high correlation (.3708; p = .000) between the xenophobia factor and the secondary antisemitism factor also demonstrates a close relationship between the two attitudes. 2.3. A Causal Model of Antisemitism In the above examples we examined whether we could demonstrate a relationship between the strength of antisemitism and five groups of variables—social and demographic variables, anomie, ideological attitudes, political-ideological self-placement, and xenophobia. The results showed the existence of a relationship between each of these variables and antisemitism, although the strength of the relationship in the case of some of the groups of variables differed. In the following, we seek to determine to what extent these variables may account for the strength of antisemitism if we correlate them at the same time with the antisemitism variable—and do this in such a way that we eradicate the effects arising from their mutual relationship. 42 The eigenvalue of the principal component of xenophobia 5, 54; explained variance 46%. The loading of the items constituting the principal component was above .4892.

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As the first step in the examination, we established two secondary factors (principal components)—the anomie factor and the conservatism factor—from those measuring the feeling of anomie (personal frustration, social defensiveness, loss of norms, distrust of politics and democratic institutions, and nostalgia) and those measuring ideological attitudes (conservative mind-set, strong religious convictions, national sentiment).43 Subsequently, we examined to what extent the anomie factor, the conservatism factor, the xenophobia factor, and the five socialdemographic factors together explained the strength of antisemitism. Applying regression analysis, we can draft the following path model:

–.093

xenophobia (r2=8%)

age

.364 –.144 education

–.077 resources

–.103

–.384

–.176

.108 anomie (r2=18%)

antisemitism R2=21%

.208

–.105 .131

domicile

conservatism (r2=14%) .213

(regression analysis; stepwise method; beta coefficients)

Diagram 1. Causal model of the explanation of antisemitism.

43 Both factors were established using principal component analysis. Anomie factor Eigenvalue: 2.13789; Explained distribution: 53.4 Loading: Distrust of politics: .75997 Personal frustration: .73105 Social defenselessness: .74818 Nostalgia: .68275 Conservatism factor Eigenvalue: 1.36477; Explained distribution: 45.5 Loading: Conservatism: .59247 National sentiments: .67522 Strength of religious convictions: .74689

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Antisemitic prejudices are explained both by social and demographic variables and by ideological and social attitudes. However, attitudes are more important as explanatory factors than are the place of residence and social/economic resources. Residence in Budapest (in the model residence in Budapest was coded with the highest value, residence in villages with the lowest value) and disposable social and economic resources directly affect the tendency toward antisemitism, but xenophobia is the most influential factor. Xenophobia is more common among older and less educated groups, and antisemitism is one of the manifestations of this phenomenon. Social and economic deprivation is not merely a direct cause of antisemitic prejudice, it also causes such prejudice indirectly—by way of anomic and conservative attitudes. Anti-Jewish prejudice is stronger when less education is accompanied by conservative attitudes. At the same time, the model also indicates that social and economic deprivation can induce antisemitism irrespective of the level of education. Indeed, antisemitic prejudice can develop among relatively well-educated but deprived low-status groups. The aforementioned appears to demonstrate that antisemitic prejudice can be explained by various combinations of factors. The social background of antisemitic prejudice is thus rather heterogeneous. An analysis of the internal structure of the antisemitic group is therefore required. 2.4. The Inner Structure of the Antisemitic Group If, however, we examine the model more closely, we perceive two factors in need of further explanation. First, it is apparent that the correlation between the two attitudes inducing antisemitism, viz. the feeling of anomie and conservatism, is negative, i.e., as anomie increases conservatism decreases, and vice versa. Thus, while both anomie and conservatism are among the factors inducing antisemitic attitudes, these two factors may affect different groups; some groups may be inclined to accept antisemitic views because of the feeling of anomie, while other groups may do so because of conservative attitudes. Indeed, it may even be that anomie and conservatism generate different types of antisemitism. An additional phenomenon points to the heterogeneous nature of the antisemitic group. As we have seen, Budapest residents are far more antisemitic than people living in other types of settlement—the population of provincial towns being the least antisemitic. On the other hand, in our analysis of conservative attitudes, we found that residents of smaller settlements are more conservative than urban dwellers. Yet

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conservatism correlates directly and positively with antisemitism. It is possible, therefore, that those people who are susceptible to antisemitism because of their conservative attitudes, differ in terms of their place of residence from those who are antisemitic for other reasons. It could be that in smaller settlements—particularly villages—conservatism is the source of antisemitism. At the same time, a further possibility is that although residents of smaller settlements are more conservative than urban dwellers, the type of antisemitism that is derived from conservatism is a special urban phenomenon. Thus, conservatives living in big cities belong to the antisemitic group. We set out to examine the inner structure of the antisemitic group by first examining which groups could be formed—from among the surveyed population—on the basis of their scores on the seven primary factors (principal components) that we had used earlier to establish the secondary conservatism and anomie factors. Table 34. Cluster groups, by frustration and conservatism factors ( factor score averages) integrated left frustrated integrated frustrated & liberal left conservative right Personal frustration Social defenselessness, loss of norms Distrust of politics and democratic institutions Nostalgia Conservative attitudes Strong national sentiment Religious convictions N

–.5320 –.6667

.3568 .3826

–1.0209 –.8971

.5639 .5137

–.8644

.4163

–.7576

.5123

–.7408 –1.2906 –.3414

.3900 .1880 –.7559

–.6856 .1360 .3775

.4417 .4325 .6907

–.7734 263 (18 %)

–.6724 415 (28 %)

.6789 278 (19 %)

.5845 517 (35 %)

Cluster analysis produced clear results.44 Comprising 18% of the population, the first group scored below average on all the factors, and thus members of this group are not characterized by either frustration or conservative attitudes/views. In this group, the proportion of voters for the liberal parties in the Hungarian parliament (Alliance of Free 44

We used the quickcluster technique in the analysis.

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Democrats, League of Young Democrats) was significantly higher than average (in 1995). The second group (28% of the surveyed population) received higher-than-average scores on all four factors expressing frustration; the attitudes of this group are more conservative than average, but religious convictions and strong national sentiment do not characterize the group. In this group, the proportions of left-wing party supporters and of nonvoters are significantly higher than average. Members of the third group (19%) possess strong religious convictions and national sentiments; they are inclined to accept conservative norms, but are not frustrated. In 1995, members of this group tended to support the national-conservative, right-centrist parties (the Hungarian Democratic Forum and, to a lesser extent, the Christian Democratic People’s Party). The fourth group (35%), on the other hand, is profoundly frustrated and conservative in every respect. In this group, the proportions of supporters of the mainly peasant-based, conservative Independent Smallholders’ Party and, to a lesser extent, of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, were significantly higher than average. The four groups also differ in their social-demographic characteristics. In the first group, the proportion of under-fifty-year-olds, residents of Budapest, the highly educated, and people with high status possessing numerous economic-social resources and cultural assets, is significantly higher than average. Males are also over-represented in this group; in the second group, there are residents of provincial towns, skilled workers, lower-middle-class people, people possessing relatively few cultural assets, and men; in the third group, residents of provincial towns, people possessing relatively large amounts of economic-social resources and cultural assets, and middle-aged people are significantly over-represented; while in the fourth group—the most frustrated and conservative group—the proportion of over-seventy-year-olds, residents of villages, people possessing few economic-social resources and cultural assets, people of low status, and women, deviate significantly from the average. Thus, the surveyed population is divided into two large groups according to the level of frustration and anomie, while the conservative and less conservative subgroups are found in both large groups. In the non-frustrated and non-anomie group, on the one hand, there is a particularly large number of people who can be called liberals and possess better social positions and opportunities. On the other

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hand, conventional and conservative sections of society—possessing relatively good positions—also belong in this group. Members of the frustrated-anomie group are characteristically people in a worse position, people of a deprived background possessing fewer opportunities for social advancement, those who hold conservative views in everyday life but who reject ideological attitudes that may be called conservative (i.e., strong national sentiment and religious convictions), people who are attracted to the Socialist Party, and those of low social status with few opportunities for social advancement and holding traditional attitudes and views. Indicative differences between these groups are also evident concerning xenophobia and the degree of prejudice. Table 35. The strength of antisemitic, anti-Gypsy and xenophobic prejudice in the cluster groups established on the basis of anomie and conservatism ( factor score averages)45

Antisemitism Hostility to Gypsies Xenophobia

integrated left & liberal

frustrated left

integrated conservative

frustrated right

–.2714 –.3218 –.5032

.0422 .0520 .0637

–.1818 –.1223 –.2556

.2053 .1876 .3598

45 To measure antisemitism, we used a secondary antisemitism factor. To measure hostility to the Gypsies, we used principal component analysis to establish a factor from six questions on the questionnaire. The questions were the following: 1. (are you someone) who loathes Gypsies; 2. would you consent to a Gypsy moving into your neighborhood (negative reply); (Do you agree that) 3. the rise in the number of Gypsies poses a threat to society; 4. everyone has the right to send a child to a school in which there are no Gypsy children; 5. one can only welcome that there are some places of entertainment which refuse entry to Gypsies; 6. Sympathy-antipathy thermometer (10 grade scale); Hostility to Gypsies factor Eigenvalue: 2.868; Explained distribution: 48% Loading: 1. .71211 2. .74717 3. .66023 4. .49495 5. .72232 6. .77461

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As table 35 demonstrates, both the first group and the third group exhibit low levels of prejudice; in the second group the degree of prejudice is somewhat higher than the sample average, while in the fourth group, levels of all three forms of prejudice—antisemitism, hostility to Gypsies, and xenophobia—greatly exceed the average for the Hungarian adult population. The strength of antisemitic prejudice in the various cluster groups is characterized by the fact that while in the fourth group the proportion of extreme antisemites—and the combined proportion of extreme antisemites and antisemites—greatly exceeds the average, in the third group non-antisemites—and in the first group stereotypers—are significantly more numerous than the average. But as table 36 shows, there exists within the integrated conservative group a relatively large antisemitic subgroup. Although the non-antisemitic ratio is the highest in this group and the proportion of extreme antisemites is the lowest, the combined proportion of antisemites and extreme antisemites (26%) is hardly lower than among the frustrated left-wing group (28%). All this demonstrates the existence of a heightened causal relationship between prejudice and the combined incidence of anomie and conservative attitudes: antisemites or extreme antisemites comprise 38% of the group characterized by both attitudes—the frustrated right-wing group. Conservative attitudes by themselves do not necessarily lead to antisemitism; indeed, if such attitudes are not accompanied by frustration and anomie, they tend, on the contrary, to imply a low level of prejudice. But what are the factors inducing antisemitic attitudes in the integrated groups? Who are the integrated antisemites, and what role do Table 36. The degree of antisemitic prejudice in the cluster groups (percentage)

Full sample Integrated left & liberal Frustrated left Integrated conservative Frustrated right

nonantisemites

stereotypers

antisemites

extreme antisemites

33 33

38 51

20 11

9 5

30 41

42 33

18 21

10 5

31

33

24

12

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ideological and political convictions play in the development of antisemitism among socially well-integrated groups? Do integration and anomie exert a different influence in smaller settlements compared with larger settlements? Thus, based on our observations, if we want to find out more about the internal structure of the antisemitic group, we need to answer two questions: What are the differences between the integrated antisemites and the anomic antisemites? What are the differences—if any— between antisemites in Budapest and antisemites in rural areas—the two largest subgroups in the antisemitic population? These two questions lead to a third one: Is there an observable difference between the integrated and the anomic antisemitic groups in Budapest and in rural areas? Among the antisemites, who comprised 25% of the sample (N = 362), 28% belonged to the integrated group and 72% to the frustrated group.46 Thus, as we expected, more than two-thirds of the antisemites came from the frustrated-anomic groups. Important differences may be observed between the integrated and anomic antisemites. Under-50-year-olds account for 50% of integrated antisemites, whereas just 31% of the frustrated antisemites are in this age group, while 31% of them are over 70 ( just 18% of the integrated antisemites are that age). In terms of place of residence, only in villages do the ratios of the two groups differ from the national average: 82% of rural antisemites belong to the frustrated group. In terms of educational and social status, there is once again a large difference between the two groups: whereas 69% of integrated antisemites have a high-school diploma, the corresponding ratio is just 31% among frustrated antisemites. Our analysis of the family backgrounds of the two groups revealed similar differences: although most members of both groups came from families of lower- and lower-middle-class status (86% of the frustrated group and 73% of the integrated group), there was a significantly higher proportion of people with lower-status family backgrounds among the frustrated group and a significantly higher

46 The group of integrated antisemites comprised those respondents whom we classified as antisemites or extreme antisemites when we were measuring antisemitism, whom we then placed into the integrated left-wing liberal group or the integrated conservative group. Frustrated left-wing and frustrated right-wing antisemites were placed in the frustrated-anomic group.

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proportion of people with upper-status family backgrounds among the integrated group. In terms of attitudes, the frustrated-anomic antisemites scored significantly higher average values on the antisemitism scale than the integrated antisemites; they were also significantly more conservative and xenophobic than the latter. By way of summary, we can state that integrated antisemitism is more common among younger groups of higher social status, while anomic-frustrated antisemitic groups are to be found among the lower strata of society. If we compare the groups of integrated and frustrated antisemites in Budapest and rural areas, we obtain an even more precise picture of the structure of the antisemitic population. In Budapest, there are more women than men among the integrated antisemites, whereas in rural areas men are predominant. Integrated antisemites in Budapest are older, more educated, of higher social status and higher family status than integrated antisemites in rural areas. At the same time, both in Budapest and in rural areas, the integrated antisemitic group is younger and more educated than the population as a whole. For instance, in Budapest, 67% of integrated antisemites have a high-school diploma, and the proportion is 54% in rural areas. The corresponding ratio for the population as a whole is 50% in Budapest and 28% in rural areas. Meanwhile, 44% of integrated antisemites in Budapest and 77% in rural areas are under 50. The ratio for the population as a whole is 38% in Budapest and 40% in rural areas. The indicators for the frustrated antisemites show that this group is slightly older and of lower social status than the average for the population as a whole in Budapest and in rural areas. Summarizing our observations, we can state that the co-occurrence of conservatism and antisemitism is, both in Budapest and in rural areas, a middle-class and upper-middle-class phenomenon. This phenomenon is particularly common among the younger subgroups. A further conclusion is that integrated conservative antisemites in Budapest are slightly older and of slightly higher status than their rural counterparts. Here we must ask how we can explain the phenomenon we discovered when we established the causal model, namely that conservatism itself—independently of anomie—can give rise to antisemitism. As we have noted, the sample contains two groups—the integrated left-wing and liberal antisemites and the integrated conservative antisemites, for whom antisemitism is not the consequence of frustration and anomie. If we can discover what characterizes these groups and identify the source of their antisemitism, then we can also obtain an explanation

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Table 37. Characteristic features of the non-antisemitic and antisemitic left-wing liberal and conservative groups (percentages and factor score averages) Non-antisemitic conservative Sex (women) Age group Place of residence (Budapest) Education (high-school diploma or above) Status (upperand uppermiddle) Resources Family capital Conservatism National sentiment Religiosity

Antisemitic conservative

Antisemitic Non-antisemitic left-wing/liberal left-wing/liberal

54 61 33 51 40% < 50 years; 44% < 50 years 59% < 50 years 59%< 50 years 31% > 70 years 13% > 70 years 16% 34% 61% 53% 43%

53%

89%

68%

14%

22%

27%

31%

.002 .003 .163 .354

.334 .180 .101 .470

.686 .867 –1.294 .038

.676 .628 –1.126 –.362

.650

.809

-1.034

–.761

for the phenomenon observed in the causal model. Table 37 shows the most important differences between the four groups. As the table shows, the group of antisemitic left-wingers and liberals comes from the upper sections of society: typical members of this group are young men in Budapest from high-status families who are highly qualified and of upper- or upper-middle social status. The principal difference between this group and the group of non-antisemitic liberals is that women form a majority in the latter group—the other differences being perhaps a consequence of this fact. The antisemitic conservatives come from lower levels of the social structure than the liberal antisemites (and non-antisemites), but once again members of the group tend to be relatively highly qualified Budapest residents of higher social status and “better” family backgrounds (meaning status and cultural capital of the parental family)—particularly when compared with the non-antisemitic conservatives. Women are more numerous in both groups, and the group of non-antisemitic conservatives contains a relatively elderly subgroup and a provincial small town subgroup.

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Finally, the difference between the two antisemitic groups—the leftwing liberal and conservative groups—is that the conservative group is slightly older and has a relatively high number of non-Budapest residents; its members are of a slightly lower social status and the proportion of women is higher. We thus managed to trace a form of antisemitism that is not caused by anomie and frustration. This antisemitism is to be found in wellintegrated groups of higher social status. Historical examples show that these are the groups that are not just susceptible to antisemitic prejudice but also—under certain political circumstances—to the ideology of political antisemitism. Moreover, they are capable of creating an associative link between antisemitic ideology and modern political conflicts, thus opening the way to the political mobilization of lowerstatus sections of society that harbor antisemitic prejudice but that are less capable of organizing themselves. For this reason, it is worth examining whether the antisemitism of the well-integrated, higher social status groups has links with other political ideologies, sentiments, and attitudes. The causal model demonstrated that conservatism is a factor contributing to antisemitism, and that it does so independently of anomie. When we examined which of the various attitudes comprising conservatism—religiosity, a conservative mindset, and national sentiment—was most closely linked to antisemitism, we found that strong national sentiment was the only factor with a serious effect on antisemitism. Even among the integrated conservatives, extreme antisemites were significantly over-represented among those who classified themselves as having “strong national sentiments” (9%, instead of the group average of 5%). In the conservative group, extreme antisemites are also overrepresented among university graduates and members of the group with upper-middle-class social status. However, the contents of table 37 reveal that the left-wing liberal antisemites also differ primarily in terms of the strength of national sentiment from the nonantisemitic, left-wing liberals. This relationship shows that an integrated and highly qualified group of Budapest conservatives harbors a form of antisemitism whose distinguishing feature is the presence of another ideological-political attitude, i.e., strong national sentiment. This type of antisemitism may be classified as a form of ideologicalpolitical antisemitism. Nevertheless, it seems that only a small group in the population was susceptible to political antisemitism in 1995. Among the 25% of the total population that was found to be antisemitic, the group of integrated antisemites comprised about 7%. Just

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over 1% were extreme antisemites. Thus, according to our calculations, no more than 1–2% of the total population was susceptible to political antisemitism in 1995. 2.5. Latent Antisemitism In the course of the survey, in order to measure the strength of antisemitic prejudice and to estimate the relative size of anti-Jewish groups in society, we necessarily used statements expressing, to a lesser or greater degree, antisemitic prejudice. When respondents agreed with such statements, they were in fact openly expressing antisemitic views. We know, however, that many people are reluctant to do so. Indeed, in today’s society, antisemitic views are no longer considered legitimate. For this reason, many antisemites refrain from voicing their opinions under any circumstances. The question arises, therefore, whether our impression of the extent of antisemitism in Hungarian society is false? May some respondents have concealed their real views during the survey? Is the true percentage of people with anti-Jewish views higher than the figure suggested by the survey? One of the greatest problems of empirical research on prejudice is that we must draw conclusions about the prejudices of members of a surveyed group on the basis of opinions that prejudiced people, in particular, may be reluctant to express openly under certain social conditions. As Róbert Angelusz has shown in his analyses of latent public opinion,47 the main factor determining whether opinions are hidden or clearly manifested is the political and social system, operating mainly through the structure of the public sphere. On the one hand, opinions may be hard to measure because a relatively large group of the given society doesn’t readily form opinions about relevant subjects. On the other hand, the difficulty may stem from the fact that some individuals hide their opinions on account of “a refined attempt to seek psychological advantage . . . existential dependence, or a fear of harder social consequences.”48 Even in advanced democratic societies with well-functioning public spheres, racial, religious, and other group prejudices belong in a category of opinions that are often kept hidden 47 Róbert Angelusz, “A rejto˝zködésto˝l a megnyilatkozásig” [From concealment to expression], in Róbert Angelusz, Optikai csalódások [Optical illusions] (Budapest: Pesti Szalon, 1996), pp. 9–49. 48 Angelusz, op. cit., p. 21.

