Letters from Turkey
My dear Aunt,
I am with you on that point. Moreover,
you do not need rocket science to create a package of some
cherry-picked solid facts, a bit of exaggeration sprinkled with
morsels of blatant lies and you have a set of arguments which can be
used for or against any cause. The more emotional and the less
rational, the better. And once you launch your package, bits will be
picked up, reproduced, modified and disseminated, a self-organising
campaign will emerge if seeded properly. After a while nobody will
know what the facts and who the sources are.
Fukuyama's eloquently written analysis
of the emerging (rather sinking) soft dictatorship in Hungary
contains some factual errors. Somebody somewhere must have stated
that the retirement age of constitutional judges was lowered and this
comes back again and again as an incriminating evidence, although it
it not true. And this is from a philosopher, a scientist, who works
from facts.
So no wonder, people who do not make a
living of studying facts and are emotionally involved in some issue
make more mistakes. Take as an example the serial murders of the Roma
in Hungary between July
2008 and August 2009. The first attacks were not sufficiently
investigated by the police either because of racist prejudice,
laziness or apathy. No matter what the reason might have been, it
was a gross professional error. But unfortunately this is repeated
all over the world: attacks against the poor are never examined so
thoroughly as attacks against the rich and infamous. Not just
negligence, but the repeated crimes committed against the Roma by the Roma also increased the threshold of the authorities. Brutal fights
erupt from time to time between Roma families, sometimes guns are
shut. Loan sharks regularly intimidate non-paying customers by
shooting at their houses or beating them up.
Nobody died in the first four attacks (of the series as we know now)
many people – including myself - thought these were acts of
intimidation by loan sharks. February 23, 2009. was a turning point
in the attitude because that day a five year old child was murdered
in the most brutal way. Roma loan sharks do not execute 5 year old kids. Nazis do. However, the police saw no connection among the attacks until their similarities became obvious: at the edge of the villages houses of poor Roma
families were put in flame by Molotov cocktails, escaping people, young and old were shot at indiscriminately.
Still, eyes of the investigators were
blurred and if you read the last paragraph of the report from that
time
you would see why. If the attacks were
not committed by Roma loan sharks, than they must have been done by
the anti-Roma Hungarian Guard. So this is the crowd you have to watch
to find the murderers.
The FBI helped the police to set the
profiles of these coward criminals who were finally tracked by cell
phone data. Although they did not use their phones at the scenes,
they were not smart enough to turn them off, or leave them at home.
Four men were arrested. They do not
seem to have any affiliation with political parties or with the
openly anti-Roma Hungarian Guard banned in 2009. Interestingly, one
of the accused had been under surveillance since 2004 because of his open,
militant racist remarks. The Office reported that surveillance was
halted in early 2008, interestingly, just when the group started to
get arms. According to other sources the surveillance lasted until
August 8, the very day of the attack at Piricse.
Another suspect of the four gentlemen
worked as an informator for the military intelligence and reportedly
made remarks that he could help to track the murderers for the hefty
reward. That notion was not picked up by his link.
The case is not yet closed, surprises
may arise. But even now, we know for fact that one of the guys was
practically an agent for the military and the other suspect was
watched closely right until he would have deserved an even closer
surveillance. Nothing else is needed for a conspiracy theory: The
government was involved in the murders in some way, either by
initiating them, or at least by not halting them until the whole
world watched Hungary. Is our package of facts done to prove the
racist attitude of the Orban government? Not really, because all this
happened during the previous government. I am sorry.
How are these events interpreted by the
great pianist Andras Schiff in an interview given following a
conference on anti-Semitism in Hungary?
“Aber
es ist auch ein moralisches Problem. Es gab und gibt offene Pogrome
gegen Roma, die von der Polizei und der Justiz überhaupt nicht oder
nur sehr schwach geahndet werden. Die bewaffneten Garden der
Jobbik-Partei zünden Roma-Siedlungen an und die Polizei greift nicht
ein. Ein Vater kommt mit seinem kleinen Kind auf dem Arm aus einem
brennenden Haus und wird von den Jobbik-Leuten mit Maschinenpistolen
niedergeschossen.“
He
basically says there is a moral problem: open pogroms have been going
on against the Roma and the authorities watch them with folded arms.
Members of the Jobbik (a radical right wing party in the Hungarian
and European Parliement) kill a child with machine guns etc.
Non
of it is true. There were no “pogroms” - and to use the term
pogrom is especially unfortunate in a German newpaper. What happened
in 2011 was frightening, but nothing like a pogrom. Although the
socialist government banned the Hungarian Guard, that paramilitary
organisation was able to get reborn anew under a different name. That
allowed them to move into a village and march on the streets in
uniform to intimidate the local Roma population. Until a new law
constructed by the Orban government was accepted by the Parliament
these thugs were just marching up and down. And then it was over, and
unlike during the previous government you do not see groups dressed
in black uniforms marching anywhere. It is over, thanks to Mr.
Orban, the man I am not a fan of.
Hysteria
is true emotions evoked by false facts. Political hysteria on one
side elicits hysteria on the other side. Hysteria is a dialogue stopper. There is nothing to discuss. Should you present all the
evidence to Mr. Schiff to make him see that his facts are wrong, he
might say, all right, all right, but still I can feel Hungary is a
racist country. Should you present all the facts to the extreme
right, that the language of the Jobbik in the Parliament is
anti-Semitic, even if it is coded, you could not rock their
conviction that the attacks against, well, Hungary (? Orbán, the
Sacred Crown?) is led by the international Jewry.
It
is convenient to keep this style of arguments, because that does not
force anyone to do anything. For the Roma, for example. Roma are poor
because of the racist discrimination by Hungarians. No, the Roma are
poor because laziness is encoded in their genes.
Either
case, the authorities are not responsible. Society as a whole is not responsible.
And
it is a killer of everything. For a Berliner (like like Bobby Kennedy)
pogroms, communities in flame, children massacred by machine guns as portrayed by Mr. Schiff should ring a bell: it is like hell, nazi Germany. And I do not want to live as my father did under (or for) Hitler. I'll never ever go to Hungary, bye Balaton.
For the crypto anti-every-race-but-us-Huns that type of argument based on false facts is the betrayal of your mother(father)land. And tragically, there seems to be no middle ground.
When
will they ever learn? Sung by my love at grandma age:
Best
to you.
P.S.
I remember, we've had that. Again, I am not suggesting that communists
and Nazis, the extreme left and the extreme right are equal when racism is considered. I just
do not want hysteria to be the language of discussion (óξύμωρον
– oxymoron)
I love you, but I have to go.
I love you, but I have to go.
