"Fascism" has once again taken a heavy toll in Hungarian public life, but let's be careful!
Now let's see what this term really means, what are the differences between Italian fascism, German National Socialism and, say, Hungarian Hungarianism. The bottom line is that the name "fascist" refers to a political attitude that is more or less uniformly condemned, legally sanctioned, and morally unacceptable throughout the entire planet. Which brings with it the extreme party dictatorship, personal absolute power, the advertisement of racism, racial superiority, etc. Fascism denies citizens their freedoms, there is no right to speech, association, assembly, etc.
Fascist systems do not tolerate any kind of oppositional or different thinking, those who would still give their heads to it: it destroys them. Literally.
One could continue, let's say that fascism is pro-war, but it is unnecessary. The bottom line is that in our time, since the fall of Germany in 1945, fascism embodies the political affiliation that has been rejected in its entirety both in the East (Russia) and in the West (United States, European Union). Anti-fascism was the only common denominator between East and West for many decades. In the same way, within some countries, anti-fascism also made the cooperation of democratic forces and communists and socialists a legitimate alliance. It was like this from Italy to France to Hungary.
The problem arose when "fascism" disappeared from the scene. In Germany, this was called "de-Nazification" and neither the Soviets nor the Westerners were selective in their means.
Unbridled lynchings also took place in other countries - primarily France and Italy, Yugoslavia. Discussing this now would lead to a side track, let's leave it for another time. Fascism has disappeared - it has become a legally sanctioned political view. They were replaced by democracies or communist dictatorships. Ex-fascists (National Socialists, Hungarians, etc.) faced court, possibly internment or forced labor, full or partial confiscation of property, loss of job, pension, etc. Where the proportion of fascists was too high, such as the National Socialists in Germany (72 percent of general school teachers, 80 percent of justice workers), the general retort quickly ended, because there would have been no one to run the country with.
However, the beginning of the political struggle between the democrats and communists, who had been allies until then, meant that the "fascist" stigma became one of the most important political tools. In Hungary, too.
In other words, the communists (and their allies) very easily labeled their opponents "fascist" in the middle of the political struggle. Finding the facts made sense for a while, but later it was no longer important. The stigma remained. Within a relatively short time, the role played in the anti-fascist resistance was no longer an obstacle for the communist propaganda machine. Everyone who is not a communist or a "fellow traveler" has become a fascist. They didn't say it that way, but that's how it came together in the minds of Rákosi and Révai. And in Hungarian public and cultural life as well. Whoever is not with us is against us. We are progressive, modern, everyone else can only be retrograde. That is, he is a fascist. That is why everything that characterized Hungarian public life before 1945 had to be branded as "fascist". "Horthy fascism".
Orientation was made easier by the fact that the Soviet Union, which occupied our country, promoted communist ideology, and that the occupation was not some fictitious, intellectual achievement. Hundreds of thousands of people disappeared in the camps of the Soviet Union and could disappear at any time if they stood in the way of the communists, i.e. the Soviet imperial aspirations.
The Communist Party would not have been able to win the support of the majority of Hungarian voters by pure political means. That's why they used all available tools. They used the political police, the people's courts, election fraud, and stigmatization. At the crucial moment, the Soviets did not shy away from direct intervention. (The abduction of the party secretary general of small farmer Béla Kovács.) It is difficult to understand today that in the difficult years after the war, a great generation of politicians fought - essentially at the cost of their lives - for Hungarian democracy. They were all given the primitive label: "fascists". There were many different people among them. Christian democrat, social democrat, third party, Octobrist, legitimist. They were united by two things: the nation and democracy. The opposite is internationalism - actually imperial subjugation. And opposite the "proletarian dictatorship", which of course the proletarians had little to do with.
In contrast, the unrestrained desire for power, the feeling of minority that turns into wild hatred, the parvenu pitianism that neglects the will of the people and deeply despises the people.
This type covered Hungarian political life with the mud of fascism between 1945 and 1948. There was a "fascist conspiracy" every week. This was taken care of by Gábor Péter's political police, the People's Prosecutor's Office and People's Court, and of course the Free People, People's Speech and other extreme organs. These papers - like the communist representatives - easily distributed the fascist epithet to such great people as law professor Gyula Moór, Zoltán Pfeiffer, Dezső Sulyok, Imre Kovács, Vince Nagy, István Vásáry, Margit Slachta, Károly Peyer, Ágoston Valentiny. Then he splashed the mud on Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy, Secretary General Béla Kovács, a small farmer, and even Archbishop József Mindszenty of Esztergom. That's why it was a great pity, because this was a well-prepared, up-to-date, morally high-level guard. Behind them, next to them, there was an educated generation, ready and able to create a modern, democratic Hungary, which in the 1930s got to know the country's real problems and developed a political, economic, cultural and social program for moving forward. It was a Hungarian program and a European one. National Democrat.
For a brief moment, it seemed that it could even be implemented, since in the quasi-free elections in November 1945, this program received an overwhelming majority. It was just an illusion. This plan became a victim of mediocrity, fear, lust for power, pettiness, laziness and incompetence. Like so many big ideas in our country.
There came the people with little talent and great ambition, and there came the grave moral and intellectual gnomes. By outbidding each other, they fascistized the past, talent, and morality. They pushed and pulled each other further and further, and then the top gnomes – devoid of any sense of morality – could play the role of governors of the province. In the meantime, the country repeatedly went into complete economic, moral and political bankruptcy, but that didn't matter.
This is the past. But unfortunately, the past is here with us. Stigma is used by some as a substitute for a political argument. No argument: fascist! Don't underestimate the danger of this. What a career primitive stigmatists have had and are having!
What was the price of this?! Half a century of wasted time! The blackening of Hungarianness. I wouldn't bring this topic here again if I didn't read and hear the expired record every day. To stigmatize people instead of arguments: this is the anteroom of the darkest dictatorship. László Orbán once easily fascistized Zoltán Pfeiffer, the president of the Hungarian Independence Party. According to him, it directly followed from this that the 700,000 people who voted for his party were also fascists. If he is a fascist, he cannot be present in political life, so fascist votes must be destroyed. This happened in 1947. Earlier, János Kádár said that the Hungarian Freedom Party is the modern manifestation of fascism. The party was destroyed by all available violence, so that it could not run in the elections. These were of course democratic parties, Pfeiffer and Sulyok were also known anti-fascists, but democrats. On the contrary, the party of Kádár and László Orbán was the party of the dictatorship.
Today's "fascist" idiots are exactly at Rákosi's level, who even put it this way in a narrow circle: "those who voted for Pfeiffer didn't know that he voted for the Jewish fascists."
Featured image: MTI/Márton Mónus