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because their public expression would amount to an open breach of the consensus rejecting such views. As with any other form of illegitimate public behavior, this could give rise to psychological conflicts and possibly even to personal disadvantages. Research on prejudice, and on antisemitism in particular, has revealed a strong latency pressure among respondents: they consider it risky to express anti-Jewish opinions. For example, in the course of a survey conducted in Austria in the summer of 1991, 27% of respondents avoided giving a response when they were asked whether the number of Jews in influential positions ought to be limited, while 31% refused to take a position on whether a law should regulate the amount of property or land obtainable by Austrian Jews.49 In Germany, in 1989, 20% of respondents in a survey of a representative sample of the adult population agreed with the statement “if I am talking about Jews, I am always very careful, because it is very easy to get your fingers burnt,” while 15% said that “I don’t tell just anybody what I think about Jews.”50 This same statement was accepted by 25% of respondents in a 1993 survey of Hungarian students, while 52% of the same students thought that “if you say something bad about Jews, you are immediately branded an antisemite.”51 Of course, the most important issue for researchers concerned with measuring antisemitism is whether or not the feeling of latency pressure induces respondents to hide their real opinions in the course of the interviews. This will obviously depend on whether respondents consider the sociological interview to be public discourse, in which case they might tend to express socially approved, conformist opinions, or a form of communication similar to a private discussion where they might tend to say what they really think, even about sensitive issues. There is no general theoretical answer to this question. In the course of their research in Germany, Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb concluded that while about one-quarter of respondents strongly felt latency pressure, it was primarily antisemites—those who otherwise did not hide their opinions in the course of the survey—who considered the 49 Franz Karmasin, Austrian Attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. Working Papers on Contemporary Antisemitism (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1992), pp. 31–34. 50 Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb, Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Ergebnisse der empirischen Forschung von 1946–1989 (Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 1991), p. 280. 51 András Kovács, A különbség köztünk van: Az antiszemitizmus és a fiatal elit [The difference is between us: Antisemitism and the young elite] (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1997), p. 58.

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expression of anti-Jewish views to be risky. According to Bergmann and Erb, who found that 12% of the whole population was strongly antisemitic and 7% extremely antisemitic, at most a further 4% of the surveyed population could be hidden or latent antisemites.52 The 1993 survey of a representative sample of Hungarian university and college students produced similar results. It demonstrated that those who gave antisemitic answers in the course of the interview also felt the strongest latency pressure, but this did not stop them from openly expressing their opinions in the interview situation. On the basis of the survey results, I concluded that 7.5% of the students were extremely antisemitic, 18% were antisemitic, and a further maximum 9% (but probably less) were latent antisemites.53 Róbert Angelusz, on the other hand, discovered higher levels of latent antisemitism in a national survey of a representative sample: over and above the 12% of openly antisemitic respondents, he identified a further 12% as latent antisemites.54 The difference in results may perhaps be explained by differences in the questions asked. But another point to consider is the extent to which the three groups—West-German respondents, Hungarian university students, and members of the representative sample of Hungarian society—considered the sociological interview to be an anonymous and nonpublic forum. Perhaps the latter group exhibited a greater lack of confidence and thus a tendency toward latency. For this reason, we should definitely examine whether—owing to the fact that a significant number of respondents conceal their real opinions—it is necessary to adjust the results obtained on the basis of opinions openly expressed in the course of the interviews. Using Niklas Luhmann’s definitions of latency,55 scholars concerned with the problem have distinguished between two forms of latency. They speak of conscious or factual latency—in which people have no developed opinions about the issues under examination—and of communicative or functional latency—in which participants hide their real opinions.56 Miriam Gilljam and Daniel Granberg call the former Bergmann and Erb, op. cit., p. 282. Kovács, op. cit., pp. 59, 62. 54 Angelusz, “Optikai csalódások” [Optical illusions], in Angelusz, op. cit., pp. 168–212. 55 Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 458. 56 See Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb, “Kommunikationslatenz, Moral und öffentliche Meinung,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 38 (1986): 223–46; Jürgen Bellers, “Moralkommunikation und Kommunikationsmoral: Über 52 53

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real nonattitudes or true negatives and the latter pseudo-nonattitudes or false negatives.57 Thus, there are two possible reasons for evading a response. Some respondents may indeed have no developed opinions about the questions raised; the issues under examination are of no interest to them. Other respondents, however, may not wish to say what they really think. Opinions may be concealed in two ways: respondents may avoid answering questions even though they do hold opinions, or they may express opinions that are not their real views. Clearly, our analysis must focus primarily on communicative latency and the group of pseudo-nonattitudes. For our examination of latency, we used a group of questions that had already been used in three other surveys. The first group of questions measures the extent to which latency pressure is felt, and allows us to examine where individuals inclining to latency fall on the antisemitism scale. Table 38. The feeling of latency pressure (percentage)

I don’t tell just anyone what I think about Jews I think many people don’t dare say openly what they think about Jews if you say something bad about Jews, you are immediately branded an antisemite

true

false

don’t know/ no response

29

62

9

54

35

11

44

41

15

Table 39. Latency-index (percentage) none of the statements is true one of the statements is true two of the statements are true all three statements are true

29 29 29 13

Kommunikationslatenzen, Antisemitismus und politisches System,” in Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur nach 1945, ed. W. Bergmann and R. Erb (Opladen: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften1990), pp. 278–21. 57 Miriam Gilljam and Daniel Granberg: “Should We Take Don’t Know for an Answer?” Public Opinion Quarterly 57 (1993): 349.

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The second group of questions indicates how strong various respondents consider antisemitism to be in society, and, on the basis of their position on the antisemitism scale, whether they see themselves belonging to what they consider to be the majority or the minority. This analysis is important if we wish to estimate latency, because previous research has shown that certain groups react to latency pressure by projecting their real opinions onto other people, in particular onto “the majority of society.”58 Table 40. Estimating antisemitism (percentage) very many many few very few DNT/N (4) (3) (2) (1) (0) In Hungary today, how many people do you think are hostile to the Jews? How many people might want to limit the influence of Jews in the country? How many people think it would be better if Jews were to emigrate?

2

23

48

16

11

2

23

46

16

13

1

17

44

24

14

Table 41. Estimate-index based on the sum of responses to the three questions (percentage) there are very few antisemites (1–3 points) there are few antisemites (4–6 points) there are many antisemites (7–8 points) there are a lot of antisemites (9–12 points) Unable to guess (0 points)

15 48 14 14 9

Finally, we assessed whether individual respondents consider a series of statements expressing varying degrees of antisemitic views to be antisemitic or not. We may consider negative responses to indicate latency, because respondents may be able to dissolve the cognitive dissonance stemming from the illegitimate nature of their suppressed antisemitic views by declaring these views to be non-antisemitic (i.e., legitimate). As a next step, indices were prepared from the responses to the three groups of questions, which were then used as indicators of latency. 58

Angelusz, “Optikai csalódások,” p. 205.

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chapter two Table 42. Is someone an antisemite if s/he . . . (percentage) antisemite

always seeks to know who is Jewish in her/his surroundings doesn’t consider Jews living in Hungary to be Hungarians wouldn’t marry a Jew wants to limit the number of Jews in certain professions thinks that Jews can never become full Hungarians whatever the conditions thinks that Jews have recognizable features thinks that the murder of Christ is the unforgivable sin of the Jews thinks that Jews should be encouraged to emigrate from Hungary thinks that the interests of Jews in Hungary are very different from the interests of non-Jews thinks that Jews are no longer capable of integrating into Hungarian society thinks that the crimes committed against the Jews were no greater than those against the victims of communism thinks that Jews are responsible for the period of communist rule in Hungary thinks that Jews divide and weaken nations that accept them thinks that Jews are hostile to the Christian faith

nonDNT/N antisemite

23

66

11

57

31

12

52 67

36 22

12 11

60

28

12

19

70

11

37

42

21

77

13

10

35

50

15

48

38

14

30

51

19

45

34

21

65

21

14

42

39

19

Table 43. Index of the denial of antisemitism (percentage) 0–3 statements were antisemitic 4–6 statements were antisemitic 7–9 statements were antisemitic 10–14 statements were antisemitic

23 25 28 24

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Thus, in the surveyed population, there are two groups whom we may suspect of concealing their real opinions in the course of the interviews or of not expressing their real attitudes. The first group is composed of those respondents who gave no real answers to a great number of the questions, i.e., those who did not answer or who selected the “don’t know” response. The second group comprises respondents who perhaps did not say what they were really thinking and responded to the questions raised with answers they considered to be appropriate or legitimate. We examined the group of respondents who regularly avoided answering with the help of the questions we had used to divide the respondents into groups according to the strength of antisemitism. The share of no responses to the 25 questions used to form the antisemitism scale was the following: Table 44. The proportion of no response (N) and don’t know (DNT) answers to the 25 scale questions (percentage) Zero DNT/N less than 10% DNT/N 10–20% DNT/N 20–30% DNT/N 30–40% DNT/N more than 40% DNT/N

43 19 16 6 6 10

Thus, 22% of respondents gave no answer to at least six questions, which means in effect that they gave no meaningful answers to the questions measuring the strength of antisemitic prejudice. Respondents who avoided answering more than ten questions (40%) form the only clearly identifiable subgroup: in this group there are significantly higher-than-average numbers of village inhabitants, poorly educated people, people of low status, and poor people—all of whom also often failed to give meaningful responses to the questions examining general economic and political attitudes. Also of interest is the fact that women are slightly more inclined to avoid answering, while Budapest residents were more likely to respond. We also examined whether we could identify differences between the various groups (classified according to their propensity to avoid responding) in terms of the strength of xenophobia, anomie, and conservatism—that is, on the basis of three attitudes that, according to the results of our previous survey, give rise

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to antisemitism. Our examination did not reveal any significant differences. This result again indicates that the refusal to respond reflects a lack of attitudes rather than latency. This impression is strengthened by the analysis carried out with the help of the latency-index and the estimate-index. The suspicion of latency arises above all in connection with those who failed to give meaningful responses to a great number of questions but who, on the other hand, were placed in relatively high positions on the latency and estimate indices. An analysis of the responses revealed that 73 of those 321 people (22% of the total surveyed population) who gave no response to more than 20% of the factor questions (i.e., to more than five questions) agreed with at least two of the statements forming the latency index, while 40 of them thought that antisemites were numerous in Hungary, and 16 of them featured in the group with high scores on both indices. Based on these results, we may state that between 5% and 25% of those who avoided giving full responses may, in doing so, have concealed their antisemitic prejudice. This makes up between 1% and 5% of the full sample. However, a closer study of the group once again revealed that in a large majority of cases the refusal to respond was more likely to indicate nonattitude or factual latency. When, for example, we examined whether, within the group of non-antisemites, there were any differences between those suspected of latency and the others in terms of the strength of attitudes such as xenophobia, anomie, and conservatism (all of which have a proven causal role in the formation of antisemitic prejudice), we found no significant differences. Thus, employing Giljam and Granberg’s category, we may classify this group as “real nonattitudes or true negatives.” This means that, when measuring antisemitism, we were right not to regard the group of unclassifiables (i.e., those with a large number of no responses) as antisemites. Of course, the suspicion of latency does not only arise in the case of those who avoided answering many questions. It is also possible that some respondents gave misleading answers rather than expressing what they really thought. If a large number of the respondents reacted to the feeling of latency pressure by giving conformist answers, and on the basis of these answers were placed among the non-antisemites, then we must definitely adjust our estimate of the proportion of antisemites. Thus, we have to examine whether the group that was placed among the non-antisemites on the basis of its answers, but received high scores on the latency scale, is in reality antisemitic.

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Among non-antisemites there was a fairly large group who felt latency pressure. Of 897 non-antisemites 239 individuals (27%) felt that there were many antisemites in the country and 386 (43%) agreed with at least two of the latency index statements. The number of those non-antisemites who scored high on both indices, i.e., who agreed with at least two of the latency index statements and who were also of the view that there were many antisemites in the country, was 112, which is more than 12% of the group of non-antisemites. A more detailed examination revealed that in the first group—the group that is non-antisemitic but supposes a high number of antisemites— there were significantly higher than average numbers of young people (18–29-year-olds) who were residents of Budapest, were better educated, or belonged to the middle class. This result corresponds with the findings of Róbert Angelusz, who also concluded that this group comprised highly educated and young Budapest residents.59 In terms of the strength of attitudes that give rise to antisemitism (xenophobia, anomie, conservatism), however, the group suspected of latency was no different from the other non-antisemitic groups. The group that is non-antisemitic, but feels a strong latency pressure, hardly differed from the other non-antisemitic groups with regard to most social and demographic indices. However, there were significantly more women, fewer young people, and more people with higher educational qualifications or belonging to the upper-middle class in the group. In terms of attitudes that give rise to antisemitic prejudice, there were a few small differences between non-antisemites suspected of latency and other non-antisemites: among the former group the feeling of anomie was significantly stronger than among the latter group, which indicates that there may indeed be antisemites hiding in this group. The third indicator used to measure latency is the denial of the antisemitic nature of antisemitic statements. As we have seen (table 43), 48% of respondents considered at most six of the fourteen statements to be antisemitic. Even if we take into account the fact that 10% of those interviewed gave “don’t know” responses to at least 8 questions, almost 40% of the respondents may not have confessed what they really thought when they were asked about antisemitism. Naturally, the denial of the antisemitic content of antisemitic statements is not

59

Ibid., p. 207.

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necessarily a manifestation of latency; it is possible that a respondent does not perceive the meaning of what are consensually considered to be antisemitic statements, or that s/he is uncertain about judging the statements and therefore gives random responses. For these reasons, the suspicion of latency is strongest in connection with those who received high scores on all three indices measuring latency and who were placed in one of the non-antisemitic groups when antisemitism was being measured. Thus, as a first step, we examined how many of the respondents who were placed among the non-antisemites (i.e., in the non-antisemitic or stereotyping groups) when antisemitism was being measured, but who agreed with at least two of the statements measuring latency, felt that there were many antisemites living in the country and, furthermore, did not regard at least eight of the antisemitic statements as antisemitic. The result of this calculation may be considered the minimum estimate of latency. In the sample (N = 1473) we have found 39 such individuals. This means that we must adjust the measured proportion of antisemites by at least 3%. To calculate the maximum estimate of latency, we created a new index by combining the three latency indices. The maximum possible score on the index was 11, which respondents received if they agreed with all three statements measuring latency, were of the opinion that there were many antisemites in the country, and considered at most three of the antisemitic statements to be antisemitic.60 Table 45. Combined latency index

non-latent (index score of 2–5) somewhat latent (index score of 6–7) latent (index score of 8–11)

percentage

N

45 36 19

661 521 277

Possible scores on the latent-index: 0 (none of the statements is true)–3 (all three statements are true); possible scores on the estimate-index: 1 (there are very few antisemites)–4 (there are very many antisemites); possible scores on the denial-index: 1 (7–14 statements are antisemitic)–4 (0–3 statements are antisemitic). 60

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Table 46. Latency and antisemitism (percentage)

non-antisemite stereotyper antisemite extreme antisemite unclassifiable

non-latent

somewhat latent

latent

52 49 12 12 64

34 38 30 30 25

14 13 58 58 11

As shown in the table, antisemites experience latency pressure much more strongly than non-antisemites, and yet, in the course of the interviews, most of them did not conceal their views and, based on their responses, they were placed in the antisemitic group. This result coincides with the findings of other surveys and confirms the validity of our measurement—at least as regards the low significance of the distorting effect of respondents who concealed their views. Nevertheless, one should also note that of the group displaying strong latency on the combined latency index (N = 277) 140 individuals (i.e., approximately half of the group) appeared as non-antisemites in the measurement procedure—that is, they were placed among the non-antisemites, stereotypers, or unclassifiables. It is these two groups that must be compared in order to find out whether latency disguises a tendency to prejudice. This comparison of the groups of non-antisemites with low and high scores on the latency index showed that non-antisemites with high scores differ from those with low scores in the same dimensions as those generally distinguishing antisemites from non-antisemites. Thus, this group of 140 individuals—10% of the total sample—probably does include many latent antisemites. With regard to the social and demographic indicators, among members of the group displaying high latency there were significantly greater numbers of people born and residing in Budapest and those whose parents were also from Budapest and were highly educated people.61 Those with high latency scores are more similar in terms of their attitudes to antisemites than to the non-antisemites with whom they appeared in the same group on the antisemitism scale: among the former group xenophobia and anomie are significantly stronger than among the latter.62 With regard to the various cluster groups formed 61 62

The differences are in all cases statistically significant (χ275

66–75

56–65

46–55

–0.05 0.079

–0.1 –0.15

0.132

–0.2 –0.195 –0.25

factor score averages; 0 = average of the total population

Diagram 2. Knowledge of the Holocaust by age group.

and 12% of non-antisemites were included in the informed and wellinformed group (table 4). This data appears to refute the existence of a connection between knowledge level and prejudice. Greater knowledge is clearly linked with a higher level of formal education and with higher status, but other motives—for instance, biographical facts, affiliation with certain religious denominations, and even extreme anti-Jewish prejudice—probably serve to encourage people to gather information about the persecution of Jews. All this lends credence to those who argue that knowledge of the Holocaust can only reduce the likelihood of prejudice if it is put in a certain context and within an established framework of education and enlightenment. We assumed that knowledge about the Holocaust would have grown as a result of the introduction in 2001 of a Holocaust Memorial Day and Holocaust education programs in the schools, and that of anniversary commemorations and the opening in Budapest of the Holocaust Memorial Center and its permanent exhibition in 2004. There were already indicators for change: a comparison of the results of surveys conducted in 2002 and in 200414 has shown that the number of those who could tell when the Holocaust happened and estimate the number of victims both in Hungary and in Europe has grown; moreover, the

14 See Mária Vásárhelyi, “A holokauszt a családtörténetekben” [The Holocaust in family narratives], in Tanulmányok a Holokausztról IV, ed. Randolph L. Braham (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó), pp. 269–89.

