Bálint Botond, the editor of Pesti Srácok, announced in his obituary that Aristo, the newspaper's regular blog author, had passed away.
As Bálint put it, Aristo's exceptionally good style and classical education not only lifted him out of the now-forgotten blogosphere, but it soon became clear that
he creates literature without any kind of intention.
"We have lost a person who was able to reproduce the atmosphere of every decade from the sixties as authentically as possible," stated the Pesti Srácok journalist, who concluded his farewell thoughts by saying,
"Aristo was a special person and he is leaving anyway. It was already his request that we not write his real name in the obituary..."
And civilek.info says goodbye to the author with a unique voice with a real rarity, our deputy editor-in-chief Szilvia Polgári conducted an interview with Polgárportál back in 2018, which we will share below.
The world according to Aristo (Interview)
In particular, during the conversations so far, I did not try to follow the written and unwritten rules of the small group of journalists, after all, I do not come from the media sector, so I did not learn how to kick the door on interviewees armed with the inexhaustible knowledge gained from Wikipedia. I definitely don't understand that. However, the current situation is even more exceptional, as I am talking to someone whose identity I cannot reveal, but I myself do not know who he really is. Unconventional, improvisational philosophizing follows with Aristo, the featured author of PestiSrácok.hu
You started writing your very personal blog in 2013 under the title "Aristo in Socialism with a Human Face". In it, you tell in detail about your family relationships, your noble and bourgeois ancestors, your grandfather who went through two wars, your father, who was forced to defect after '56, and of course about your own trials because of the reactionary family. What do you think, does the departure determine the arrival?
Surely. I wouldn't have been able to run any other course. Unlike the opposition representatives of the seventies and eighties, whom they try to put on a pedestal today, I would have been shut down if I had done what they did. To put it that way, I was significantly constrained, I did not have the rescue conditions that they did, it is indicated that all their relatives and ancestors either at the AVH or at the Ministry of the Interior performed essential tasks. So they remained protected, practically none of them got hurt. I could have sat like a crow on a tree. In this sense, the arrival in '89 was nothing more than stealth.
You were also quite disappointed, you saw the failure encoded in the MDF earlier than many others.
Because I lived in everyday life. I was a long-time member of the MDF, I participated in all kinds of meetings from the beginning, but the main experience was the story when I went to the MDF headquarters here on xxxx, and a man I knew came out, imagine a real, old-fashioned abomination from the county party committee, with whom I had numerous personal disagreements. And I asked the administrator girl, because in contrast to the management, they always knew everything about what she was doing here, and she answered that she joined the MDF. Do you remember that because of Pozsgay and the Judge, the ban on the MSZMP member not being able to join another party was previously lifted (the official date is February 11, 1989 - Meeting of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party - ed.) . And then I went to the president and told him that I had given forty years not to be in a party with them For forty years! So if he's in, I'm out. So I lived here, and not in Pest, I meditated on democracy, read the works of Tocqueville or Montesquieu. I lived here every day and then I realized that whatever they change and whatever the system will be, it will have to be done with the same people.
What is in the head cannot be changed overnight.
Only we lulled ourselves into illusions. We came back from Lakitelek with my friends and I remember what nonsense we said to each other. I am talking about university lecturers and other intellectuals. We sat there in the car and daydreamed about the fact that if the lid is taken off this nation and the Hungarian talent and momentum are released, then it will be in Canaan and the whole of Europe will lie at our feet. And I took this as well because it sounds so good. In theory. But practice showed otherwise.
Many of us wanted to believe in the actual regime change.
Of course, but I still can't forgive myself for being so stupid and believing it.
Does this change anything?
Of course, it severely damages my self-image. This will forever be a sore spot every time I think about it. And during the current political tug-of-war, I inevitably remember what happened in '89. That's why I think about everything again.
The communist type of man still lives with us today, there is no doubt about that. As well as the traces of forty years of destruction, which were carried out in the souls. For example, the low participation rate of the first free elections can be attributed to this, where only a little more than 65 percent showed up, because they were like, what for.
