Alunecări neprevăzute. Radicalizarea politicii și ispitele rasiste: cazul Ungariei între anii 30 și 40 / Unwary slidings. Radicalization of politics and racist temptations: the case of Hungary between the ’30s and ’40s

The study of the “Hungarian case” is particularly interesting because it refers to a country in which the feeling of pride and the collective desire for a “national redemption”, after the defeat in the First World War and the end of the Empire, seem to prevail over any other political tendency. However Hungary, as much as it cultivates and enhances its “uniqueness”, finds itself having to deal with an international policy which, in the period we are considering here, is dominated by “imperial” powers such as Germany and the Soviet Union. From this reality arises the particular mix that characterizes Hungarian political culture between the Thirties and Forties of the Twentieth Century: nationalist tendencies are confronted in a way that is sometimes ambiguous with the cumbersome totalitarianisms of some European countries, and they try to bend themes and values of the latter to supposed “national needs”. The anti-Semitic tendencies, present in part of society, as well as the pro-German tendencies, gradually become predominant and embarrass the supreme arbiter of the country's politics, the Regent Horthy, who does not seem able to give Hungary a clear political line. At this juncture, the Hungarian populist movement serves as both a (weak) critical conscience and a litmus test of the country's contradictions; and anti-Semitism is a key question for understanding how “collective self-censorship” can influence the evolution of the political culture of a community. To understand the particular roots and specific consequences of anti-Semitic tendencies in Hungarian culture and society in the interwar years, we need to consider the characteristics of Hungary's nation-building process: since the early modern period, this country has had a multi-ethnic configuration but at times it tried to enhance the “specific signs” of a national culture and tradition. While the noble class has maintained - since the incorporation of Hungary into the Habsburg Empire - its feudal privileges, the country has experienced the influx of groups of immigrants, including Germans and Jews, who have contributed to the peculiar development of the economy and society. Hungarian nationalism, which reawakened for the first time in a striking way in 1848, saw its aspirations frustrated; as a result of the double “shock” generated by the brief communist regime of 1919 and by the Trianon Treaty, it forcefully returns to the scene and is concerned with stemming what it considers “dangerous foreign influences”. Actually, since the beginning of the 20th century, attempts to modernize Hungarian culture and society were considered by conservatives as a result of the influence of Jews in the country, which they considered excessive. After 1920 anti-Semitic tendencies intensified. In that year, the Numerus Clausus law was approved: it discriminated against Jews in the university environment - a victory for the Hungarian conservative milieu, which, in its opinion, wanted to curb the “over-representation” of Jews in educational and cultural institutions to give new impetus to the “authentic” Hungarian culture. Subsequently, by the same political circles, discrimination was abolished - at least in part - in the name of an achieved unity of the nation. But anti-Semitic tendencies are destined to remain in Hungarian society and politics until the 1940s, as a real “stone guest” or as an unresolved knot, between strategic slowdowns and sudden accelerations, and - as some studies show - mix with certain generically xenophobic policies towards the minorities present in the country. In this essay we want to show among other things how the mixture of resentment and victimhood - which resurfaces at times in the political discourse of Hungarian nationalism and conservatism since 1920 - constitutes one of the long-term trends in the politics of the Magyar country, which argues that - despite the documented precedents - for what happened from March 1944 onwards (in particular, the actual genocidal policies implemented by the Nazis in Hungary) the “Hungarian nation” is in no way responsible. In other words, the nationalist public discourse - which seems to have firm roots - tends to accredit the idea of a nation which by definition cannot be considered responsible for its recent past and which therefore constantly acts in “legitimate defence” in reaction to presumed aggressions (also and above all of an ideal and cultural type) coming from outside.