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Table 4. Antisemitic and non-antisemitic groups according to their knowledge of the Holocaust (percentage, N = 983)

Very uninformed Uninformed Averagely informed Informed Well-informed Total

Extreme antisemites

Moderate antisemites

Non-antisemites

8 40 39 10 3 100

15 47 29 7 2 100

11 46 31 11 1 100

number of those who held only Nazi Germany responsible for the Holocaust has decreased in the population as a whole, and the number of those who held Germans and Hungarians equally responsible for it has increased somewhat. Our expectations were only partly fulfilled. In the 2006 survey, 94% of respondents had heard about Auschwitz, 48% about Dachau, and 18% about Treblinka. These figures are basically the same as in 2003. Also, the vast majority of those who said they had heard about these places associated them with the Holocaust (as death camps or as places where Jews had been taken) when asked why these places were known. On the other hand, two-thirds of respondents (57%) could give an acceptable definition for the meaning of the word Holocaust. This ratio is much higher than the ratio of correct answers in the 2003 survey (when 44% of participants could define the meaning of the word), and is close to the results of surveys conducted in Austria and the United States. Some increase in knowledge about the Holocaust is also signified by the fact that in the 2006 study 48% of respondents could give a correct estimate of the number of Hungarian Jewish victims, as opposed to 35% in the 2003 survey. However, if we use the composite knowledge index, we can draw a picture showing that in 2006 the results were almost exactly the same as the results of the 2003 survey (see diagram 3). The 2006 results on the social-demographic factors influencing knowledge about the Holocaust are similar to those in 2003. We again found significant differences between younger and older age groups: the group of people aged 50–59 (born between 1945 and 1954) stood out from all other groups. Their level of knowledge was the highest,

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40

39

39 32 32

35

percentage

30 25 20

16

17

15

11

2003 2006

10

10 2

5

2

0

highly ignorant

uninformed

averagely informed

informed

well informed

Diagram 3. Respondents’ level of knowledge (2003–2006).

whereas that of the youngest groups (18–19- and 20–30-year-olds, respectively) was the lowest. The fact that the age group between 50–59 knew more about the Holocaust than the age groups before and after it indicates that knowledge comes neither from the previous generation (as they did not pass their knowledge on to the next generation), nor from schools in the former system. It is very probable that this generation, very active participants in the events and debates of the years of transition, closely followed the fierce controversies on the role of Hungary in WWII and its responsibility for the persecution of Jews, and that these debates served as a source of their knowledge. On the other hand, it is remarkable that the generation that witnessed the transportation of their Jewish compatriots to the ghettos or their deportation to concentration camps, as well as the bloodshed produced by the Arrow Cross, know nearly as little about these events as the young people who are two generations away from them. This finding is reminiscent of what Aleida Assmann described a few years ago concerning German collective memory: the “eyewitness” generations were not “eyewitnesses” at all. Those who did not pay attention to what was happening could not possibly remember it later. In that sense, the memory of the Holocaust is not collective memory per se, for it is the potential eyewitnesses, the contemporaries of the events, who remember the least.15 15 Aleida Assmann, “Persönliche Erinnerung und kollektives Gedächtnis in Deutschland nach 1945,” in Erinnern und Verstehen: Der Völkermord an den Juden im politischen Gedächtnis der Deutschen, ed. Hans Erler (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2003), pp. 126–39.

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Table 5. Antisemitic and non-antisemitic groups according to their knowledge of the Holocaust, 2003–2006 (percentages) Extreme antisemites Moderate antisemites Non-antisemites Highly ignorant Uninformed Averagely informed Informed Well-informed Total

2003

2006

2003

2006

2003

2006

8 40 39

21 33 38

15 47 29

29 43 21

11 46 31

15 39 33

10 3 100

6 1 100

7 2 100

5 2 100

11 1 100

10 3 100

The next step of our analysis was to examine whether the knowledge level of antisemitic and not antisemitic groups remained the same as three years earlier. As table 5 indicates, this time there were many more highly ignorant respondents among the extreme antisemites and antisemites than in 2003. This substantial change is probably due to an increase in the anitsemitic group, and to the fact that among the new antisemites the younger, less educated, and, consequently, more ignorant people were in the majority. 2. Holocaust Denial and the “Holocaust Business” Libel in 1995–2009 2.1. The 1995 Study 2.1.1. Opinions on the Holocaust and Antisemitic Prejudice In both the 1995 and the 2003 survey, our aim was to show whether or not antisemitic attitudes were concealed behind opinions about the Holocaust.16 First, we tried to find out how widespread Holocaust denial was in Hungary. Second, we looked at how the public dealt with

16 During the survey of 2003, there was an opportunity to repeat all the Holocaust-related questions used in the 1995 survey. However, as pointed out above, the questionnaire contained only a few statements measuring the degree of antisemitism. Meanwhile, the antisemitism survey of 2002, already analyzed in detail, contained only a few Holocaust-related questions. All of this limits the possibilities for comparison.

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historical questions of Hungary’s role and responsibility in World War II. This topic was of special symbolic importance following the fall of communism because political groups used it to create their political identities, and it could also be used to express antisemitic attitudes. As might have been expected, only a tiny minority of Hungarians agreed with statements denying the occurrence of the Holocaust in 1995. Only 2% of those questioned said they thought that there might not have been gas chambers in the concentration camps, 3% of them agreed with the statement that Jews invented the majority of the horrors after the war, while 12% agreed with the statement that the number of Jewish victims was much lower than is usually quoted. These figures are lower than the percentage of positive responses given to similar questions in other countries: 8% of those questioned in Germany (1994), 5% in France (1993), 7% in Great Britain (1993), and 7% in Austria (1995) considered it possible that the Nazis had not actually exterminated Jews.17 Nearly two-thirds of those questioned in Hungary (63%) also rejected the statement that Jews try to take unfair advantage of the fact that they were persecuted, while in Germany only 41% and in Austria only 44% rejected a similar statement.18 A somewhat smaller percentage of those questioned, but still more than half (52%), agreed with the statement that “Hungary is also responsible for what happened to the Hungarian Jews during the war,” and with the statement that “more should be taught in schools about the persecution of Jews to make sure nothing similar could ever happen again” (57%). Only a relative majority (44%), however, disagreed with the statement that “the Hungarians fought against the communist Soviet Union for a just cause in World War II,” while 28% of those

17 The question was posed somewhat differently in the countries listed. In Germany, France, and Great Britain the question was: “Does it seem possible to you or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?” In Austria and Australia the question was: “Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened, or do you feel certain that it happened?” See Knowledge and Remembrance of the Holocaust, p. 882. 18 Respondents in Germany and Austria were asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement that “Jews are exploiting the National Socialist Holocaust for their own purposes.” See Knowledge and Remembrance of the Holocaust, p. 888. Of those questioned, 39% accepted the statement as true in Germany, 28% in Austria, and 26% in Hungary.

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questioned agreed with the statement and another 28% could not, or did not want to express their opinion. Two questions, however, elicited responses differing from the general trend from an overwhelming majority of those questioned: 73% felt that “after the decades that have passed since the persecution of the Jews this topic should be dropped,” while only 20% of them rejected this statement, while 67% of them agreed (and only 24% disagreed) that “Hungarians suffered just as much as Jews did during the war.” And the relative majority (47%) did not think that “Jews are right to ask for compensation from the Hungarian government for their persecution during the war” (14% were unable to answer this question). It is obvious that we cannot simply consider these responses as symbolically either representing antisemitic attitudes or rejecting such attitudes—we cannot simply assign the groups who answered certain questions positively or negatively to either camp without further analysis. As table 5 shows, in 1995 the Holocaust was denied by only a few people even among extreme antisemites, and half of this group— which comprised 8% of respondents—made no attempt to reduce the number of Jewish victims (tables 6 and 7). Table 6. Is it possible that there were not really any gas chambers in the concentration camps? (percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know, no answer

1 1 4 6

97 94 87 89

2 5 9 5

Table 7. Is it possible, that there were fewer Jewish victims than is usually claimed? (percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know, no answer

9 6 19 45

85 84 67 40

6 10 14 15

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Table 8. The Jews are right to ask for compensation from the Hungarian government for their persecution during the war? (percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know, no answer

51 36 27 20

38 46 65 75

11 8 8 5

Table 9. Is it possible that Jews try to take advantage of the fact that they were persecuted? (percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know, no answer

15 19 50 70

81 75 45 22

4 6 5 8

Table 10. Do you agree that after all these years the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest? (percentage)

Non-antisemites Stereotypers Antisemites Extreme antisemites

yes/rather agree

no/rather disagree

don’t know, no answer

69 72 85 89

26 21 12 8

5 7 3 3

The great majority of extreme antisemites and a majority of antisemites denied the legitimacy of compensation. Moreover, most extreme antisemites thought that Jewish people might be trying to benefit unjustly by emphasizing the issue of persecution (tables 8 and 9). Still, on these issues, some non-antisemites—about one-third—were of the same opinion as the antisemites. Further, in each group, a large majority agreed that the topic of the Holocaust should now be laid to rest.

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Thus, one could hypothesize that there are some opinions given in response to our questions—Holocaust denial and underestimating the number of victims—that clearly express antisemitism, but a significant proportion of antisemites do not volunteer such opinions to express their anti-Jewish prejudice. Instead they voice opinions that may also be shared by non-antisemites. This is demonstrated by the findings of our calculation concerning the issues on which the positions of nonantisemites and extreme antisemites are the most divergent.19 As we noted, on each issue, the position of antisemites differed significantly from the opinion of non-antisemites. But the extent of the difference varied. The smallest divergence between the two groups was registered for the most adamantly antisemitic statements. Thus, the two groups were closest in their opinion concerning the possibility that there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps or that the Jews had invented the horrors after the war; even most extreme antisemites disagreed with these two statements. The greatest difference between the two groups was to be found in their response to the questions of whether the Jews take advantage of their persecution, whether the number of Jewish victims is actually smaller than claimed, and whether Jews are right to ask the Hungarian government for compensation. At first glance, these results seem logical. A consistent antisemitic argument might say that Jews want to take advantage of their persecution. They therefore exaggerate the number of Jewish victims and are consequently unworthy of compensation. And it seems consistent to admit both the number of victims, and the Jews’ right to compensation. However, our data show that only a minority of respondents fit these two consistent groups. Only 7% of respondents thought that both the number of Jewish victims was smaller than is claimed and that Jews do not deserve compensation, while only 8% felt that the number of victims was smaller than is claimed and that Jews try to take advantage of their persecution. A somewhat larger group, but still a small minority (17%), felt that Jews want to take unfair advantage of their persecution, and that they should not be entitled to compensation. Instead of the “logical” polar distribution of responses discussed above, a different opinion structure is reflected by the data. Only 37%

19 The calculation was made by adding up the differences in “agree” and “disagree” responses in the antisemitic and non-antisemitic groups.

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of those who feel that Jews should not be entitled to compensation also feel that Jews try to take advantage of their persecution, while only 30% of those who believe that Jews try to take unfair advantage of their persecution think the number of victims is exaggerated. On the other hand, 41% of those who don’t think Jews try to take advantage of their persecution also feel that they should not be granted compensation, while 19% of those who think the number of victims is not exaggerated can imagine that the victims try to take unfair advantage of their unquestionable suffering. In fact, even 18% of those who feel that Jews should be entitled to compensation also think that Jews try to take unfair advantage of their suffering. Thus, a majority (63%) of those who feel Jews should not be entitled to compensation do not think that Jews try to take unfair advantage of their suffering, while a majority (70%) of those who do think Jews take unfair advantage do not think that Jews exaggerate the number of persecution victims in order to gain advantage. Thus, many respondents do not consider compensation unfair because Jews seek to benefit unjustly, and many of them do not believe that the exaggeration of the number of victims is a means of securing unfair advantage. In consequence of all this, the responses given in 1995 to the three Holocaust-related questions that best distinguish between antisemites and non-antisemites do not manifest attitudes in the same dimension. Respondents expressing consistently antisemitic or consistently nonantisemitic responses together account for roughly one-third of total respondents. For example, some of those who disagreed with compensation likely did so not on the basis of their attitudes toward Jews, but on the basis of other attitudes—such as those that developed during the debates and decisions of the early 1990s concerning compensation for people whose property had been confiscated or who had suffered persecution—and such respondents were unwilling to make a distinction on this issue between victims of anti-Jewish persecution and those who suffered other forms of repression. Those respondents who accuse the Jews of misusing the Holocaust and seeking to take advantage by keeping it on the agenda, but who do not dispute the historicity of the Holocaust or the number of victims, would seem to be reacting to contemporary group conflicts. They do not consider their opinions to be related to earlier forms of antisemitism and therefore they do not perceive a need for “historical” legitimation in order to express them. All this indicates that, in 1995, there was still an absence in Hungary

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of a discourse in which positions relating to the Holocaust would have the same symbolic significance that they do in the context of the decades-old Western debate concerning antisemitism, persecution of the Jews, the issue of responsibility, and the relationship of recurrent anti-Jewish hostility to all these issues.20 Thus, some of these respondents may make no distinction between the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and victims of other sorts of repression, which simultaneously indicates that the historical uniqueness and singularity of the Holocaust may not be an essential part of historical consciousness in Hungary. Other conclusions can be drawn from the observation that a large proportion of those who do not question the number of Jewish victims accuse Jews of selfishly taking advantage of their suffering. This accusation is clearly a prejudiced rationalization for group conflict. Those who hold these prejudices evidently do not feel a need to “historically” legitimate them. To sum up, even those three questions that most strongly distinguished the antisemitic and non-antisemitic respondentscannot be considered an absolutely reliable instrument for measuring antisemitism. This is exactly why some antisemites used these “milder” statements, instead of more clearly antisemitic ones, to express their attitudes in the hope of gaining more legitimacy than that gained by supporting the clearly antisemitic, but for the majority unacceptable, denial of the Holocaust. 2.1.2. Opinions about the Holocaust in the Various Social Groups In the next phase of the study, we attempted to find an explanation of how the distribution of attitudes was determined—whether the opinion groups differed by social, demographic, or other characteristics. As a result of this analysis, we arrived at three opinion clusters. The first cluster was formed on the basis of opinions about the following statements (the statements in the next few paragraphs are numbered according to their order on the original questionnaire): (2) that Jews try to take unfair advantage of their suffering; (3) that the number of victims might have been smaller than is generally claimed; (4) that 20 See András Kovács, “A szerzòdés elévült. A zsidók és a mai Európa” [The contract has lapsed: Jews in today’s Europe], in Tér és terep, ed. Nóra Kovács, Anna Osváth, and László Szakra (Budapest: Akadémiai Könyvkiadó, 2004), pp. 73–79.

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there might not have been gas chambers in the concentration camps; (5) and that a great degree of the persecution was invented by Jews after the war. We called the factor constructed from these statements the “Holocaust denial” factor. The second cluster was formed by on the basis of responses to three statements: (1) that Jews rightfully ask for compensation from the Hungarian state for their persecution; (7) that Hungary is also responsible for what happened to Jews during the war; and (10) more should be taught about the persecution of Jews in schools to make sure that it never happens again. We called this factor “acceptance of responsibility.” Finally, for the construction of the third opinion cluster, we used the following statements: (6) that after all these years the persecution of the Jews need not be discussed anymore; (8) that Hungarians suffered just as much during the war as Jews did; and (9) that Hungarians fought for a good cause in the war against the communist Soviet Union. We called this factor “legitimation of forgetting.” 21 Next, we looked at whether there were groups that accepted the opinions expressed by these clusters to a greater or lesser degree than

21 The opinion clusters were constructed by factor analysis (maximum likelihood; varimax rotation). The results of factor analysis are as follows:

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Eigenvalue

Explained Variance (%)

2.10961 1.43295 1.17972

21.1 14.3 11.8

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

–.06142 .46647 .49488 .73879 .75511 –.02378 .01795 –.09410 .26901 .10555

.67319 .40529 .30229 –.15909 .05082 .11971 .70284 .09851 –.19783 .52704

.05523 .32669 .31957 –.24678 .04483 .65503 –.10761 .65494 .55904 .13493

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the average.22 These calculations showed that those between 18–23 years old, village dwellers, unskilled and semi-skilled workers, and those from poor families were more likely than the average to accept the “Holocaust denial” factor. Those who rejected the “Holocaust denial” factor were more likely to be between 60–70 years old, to live in cities other than Budapest, to come from well-to-do families, and to be intellectuals. Thus, it appears that “Holocaust denial” is found the lowest layers of the social hierarchy, and is most likely to be favored by people who are relatively deprived of social resources. An analysis of the “acceptance of responsibility” factor showed a different picture. The legitimacy of compensation, acceptance of Hungarian responsibility, and the remembrance of the Holocaust are rejected once again by a group of low social status, but the legitimacy of compensation and the institutional inclusion of the Holocaust in historical memory also receive the disapproval of an educated, upper-middleclass group in Budapest. Finally, the “legitimation of forgetting” factor was also most likely to be supported by groups of low social status. Its supporters were more likely than average to have been born, attended school, and lived in a village; have finished 8 grades or less of school; been independent farmers, semi-skilled workers, or pensioners; come from low-income families; and been religious. An analysis of the factors demonstrated that although each of them was positively correlated with antisemitic prejudice, the strongest correlation was observed for the “forgetting factor” rather than Holocaust denial. When we examined the relationship between the opinion clusters under analysis and the various attitudes established to explain antisemitism23 we found that although “Holocaust denial” strongly correlated with antidemocratic authoritarian attitudes, and that Holocaust deniers are also strongly xenophobic, once again it was only the “forgetting factor” that correlated significantly with most of the attitudes explaining prejudice, whereas a rejection of responsibility does not show a strong correlation with any of the other attitudes included in the analysis. This indicates that, in 1995, antisemites expressed their views by means of the relativization rather than denial of the Holocaust.

22 This was done using the “oneway” procedure. The differences between group ratings are statistically significant to a degree of 0.05. 23 See pp. 103–106.

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To sum up the findings of the 1995 research, the relationship of antisemitism and opinions about the Holocaust have developed differently in Hungary than they have in the West. Antisemitism in Hungary has attempted to find legitimation in ways different than in the West; it appears that Holocaust denial was not one of the tools used here to create legitimacy. While Holocaust denial tends to be a provocative ideological tool of traditional elite groups of the extreme right in the West, or of conscious extreme right political movements that are otherwise reluctant to expose their antisemitic attitudes, in Hungary those who indulge in Holocaust denial are also willing to openly declare other antisemitic views, too. For such people, Holocaust denial does not take the place of otherwise unspeakable views, but rather is part and parcel of their manifest antisemitism. Sociodemographic data show that the group of Holocaust deniers in 1995 consisted of individuals of low social status living beyond the pale of any social consensus, who may not even have been aware of the existence or strength of such a consensus. Those who are antisemites, but reject a denial of the Holocaust, provide us with a different picture. This is clearly not only because they might be afraid to break such a strong social taboo but also because their antisemitic views allow for an admission of the persecution of the Jews in World War II, and may even admit a condemnation of the Holocaust. Members of the group feel that confronting the Holocaust would delegitimize their anti-Jewish views, and so they call into doubt whether the Holocaust differed from the wartime sufferings of others (in particular the sufferings of Hungarians who had been fighting for a just cause)—thus warranting special attention. The group rejecting historical responsibility for the Holocaust exhibits noteworthy characteristics. It is the only one of the various groups supporting the opinion clusters in which there is a perceptible share of well-educated people of high social status. Members of this group are particularly opposed to more school education on the Holocaust or to recognizing the legitimacy of compensation. Eighty percent of the group is included among the non-antisemites, but almost three-quarters of those non-antisemites who are suspected of latent antisemitic views—that is, those who remained silent about their real views about Jews during the survey24—are found in this group. All this shows that

24

See chapter on latency, p. 79.