I'll say something else. In addition to the fact that it will be anyway, there is no choice, the view that matters are handled in Pest, in dark offices, has also strengthened. Because I, as a local MDF leader, have never been asked what I or those I represent in that small town want. Never. Even in '88-89, only the ukazs came. From that point on, the view that still echoes in me, but not only in me, but in many people, was strengthened, that politics is a genre that they play among themselves anyway. And if I say something, it doesn't matter anyway. If you look at it, the spirit of the Hungarian people is reluctant to engage in politics, because starting in 1945, but unfortunately in 1989, they broadcast the message that comrades, don't jump! The Russians were here, for example, and it causes me a problem that nowadays I read from many people that they already knew in '87 that it would all end here, because all the signs pointed to it. A freak! Even in '87, I think ninety-five out of a hundred people thought it would last until the end of time. How can such an empire fall apart, come on! That's what we thought. It took hundreds of years for the Roman Empire to disintegrate, of course, because practically from the Battle of Hadrianopolis (fought on August 9, 378 AD by the armies of the Emperor Valens and the Visigoth leader Fritigern, during which the Roman legions suffered a catastrophic defeat from the nomadic Goths - ed.) continued for a very long time. In contrast, the Soviet Union fell to pieces in a few months, but no one knew this beforehand. I think so.
Many claim that history repeats itself. What do you think about this? Either in terms of tools or context, but I am also thinking here of the peculiarities of human nature.
The latter is the key word, because human nature is unchanging. Gibbon, the famous British historian, says that history is nothing but the totality of the follies, errors and sins of mankind. Of course, history does not repeat itself in the sense that the same situation never occurs again. There are always other factors, horribile dictu the technical development. The fact that there was no war in Europe is a classic example of this, which also dominates the public discourse. Now, on the one hand, this is not true, because it was in the Balkans, and it is still going on in Ukraine, but the fact that there was not such a real big war is, in my opinion, not the merit of the European Union, but of the atomic bomb. That mutual, deadly threat, because if war breaks out today, no stone will be left unturned in Europe. But literally, no living person remains. Rome was overthrown, I always use this as an example, because I like ancient stories, that the barbarians came in armed and beat everyone who didn't like them in the head. Well, that can't be done today. That is, anyone with a barbaric weapon would set out to wipe out Europe, no matter if there are more people or no matter if they are more determined, i.e. they have everything that the enemies of the Roman Empire had, today this can be eliminated with the push of a button.
Sometimes we still feel strange, especially when we look at the footage from Röszke or the New Year's Eve parties in Western Europe, but we'll come back to that later, let's stick to history for now.
Okay, so history repeats itself in the sense that people keep making the same mistakes. If you look at it, the current officials of the European Union are behaving exactly like the leading officials of the Roman Empire. No problem, let them come, we are the strongest, we will swallow them crosswise.
The pride?
That's right. So what is it to us? Think about it! Attila beats the Goths, but really, the Goths flee and ask at the Danube to be allowed into the Roman Empire. They ask. Because they were refugees, in the strict sense of the word, we know that the Huns did not care if they defeated someone. And they let them in because they expect that they are young, so they will join the army and pay taxes. Ammianus Marcellinus ( the most prominent historian of the late Roman imperial period - ed.) writes that they were brought over on all kinds of watercraft and literally "care was taken to ensure that none remained on the other side". So the later destroyers of the Roman Empire come in, the officials are incompetent, the empire is unprepared, corrupt, according to Marcellinus, they asked for a piece of gold for half a dead dog, there was such a famine. In Hungarian, they didn't know what to do with them. This angered them and quite understandably revolted, which then led to the Battle of Hadrianopolis. So the bottom line is that we are making the same human mistakes now that were made then and that we will make forever because we are human. We are driven by the same human qualities, the desire for power, vanity, and pride. In this sense, history repeats itself. The same situation will definitely not happen twice.
This is true, but we have not only technical development at our disposal, but also historical experience. A man at forty does not enter the same pit he entered at twenty. Then why humanity?
The only lesson of history is that we never learn from it. Simply because we can't get out of our skin. I think we are neither smarter, nor more beautiful, nor more thoughtful than even the inhabitants of the Roman Empire were. My basic experience in this regard were the works of Plutarch and other ancient historians, which came into my hands as a teenager, and from which a person perfectly similar to today looked back. We haven't changed anything. Later, when I read the Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, the same people looked back from there too, with the same doubts and mistakes. So we don't change, we make the same mistakes, and I think our successors will make them too, if there are any, although I'm not sure about that.
