Harry’s Place

V. interesting article, Adam

Thanks Adam. I noticed that Dissent now have it on their web site. I was sickened to read that there is a group calling itself “Arrows of Hungarian National Liberation Army.” As you point out yourself it is not a coincidence that the word “Arrows” is part of the groups name. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust in Hungary in late 1944 and early 1945 will know exactly what the Arrow Cross were responsible for back then.

Adam’s article has been published in Dissent which is a superb magazine. I have been a subscriber for some time now and they always have interesting articles. I urge everyone to take out a subscription!

Very interesting article.

I heard Roger Griffin speak on modernism and fascism a while back. He was absolutely brilliant and I’m going to get his book. He points out (and I simplify) that nobody talks about degenerate Jews any more, and if you try to recognise fascists that way you miss the urbane and politic leaders like Gabor Vona, leader of Jobbik and Magyar Garda. What gives these people away is a yearning for over-arching narratives explaining the world, and an expectation that you can clean up society - Griffin pointed out the prevalence of the ‘gardening’ metaphor and the necessity of burning weeds.

What chills and sickens is that discrimination against Roma is so open ie acceptable.

Berlosconi in Italy - it’s OK to fingerprint Roma children because they’re all thieves.

Mira - Get the book, its probably the most important piece of historical writing since Furet. Griffin calls parties such as the FN and the like ethno-cratic liberals, all vive la difference but basically still obessed with the purity of the ethnie, of a supra-individual identity and with decadence.

There was a Sythe Guard, I believe, in Hungary during the mid thirties, a peasant fascist group, though soon subsumed by the run away success of the Arros Cross by the end of the decade after the failure of their putsch

Thanks for the tip about Roger Griffin. I did not know about his book but now definitely read it. HP at its best - intelligent informed comment.

Adam (and Mira) - Here a fairly comprehesive list of his stuff - http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/index.php/staff/details/griffin/

Mira: Berlosconi in Italy - it’s OK to fingerprint Roma children because they’re all thieves.

Most of the HP bloggers seem to have no problem with fingerprinting, so I doubt this will be seen as an issue.

Dirigible, I don’t claim to have concentrated much on fingerprinting, but if a state decides to do it either directly or indirectly on an ethnic basis, that’s trouble.

Thanks for the pointers, socialrepublican.

Adam,

Also (and you might have it already), Stanley Payne’s a History of Fascism is a must

@Adam’s explanation “After fifty years of dictatorship there is a real reluctance in this country to restrict freedom of speech, no matter how unpleasant the views being expressed.” is telling us, to incite hatred is just unpleasant, it is the typical prejudice of left-liberal people, who live in the west.
In a country like Hungary, where with the help of Hungarian administration about half a million Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them were murdered, it is dangerous to allow hate speech and it is a real miracle, that until now no Roma or Jew have been murdered.
After the change of system in 1989 the liberals - many of them of Jewish descent - stood up against any legislation curbing the activities of the extreme right. They thought that Hungary will become like the United States, where some of them were invited by George Soros. The problem of course is, that the USA have an entirely different history and political culture.
The Hungarians would have been well advised to learn from the Austrian and German experience, where no paramilitary groups are legal and where the denial of the National Socialist crimes are forbidden.
Thanks also to the Hungarian liberals, one can deny in Hungary those crimes and even justify them.

Nagy Talavera’s The Green Shirts and the Others is old and a little confused conceptually but still a mine of information about Fascism and the radical right in Hungary and Romania.

As an aside, Marius Turda’s work on Hungarian eugenists and the far right is worth a look too, tho in the interests of full disclosure, he was my dis super