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one possible reaction to latency pressure is to support the opinions on this factor. There are historical examples of this—which as we have seen arose in discourses during the initial years of the post-communist period25—so it is not particularly difficult for latent antisemites to use this discourse to resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises from the tension between their antisemitic views and an awareness of the illegitimate nature of such views. As has been documented, during the immediate postwar period, most Hungarian middle-class antisemites, who had previously supported measures denying Jews their legal equality as citizens, sought refuge in arguments such as “we didn’t want it,” thereby rejecting any connection between the views that they had held and the physical destruction of the Jews, placing the blame instead on the German occupying forces and the Arrow Cross.26 In post-communist Hungary, not only did the antisemitic discourses analyzed above return to patterns resembling those seen between the two world wars, so did the “embarrassed” antisemites, probably having drawn strength from such discourses. And such antisemites felt that it was time to stop discussing the Holocaust and responsibility for what happened. According to this logic, the “old Jewish question” has nothing to do with today’s conflicts, which are the consequences of defending the country from foreigners and from those seeking to benefit from earlier persecution. Seen in such terms, it is understandable why this group is interested in laying the issue of wartime Jewish persecution to rest and in denying responsibility rather than in questioning the historicity of such persecution. It does not legitimize its views by declaring that the persecution of Jews never took place. Instead, by acknowledging and occasionally even condemning Jewish persecution, it show that the Holocaust is not related to what it thinks about the Jews today, and that the Jews themselves are taking advantage of the Holocaust. What we identified here is most probably the Hungarian mutation of “secondary antisemitism” defined first by Theodor W. Adorno, and investigated in several empirical studies in Germany.27 See chapter 1. A comprehensive criticism of such self-serving arguments appears in István Bibó’s famous study. See István Bibó, “Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után” [The Jewish Question in Hungary after 1944], in István Bibó, Válogatott tanulmányok, vol. 2 (Budapest: Magvetò, 1986), pp. 621–799, especially pp. 624–63. 27 Theodor W. Adorno, “Zur Bekämpfung der Antisemitismus heute,” in Theodor W. Adorno: Kritik: Kleine Schriften zur Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), pp. 105–33; Lars Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für 25 26

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Of course, a rejection of responsibility for what happened in the war, and of the logical consequences of this responsibility, is also a fertile field for the symbolic expression of antisemitic views. Here, antisemites can find common ground with non-antisemites, which makes the open expression of their antisemitic views significantly easier. One reason for this is the absence of continuity in public historical reflection, that is, the blotchy nature of historical memory. This is reflected in the otherwise non-antisemitic opinion that regarded compensation for Jews as merely one of many compensation issues. The absence of proper historical memory is also indicated by what is the phenomenon’s strongest explanatory factor. Certain positions taken under the communist regime over the decades (including expressions of nationalism) gained symbolic importance: they came to represent opposition to the system. Some of these views were historically tied to antisemitism. After such a long period of sanctions against the open discussion of these issues, some people in Hungary in the early 90th were probably unaware of the connection between antisemitism and these views, and expressed them as a way of manifesting their opposition to communist ideology. This view has been strengthened by the fact that the drab and negative depiction of Hungarian history of the prewar period, used as a form of legitimation during the decades of communist power, has been contrasted with a positive depiction of the same epoch as to negate communist legitimation (especially by the first government after the fall of communism). This positive depiction has been adopted by some who were by no means antisemites, but who have been motivated by a desire to express their opposition to communist ideology. This hypothesis appears to be supported by the data indicating that a large group of young liberal voters, the vast majority of whom were not antisemites and who generally did not support antisemitic views in the survey, tended to support those views of the antisemitically inclined camp that could also be interpreted as an expression of national consciousness.

Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), pp. 90–91; Wolfgang Frindte and Dorit Wammetsberger, “Antisemitismus in Deutschland: Sozialwissenschaftliche Befunde,” in Feindbild Judentum: Antisemitismus in Europa, ed. Lars Rensmann and Julius H. Schoeps (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008), pp. 261–95.

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2.2. The 2003 Study Although the survey of 2002 did include some of the questions concerning opinions and attitudes about the Holocaust, only the research data of 2003 permit us to make detailed comparisons or monitor changes. Table 11 shows the breakdown of responses received in the three different surveys. Table 11. Responses to questions concerning the Holocaust, 1995–2003 (percentage) Rather agree

Rather disagree

Don’t know, no response

1995 2002 2003 1995 2002 2003 1995 2002 2003 Non-Jewish Hungarians suffered just as much as Jews did during the War.

67

There were not really any gas chambers in the concentration camps.

57

54

24

2

4

The Jews are right to ask for compensation from the Hungarian government for their persecution during the war.

40

Jews try to take advantage of the fact that they were persecuted.

26

39

9

93

88

5

8

38

47

45

13

17

35

63

49

11

Hungary is also responsible for what happened to the Hungarian Jews during the War.

52

57

37

27

11

There were fewer Jewish victims than is usually claimed.

12

11

10

74

52

60

14

37

30

More should be taught in schools about the persecution of the Jews to make sure that it never happens again.

57

61

54

33

28

33

10

11

13

34

30

46

13

20

7

16

16

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Table 11 (cont.) Rather agree

Rather disagree

Don’t know, no response

1995 2002 2003 1995 2002 2003 1995 2002 2003 A majority of the horrors were invented by the Jews after the war. After all these years, the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest.

3

6

92

81

5

13

73

42

20

46

7

12

International data 1993–1996, Hungary 2003, percentage

2.2.1. Holocaust Denial and Revisionism The data indicate that Holocaust denial was a relatively unknown phenomenon in Hungarian society in 2003. In Western Europe, where “historical revisionism” has been a part of extreme right-wing ideology for some time, between 50% and 70% of the people are acquainted with the main claim of those who deny the Holocaust, namely that the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis never happened. In contrast, just 26% of Hungarians stated that they had heard this claim (see diagram 4).

90 81

80

60

70

67

70 60

59 50 46

50 40 30

70

49 44

33

30

29

26 21 20

20 10

13

9

7

4

0

6

4

2

0 Ge rma ny

Fra

Gre Un Pol ited and at B Sta rita tes in

nce Yes

No

Au

stri

a

Ru

ssia

Hu

nga

ry

Don’t know, no respnse

Diagram 4. Some people claim that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened. Have you ever heard this claim?

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International data 1993–1996, Hungary 2003, percentage

The explanation for this low rate is probably the fact that—as we have already shown—Holocaust denial currently plays a minor role in antisemitism in Hungary, and, for this reason, public debates on antisemitism rarely address the issue. A radical denial of the Holocaust was uncommon even in 2003: just 2% thought it possible that the Holocaust had never happened, and just two respondents out of a sample of 1,000 claimed to be certain that this was the case. This ratio is low by international standards (see diagram 5). 100

94

91

90

84

80 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

13 8

7

5

9

0

Germany It’s possible

France Not possible

7 2

1

Great Britain

Hungary

Don’t know, no response

Diagram 5. Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?

In 1995, 2% of respondents agreed that there had been no gas chambers in the concentration camps. By 2003, this ratio had risen to 4%, and the number of “don’t knows” was also two percentage points higher (see diagram 6). The third typical “revisionist” statement was accepted by a greater percentage of respondents in 2003 than it had been in 1995 (see diagram 7). There was also an increase in the percentage of respondents failing to answer the question. The responses to the first series of questions therefore demonstrate that although the number of Holocaust deniers and people agreeing with historical revisionist statements is relatively low in Hungary in

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100

93

88

90 80

percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

5

2

8

4

0

1995

Rather agree

2003

Rather disagree

Don't know, no response

Diagram 6. Do you agree or disagree that there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps?

100

92

90

81

80

percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

13 5

3

6

0

1995

Rather agree

2003

Rather disagree

Don't know, no response

Diagram 7. Do you agree or disagree that a majority of the horrors were invented by the Jews after the war?

comparison with the average for Western Europe, their share of the total—particularly the latter group—has increased since the mid-1990s. A further striking development is the increase in the percentage of respondents giving no response, which may indicate a growing latency, but could also suggest that a higher proportion of respondents were really unable to answer the questions posed.

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2.2.2. Responsibility and Historical Memory A slightly higher share of respondents were willing, in 2003, to recognize Hungary’s responsibility for the persecution of Jews than had been the case in 1995 and a smaller percentage thought that Hungarians had suffered just as much as Jews during the War. At the same time, a smaller number were of the opinion that Jews should be entitled to compensation and a far greater number thought that Jews were trying to take advantage of the fact that they had been persecuted. 70

63

60 49

percentage

50 40 30

35 26 16

20 11 10 0

1995

Rather agree

2003

Rather disagree

Don't know, no response

Diagram 8. Do you agree or disagree that Jews try to take advantage of the fact that they were persecuted?

As diagram 9 shows, public opinion concerning the need to remember the Holocaust substantially changed in the course of the eight years between the two surveys. In 2003, far fewer respondents were of the view that the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest: 73% agreed that remembrance of the Holocaust would help to make sure that such events never happened again (this statement had not been included on previous questionnaires), and roughly the same number thought that more should be taught in schools about the Holocaust—even though at the time of the survey, thanks to the introduction of a Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001, the topic of Jewish persecution was already being addressed more thoroughly in schools. It is this change that probably accounts for the shift in opinions, thereby lending support to the proposition that government actors and norm-setting sections of the elite can effectively shape historical memory.

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80

73

70

percentage

60 46

50 42 40 30 20 20

12 7

10 0

1995

Rather agree

2003

Rather disagree

Don't know, no response

Diagram 9. Do you agree or disagree that after all these years the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest?

2.2.3. Opinions about the Holocaust and Antisemitic Prejudice An analysis of the 1995 survey data showed that although antisemites are more likely than non-antisemites to accept statements denying or relativizing the Holocaust, there was no linear correlation between the intensity of anti-Jewish attitudes and certain views on the Holocaust. By 2003, however, the situation had changed slightly. First, the greatest discrepancy between the opinions of antisemites and non-antisemites was no longer found in the same three issues—the exaggeration of the number of victims, entitlement to compensation, and exploiting the Holocaust for collective or private gain. Indeed, in these areas the discrepancy had decreased significantly since the previous survey.28 Nevertheless, the substantial decline in support for antisemitic opinions on the Holocaust among a well-definable extreme antisemitic group comprising 9% of the total population was striking: compared with 1995, 50% fewer members of this group thought that the actual number of Jewish victims was lower than the official figures, while

The decrease is partly due to the fact that during the current survey the means of measuring antisemitic attitudes were less accurate than in 1995, and so some respondents harboring antisemitic prejudice may have been placed in the non-antisemitic group. For more information on this, see note 13. 28

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Table 12. Does it seem possible to you that the number of Jewish victims was significantly lower than is usually stated? (percentage) Rather yes Non-antisemites Extreme antisemites

Rather no

No response

1995

2003

1995

2003

1995

2003

9 45

8 24

85 40

62 47

6 15

30 28

Table 13. Are Jews right to claim compensation from the Hungarian government for the persecution of Jews during the war? (percentage) Rather yes

Non-antisemites Extreme antisemites

Rather no

No response

1995

2003

1995

2003

1995

2003

51 20

40 32

38 75

41 61

11 5

19 7

Table 14. Does it seem possible to you that the Jews are trying to take unfair advantage of the fact that they were persecuted? (percentage) Rather yes Non-antisemites Extreme antisemites

Rather no

No response

1995

2003

1995

2003

1995

2003

15 70

32 53

81 22

51 38

4 8

17 9

50% more thought that Jews should be entitled to compensation, and 20% fewer thought that Jews were taking advantage of the fact that they had been persecuted (see Tables 12–14). A similar shift in opinion could be observed with regard to Hungarian responsibility for the persecution of Jews: whereas just 35% of extreme antisemites accepted Hungary’s responsibility in 1995, the ratio increased to 61% in 2003. The most important difference of opinion between the two groups in 2003 concerned the issue of whether remembrance of the Holocaust should be kept alive and whether or not more should be taught in schools about the topic: the majority of the non-antisemites agreed with these statements, whereas between one-half and two-thirds of the

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extreme antisemites thought that the matter should finally be laid to rest. Thus, while the antisemite group—clearly not unrelated to the conservative government’s introduction, in 2001, of a day of Holocaust remembrance and its support for a Holocaust museum and memorial—is more willing than before to acknowledge the historical fact of the persecution of Jews as well as the associated consequences, at the same time, it would like to see the topic laid to rest and is strongly opposed to its further discussion. This opinion cluster displays a trend that is also revealed in other questions when we examine the coherence of opinions. Once again, we investigated the coherence of opinions based on the number of victims, entitlement to compensation, and statements relating to taking advantage of persecution. In 2003, the percentage of consistent antisemitic and non-antisemitic opinions was the same as eight years earlier. A shift toward consistency could be observed in just one series of questions: the percentage of those who thought both that Jews did not deserve compensation and that Jews were seeking unfair gain increased from 17% in 1995 to 26% in 2003. A further change in a similar direction is that among those who thought that Jews were not entitled to compensation, 56% (compared with 37% in 1995) thought that Jews were trying to take unfair advantage. Thus, in 2003, a majority of those opposed to compensation suspected Jews of taking unfair advantage. Indeed, in 2003, those who accepted the right to compensation were fewer in number even among those who did not share the latter opinion. Moreover, the share of respondents accusing Jews of taking unfair advantage increased even among those who otherwise accepted the gravity of Jewish persecution and the right of Jews to compensation. Taken together, the above opinions indicate that by 2003 the previous opinion structure had shifted toward a more coherent legitimacy discourse. But even now this consistency was not established by casting doubt on the Holocaust or by denying the gravity of the persecution as the basis for discrediting the appropriateness of compensation or as an accusation concerning an attempt to acquire unfair gain under the pretext of persecution. The new opinion structure is not “negationist”; nor does it relativize the Holocaust. A majority of its supporters accept the historical facts as well as the issue of historical responsibility; they also acknowledge the right to compensation. But, typically, one in three respondents thought both that the memory of the Holo-

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caust should be preserved and that Jews were taking advantage of the memory of persecution.29 As we have seen,30 this argument emerged in post-1990 antisemitic discourse and was voiced with increasing frequency in subsequent years. For example, when the Holocaust Memorial Day was introduced in 2001, István Csurka stated that the “Holocaust business” meant for him the “ransom . . . by which some current . . . Jewish leaders draw benefit from the memory and martyrdom of the clearly innocent masses of victims who were gassed and slaughtered by tapping [into the resources of] the Swiss banks, states, and governments for decades now.”31 In contrast to Holocaust denial, it would seem such arguments are more readily acceptable to the more or less anti-Jewish sections of the public: more than one in three people, while recognizing the reality of Jewish persecution, accuse contemporary Jews of exploiting the memory of those who were persecuted.32 The effectiveness of the discourse surrounding the “Holocaust business” accusation is easy to account for: one does not need to oppose the dominant elite opinion on the factual reality of the persecution and genocide of the Jews; the arguments address “objective” interests and conflicts of interest rather than “emotions,” “sentiments,” or “history,” and they are not obviously associated with any ideological or political camp, since they are present in both right-wing and left-wing circles and have even been voiced by Jewish authors.33 This discourse strategy and opinion structure fits in well with the results that found the greatest discrepancy between the opinions of antisemites and non-antisemites in the issue of whether or not the past should be laid to rest.

29 In 2003, a majority of those regarding compensation as illegitimate thought that Jews were trying to benefit unjustly from the Holocaust, whereas less than half had thought so in 1995. 30 See Chapter 1. 31 Pál Lakatos’s interview with István Csurka, “A MIÉP és a MAZSIHISZ” [The Hungarian Justice and Life Party and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary], in: Vasárnapi Újság, April 22, 2001. 32 This is the view of 41% of extreme antisemites and 33% of moderate antisemites and non-antisemites. 33 For the best-known example, see Norman H. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Sufferings (New York: Verso, 2000).

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2.2.4. Opinions on the Holocaust in the Various Social Groups in 2003 As in 1995, we attempted to reconstruct typical opinion forms exhibited by the surveyed population based on the 2003 survey data. As we have seen (table 11), participants in both surveys were asked to state their opinions in response to nine statements. In the course of analyzing the 1995 survey, we established that responses were organized around three dimensions; the opinion clusters expressed positions on Holocaust denial, the question of responsibility, and the laying of these issues to rest. By 2003, this opinion structure had changed slightly. The direction of change appears to be similar to what we observed in our study of response coherence. Once again, we undertook factor analysis based on the 2003 survey data, producing three opinion clusters.34 The first of these, manifesting opinions that expressed the importance of remembrance, consisted of three statements (again the numbers reflect those in the original ques-

34 Ten statements were thus included in the analysis. In addition to the nine statements used in both surveys, we introduced two statements specific to the 2003 survey (“The memory of Jewish persecution should be kept alive today”; “Remembrance of the Holocaust helps to make sure that such events never happen again”). Finally, we left out the statement “Hungary is also responsible for what happened to the Jews during the war” because this now formed a dimension separate from the other statement groups. The results of factor analysis (maximum likelihood, varimax rotation) were as follows:

Eigenvalue

Explained variance (%)

2.078 1.692 1.591

20.8 17.0 15.9

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

–.169 .113 .704 .456 –.256 .0 .704 .0 .743 –.453

Factor 2

Factor 3

–.107 .619 –.102 –.490 .730 .388 –.220 .173 .0 .553

.635 .104 –.189 .0 .174 .695 .0 .768 –.153 .0

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tionnaire): (3) “The memory of Jewish persecution should be kept alive today”; (7) “More should be taught in schools about the persecution of the Jews to ensure that it never happens again”; and (9) “Remembrance of the Holocaust helps to ensure that such events never happen again,”. (On this factor, the statement that the memory of Jewish persecution should be laid to rest and the opinion that compensation was legitimate received high (negative) scores, too; but they received even higher scores on other factors.) The second factor comprises statements relating to the “Holocaust business” accusation: (2) “Hungarians suffered just as much as Jews did during the war”; (4) “Jews are right to ask for compensation from the Hungarian government for their persecution during the war” (negatively valued); (5) “Jews try to take unfair advantage of the fact that they were persecuted”; and (10) “After all these years the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest.” The third opinion cluster was based on statements denying the Holocaust: (1) “Do you think it possible that there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps?”; (6) “Do you think it possible that there were far fewer victims of the Holocaust than is usually claimed?”; and (8) “The Jews just invented the majority of the horrors after the war.” If we compare this opinion structure with that observed in 1995, a striking difference is the relative coherence of the 2003 data. The statement accusing Jews of taking advantage of persecution was removed from the 1995 “Holocaust denial” factor and placed elsewhere, so that the factor became clearer—since it was now constituted merely of statements denying the Holocaust. A clearer picture of respondents’ opinions was also expressed by the factor that we had previously called the “legitimation of forgetting” factor. As in 1995, this factor comprised the statements concerning the equal suffering of Hungarians and Jews and the need to lay the “matter” to rest. But on this factor, the greatest emphasis was now placed on opinions expressing the illegitimacy of compensation and the “taking of unfair advantage.” The inclusion of the latter statement altered the significance of the factor: the opinion cluster was now indicative of the view that Jews have no historical legal right to special treatment or compensation, that when attempting to obtain such, they exploit historical suffering that was experienced simultaneously by other groups, such as Hungarians, and that they do so by keeping the issue of persecution on the agenda. The third factor—which we had previously called the “responsibility”

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factor—also became more clear-cut than before, comprising statements in favor of keeping the historical memory of persecution alive. A strong and significant correlation exists between the two latter factors (p = –.474), which indicate that by 2003, opinions about preserving the memory of the Holocaust, views on the issue of responsibility, and statements accusing Jews of participating in the “Holocaust business” had formed into one dimension. According to the average scores on these two factors, strongly antisemitic, moderately antisemitic, and non-antisemitic groups differ significantly from each other. This means that the opinion clusters function almost as antisemitism scales.35 Thus, the correlation between opinions on the Holocaust and on antisemitic prejudice was far closer in 2003 than it had been in 1995. The results show a significant change in the cognitive dimensions of the prejudice, too: “secondary antisemitism” became a much more salient part of it, as it was earlier. Based on the 2003 research data, we also examined the socialdemographic profiles of the groups supporting the various opinions. The boundaries between the various groups were fuzzier than they had been in 1995. Since the mid-1990s, there appears to have been a change in the make-up of the group of Holocaust deniers. Place of residence was now the only demographic variable to show a correlation with Holocaust denial. Residents of Budapest were more inclined to accept such opinions, while residents of provincial cities were the least likely to agree with statements denying the Holocaust. It seems probable that—in contrast to the previous situation—this group is no longer one of low social status and rural residence. Nevertheless, this is not clearly shown by the data, since it was only in respect of type of settlement that we found significant differences between the categories studied.36

35 The oneway procedure was used for the purpose of comparison. The results were as follows (factor score averages):

Non-antisemites Moderate antisemites Extreme antisemites

Factor 1

Factor 2

.151 –.108 –.525

–.120 .114 .424

36 This time, both economic and social status showed a positive correlation with the Holocaust denial factor. However, the correlation coefficients were low in both instances.