What about liability? I'm thinking that while a little person is forced to account in almost all areas of his life, what is the responsibility of the system itself, and where can it be found? For example, if the mandatory, unlimited quota were to be implemented and migrants would be "deported" unchecked to the member countries, who obviously could not be locked up there, because of human rights, etc., and they would commit something, say they would blow up some citizens or rape them, who would be responsible?
The problem is that mass democracies have practically become the means of copying responsibility. Nowadays, where there is such a state system, various, mysterious committees decide on everything, and such and such advisory boards. Individual liability has been eliminated. It used to be that the king stood up and said that they were declaring war on my enemy. Then if he lost the war, he could pick his tent wood. You thought it, you said it, you wanted it that way. Failed? Well go to hell! On the other hand, if everyone in Germany were to be blown up tomorrow morning, then Angela Merkel would spread her arms and say that the entire party leadership, even the Bundestag, said that it should be done this way. Would I be responsible? No way, that's what we all wanted! And, as we know, collective responsibility is not appropriate in these cases, so the entire Bundestag could not be executed. They remove responsibility. Look at how, outside of certain circles, there is no mention of what exactly the industrial lobbies do and how they influence - twenty thousand lobbyists are registered in Brussels alone, so that's shocking, isn't it? Today, there is no one who would stand up and say, I want it this way, so it will be so! Then if it doesn't work out, I'll take the responsibility. It's a terribly strange thing, and it's quite new, because until about the middle of the 20th century, history was about high-volume leaders at the head of countries. Bismarck, for example, when he made a serious decision, put a loaded pistol in his drawer, so he would have taken responsibility in case of failure. Well, that's out of the question today. Instead of Bismarck, there is a committee. And in the end, the responsibility spreads, we stand and watch stupidly while they shoot, rape, and explode. And why all this? Because authority is an ugly thing! Because we should give authority to the one who would stand up and take responsibility, because we listen to him! But authority is an ugly thing, disgusting, as all our liberal compatriots tell us at least twice a day. There should be neither teacher nor judge authority, so no one should have authority, because it is so feudal, phew! However, if there is no authority, then there is no one responsible. Only this is always forgotten. If you look at it, the whole European Union is about delaying things. They discuss what they will discuss next week and when they will meet again to discuss the same thing again.
Don't you think that when it comes to authority, the EU mainstream takes a rather pharisaical position?
The fact is that in this respect, but also in other respects, we live in a terribly pharisaical age, where big politics says something completely different from what it does. They talk about solidarity, love and inclusion, but they replace the cleaning staff in Brussels with white Central Europeans. Just in case. The problem is that, in many cases, problems are not approached in ordinary ways, including migration. I have a strong tendency to philosophize…
Well!
I get the hint. But think about the fact that a man comes here, he knows where, his skin is brown, he looks back at us and says that he lived in this or that village in Afghanistan and was persecuted there. Who the hell is going to go there, where everyone else is shooting at everyone else, to investigate the case of this one man out of a million? Did he really live there, was he really called that, was he really persecuted? And if it turns out that he lied, who will trace where he really came from? How? How? These are not theoretical but practical questions. And in the end, let's say we found out all this, the bodies of six countries worked on it for two years before they found out the truth about this one man, fine, then he should be sent home. But how? And now we were talking about only one person.
Just leave the how, but the where doesn't matter. By the way, this is a trick in the argument when they say that we don't even have to accept those sent here, only judge them. Yes, only if you expel him and he wisely threw away his papers before, then where do you expel him? By the way, deportation doesn't actually work in Western Europe, they get the papers, then they disappear from the eyes of the authorities, but they don't leave Europe.
Yes. And we haven't even talked about the other loopholes, when - I wrote about this just a few days ago - he simply says that he is gay.
Facebook was also blocked quickly.
