Re: <nettime> meanwhile in Hungary

[Tjebbe van Tijen <tjebbe@imaginarymuseum.org>]

Janos that is an awful lot of detailed information on the electoral system changes & practices in HUngary 
in these two simple links.

The details - necessary as they are - swallow up an outsider without enough focus on the Magyar Dystopia of the 21st century.

Did I miss your own comment on all this?

Or would you be able to formulate it with this detailed information just as a reference?

I do have odd memories of the political landscape of Hungary in the mid eighties of last century and the dismay of seeing people I licked at that time drifting into ultra-right/nationalistic directions (Inconnu group among others). 

In a way all those numbers and the concept of a super majority made me think back to  a book of Miklos Haraztsy "Opposition = 0,1 pour-cent. Extraits du samizdat hongrois présentés par Miklós Haraszti. Traduit du Hongrois et préf. par Georges Aranyossy" (Edition du Seuil 1979). I have it at home. Remember meeting him in Budpaest and being introduced to the circle of dissidents around Krasó György by Haraszti. Krasso having house-arrest at that time. Now the cynical "opposition 0,1 %" in the title of that book seems to come into view of what is a parliamentary democracy (however manipulative it's functioning, and politics without manipulation do not exist).

Orbán and the Fidesz party have been watched over in their cradle by Haraszti Miklos and looking around I spotted an article by Haraszti The "real" Viktor Orbán published in OpenDemocracy in 200, where he hails the elections of that year that did send Orbán back to a role of opposition and wonder (also) how the actual state of affairs is seen by him.

As for the Hungarian diaspora of 1956 and their part in the recent voting... that seems logic when one looks into  the forces that were revolting against party communist rule in 1956. One sees there a whole spectre of ideologies and practices under the banner of "freedom" (as there was a common enemy to be fought), with several rooting in a not so far away reactionary past of the Horthy regime. 

In the year 2005/2006 I did a study of many of the Hungarian exile communities and it was often hard to stomach their racist and ultra nationalist viewpoints.

Is it not so that in Hungary the process of coming to grip with its own past has been neglected?

The simplifications as expressed in the representation of history as in the House of Terror are an expression of the dichotomy of freedom versus communist repression... 

It suffices to reas some documents on the 'white terror' of the Horthy regime already published in the twenties of last century and his actual rehabiliation, to know what is to be done.

Tjebbe van Tijen

=====

     On 13 Jun 2014, at 12:11, Janos Sugar wrote:

          Hungary and the End of Politics
          Kim Lane Scheppele
          <...>


Tjebbe van Tijen
Imaginary Museum Projects
dramatising historical information
http://imaginarymuseum.org
web-blog: The Limping Messenger
http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/
Flickr: Swift News Tableaus by Tjebbe van Tijen
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7141213@N04/


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