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On the “Holocaust business” factor, a significant difference can be observed in the level of education of those with high scores and those with low scores: skilled workers are significantly overrepresented among those inclined to support the opinion cluster, while college or university graduates are significantly underrepresented. There are some indications that this opinion cluster is more typical of residents of provincial cities than of residents of Budapest, but the difference was not particularly significant. Interestingly, however, supporters of the opinion cluster included a higher-than-average number of respondents with high scores on the scale measuring knowledge of the Holocaust. Based on this observation, we determined that, among respondents agreeing with the opinions in question, there is a group that forms its position on the Holocaust knowing well the some symbolic meaning of the opinions that it supports. This is confirmed by our conjecture that antisemites were more likely to express anti-Jewish attitudes by means of this opinion cluster in 2003 than they had been in 1995. Finally, the last element in the opinion structure—which expresses the need to take responsibility and for remembrance—was supported by a significantly higher share of the most elderly group (respondents over 75) and less so by young people, particularly those aged 18–25. Skilled workers once again are present in this group. If we take into account the strong correlation between the two latter factors, it becomes apparent in which social milieu we may find an above-average number of those who draw on arguments from a construed group conflict to express overt or latent antisemitic prejudice: a relatively young and poorly educated urban group. 2.3. The 2006 and 2009 Study In the 2006 and 2009 surveys we had a chance to repeat most of the Holocaust-related questions from earlier studies.37 Table 15 shows the changes in the acceptance of Holocaust-related statements in the last fifteen years. 37 The 2009 study was commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Center and carried out by the Ipsos Polling Institute. One thousand people, representing the adult Hungarian population by gender, age, domicile, and education were interviewed face to face. In the 2009 survey, we had to use a much shorter questionnaire than earlier and the questions mainly dealt with Holocaust-related issues. Therefore, besides some basic data showing the longitudinal changes in certain dimensions, the 2009 dataset does not offer enough background information for a deeper analysis.

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chapter three Table 15. Opinions on the Holocaust 1995–2009 (percentage) Rather agree

Rather disagree

Don’t know, no answer

1995

2003

2006

2009

1995

2003

2006

2009

1995

Non-Jewish Hungarians suffered just as much as Jews did during the war

67

54

56

66

24

39

35

21

9

7

9

13

There were not really any gas chambers in the concentration camps

2

4

7

6

93

88

85

81

5

8

8

13

The Jews are right to ask for compensation from the Hungarian government for their persecution during the war

40

38

33

–

47

45

51

–

13

17

16

–

Jews try to take advantage of the fact that they were persecuted

26

35

34

29

63

49

53

55

11

16

13

16

Hungary is also responsible for what happened to the Hungarian Jews during the war

52

57

60

50

37

27

30

34

11

16

10

16

There were substantially fewer Jewish victims than is usually claimed

12

10

14

12

74

60

61

64

14

30

25

24

More should be taught in schools about the persecution of the Jews to ensure that it never happens again

57

54

45

54

33

33

45

31

10

13

10

14

A majority of the horrors were invented by the Jews after the war

3

6

9

11

92

81

80

72

5

13

11

17

73

42

48

40

20

46

43

44

7

12

9

16

After all these years the topic of the Holocaust should be laid to rest

2003 2006 2009

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The first striking result of the comparative data is the fluctuation in the number of those who cannot, or do not want to, express an opinion about the Holocaust. The number increased between 1995 and 2003, decreased slightly over the following three years, and then substantially increased again until 2009. This result may be a sign of growing latency but could also be linked with the public—mostly internetbased—appearance of a vocal group of Holocaust deniers, evoking uncertainty in relatively large groups of the population. 100

93

88

90

85

81

80

percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

5

2

8 4

13 8

7

6

0

1995

Rather agree

2003

Rather disagree

2006

2009

Don't know, no response

Diagram 10. Do you agree or disagree that there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps?

The findings of the 2006 survey show a substantial increase in the percentage of Holocaust deniers since 2003. The proportion of Holocaust deniers in the 2006 sample was 7–10%—more or less the same as in Germany, France, or Great Britain in the mid-1990s. However, this proportion did not change over the next three years. If we aggregate the number of those who accepted at least two of the three obviously Holocaust-denying statements (“there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps”; “the horrors were invented by the Jews after the war”; “the number of Jewish victims was significantly lower than is usually stated”), then 12% of the sample can be classified as deniers in 2009. The deniers are mostly young and poorly educated men. In the other dimensions that were investigated there are some interesting changes, too. The 2006 data show a slight growth in the number of those who want the topic of the Holocaust “to be laid to rest,”

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but this trend did not continue in 2009. Likewise, in 2006 there was a substantial drop in the number of those who thought that more should be taught in the schools about the persecution of Jews, but in 2009 the support rate returned to the 2003 level. Around 50% of the population apparently accepts that in recent years the Holocaust has become an integral part of institutionalized historical memory. On the other hand, with regard to the question of responsibility, a contrary trend can be observed. In 2006, the number of those who agree with the (shared) responsibility of Hungarians had grown (though fewer people thought that compensation given by the Hungarian government to the persecuted was justified). However, in 2009, acceptance of Hungarian responsibility for the persecution fell substantially; many more people thought that non-Jewish Hungarians suffered as much as Jews in the war. Even those who were inclined to accept Hungarian responsibility for the persecution tended to consider the war-time government as solely responsible: two-thirds of respondents readily agreed with the responsibility of the Hungarian government, but only one-third agreed with the statement that ordinary people could have done more in order to save Jews. While more than half of the respondents thought that the persecution of Jews was opposed by almost everyone but members of the Arrow Cross, only one-third of respondents disagreed. 3. Summary As we have seen, the findings of the 2003 and 2006 surveys show an increase in the percentage of Holocaust deniers since 1995; in the following years, however, these numbers have not changed. The nominal increase in ten years is significant; the percentage of Holocaust deniers is now around the average for certain Western European countries.38 A complex picture emerges from the responses given to the opinion questions. The share of opinions according to which the Holocaust receives excessive emphasis or is too frequently mentioned actually fell (it was 40% in 2009, the lowest rate in the last fifteen years). This was obviously a result of political and media campaigns in the preceding In 2004, the comparable results were around 9% in Austria, 15% in Great Britain, and 11% in Italy (2003). See Lars Rensmann and Julius Schoeps, eds., Feindbild Judentum: Antisemitismus in Europa (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008), pp. 75, 107, 252–53. 38

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years. Nevertheless, support for statements accusing Jews of making improper use of the memory of the Holocaust or of exploiting it for collective gain increased. In 1995, this latter claim was rejected by almost two-thirds of respondents (63%), but only by less than half of them in the subsequent period. The co-existence of the two opinion clusters indicates the presence in society of a sizeable group that does not perceive a need to legitimize its hostility toward Jews by denying or relativizing the Holocaust. Indeed, members of this group believe that public acknowledgment of the historical significance and lessons of the Holocaust proves that the source of their current antipathy toward Jews is not antisemitism; they are convinced that they are simply reacting to new “facts.” Their answers to the questions on the antisemitism scale are not antisemitic, many of them, both in 2003 and 2006, stated that they bore no hostility toward Jews. In 2006, 59% of those who thought that Jews misuse the memory of the Holocaust belonged to the non-antisemites (30% of the non-antisemite group). Consequently, the percentage of blunt antisemites among respondents is far lower than those voicing accusations concerning the “Holocaust business.” This result can be considered an indicator of latency and of the appearance of the phenomenon of “secondary antisemitism.” The above duplicity opens up a wide field for coded antisemitic discourse. And, indeed, this discourse seems to proceed in the direction of “least resistance”: it is articulated in opinion patterns that at present are not classified definitively as antisemitic, and whose expression in the public discourse, therefore, is not necessarily illegitimate.39 This tendency appears in the gradual systemization of the various elements of the identified opinion cluster. In 2003, strikingly—unlike in 1995—a more coherent opinion cluster expressed accusations relating to the “Holocaust business.” In the mid-1990s, opinions about the legitimacy of compensation for suffering, the importance of preserving the memory of persecution, the comparability of different victimhoods were frequently influenced by general positions about the communist past, restitution, and recompense for crimes committed in the communist period and not exclusively by specific attitudes toward

39 Misusing the Shoah in order to legitimate current Israeli politics is a frequent argument of the Israeli left. See Yehuda Elkana, “The Need to Forget,” Ha’aretz (March 2, 1988): 13 (in Hebrew).

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the Holocaust and the Jews. However, in 2003, the majority of those who considered compensation to be unjustified were of the view that Jews were benefiting unfairly from the memory of persecution. This tendency became even stronger in 2006. In 1995 only 17% of respondents agreed with both statements—that Jews misuse the Shoah and that the compensation for the persecution is unjustified—but in 2006 32% of them did. On the other hand, while in 1995 only 37% of those who denied the legitimacy of compensation thought that Jews misuse the Holocaust, in 2006 the corresponding proportion was as high as 52%. All this indicates a substantive change in the cognitive content and cohesion of antisemitic thinking. Those who admit to being antisemites do not just voice accusations concerning the “Holocaust business,” but are also opposed to preserving the memory of Jewish persecution. In both 2003 and 2006, the greatest discrepancy between antisemites and non-antisemites could be observed in this area. In 2006, the opinion cluster relating to the Holocaust revealed a much sharper distinction between antisemites and non-antisemites than it had previously: the difference between those antisemites and non-antisemites who thought that the “topic of Holocaust should be laid to rest” was 52%. We may thus conclude that, at the time of the survey, respondents were much more aware than they had been earlier of the symbolic meaning behind the statements they were accepting or rejecting. Indeed, they seem to have been much more aware of the symbolic significance of the entire Holocaust discourse. The social-demographic profile of the groups representing the various opinion clusters was more obscure after 2000 than it had been in 1995. Although there does appear to be a subgroup in which antisemitic opinions are held more frequently than the average, the indicators suggest that perhaps the main factors explaining the differences are the awareness of symbolic meanings of opinions relating to the Holocaust rather than social-demographic factors. This possibility appears to be confirmed by one of the findings of the 2002 survey.40 40 The questionnaire used in the 2002 survey contained just four questions relating to the Holocaust (see table 11), but the 2003 survey also allowed for analysis of the background variables. Factor analysis proved that the Holocaust-related questions (“Non-Jewish Hungarians suffered just as much as Jews did during the War”; “Jews try to take advantage of the fact that they were persecuted”; “There were far fewer Jewish victims than is usually claimed”; “More should be taught in schools about the persecution of the Jews to ensure that it never happens again”) were placed in one dimension,

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According to this finding, the opinion cluster accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust is most frequent in the high-status group with strong national sentiment. As we saw when analyzing the underlying attitudes giving rise to antisemitic prejudice, radical national sentiment has the strongest effect on this group. This leads us to conclude that the systemization of opinions relating to the Holocaust and the expression of their symbolic meaning is most frequent in those groups whose members probably include a large number of people with overt or latent antisemitic sentiments and of relatively high social status. High social status—a higher level of education and associated habits of media consumption, etc.—most likely serves to accelerate the cognitive process by which people become aware of the symbolic meaning of statements relating to the persecution of Jews.41 The results of the 2009 survey seem to substantiate this observation: this time party preference differentiated strongly between the opinion groups. While the extreme right voters tended to give systematically antisemitic answers, the voters of the centrist parties took a similar position. They rejected Holocaust denial and accepted the importance of its memory, but they were explicitly divided on the question of historical responsibility. The center-right stressed more Hungarian suffering and tended to neglect Hungarian responsibility, while voters of the center-left parties tended to take the opposite position. The conclusion that one may draw from this survey finding is similar to that made when analyzing changes in antisemitic prejudice. No doubt, in the period under inquiry, the views promoting the denial or relativization of the Holocaust became more widespread. On the other hand, many more respondents now consider it important to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. The most important change in comparison with the situation in the 1990s is that opinions on the Holocaust are becoming increasingly more coherent, and, therefore, and formed one factor (principal component). The factor was at most only weakly correlated with the social and demographic variables, but was correlated significantly with antisemitic prejudice and attitudes underlying prejudice. The factor was strongly correlated with the variable that classed the group exhibiting strong national sentiment by status. The result of the analysis was that the high-status nationalist group received the highest score on the factor, while the high-status non-nationalist group received the lowest score. The averages of the other groups resembled the average for the total population (oneway; sig. F.: .000). 41 This relationship may be indicated by the fact that in 2003 the group accusing the Jews of benefiting from the “Holocaust business” included a high percentage of respondents with high scores on the scale measuring knowledge of the Holocaust.

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more suitable for a coded expression of positions on other issues—in a manner similar to that which Peter Novick has demonstrated in the United States. The use of these opinions as antisemitic codes first became widespread in a social group of relatively high social status. In view of its communication potential, this group provided Hungary, among other things, with a framework in which the Holocaust discourse gradually became the symbolic terrain of general political and ideological conflicts.

CHAPTER FOUR

FROM ANTI-JEWISH PREJUDICE TO POLITICAL ANTISEMITISM? A large part of Hungarian society—both Jewish and non-Jewish—is convinced that antisemitism has increased in Hungary since the fall of communism.1 What is said on the street, written in newspapers, and heard on the radio can and does give rise to anxiety. And such anxiety does not affect only Jews: even people who are not personally affected rightly fear antisemitism, because they are aware of its history. They know that if anti-Jewish or any other type of prejudice becomes a means of expressing or manifesting social, political or cultural conflicts in the public sphere, this could jeopardize not only society’s proper functioning but also the country’s integration into the community of Western democracies. But are the fears legitimate? Do our observations since 1989 provide grounds for such anxiety? And has antisemitism already reached an alarming level in Hungary? According to surveys conducted between 1993 and 2009, approximately 10–15% of Hungary’s adult population is antisemitic, while a further 25% nurtures anti-Jewish prejudice to some degree. The percentage of the prejudiced population has increased during the period under inquiry—but not to a dramatic extent. Thus, based on the various indicators, the anxiety felt after the collapse of communism concerning a rapid increase in antisemitism appears to have been only partly justified. Such anxiety was evidently nurtured by the immediate and unanticipated advance of antisemitism after 1989. Until then, many people had believed—not without reason—that antisemitic language had been eradicated from Hungarian public discourse by the enforced

1 According to a survey conducted in 1999–2000, almost two-thirds (63%) of Hungary’s adult Jewish population considered that hostility toward Jews had increased in recent years: see András Kovács, ed., Zsidók és zsidóság a mai Magyarországon [ Jews and Jewry in Hungary today] (Budapest: Múlt és Jövò Könyvkiadó, 2002), p. 149. In 2002, 23% of the total Hungarian population thought that antisemitism had increased, 49% that it was unchanged, and 15% that it had declined. In the 1995 survey, 33% of respondents thought that antisemitism had increased, 32% that it was unchanged, and 22% that it had declined.

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silence of decades of communist rule, the almost complete taboo surrounding Jewish topics, legal sanctions against antisemitism, and a ban on antisemitic remarks. It was thought that antisemitic cognitive and emotional patterns had been removed from the social memory of the masses and, in particular, from the memory of those who had never even had the opportunity of interacting with Jews because of the destruction wrought by the Shoah. It seemed to people at that time, therefore, that antisemitism was appearing out of nowhere and spreading at an alarming rate. Today, we know more about the manner in which the “Jewish question” was in fact sustained during the postwar decades. Documents, memoirs, literary pieces, and oral histories have demonstrated the continuous existence of anti-Jewish sentiment—of varying content and emotional intensity—in the nonpublic historical memory in postwar Hungary.2 In this “private history,” traditional clichés and stereotypes survived, albeit rather dimly and with a gradual loss of shape. Still, the clichés and stereotypes proved easy to mobilize when subjected to certain external stimuli. The “Jewish question” was also present in the struggles of intellectual lobbies, whose disputes were rationalized in terms of “urbanpopulist” antagonism—a euphemism used for (mostly) Jewish and (mostly) non-Jewish intellectual groupings. Communist policy makers consciously promoted and manipulated such conflicts, thereby contributing to their perservation. However, this was but one aspect of the policy of sustaining the “Jewish question” and antisemitic clichés after World War II. As we know, antisemitism—packaged in an anti-Zionist rhetoric— was from time to time a part of government policy in various countries of the Soviet bloc. Anti-Zionist campaigns in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland influenced the “Jewish policy” pursued by other Soviet-bloc countries. In the 1950s, “Zionist” legal suits were created in Hungary, too, ending with political show trials. In the decades after the 1956 revolution, Jewish institutions and religious figures were 2 Without being exhaustive, the following are some examples: Éva Standeisky, “Értelmiségi antiszemitizmus a Kádár-korszakban” [Intellectual antisemitism in the Kádár era], in Évkönyv VIII (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2000). pp. 26–39; Rudolf Ungváry, “Nem zsidónak lenni” [To be a non-Jew], in A Napló (Budapest: Minerva KFT, 1990), pp. 244–50; Júlia Lángh, Egy budai úrilány [A young lady from Buda] (Budapest: Magvetò, 2003), p. 108; Pál Engel, “Úrigyerekek tévúton” [Young ladies and gentlemen on the wrong path], Népszabadság, May 12, 2001; Pál Závada, A fényképész utókora [The photographer’s posterity] (Budapest: Magvetò, 2004), p. 401.

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placed under constant surveillance by the security forces. The official bodies in charge—the State Office for Church Affairs, certain departments of the Central Committee and the Ministry of Interior—regularly elaborated plans of action on political issues that were linked (or perceived to be linked by the apparatus of the party state) with Hungarian or foreign Jewry. Although official politics in the public realm adhered to the definition of Jews as a religious community, in party and state documents concerning Jews and Jewish institutions the country’s Jewish population was generally treated as a national group, a national minority, or an ethnic group. Official measures reflected such treatment. Indeed, communist politics constantly recreated the “Jewish question” and associated issues—even while it refused—at least in Hungary—to tolerate overt antisemitism. In Czechoslovakia and Poland, the secret police drew up lists of Jewish citizens (using the Nuremberg definition to decide whether somebody was a Jew or not). Recently discovered documents show that even in Hungary, Communist Party and government organs took regular note of whether individuals falling under their scrutiny were Jewish or non-Jewish. Whenever Jewish origin was considered to be a risk, the individuals involved were subjected to discriminatory measures based exclusively on their descent.3 Thus, antisemitism did not simply emerge out of nowhere after the fall of communism. Antisemitic stereotypes, patterns, 3 For the Polish lists, see Michael Checinski, Poland: Communism, Nationalism, AntiSemitism (New York: Karz-Kohl Publishing, 1982), pp. 239–40. As far as I know, to date no documentary evidence has surfaced proving the existence of the lists, but aside from secondary evidence, their existence is rendered probable by the fact that the documents of the “Action Spider,” which aimed at creating a full list of Czechoslovak Jews, have emerged from the archives of the political police. This campaign—after prior events going back to the 1950s—was recommenced in 1971 and was still underway in the late 1980s. See András Kovács, ed., Jewish Studies at the CEU 2002–2003: Orientation for a Systematic Register of the People of Jewish Origin (published by M. Crhova), pp. 290–94. One cannot exclude the possibility that these campaigns were undertaken in a coordinated manner in the countries of the Soviet bloc under Soviet instruction. In Hungary, documents have yet to be found concerning a decision to establish such lists, but lists of people associated with Jewish institutions and membership lists of Jewish organizations have already surfaced from the archives of the communist political police. In view of the relatively large size of the Jewish population in Hungary, it is possible that the authorities focused on Jews that were in “sensitive” positions. (The Czechoslovak document ordering the compilation of a list places emphasis on fields such as mass communication, science and education, health, and domestic and foreign trade.) For “Jewish politics” in Hungary see András Kovács, “Hungarian Jewish Politics from the End of the Second World War until the Collapse of Communism,” In Jews and the State: Dangerous Alliances and the Perils of Privilege, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn, Studies in Contemporary Jewry XIX (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 124–56.