Almost immediately. Anyway, I feel sorry for my poor editor, who is constantly blocked, mainly because of me. So, if we try to think through what should be done with such a person in a simple, practical way, we come to the conclusion that he should not come here. Because we don't have time, money, or even the opportunity to investigate each of them and make a reasonable, serious decision. Don't get me wrong, this is a person's destiny, so it is extremely important. For him as well as for humanity in general. But if we can't make a decision about his fate, then the solution is not that we don't make a decision and he does what he wants, but then he shouldn't come here.
If we were to overcome the reception, then how to proceed? How do you imagine that, for example, a young man from Somalia who does not read or write in his own language, who has been socialized among tribal customs, comes here and meets the totally devalued culture of the 21st century West? Will he learn German in half a year, then join the Mercedes factory next to the tape, and then collapse on the bosoms of philosophy students in the ruin pubs on Friday evenings as a sign of his gratitude? Seriously, with the experience so far behind us, who still believes that these people will live happily with us in peace and harmony, saving five hundred years of social development?
Maybe it's inappropriate, but I always refer to the domestic gypsies in such cases. They have been living with us for centuries and only very few were able to adopt our standards. Because there are such, of course, but in tiny numbers. Several hundred years were not enough for them to integrate en masse and adopt our values. We even have a common language, which means we can communicate with them! Well, if anyone can even imagine it... I think it's just that they don't imagine it at all. These people do not see beyond the four or five years for which they are elected, they are not interested in the rest.
This is the political part, but the ideology itself always relates to a kind of utopian perfection, not to yesterday, today and reality. It is a fact, however, that no one has been able to integrate the Muslim masses until now, as the intention and ability to integrate is not characteristic of Islam.
Utopia is also a very strange thing because, for example, classical communist ideology was a distinctly Machiavellian approach. Remember, they always said, money matters, the rest is irrelevant; they were not ideologues, at least not the ones I met. Each of them was a little Machiavelli, he thought "if I pay the people, if I shut their mouths, then I do what I want". They really didn't like to talk about justice and the like, because they thought it was stupid. Look, the same people, or their sons and grandsons, raise the flag of morality high and wave it every day, from morning to night. So is humanity, and so is solidarity, of course. Quite simply, they moved from the Machiavellian side to demanding Christian values from you and me. Well, comrades, let's stop for a moment! Does someone whose father hanged priests refer to Nazareth? And who, by the way, if a priest says something in the church, then the roaring anticlerical bursts out of him like Saint-Just or Robespierre? Then he points at you and says you're not even a Christian. In practice, they saved themselves along with their ideology, by wearing this moral mask, that on the one hand, the old sins became explainable. Of course, they wanted good, they spoiled it a bit, but they wanted good. On the other hand, they made it possible that what was demanded of you in the name of violence, can now be demanded in the name of humanity. Bribing me with chocolate is definitely a lighter genre, personally I prefer it to being bribed with a stick of gum.
But the principle is the same.
Yes exactly. And the result too. Today, wherever you turn, morality is pointed at you, suggesting that you are not human at all, since you do not want your fellow man. Your neighbor! So this is something quite funny and especially so in Hungary, because the question of departure and arrival can only be raised in the case of our families. But if you look at the left-liberal side, who were the papas and mamas… I know, it's a nasty thing to refer to like that…
Not so much. There is continuity.
Well, it's absurd to say that family education didn't catch them! You and I, it's different, we are "like that", obviously, well, even your grandparents were anti-Semites, fascists, or stupid peasants, and then you must have become one too, because that's how the family works. But interestingly, the one whose grandfather was an assassin at the ÁVH, he was not.
Aren't we tired of double standards yet?
Me to death. In one of my writings, I think I reflected on the little Pukli in the checkered shirt, what it must have been like when the ÁVÓ grandfather sat him on his lap, told him stories, and then he played veselerom with his teddy bear in the evening. In such cases, the philosophical and epistemological argument is always that we should not generalize. We hear this three hundred times a day. Because the migrant does the violence, but let's not generalize. Now, generalization is not a mistake, but the method, if you like, the basis of our thinking. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to grasp things. So if there wasn't a general concept for the cube stone, then each piece would have to be named individually, and let's face it, this would interfere with communication a bit. In the same way, if we cannot talk about migrants in general, then they should be listed individually by name, so it is not possible to talk, let alone think. Generalization is a way of thinking and so is prejudice, whether we like it or not. You should read Gadamer's work entitled Truth and Method If we meet someone on the street with a bloody knife, we run away. Maybe he just cut his finger and wants to ask us for help. True, the probability of this is damn low, but theoretically you can't rule it out.