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and attitudes had been present beneath the surface of Hungarian society throughout the postwar decades. After 1990, such attitudes could be expressed without hindrance in the public sphere. How to evaluate and interpret the data collected during our investigations? Even if the incidences of antisemitism have not increased dramatically, if there do turn out to be a significant number of antisemites living in the country—previously concealed, but now vociferous— fears of a resurgence will certainly have been justified. How intensive is the hostility toward Jews in Hungary compared with other European countries? Is the number of antisemites in the country greater or smaller than in other European states? In recent years, many different surveys have been conducted on antisemitic prejudice in Europe. In 2002, the Anti-Defamation League arranged for surveys to be conducted in various countries. Each survey posed the same questions to representative samples of the adult population.4 By aggregating the responses, the researchers found that 25% of the total adult population of the ten countries surveyed was antisemitic.5 A further survey conducted in the fall of 2003—with other, more extreme antisemitic statements—found that 23% of Germans were antisemites.6 Caution should be applied in comparing the results of surveys conducted with different questions, but we can say that these findings are not very different from the data obtained in Hun-

4 For further information on the surveys and for the data, see www.adl.org/anti_ semitism/european_attitudes_april_2004.pdf. 5 Respondents who expressed agreement with at least two of the four statements ( Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind; Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want; Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country; Jews have too much power in the business world) were considered to be antisemites. Total antisemitic responses by country were as follows: Belgium—39%, Germany—37%, France—35%, Spain—34%, Italy—23%, Switzerland—22%, Denmark—21%, Austria—19%, United Kingdom—18%, Netherlands—7%. The survey was repeated in 2004 and a decline was recorded in each country apart from the United Kingdom (23%) and the Netherlands (9%). The decline was the greatest in France (25%) and Spain (24%). In 2004, antisemites accounted for on average 21% of the population in the ten countries. In 2007, with a somewhat modified set of questions, 28% of those surveyed in six European countries (Austria, Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) believed that at least three of the above statements were “probably true, and 21% of Hungarian respondents and 17% of Austrian respondents believed that all four of the statements were “probably true.” The Hungarian respondents had a much higher-than-average support of the two statements about “Jewish power” in business and finance. 6 See research conduced by the Forsa Institute for the German magazine Stern: http://www.hagalil.com/or/2004/01/antisemitismus-studien.htm.

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gary. This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of the responses to several similar questions: in 2002, 10% of respondents in a French national sample placed themselves in the group that “does not like Jews” (the corresponding figure in Hungary in 2002 was 12%, in 2009 10%).7 In 1999, 17% of a Czech sample and 16% of a Slovak sample did not want Jewish neighbors (the figure for the Hungarian sample was 12%), while 23% of Czechs and 25% of Slovaks agreed with the statement that Jews were exploiting the memory of the Holocaust for selfish ends—in Hungary, roughly one-third of respondents agreed with a similar but slightly less blunt statement (see page 161).8 In 2007, 58% of the Hungarian respondents accepted the same statement, while in 2009, 42% thought that the subject of the Holocaust should now be taken off the agenda. Meanwhile, 58% of German, 57% of Spanish, 56% of Austrian, 52% of Swiss, 46% of French, 43% of Italian, 38% of Belgian, 35% of the Dutch, 30% of Danish, and 23% of British respondents agreed with the statement “Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust.”9 These figures show that in Hungary and the other countries under investigation—that is, the old member states of the European Union (excluding the Netherlands) as well as some of the new members— approximately one-quarter of the adult population exhibits antisemitic prejudice to a greater or lesser extent, and that differences between individual countries are not particularly great. Can we state, therefore, that as far as antisemitic prejudice is concerned there is no essential difference between the populations of most European countries? Our point of departure as we began our analysis was that antiJewish prejudice was just one element of the complex phenomenon known as antisemitism. If we wish to study the function and dynamics of antisemitic prejudice, then—although the extent of antisemitic prejudice is an important piece of data—we need also to form an impression of whether or not antisemitism functions as a “language,” “code system,” or “culture” in the given society, whether it is used to interpret issues and disputes that are otherwise unrelated to the

See http://www.csa-tmo.fr/dataset/data2002/opi20020404a.htm. The surveys in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia were conducted using national representative samples by the American Jewish Committee in August and September 1999. There were 1,166 Czech and 1,057 Slovak respondents. For the survey data, see www.ajc.org. 9 See the cited survey of the Anti-Defamation League, note 4. 7 8

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place and role of Jews in society, and whether or not this antisemitic culture has an immediate political function. The “possibilist” theory of antisemitism—whose methodology is used in this analysis—is based on the assumption that the three factors—prejudice, the development of an antisemitic culture, and the formation of an antisemitic political ideology—do not necessarily arise in conjunction, but that their simultaneous presence is the consequence of external and mutually unrelated historical factors. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, antisemitism was probably stronger in France than in Germany, and yet it was in the latter that it became the most destructive political ideology of the twentieth century. The number of antisemites in any given society need not be particularly great for diffuse prejudice to be transformed by circumstances into a dynamic political ideology. According to Shulamit Volkov, this is what happened in Germany in the latter third of the nineteenth century.10 For Volkov, the accidental coincidence of several historical factors set a process in motion that was to end in tragedy in the twentieth century. Volkov explains the development and dynamic growth of modern antisemitism in imperial Germany as the consequence of the combined effect of four preconditions. One of the historical preconditions was indisputably the presence of anti-Jewish prejudice. But in order for anti-Jewish sentiment to grow dynamically, there also needed to be intellectuals willing and able to establish a cognitive link between antiJewish prejudice and major societal problems. The reason the antisemitic ideology established in this manner could become a worldview accepted by a large section of society was because German society included a relatively large group of people for whom antisemitism provided an opportunity for social integration, while there was also the political will to mobilize antisemitic prejudice. In other words, the antisemitic group in question was sufficiently important to the various groups competing for political power that some of these groups made antisemitism a part of their political ideology.11 10 Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XXIII (1978): 25–45 and “The Written Matter and the Spoken Word: On the Gap between Pre-1914 and Nazi Anti-Semitism,” in Unanswered Questions: The Nazi Germany and the Genocide of Jews, ed. François Furet (New York: Shocken Books, 1989), pp. 33–55. 11 According to Volkov, in the second half of the nineteenth century, artisans comprised this section of society in Germany. See Shulamit Volkov, “Zur sozialen und politischen Funktionen des Antisemitismus: Handwerker im späten 19. Jahrhundert,”

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What is the context of antisemitic prejudice in today’s Hungary? Should we expect prejudice to gain ground dynamically and become a political factor? Indeed, should we fear antisemitism becoming the dominant factor in Hungarian politics owing to the combined effect of the various consequences of Hungary’s democratic transformation? In previous chapters, we examined in detail the extent and strength of antisemitic prejudice in Hungary. Our research findings demonstrated that hostility toward Jews is certainly present in modern Hungarian society. While comparing the research conducted at different times, we found that the system of antisemitic prejudice had actually become more coherent over time. In recent years it has been more closely linked with political ideologies and preferences. The intensity of political antisemitism also became stronger. Behind this development we identified among others a social group—of relatively high social status—for which hostility toward Jews was no longer simply a means of compensating for social frustration but had become a code of political identity. Does this all mean that prejudice is already on the path toward becoming a cultural system and political ideology? Is there a risk of antisemitism departing from the intellectual field and finding a social group for whom antisemitic ideology could perform a function similar to the one it played in imperial Germany? After the fall of communism, the “Jewish question” reappeared as part of the intellectual discourse. The main reason for this was that among the intellengtsia—to which most survivors and the offspring of survivors belonged—the vocabulary and language of the “Jewish question” had remained intact throughout the postwar decades. Much has been written on the different manner in which Jewish and nonJewish intellectuals related to the post-1945 era and on the mechanisms that contributed to the reproduction of group boundaries.12 The

in Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1990), pp. 37–53. 12 For several examples, see the following works by András Kovács: “A zsidókérdés a mai magyar társadalomban” [The Jewish question in contemporary Hungarian society], in Zsidóság a mai Magyarországon, ed. Péter Kende (Paris: Magyar Füzetek kiadása, 1984), pp. 3–32; “Identitás és etnicitás: Zsidó identitásproblémák a háború utáni Magyarországon” [Identity and ethnicity: Jewish identity problems in postwar Hungary], in Zsidóság, történelem, identitás, ed. Ferenc Eròs, Yichak M. Kashti, and Mária M. Kovács (Budapest: T-Twins Kiadó, 1992); “Asszimiláció, antiszemitizmus, identitás: A zsidóság a modern magyar társadalomban” [Assimilation, antisemitism, and identity: Jews in modern Hungarian society], in Hogyan éljük túl a XX. századot?

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difference was not that one of the groups was well integrated and the other poorly integrated into the communist system or that one side gave more support to the system and the other less, but that the motives for supporting, accepting, or rejecting the system were different among the two groups, in accordance with their different historical experience and memory. During the decades of communist rule, lobbying networks arose around these differences (and the elements of identity constructed out of them) in various intellectual professions. Such informal networks were products of enforced adaptation to the monolithic institutional system of the party state.13 At the same time, communist politics used them as a means of manipulation. These networks traced their origins to the “urban” and “populist”—or even gentry—middle-class intellectual groups that existed between the two world wars and explained and justified themselves by claiming that each was only exercising a legitimate defense against the other lobby group. Thus, their cohesion was created by the need for “self-defense” against “Jewish solidarity” or “self-defense” against “antisemitic exclusion.” This identity was constructed by a discourse using the notion of the “Jewish question”—although in the postwar period, in its public form, it was undertaken in exceptional circumstances and only in coded language. It was in this language, sustained in the intellectual milieu for the duration of the communist era, that the stereotypes and the antisemitic or anti-antisemitic discursive schemes were conserved until the period of political change in the late 1980s, surfacing amid the conflicts of the post-transition period. Ed. Mónika Víg (Budapest: Századvég Kiadó, 1992); “A zsidó identitásról” [On Jewish identity] Budapesti Könyvszemle no. 1 (1993). See also Viktor Karády, “Antiszemitizmus, asszimiláció és zsidó identitás Magyarországon a régi rendszertòl az ezredfordulóig” [Antisemitism, assimilation and Jewish identity in Hungary from the ancien regime until the turn of the millennium], in Viktor Karády, Önazonosítás, sorsválasztás (Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2001), pp. 62–65; “A zsidó azonosságtudat válsága Magyarországon a Soá után” [The crisis of Jewish identity in Hungary after the Shoah], in op. cit., pp. 77–96. On Poland, see Aleksander Smolar, “Les Juif dans la mémoire polonaise,” Esprit ( June 1987): 1–31; Jaff Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Stanislaw Krajewski, “Jews, Communism and Jewish Communists,” in Jewish Studies at the CEU 1996 –1999, Vol. 1, ed. András Kovács (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp. 115–30. 13 Cf. Kovács, “A zsidókérdés a mai magyar társadalomban,” pp. 22–23; Karády, “Antiszemitizmus, asszimiláció és zsidó identitás Magyarországon a régi rendszertòl az ezredfordulóig,” pp. 62–65. Karády makes an important point on the use of the term “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” lobbies: “these terms are usually of merely symbolic rather than empirical content . . . they juxtapose groups in which Jews and non-Jews provide the underlying tone” (op. cit., p. 63).

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This intellectual discourse very quickly emerged at the political level. Viktor Karády even opined that although the cleavages of posttransitional Hungarian politics could not be traced back to the “Jewish question,” the issue was present in the divergent options of the left- and right wing: “These two options contain, in disguised form, different plans for society: the one side accepts without reservation the western development model of an open society, while the other side supports ‘third way’ ideas and concepts.” Since Jews have historically played an important part in the implementation of Western development in Hungary, “[in this] wider context, therefore—one that goes well beyond antisemitism . . . the relationship towards Jews appears, after all, to be one of the main sources of current ideological divisions.”14 In my view, however, we probably have to look elsewhere to find an explanation for this impression. One explanation is that the various political groupings in post-communist Hungary were unable to offer voters radically alternative social visions and, therefore, they used preeminently historical and ideological symbols to distinguish themselves from one other. Another factor is that—as we have already noted— the political parties appearing on the scene after the fall of communism suffered from a grave lack of legitimacy. They could not fall back on an established party history, nor could they count on the support of well-defined and distinguishable social groups. They were compelled, therefore, to establish their identities in the symbolic domain, and this domain became the principal arena for constructing party identity. The preferred field of discourse for establishing identity was history and the leading participants of these discourses were the professional exponents of all memory discourses—the intellectuals. These debates on identity politics were held in the language of the intellectual groups. They were concerned primarily with the past rather than the future, and they reflected the struggle among intellectuals for influence and power as well as the cleavages of the intellectual subcultures. As a consequence, the language of the “Jewish question”—which in previous decades had already served to express beneath the surface the self-identity of the various intellectual camps—soon became the language of the identity discourses and rapidly became embedded in the political context. This set in motion the process leading to a

14 Karády: “Antiszemitizmus, asszimiláció és zsidó identitás Magyarországon a régi rendszertòl az ezredfordulóig, pp. 67–69.

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renewal of antisemitic language as a cultural code—a process that is further strengthened if people who otherwise oppose antisemitism use the vocabulary of this language to express their rejection of the total cultural content—not just hostility toward Jews—that the antisemitic code represents. But what code does today’s antisemitism represent, what is encoded in antisemitic language? Concerning modern antisemitism in the nineteenth century, we stated, based on Volkov’s analysis, that it is a code capable of the individual expression of the same relationship— rejection—with the most diverse phenomena manifesting the essential aspects of modern Western civilization; that is to say, it is the code of anti-modernity. However, this is no longer self-evident today. Although one still finds in antisemitic works published in Hungarian the classical elements of the traditionalist cultural critique (Kulturkritik) of modernity, if divisions between the political camps are also expressed in their relationship toward the “Jewish question,” then this relationship clearly does not form the boundary between modernity and anti-modernity. One cannot say that those who rediscover the “Jewish question” in contemporary Hungarian society are those who also reject the theory of market rationality, modern urban life, mass consumption, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, modern technology, the use of cyberspace, rock music, subcultural fashions, and many other things that are the products of the modern world, and who, moreover, consider themselves to be part of another coherent culture in opposition to all this. When analyzing the antisemitic discourses of the post-communist period, we found that the mainstream antisemitic discourses were in fact direct and almost undisguised expressions of status conflicts among intellectuals presented as essential political alternatives. Thus, some of the intellectual groups that played an important role in the political debates at the time of the political transition used the language of the “Jewish question” and the rhetoric of “national self-defense” for the political rationalization of their group conflicts. The “Us” and “Them” dichotomy denoted not modernist and anti-modernist cultures but definable intellectual groups as well as parties and political groups that they wished to form in their own image or which they considered to be opponents. What took place in Hungary after the fall of communism was in certain respects similar to what happened in imperial Germany: the “Jewish question” took on a coded significance. On the other hand, it functioned as a code of political identity rather

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than as a cultural code of anti-modernity. It may thus be referred to as post-modern antisemitism, in contrast to the modern antisemitism of the nineteenth century. But does this code have any significance beyond the relatively narrow circle of intellectuals who actively employ or merely understand the language of the “Jewish question”? This is the most important question when evaluating the dynamics of antisemitism. In nineteenthcentury Germany, the ideologues of antisemitism linked the “Jewish question” to problems that affected and mobilized major social groups, such as the “social question” and “the essence and existence of the nation.” Although, in comparison, the construction of political identities appears to be a particularistic problem, the fact that the groups instrumentalizing the “Jewish question” use the rhetoric of national self-defense for this aim renders antisemitic discourse part of a more universal language. The rhetoric of national independence, interest, and self-defense has acquired a strong legitimacy after four decades of a political system in which the use of such language had a symbolical meaning, since it expressed opposition to the prevailing system. Even if this language had elements traditionally associated with antisemitic views, after such a long period of prohibition such associations had probably grown weaker among many societal groups, particularly the young. For them, after the collapse of communism, using this language served merely to express rejection of the old system. It was this circumstance that antisemitic intellectuals recognized and exploited after the political changes, when they strove to establish a close association between the legitimate language of national consciousness and the illegitimate language of the “Jewish question”—thereby raising the latter to a legitimate field of discourse. To this end, the old antisemitic structures were transformed for the simplification and rationalization of new political conflicts. The tensions caused by economic and cultural globalization were portrayed as a conflict between cosmopolitan and national interests, the consequences of joining the process of international integration as the loss of national sovereignty, and the social consequences of the economic and political transition as the result of being at the mercy of colonial masters. Meanwhile, either covertly, in coded form, or overtly, the image of the Jew as destroyer of the nation was evoked as the domestic agent of the colonizing Foreigner—the old cliché of a Jewish conspiracy. It is this construction that appears with considerable linguistic power in the writings of István Csurka: “It’s a war now,

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a domestic Hungarian cold war, between the Hungarian people and the domineering foreigners.”15 “They’ve forced a financial system and a colonial financial management administration on us which . . . aims to establish a secure zone, refugee camp and hinterland for the perpetual war in the Middle East. For all this to happen, the primary need is that others rather than Hungarians should dispose of Hungarian assets, or Hungarians who are reliable as far as the Middle East is concerned and who profit from the transaction.”16 The “final aim is the extermination of Hungarians. Not by using weapons or poison gas, but by financial policy means, by removing livelihood opportunities, and by leading them towards self-destruction.”17 Of course, these are merely words. As far as the dynamics of antisemitism are concerned, the establishment of a linguistic field in which certain political agents can portray themselves as patriotic opponents of the power-hungry domestic Foreigner, the anti-national force represented by the Jew, and present all political and social disputes as a struggle between these two forces can be of marginal significance. It becomes threatening only when society includes sizeable groups who can be persuaded that the cause of their feelings of vulnerability is that the whole nation is threatened, the reason for their disorientation is the destruction of national traditions, and the explanation for their deprivation is the irrepressible advance of a merciless Foreigner. Historical research on nineteenth-century antisemitism has identified various such groups, which subsequently became the foundation of antisemitic politics: an impoverished artisan class (Volkov, Lichtblau), urban retailers and craftsmen (Bunzl ), students from lower-middleclass backgrounds (Kampe), and intellectuals with strong ideological motivations (Pulzer).18 Such historical analyses have also demonstrated that social groups living in extreme poverty were not necessarily the

István Csurka, “Helyszíni közvetítés” [Running commentary], Magyar Fórum, March 23, 1995, p. 2. 16 Csurka, “Helyszíni közvetítés,” Magyar Fórum, July 20, 1995, p. 2. 17 Csurka, “Minden, ami van” [All there is], Magyar Fórum, February 5, 1998, p. 2. 18 For the substantial literature on this issue, see Volkov, “Zur sozialen und politischen Funktionen des Antisemitismus”; John Bunzl and Bernd Marin, Antisemitismus in Österreich: Sozialhistorische und soziologische Studien (Innsbruck: Inn-Verlag 1983); Albert Lichtblau, Antisemitismus und soziale Spannung in Berlin und Wien 1867–1914, (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1994); Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988; 1964), pp. 272–81; Norbert Kampe, Studenten und “ Judenfrage” im Deutschen Kaiserreich: Die Entstehung einer akademischen Trägerschicht des Antisemitismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988). 15

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most receptive to antisemitic ideology. Poverty was not the shared characteristic of the groups identified as antisemitic, nor was it having a similar economic and social position. Instead, all the groups identified felt that their social status had been undermined and were worried about loss of status. As Bunzl and Marin have shown, the proletarization of certain groups in Austria during the final decades of the nineteenth century increased the level of support for the Social Democrats, while people’s fear of proletarization tended to benefit the strongly antisemitic Christian Socialist movement.19 “Antisemitic slogans which laid all blame for social decline and failure on Jewish scapegoats found a receptive audience at a time in history when the former social frameworks had collapsed and uncertainty and dissatisfaction were widespread,” noted Klemens Felden in an analysis of the sudden increase in anti-Jewish hostility.20 Thus, it was not just downward social mobility that inclined individuals and groups toward the antisemitic movements but the strong fear of becoming déclassé. Such fear stemmed largely from the fact that the groups in question were incapable of integrating into the great “societal milieus” of German and—with some differences—Austrian society, as Rainer Lepsius called them, and which were later referred to as “pillars.”21 These “milieus”—conservatism, liberalism, social democracy, and Catholicism—had their own political representations, ideologies, and (sub)cultures. Still, as Volkov has shown, German society also contained a heterogeneous and diverse group that, for various reasons, was incapable of adjusting to the various forms of integration such as, for example, traditional artisans in the Protestant northern parts of Germany and in areas of mixed religion.22 This group was sufficiently large to endanger the integration of German society and to create political crises. For this reason, Bismarck “for several decades adhered to the tactic of using the image of a permanent enemy of the nation in order to maintain the internal cohesion of society. In this context,

Bunzl and Marin, op. cit., p. 21. Klemens Felden, “Die Übernahme des antisemitischen Stereotyps als soziale Norm durch die bürgerliche Gesellschaft Deutschlands (1875–1900),” Ph.D. diss., Heidelberg University, 1963. Cited by Lichtblau, op. cit., p. 17. 21 Rainer M. Lepsius, “Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur: Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft,” in Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ed. Friedrich Lütge and Wilhelm Abel (Stuttgart: G. Fischer Verlag, 1966), pp. 371–93. 22 See Volkov, “Zur sozialen und politischen Funktionen des Antisemitismus,” p. 51. 19 20

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it is easy to interpret antisemitism. . . . In contrast to the Jews namely, minor artisans and other social groups were indisputably a part of the glorious German nation.”23 Therefore, these groups, though pushed to the margins by Germany’s social and political development, could regard themselves—in contrast to Jews—as true Germans and Christians, and could feel a part of the German nation. Indeed, this was the only way that they “could be reintegrated” into the political and social sphere. As Volkov noted, “[t]hus, antisemitism functioned as a supplement to nationalism, and it is only in this context that the relationship between the two phenomena may be understood. . . . When linked with extreme nationalism, antisemitism served to mitigate the identity crisis of those people who otherwise felt that they were isolated from other parts of German society and from the leaders of the German state, who rejected them and even looked down on them.”24 Antisemitism mitigated, for such people, a permanent feeling of exclusion. It also served as a means of dealing with a conflict that threatened to upset social cohesion. As we have seen, in today’s Hungary the “Jewish question” also functions as a code to divide what is “national” from what is “antinational.” The question is whether or not modern Hungarian society contains a group for which this ideology fulfils a function similar to the one it performed in imperial Germany. Does there exist, in Hungary’s post-communist society, a social group that experiences the arrival of new institutions, norms, and regulations as a loss of status, a threat, a loss of orientation, and a hopeless erosion of normality, and at the same time it is capable of developing forms of collective behavior that could cause perceptible damage to the functioning of the systems underlying economic, political, and social integration? If such a group does exist, could nationalism combined with antisemitism—as well as identification with the political groups that represent this mix—offer it psychological relief and the possibility of a return to the political and social mainstream? The research we undertook between 1994 and 2009 did not seek to answer this question. Nevertheless, the research findings analyzed above as well as the data of other investigations do allow for conjec-

23 24

Ibid., p. 52. Ibid.

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ture. We can only state hypotheses, whose validity is necessarily limited. Further research is required in order to complete the picture. Research on elections and voter behavior since 1990 has shown, without exception, that between 1990 and 2010, Hungarian voters had uncertain party loyalties and significant volatility, with a relatively large number of voters failing to take part in elections. In his analysis of shifts among voters and non-voters, Zoltán Fábián demonstrated that during the initial five years of Hungary’s parliamentary democracy a large majority of voters (74%) did not remain loyal to the parties they had originally chosen as their first or second preference and that just 12% of voters gave their support to the same party in the first two elections.25 The party preference data prove that between 1990 and 1995, more than two-thirds of the total population failed to vote on at least one occasion. As they tried to explain people’s rapidly changing party preferences, the researchers identified a group that rejected to a lesser or greater degree all the ideologies promoted by the various political parties. Based on a national representative sample of 1,000, Róbert Angelusz and Róbert Tardos examined, in early 1990, how potential voters could be classified based on their views on the communist system, liberal market economy, social issues, and national sentiment.26 The largest of the various “ideological” groups was the so-called “pragmatic” group, with 31% of the total population. This group did not support the previous political system, nor was it attracted to economic liberalism, nationalist ideology, or religiosity. This group—which could also be referred to as having no attitudes or diffuse attitudes—rejected all of the ideologies used by both supporters and opponents of the previous system to express their support for a particular worldview and political camp. As far as its voting attitudes were concerned, the “pragmatic” group comprised three major subgroups, which differed greatly from each other in social and demographic terms: non-voters, then-Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats) voters, and supporters of provincial conservative parties. The latter group appeared to be relatively well integrated into society, and its

25 Zoltán Fábián, “Szavazói táborok és szavazói hïség” [Voter groups and voter loyalty], Századvég no. 1 (Summer 1996): 95–111. 26 Róbert Angelusz and Róbert Tardos, “Politikai és kulturális választóvonalak a parlamenti pártok szavazótáborában” [Political and cultural dividing lines among political parties’ voter groups], in Hálózatok, stílusok, struktúrák (Budapest: ELTE Szociológiai Intézet-MKI 1991), pp. 182–208.

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attitudes could be explained by special factors. But the first two groups were different. These two groups were distinguishable from the third in terms of their degree of anomie, signifying social disintegration:27 the feeling of anomie was, in both groups, greater than the average for the total population. Electoral research has shown that during the twelve years after the first democratic election, the above group, which was identified as early as 1990, migrated between the two extremes of politics—the government and the opposition—or simply rejected participation in elections. Thus, the majority of supporters of the victorious parties in the 1990 elections transferred their support, during the period prior to the 1994 elections, to the largest political and ideological opponent of the governing parties. This was the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP), the “successor party” of the former ruling communist party (Hungarian Socialist Worker Party, HSWP). They did so in such a way that in 1991–1992, the middle of the parliamentary term, they supported the most radical opposition party, Fidesz. Following the HSP’s clear victory in the 1994 elections, a similar process recommenced. As a result, by August 1995, the HSP, which had received 33% of the vote in 1994, could count on the support of just 22% of potential voters. By then, a relative majority of voters supported the Smallholders Party, which was to be found at the opposite end of the political spectrum. The Smallholders’ share of potential voters’ support was 24%, and it was at this time that support for Fidesz, the party that was to be victorious in the 1998 elections, began to increase. By this time, just half of those who had supported the HSP in 1994 continued to support the party, but most of the party’s previous voters (38%) were to be found among non-voters.28 Fidesz’s victory in 1998 was due not only to the fact that the party managed to gain the support of a majority of voters who had voted for the center-right parties in previous elections. A second factor was that Fidesz was the only party that had not been in government during the eight years following the fall of communism and it was thus able to win the support of shifting voters with diffuse attitudes or no attitudes.

This indicator was developed from questions measuring fear of crime and violence, confidence or lack of confidence in others, and general (dis)satisfaction with life. 28 Fábián, op. cit., p. 103. 27

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It is probable that other people in this group supported a radical right-wing party in 1998, the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), which occupied at that time the most extreme position on the political scale.29 Indicators suggest that for this shifting group the most important motive for choosing a party was its distance from the government in power, rather than the problems and solutions it wished to address. It seems likely that the “no attitude” groups, for whom rejection and protest were the prime motives for voting, were particularly likely to manifest this form of electoral behavior, that is, to switch back and forth between the political parties.30 This is also implied by the composition of the groups: according to the available data, people aged around 40, skilled workers, and urban dwellers were significantly overrepresented in the “no attitude” groups and among abstaining and protest voters. Such attitudes and behavior, therefore, characterized a section of society that was not the poorest but that contained many people who were the “losers” of the transition, that is, people, who had lost opportunities for upward mobility and were threatened by their loss of status. These were the people we had placed in the “frustration and anomie” group based on the findings of the 1995 antisemitism survey, among whom antisemites were overrepresented. Electoral research thus identified an anomic group with “no attitudes,” weak political allegiances, and a tendency to submit protest votes. This group’s characteristics were strikingly similar to those of

According to a survey conducted in April 1997 by Szonda-Ipsos Public Opinion Research Institute, based on a national representative sample of 30,000 subjects, one in four voters for the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) in 1997 had voted for the Hungarian Socialist Party or the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ—a leftliberal party) four years earlier, while an additional 27% had not voted in the earlier election. 30 This is supported by means of a comparison of party preference data for the 1995 antisemitism research project and data for party preference research undertaken in the spring of 1996. (Based on a representative sample of 1,500 adults; the research was conducted by Gallup Hungary.) In 1995, the group referred to as the “frustrated left-wing” group contained more than an average percentage of left-wing party voters and non-voters. In this same group, by 1996, the percentage of nonvoters had risen even further (to 50%), while the percentage of left-wing voters had declined significantly (HSP and HSWP = 17%) and the percentage of right-wing party voters had increased (Fidesz, Independent Smallholders Party, Christian-Democratic People’s Party, Hungarian Democratic Forum = 30%). For further analysis of the two surveys, see András Kovács, “Voting for and Voting Against: Electoral Behavior and Political Culture in Post-Communist Hungary,” lecture given at a conference on political culture in post-communist countries, held at Humboldt University, Berlin, on October 19, 1999. 29

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the anomic antisemitic group identified in the course of our research on antisemitism. It is not baseless to suppose that the two groups included many of the same individuals. When analyzing the findings of the 2002 survey, we noticed the presence of a new group among the anomic groups, which we called the “frustrated nationalist” group. We found at least some of the “frustrated left-wing” group of the 1995 survey in this new group. Compared with 1995, a major change was that the frustrated nationalists were far more antisemitic than the frustrated left-wingers of seven years earlier. Moreover, whereas in 1995, anomie—one of the best indicators of social disintegration—had resulted directly in prejudice, in 2002, among this relatively young and urban group, prejudice was not directly related to social despair and a mistrust of the political leaders but with strong national sentiment and support for radical national demands. It was not in itself the high level of anomie that distinguished this prejudiced group from nonprejudiced or less prejudiced groups, but the fact that anomie was accompanied by overt nationalism. Antisemitic prejudice was therefore directly associated with a political attitude or worldview. We hypothesized that overt nationalism could thus be a means of compensating for an anomic relationship with the world of politics and society. In this group, the “rationalization” of anomie was in an advanced state. The results of the 2006 and 2009 surveys basically confirmed this tendency. In 2006, the strongest predictor of antisemitism was still xenophobia, but nationalism and (low) status were also strong contributors.31 In 2006, the antisemitic segment of the population evidently consisted of two groups: a (conservative and anomic) low-status group and a strongly nationalist group that was neither socially deprived nor strikingly anomic. Although the members of the last group typically had no trust in the democratic institutions of the new system, they displayed high trust in (certain) politicians and in the efficacy of political action. Whereas the first subgroup was dominated by young and socially deprived persons, the second was of higher social status, older, and Budapest-based. Can we therefore assume that the group that is poorly integrated into Hungarian society and carries considerable political weight in view

31 Regression analysis, stepwise method; Antisemitism factor (PC): R2 = 11%; Beta coefficients: xenophobia: .219; nationalism: .171; status: –.161.

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of its influence on the outcome of elections and that—as an analogy of the German example—may find a new path to social integration by means of nationalist and antisemitic political organizations? Do our findings indicate that extremist political entrepreneurs have already established the link between their agenda and the urge of anomic groups to rid themselves of the tensions caused by their poorly integrated status? There are without doubt signs of such a development. It may well be that the frustrated left-wing group of 1995 and the frustrated nationalist group of 2002 constitute that social group with weak party allegiances that has played a decisive role since 1994 in determining which political group forms the parliamentary majority in Hungary. Indeed, since 2006, this group has appeared as a separate political force on the Hungarian political scene in the form of the newly organized, dynamically growing, extreme-right party, Jobbik (“For a Better Hungary”), led by relatively young radical politicians who recognized the political potential identified by sociological investigations. The supporters of this party display similar attitudes to the group we characterized above: strong anomic feelings toward the existing institutional system and a strong conviction that the “rotten establishment” can be changed by quasi-revolutionary political means.32 This group’s political weight has grown in the last couple of years. It has absorbed those young groups33 who were not able to find their way in the postcommunist society and who do not identify with the new republic, which they consider the result of a selfish compromise between the old communist and the new post-communist elites.34 These groups, always ready for violent clashes with the authorities, have developed intense anti-establishment sentiments, which have been effectively exploited by the political entrepreneurs of the emerging extreme right.

32 The electoral results for Jobbik show a permanent increase in support of the party: in the parliamentary elections of 2002, the party received only 2.2% of the votes (119,007 votes) and could not reach the 5% threshold for entering Parliament. In the European elections of 2009, however, Jobbik received 14.77% (427,773 votes) and, finally, in the parliamentary elections of April 2010 16.67% (855,436 votes). 33 The electorate of Jobbik is significantly younger than that of the other parties, including the center-right Fidesz, which emerged from the radical anti-communist youth movement of the pre-transition period. 34 Mária Vásárhelyi, “Populizmusba oltott kádárizmus: Fiatalok a rendszerváltásról,” Élet és Irodalom, March 26, 2010; see http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;24843.

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The discourse aiming at the political mobilization of this group is not very different from the radical nationalist discourse of the 1990s analyzed above. The decisive difference is that the present-day discourse has succeeded in transgressing the boundaries of the elite groups and finding its way to the disappointed people of the street. A recurring formula of the present extremist discourse repeats the basic pattern of the “Us vs. Them” discourse of the early ’90s: it sets “our kind [of people]” (the in-group) against “your kind”—outsiders, who malign the country. It is because of these outsiders that “we cannot feel at home in our own country”; the task is to recapture Hungary from those who “do not recognize common values and common principles.” “Decisions made by your kind [of people] are always dictated by whatever happens to ‘pay off’ at a particular point in time, whatever is profitable for you, that is, whatever results in money or power. Common values are replaced by antifascist slogans and anti-Hungarian sentiment, and other ways of bringing ‘our kind’ [of people] under control.” “Your kind (intend us to be) obedient subjects, servants and domestics, in an impoverished and maimed Hungary that has been turned into a thirdworld colony.” This discourse leaves little doubt about the identity of the “Other”: If, after the fifty years of your communism, there had remained in us even a speck of the ancient Hungarian prowess, then after the so-called “change of regime” your kind would not have unpacked your legendary suitcases, which were supposedly on standby. No. You would have left promptly with your suitcases! You would have voluntarily moved out of your stolen . . . villas, and . . . you would not have been able to put your grubby hands on the Hungarian people’s property, our factories, our industrial plants, our hospitals. . . . It would be nice if there were just a tiny little bit of truth to the supposed fear that the likes of you feel, owing to the alleged antisemitism and fascism etc. raging here. . . . On the contrary, your kind visibly do not fear at all. . . . We will not put up with this indefinitely. . . . This is our country; we are at home here and it is here that we are at home. We shall take back our homeland from those who have taken it hostage!35

35 All citations are from Krisztina Morvai, a lawyer and university professor who headed the party’s European election list and was elected to the European Parliament in June 2009. See her page at www.barikád.hu on the following dates: Aug. 20, Aug. 27, Oct. 5, and Nov. 11, 2008.

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The antisemitism of the extreme right, however, has still not been transformed into a political ideology. Political racism appears in the extreme right’s program in the form of concrete demands, like cutting and restricting welfare services for Roma, the legalization of segregation in schools and elsewhere, and the reintroduction of the prewar rural gendarmerie for strict police controls in Roma settlements. This is not by chance: in a society where, as we have seen, anti-Roma sentiments are extremely widespread, these demands are extremely effective for mobilizing substantial segments of society, while the efforts of the earlier extreme right groups to use antisemitism for the same purpose were much less successful. This does not mean that antisemitism is absent from the rhetoric of the radicals, but that it does not take the form of anti-Jewish political demands. For the typical antisemitic commentator today, “the Jew” does not designate a specific individual or group, but has become a symbol. A fundamental difference from the pre-World War II situation is that most Hungarians today have never met a Jew. And even if they have met one, they were very likely to have been unaware of the individual’s Jewish identity. Many people harbor antisemitic stereotypes about Jews; they may have seen Jews—or people they thought were Jews—on television, but the stereotypes concealed in the crannies of social consciousness and memory, which may be reactivated at times, offer little guidance even to such people with regard to specific everyday social conflicts. If certain groups were now to demand anti-Jewish measures, a large part of Hungarian society would have no idea how—against whom—such measures should be implemented. The masses mobilized by antisemitic politicians prior to World War II knew what they wanted from Jews: social positions and resources. Today, people would be unlikely to recognise in similar anti-Jewish political demands the means of solving their everyday problems. Few people would expect their situation to be improved by the forced emigration of Jews or the expulsion of Jewish investors. This is not to say that the shrill antisemitic voices heard since 2006 are no threat. They may well prepare the ground for everyday violence. Nevertheless, antisemitic language currently serves primarily as a medium for establishing extreme right-wing identity—similarly to the language of the “Jewish question” in the elite sphere. This antisemitic language can be used to express who is “our kind” and “your kind,” who is “part of our crowd,” who is “with us.” Those who speak in “our language” belong

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“to us.” Language creates a collectivity; it expresses belonging. The communicative function of antisemitic clichés is that those speaking recognize: “Aha, you think the same way I do”—but not just about Jews. For it is far from certain that among users of the antisemitic language the political common denominator is established by what they think of Jews. Quite possibly, it is in some completely different field that they perceive a commonality. In this sense, those who occasionally use antisemitic language may not necessarily be antisemites. Nonetheless, they know that in certain situations and milieus they have to use this language in order to show that they are a part of the group. On the other hand, just as one does not have to be an antisemite to participate in antisemitic discourse, so not all antisemites seize every opportunity to use this language publicly. Surveys show that people nurturing anti-Jewish prejudice can be found in all segments of Hungarian society and politics. Still, such prejudice does not necessarily play an important role in their political choices, cultural preferences, or in their everyday life. Of course, these antisemites are also aware of the communicative function of the language of antisemitism, but since they do not regard themselves as members of anomic and poorly integrated groups, they will be hesitant to voice their prejudices outside the private sphere. Thus, those nurturing anti-Jewish prejudices and those using antisemitic language do not perfectly overlap. In view of the events of recent years, is there a danger that antisemitic politics could gain ground in Hungary? Evidently, determining the future role of antisemitism in Hungarian politics is beyond the scope of sociological analysis. The general circumstances—Hungary’s integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures, its deepening involvement in European politics, the basic policy positions of the country’s mainstream political forces, and many other factors—render the elevation of political antisemitism into a central position unlikely. Nevertheless, the country’s future course depends in large part upon its political actors. Based on the knowledge acquired through sociological analysis, we may state that the presence of anti-Jewish prejudice in society has already encouraged certain political forces and cultural groups to attempt to transform the prejudice that once affected the margins of Hungarian society into a language, culture, and ideology—that is, into an “ism.” Still, historical studies remind us that, in the modern era, it is the political and cultural elite that determines whether or not antisemitism becomes a cultural and political factor. For antisemitic political forces to acquire significant influence, there has always been

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a need for members of the norm-setting elite to actively espouse an antisemitic interpretation of events—as a framework for explaining perceived social and political conflicts—and for other members of the elite to accept such an interpretation. If, as it marks out the boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate debate, the elite discourse fails to classify the antisemitic framing of crucial events as illegitimate, and such an appraisal acquires validity in the public sphere, then a dangerous historical turn may result.