By the way, I understand why they come, but I only have a very simplified theory for why mianstream is pushing for this. Throughout history everything has been about power and profit, why should it be any different now? The plan of the United States of Europe is no longer a secret, and consumers are being lured here. Because it makes a profit, and if it comes on foot, it doesn't cost anything. It doesn't matter what your color, religion, or culture is, the main thing is to eat! Think about it, the consumption of an aging continent does not bring as much to the kitchen as that of a young and growing continent.
I don't see it that way at all. My opinion, István Ráth-Végh wrote about it, is that fashion is of enormous importance, in a way that goes beyond all reasonableness. Quite simply, in the countries where they come from, it has become fashionable to go to Europe. And in the same way that the liberals, Macron and Merkel follow a political fashion. Because where they come from and where they were taught, those mental patients from '68, who by the way still teach at German and French universities, this was the fashion there. It was impossible to hang out. In the Middle Ages, for example, men wore shoes with pointed toes so long that they had to be tied to their knees. They couldn't walk in it, it bothered them in everyday life, but they wore it regardless, because it was the fashion. The art of imitation was therefore learned from monkeys. And this is actually why all philosophy is life-threatening, with the exception of quite abstract epistemological matters, although even those are. Because it leaks out and becomes an ideological fad in the hands of fools. Look, leftism is still fashionable in Western Europe! It doesn't make any sense. Eastern countries with left-wing governments went through hell, and they sat there, and it seems they liked it.
Are you saying that global money capital's desire for profit has nothing to do with this?
No not at all. I say that fashion is decisive, then many people see the possibility of profit in this and ride it. Well, the cobbler was also happy that he was able to sell shoes to that fool that were three times the size they should have been! Apparently he asked for more. The cobbler didn't invent fashion, but he made a pretty good living out of it.
What is the cause and what is the effect?
I think fashion has a huge role to play in the fact that migration has picked up so suddenly. Ali heard from Mohamed that Zulejka is already out in Sweden and living well. And as telecommunication devices spread around the world, it exerted tremendous power in an instant. Today, Yusuf shares with four thousand people on Twitter every day that he's having a great time. And you get social assistance for free, and you just have to lie that you're gay, and then they'll let you in. It's a blast. And I don't deny that there are human traffickers who make more than we can imagine.
However, NGOs also got involved.
How about! Let's be completely honest, what NGOs do, Soros here or there, it's a huge business. Imagine how many euros these people spend every year, every day, every minute! And what is it spent on? On yourselves! They take a salary, go on assignments, travel far and wide.
But someone is funding them, and that's their purpose. Isn't it the farmer who tells us whether to harvest potatoes or milk a cow?
Yeah, just remember, and I haven't told you this yet, but I'm an awful lot of Hegelian, so it's twofold. Yes, the owner tells you, but after a while it will definitely and logically start to work backwards. You also influence the owner. The farmer must inevitably pay attention to what you want, if he wants to keep you at all. What you want, what you are capable of, how you think about the world, he must take these into account. I think there is no doubt that NGOs influence Soros' opinion on anything. They influence him at least as much as he influences the activities of NGOs. A chicken and egg problem, who started it? But today I am quite sure that Soros sees nothing of the world, only what his own NGOs convey to him. He thinks I make the decision, since I give the money. You just forget that, in order for the possibility of an action to be created, you need to know the circumstances in which I am acting. And this information is conveyed by NGOs. Uncle Georgie would be very badly surprised that if I did it for, say, a year, he would have to live in a small village in the plains. And Márta Pardavi and the others could visit her, but she would only be able to communicate there with the neighbor Aunt Mari and Uncle Pista.
What can be the conclusion?
I always say, in the words of Mark Twain, that it is very difficult to predict, especially about the future, but the fact is that there can only be two outcomes. One is to let them in, after a while they will put us down and then no stone will be left unturned, that's all for us. The other solution is that all of a sudden we get angry, like that bald digo did in the past few days, and then there will be some kind of reorganization in the context of a terrible bloodbath and they won't come for a while, because if they shoot them all, then the others at home will know about it. they will know that these idiots are shooting here. These two outcomes are possible. The third thing they are trying to give us, about the blessings of wilkommenskultur and multikulti, I think is nonsense.
The two outcomes you mention are essentially one outcome, a kind of civil war situation.
Yes, but you know what's wrong? The fact that mass democracies do not educate elites. The longest-lasting and best-functioning social systems of mankind were oligarchic republics. As Rome was until the emperorship, or so was Periclesian Athens (According to the editors, not until Pericles, during and after him. See: Plato's criticism of mob rule - ed.). But not to go too far, the United States of America was also like this, for a very long time. Those few dozen East Coast families ran America's affairs for a long time. In the oligarchic republics, there was an elite that was raised from a very young age to think that later on you will lead the country, and all the others will tolerate this in some way. Or it distracts them from a particular historical moment. But the point is that there is no elite now.
I don't agree, today we have a shadow elite, an economic elite who don't come to light, at least not those who really control the essential things. And they create the puppet theater called the political elite, the irresponsible company that we see every day.
Remember, in Rome, senators were forbidden to do business, they were only allowed to farm. The order of knighthood was invented so that someone could manage the money. The elite I am talking about is completely separate; the Rockefellers did not become American presidents.
Rather, they were purchased.
Today it is, but originally it wasn't like that. Max Weber writes Politics as a Profession that the ideal politician is one who has an independent income and who is rich. He doesn't literally write it that way, but that's the point. And I can see that you want to say, like Gyurcsány, but Max Weber also writes that he is someone who did not get rich now and not from this. So he is not a businessman, but a third-generation offspring. Churchill, when he lost the election after WW2, went home and wrote books on his estate. And he expressed his view that everyone was stupid except him. But when it became a big problem, they sought him out anyway.
Of course, because people think that a person who has a civilian profession already knew something before he turned his head to politics, he doesn't need to get rich from politics.
Yes, you know, there is a big problem, in general. Imagine that you are now twenty years old and you enthusiastically decide to enter the political field. That's why you have to join a party, go through the ranks from sticking posters to the presidency, and by then you'll become a trained chicken catcher. How many compromises, how many backstabbings, extortions, and slurs do you have to suffer until you reach a leadership position in the party where they say, well, now you can even be a candidate for prime minister? The selection method is simply wrong. The fact that we now have a relatively good relationship with Orbán and the others is thanks to luck.
A good quality person was there at the right place at the right time.
But if Orbán had to start politics in KISZ from 1970 and became prime minister in 1989, then what would have happened?
That would have been a different story. But it's not just quality, character is also important, because a crisis requires a different person than peacetime.
On the one hand. On the other hand, the situation with Merkel is that the German economy was in shambles, and they debated for years whether to raise taxes by half a percent or even lower them. This is what the world war was about in the Bundestag. Let's think of it as not having to do much of anything. But the main problem is always inheritance. Who should be next? When a person reaches a certain age, he realizes quite sharply and often painfully that his personal existence is finite. And he begins to meditate on what those who come after him, whom he raised and made responsible for them, will do? But this kind of political system eradicates that. Because he doesn't care who comes after him. They will elect someone, from anywhere, who knows in which alley the person who will be the next leader of Europe is now littering? Ten years later. Like Schulz. Who would have thought that a minor who didn't even finish high school would become a decisive political factor in Europe? And this can also be read in a liberal way, that look, what a beautiful equality of opportunity, everyone can be anything, not like in that dirty Horthy system, it is also possible that this asshole could have been anything. So where do we live?
Why did Aristo become Aristo?
Because of a horribly simple mistake. I wanted to communicate as Ariosto after my favorite Renaissance author Ludovico Ariosto, but I simply left out the letter "o".
It's really prosaic.
Yes, he had a completely prosaic reason. Then I read it later and found out that "ariston" means "the best" in Greek. On the other hand, "Aristo" remains genderless due to the lack of "n", and since the Greek language operates with male and female genders, it seems that I can consider myself the best gender-neutral.
Author: Szilvia Polgári
Photo: Pestisracok