INDEX OF NAMES

Abel, W. 193 n. 21 Adorno,Th. W. 91, 159 Ady, E. 10 Andorka, R. 36 n. 3 Angelusz, R. 79, 81, 87, 90, 195 Antall, J. 14 n. 33, 18, 20, 25–26 Assmann, A. 148 Balassa, Sz. 93 n. 69 Bartók, B. 10 Bellers, J. 81 n. 56 Berend, I. T. 8 Bergmann, W. 42 n. 8, 48 n. 15, 53 n. 24, 80–81, 82 n. 56, 107 n. 74 Bettelheim, B. 53 n. 24 Bibó, I. 10, 91, 159 n. 26 Bismarck, O. von 193 Braham, R. L. 25 n. 66 Bujdosó, G. P. 3 n. 4 Bunzl, J. 192–193 Chanes, J. R. 48 n. 15 Checinski, M. 183 n. 3 Cohen, R. 48 n.15 Courtois, S. 23 n. 65 Csaplár, V. 22 n. 64 Csengey, D. 8 n. 13, 11 nn. 22, 25 Csoóri, S. 9–11 Csurka, I. 8, 14–20, 169, 191 Diner, D. 101 n. 71 Dobb, L. W. 106 n. 74 Dollard, J. 106 n. 74 Domonkos, Gy. V. 11 n. 24, 12 n. 29 Elkana, Y. 177 n. 39 Engel, P. 182 n. 2 Enyedi, Zs. 36 n. 3, 39, 90 nn. 63, 69 Erb, R. 42 n. 8, 48 n. 15, 80–81, 82 n. 56 Erler, Hans 149 n. 15 ErZs, F. 187 n. 12 Fábián, Z. 36 n. 3, 39, 90 n. 63, 93 n. 69, 195 Farkas, M. 4, 20 Farkas, Z. 8 n. 14

Felden, K. 193 Felling, A. 56 n. 30 Finkelstein, N. H. 169 n. 33 Fleck, Z. 93 n. 69 Fodor, Dr. J. 5 n. 10, 11 n. 23 Frindte, W. 160 n. 27 Geiser, S. R. 60 n. 34 GerZ, E. 4, 20 Gilljam, M. 81, 82 n. 57 Glock, Ch. Y. 60 n. 34 Gordon, M. 101 n. 71 Granberg, D. 81, 82 n. 57, 86 Grunenberg, A. 23 n. 65 Hancil, J. 18 n. 55 Heinz, W. R. 60 n. 34 Heitmeyer, W. 56 n. 28 Horthy, M. 3, 9, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31 Igansky, P. 101 n. 71 Illyés, Gy. 10 Janowitz, M. 53 n. 24 Jeszenszky, G. 25–26 Kampe, N. 192 Karády, V. 188 n. 13, 189 Karmasin, F. 80 n. 49 Karsai, L. 3 n. 3, 25 n. 66 Kashti, Y. M. 25 n. 66, 187 n. 12 Kende, P. 187 n. 12 Kertész, I. 137, 144 Klug, B. 122 n. 88 Kolosi, T. 36 n. 3 Kornadt, H. J. 106 n. 74 Korvin, O. 3 Kosmin, B. 101 n. 71, 122 n. 88 Kovács, A. 80 n. 51, 93 n. 69, 110 n. 77 Kovács, M. M. 25 n. 66, 187 n. 12 Kovács, M. 10 nn. 20–21 Kovács, N. 155 n. 20 Krajewski, S. 188 n. 12 Kun, B. 3, 5 n. 10, 8, 17 Kunszabó, F. 5 n. 10 Kurucz, Gy. 12 n. 26

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Lakatos, P. 169 n. 31 Lángh, J. 182 n. 2 Lepsius, R. M. 193 Lermann, A. ix Lichtblau, A. 192 n. 18 Luhmann, N. 81 Lukács, Gy 15 n. 38 Marin, B. 192 n. 18, 193 Markovits, A. 101 n. 71 Márkus, B. 8 n. 15 Mendelsohn, E. 93 n. 68, 183 n. 3 Merton, R. 56 n. 28 Miller, N. E. 106 n. 74 Morvai, K. 200 n. 35 Németh, L. 10 Nolte, E. 23 Novick, P. 138, 180 Osváth, A.

155 n. 20

Peters, J. 56 n. 30 Pulzer, P. 192 Quinley, H. E.

60 n. 34

Rabinovici, D. 122 n. 88 Radnóti, S. 141 n. 6 Rákosi, M. 4, 20 Reinprecht, Ch. 33 n. 2 Rensmann, L. 160 n. 27, 176 n. 38 Révai, J. 4, 20 Rosenfeld, A. H. 123 Rürup, R. 65 n. 39

Sallen, H. A. 42 n. 8 Schatz, J. 188 n. 12 Scheepers, P. 56 n. 30 Schoenfeld, G. 101 n. 71 Schoeps, J. H. 160 n. 27, 176 n. 38 Seltznik, G. 48 n. 15 Shafir, M. 139 n. 4 Silbermann, A. 42 n. 8 Smolar, A. 188 n. 12 Spaeck, U. 122 n. 88 Srole, L. 56 Standeisky, É. 182 n. 2 Stark, R. 60 n. 34 Steinberg, S. 48 n. 15 Stirling, Gy. 4 n. 5 Szamuelly, T. 3 Székely, M. 40 n. 7 Sznaider, N. 122 n. 88 Tardos, R. 195 Teleki, P. 25–26 Ungváry, R.

182 n. 2

Vágó, B. 3 Vajda, M. 141 n. 6 Vásárhelyi, M. 199 n. 34 Víg, M. 188 n. 12 Volkov, Sh. 186, 190, 192–194 Vukovich, Gy. 36 n. 3 Wammetsberger, D. 160 n. 27 Weiss, H. 33 n. 2, 42 n. 8, 48 n. 15 Závada, P. 182 n. 2 Zolnay, J. 18 n. 55

INDEX OF SUBJECTS Act IV of 1939 26 additive method 41, 44 alien 9–11, 15–18, 20–21, 25, 27, 100, 140 Alliance of Free Democrats, (AFD, SZDSZ) 5, 7, 14 n. 36, 18, 20, 71–72, 108–110, 116, 120, 197 n. 29 American Jewish Committee, AJC vii, 32, 40 n. 7, 185 n. 8 American Jewish identity 138 anomic attitudes 56–57, 70, 107, 118 feelings 56, 59, 63, 199 anomie factor 59, 69–71, 103 n. 73, 117, 120 n. 86 theories of 106 anti-Americanism 101 anti-Communism 138, 199 n. 33 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 184 anti-fascism anti-Fascism-Communism debate 23 anti-Jewish attitudes 101 n. 70, 122, 130, 166, 173 legislation 4, 23 persecution 154 stereotypes 21, 47 n. 13 anti-Judaism 35, 60, 97, 111, 112 n. 80, 130 anti-Israel 128, 130–131, 133–135 anti-liberal politics 11, 14, 108, 114, 116 anti-Roma 93 n. 69, 201 Antisemitic coded discourse code system 185 code of political identity 14, 27, 187, 190 commentators 1 exclusion 11 n. 23, 188, 194 intellectuals 189 language xi, 28, 185, 202 latent, views 79, 98, 158 legislation 11 literature ix, 1– 2 models 15, 102 public discourse 1, 6, 14, 15, 177 social characteristics of, groups 31 structure of ideology 31

symbolic expression of, views 48, 120, 160 topos 8 worldview 21, 31, 186, 198 Antisemitism affective 94 causal model of 68, 78, 102, 111, 117 code of political identity 27, 187, 190 discriminative 36, 112–117, 121, 126, 130 dynamics of ix–xii, 93, 185, 191–192 East-European x, 2 historical 20, 22–23, 29, 31, 60, 78, 123, 137, 154, 160 legal sanctions against 93, 182 new ix, 101 n. 71, 122–123, 126–131, 133–135 old 123, 125–127, 129–135 political x–xii, 7, 29, 31, 78–79, 111–113, 115, 117–118, 121–122, 126, 130, 187, 202 possibilist theory of 186 public expression of 80, 137 reemerging 31 research on, in Hungary 31, 123, 140, 195 strength of 36, 40, 45, 54, 63–64, 68–69, 85, 111, 187 anti-Zionism 15, 101 anti-Zionist rhetoric 182 Arabs 67, 95 Arab world 21, 134 Arrow Cross 2, 20, 24, 27, 29, 148, 159, 176 assimilation 9, 188 n. 12 Auschwitz 137, 139, 141, 141 n. 7, 147 Austria 33, 35, 42 n. 8, 80, 142, 147, 150, 184 n. 5, 193 Austrian Jews 80 authoritarianism 18 n. 55, 36, 56 n. 30, 90 n. 63 Belgian 185 BeszélZ 19 “Bolshevik-liberal” media

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208

index of subjects

Bolshevism 3 Budapest vii, 14, 50, 53, 70, 75–77, 89, 125, 157 causal model 68, 76–78, 102, 111, 117, 121 Central Committee 8, 183 Central Committee of the HSWP 8 Christian anti-Judaism 60 Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) 72, 197 n. 30 Christian Socialist movement 193 cluster analysis 42, 45, 71 cognitive dimension 43, 95, 172 cognitive dissonance 83, 159 collapse of Communism xi, 18, 31, 93 n. 68, 139, 181, 191 colored immigrants 66–67 Communist dictatorship 6–7, 19, 23 ideology 160 party 4, 6–8, 19, 20 n. 62, 31, 133, 183, 196 system 6–7, 22, 28–29, 40, 54, 56, 188, 195 conative dimension 41–42 conservatism factor 69, 103 n. 79, 106 Council’s Republic 9 Czechoslovakia 32–33, 182–183 Czechs 32–35, 185 Dachau 141, 147 democratic political system 57 dichotomization 10 diffuse attitudes 195–196 discrimination 3 n. 2, 35–36, 45, 97, 112 n. 79, 137 discriminative measures 125 domestic foreigner 192 deprivation long term 119 relative 119–120 subjective 48, 54–55 Dutch 185 economic-social resources 52–54, 59, 72, 92 emancipation 9, 21 emotive dimensions 43 estimate-index 86, 88 n. 60 ethnic group 66–68, 183 Euroatlantic structures 202

European countries 128 n. 32, 139, 141, 176, 184–185 European identity 138–139 European Union 185 Fatelessness 144 financial power 21 First World War 6 France 23, 142–143, 150, 175, 184 n. 5, 186 freedom of expression 90 frustrated left nationalists 110 right 71, 73, 107–109 frustration-aggression theory 106 genocide of the Jews 169 gentry 15, 188 German Democratic Republic 23 Germany 4, 23–25, 42, 80, 142–143, 150, 159, 175, 184, 186–187, 190–191, 193–194 Germany’s conservative tradition 23 Gypsies hostility to 73–74 Great Britain 142–143, 175, 176 n. 38 Gulag 139 Guttmann scale 43 historical consciousness in Hungary 31, 155 historical memory 22, 31, 140, 157, 160, 165, 172, 176, 182 historical revisionism 139, 162–163 Hitel 9 Holocaust business 169, 171–173, 177–178 Conference, Stockholm 139 denial 2–3, 123, 139–140, 149, 153, 156–158, 162–163, 169–172, 179 denial factor 156–157, 171 educational program 139 knowledge on 148 memorial day 139, 146, 165, 169 relativization of 20, 179 homosexuals 100, 143 Horthy era 9, 24, 26 Hungarian Jewish assimilationism 11 Jews 9, 19–21, 50, 150 liberalism 11, 24

index of subjects neo-Nazi groups 2 public sphere 27 skinhead movement 2 Hungarian Academy of Sciences 8 Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference 3 n. 2 Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF, MDF) 7–8, 14, 18, 72 Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) 14, 31, 197 Hungarian National Frontline 2 n. 1 Hungarian National Movement 2 n. 1 Hungarian National Socialist Action Group 2 n. 1 Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP, MSZP) 73, 90, 100, 108–110, 119–120, 196–197 Hungarian Workers’ Party (MP, Munkáspárt) 90 Hunnia Füzetek 3 identity strategy 10 ideological attitudes 60, 63–64, 68–69, 73, 102 imperial authoritarian state 23 Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKGP) 72 integrated conservative 74, 76, 78, 108, 111 integrated left 108 integrated liberal 108 intellectual self-defense 4 internationalist ideology 6 interwar period 22 Israel 123, 127, 130–131, 133–135 Italian 185 Jewish alien 10–11, 20–21, 27, 100 cohesion 35 communism 8, 12, 21, 181, 188 n. 12 expansionism 3, 20 influence 13, 31, 95 institutions 182–183 persecution 3, 5, 20, 22–24, 27–29, 31, 35, 123, 137–141, 144, 146, 148, 150–151, 153–156, 158–159, 165, 167–169, 171, 176, 178–179 power 2, 27, 184 n. 5 question 1, 6, 8, 18–19, 35, 99, 114, 159, 182–183, 187–191, 194, 201

209

religious figures 182 scapegoats 193 solidarity 188 victims 147, 150–151, 153, 155, 166, 175 Kádár-Aczél regime Kadarism 15 Kitartás 2 n. 1 Kulturkritik 190

15

language of national consciousness 191 latency conscious 81 communicative 81–82, 99 factual 81, 86, 99 functional 81 index 86–90 Luhman’s definitions of 81 pressure 80–83, 86–87, 89, 98, 130, 159 League of Young Democrats (LYD, Fidesz) 20, 72, 100, 108–110, 116, 119, 120, 195–196 left wingers 77, 143, 198 left-wing self-placement 65 legitimacy discourse 5, 15, 20, 138, 168 Legitimation of Forgetting factor 157, 171 liberal self-placement 65 liberal-universalist tradition 21 Magyar Fórum 14 Magyar Hírlap 8 n. 12, 11 n. 22, 25 n. 68, 137 n. 1 Magyar Nemzeti Arcvonal 2 n. 1 Magyar Nemzeti Mozgalom 2 n. 1 Magyar Nemzetiszocialista Akciócsoport 2 n. 1 Manichean world view 17 Marxian-Communist historiography 24 media power 21 middle-class antisemites 159 Ministry of Interior 183 mobility, mobile upward, downward 193, 197 social 52, 193 moderately diffuse prejudice group 113 MTI (Hungarian News Agency) 5 Muscovites 17

210

index of subjects

Nappali hold (Daylight Moon) 9 National forces 10, 18, 28, 192 group 183 minority 183 opposition 7–8 self-defense 190–191 sentiment 60, 63–64, 66, 69, 72–73, 78, 100, 107, 110, 179, 195, 198 National Bank 20 nationalism 33, 103 n. 73, 106, 110–112, 117–118, 120, 122, 160, 194, 198 nationalist opposition 7 Nazi concentration camp 141 Nazism 2, 23, 31 negationist 168 neo-conservative 26 neo-Nazi 2, 27 New York vii New York Times 7 Nobel Prize 144 numerus clausus 26 Nuremberg definition 183 Pannon Buldog 2 n. 1 parliamentary democracy 22, 190 per capita income 52 Poland ix, 33, 144, 182–183 Polish Jews x–xi, 1–9, 11–13, 16, 19–24, 26–29, 33, 36, 39, 47, 52–53, 67–68, 80, 92, 94–95, 99–101, 106, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122–123, 125, 127, 130, 135, 137, 139–141, 144, 146–148, 150–151, 153–156, 158–160, 162, 165, 168–169, 171–172, 176–179, 181–187, 189–190, 194, 201–202 political culture 93, 197 n. 30 ideologies 78, 187 language 22 mobilization 78, 200 preferences 39 politicization xi, 107, 111, 117, 135 post-Communist period 1, 5, 17, 21–22, 159, 190 post-Holocaust era 27 prejudiced stereotyping 43, 45 principal component analysis 43, 68, 69 n. 43, 73 n. 45, 103 n. 73, 144 n. 10, 145 n. 11 private history 182

pro-Israel 131, 133–135 pro-Nazi extreme rightwing 24 proto-Fascism 24 pseudo-nonattitudes 82 public historical reflection 160 racial egoism 4 persecution 4 radical liberalism 13 re-contextualization 26, 30 Recsk 141 Religion 16, 193 religiosity 63–64, 78, 99, 119–120, 195 religious-conservative views 92 resource-linked variables 53 responsibility 3, 22, 24, 29–31, 35, 123, 137, 139, 141, 148, 150, 155, 157, 159–160, 170–173, 176 acceptance of 156–157 historical 35, 158, 168, 179 Revolution in 1956 14, 182 right-wing identity code 91 right-wing self-placement 65 Roma victims 143 rural antisemites 75 Saint Crown 3 n. 3 Second World War 20, 26 n. 69, 93 n. 68, 144 n. 9, 183 n. 3 semi-Fascism 24 Shoah ix, 138, 177 n. 39, 178, 182, 188 n. 12 Slovaks 35, 185 small-country discourse 24 social defencelessness 56, 59, 60 n. 33, distance 33, 43, 53, 94, 100–111, 112 n. 79, 115 inequality 56 norms 56, 119, 125 regulations 54 taboo 158 Social Democrats 193 Socio-demographical indicators 48 Soviet bloc 138, 182, 183 n. 3 Soviet concentration camp 141 State Office for Church Affairs 183 Stockholm 139 Swiss 169, 185 Szent Korona 3

index of subjects Tel Aviv 20 The Authoritarian Personality 60, 66, 91 thermometer 67 three-dimensional model 42 n. 8 Treblinka 141, 147 Trianon 24–25 tripartite model of prejudice 41 true negatives 82, 86 Új Rend 2 n. 1 United States 123, 138, 141–142, 147, 180 University of Vienna 33, 35 urbanist-populist antagonism 6

Vietnam War 138 Világnemzeti Népuralmista Párt Világosság 10 n. 20 Vorkuta 141 voter volatility 195

211 2 n. 1

Western Europe 23, 48, 140, 162, 164, 176 World-National People’s Power Party 2 n. 1 xenophobia 66, 68–70, 73–74, 85–87, 89, 92, 100, 102–103, 106, 110, 112, 198