Viktor Orbán and the magnificence of Hungarians

Viktor Orbán normally gives “interviews” on Magyar Rádió on Friday mornings. Why did I put the word interview in quotation marks? Because these weekly performances are not really interviews. I’m convinced that the questions posed are not new to the prime minister. I wouldn’t be surprised if his office supplied the radio station with the material ahead of time. So, the reporter’s questions simply serve as a vehicle for Orbán’s messages to the nation on any given week.

Some of these weekly orations are not worth spending time on. They are just rehashes of government propaganda. But there are always some that are worth dissecting. Yesterday’s was one of the more memorable ones because there were so many false numbers, illogical statements, and highly controversial word usage.

Let me start with the last item. Yesterday I must have gotten at least a dozen letters from my friends in Hungary and elsewhere expressing their dismay at Viktor Orbán’s reference to Hungarians as a special kind of people. And now I have to bore you with the meaning of a Hungarian word that Orbán used twice during this interview. The word is “fajta.” “Faj” means race or species and “fajta” is a subgroup within it. But it can also mean “kind” or “sort.” So, for example, you might ask at the farmers’ market “what kind of apples” the farmer is selling. Or, you might be curious about the kind of dogs the Obamas have. Some dictionaries also translate the word as “race.” You could also translate the word as “stock,” meaning blood relations or inherited characteristics. In any case, Orbán talked about the Hungarian “fajta” twice during his interview.

Viktor Orbán at Magyar Rádió / Photo Szilárd Koszticsák, MTI

Pusztaranger, the foremost German-language blog on Hungarian politics, devoted two posts to the question. In the first article, the blogger used the word “Rasse” which later was changed to “Spezies.” In either case, as we can see, “race” and “species” can in certain instances be interchangeable, and Viktor Orbán is a master of this kind of double talk. On the one hand, using a word with an ambiguous meaning allows him to claim total innocence of the charge of racist motives while, on the other hand, he can please his right-wing followers by pointing out the special, superior attributes of Hungarians that distinguish them from the rest of mankind.

The topics Orbán covered Friday are wide-ranging and I can’t cover them all. Therefore I will concentrate on two related topics, the specific values that distinguish Hungarians from other nationalities and how these values translate into the alleged economic success of the Orbán government.

This subject came up at the very beginning of the interview after the reporter inquired about the secret of the “surprisingly good economic results” achieved in the third quarter of the year. Did they have something to do with increased agricultural yields thanks to the good weather or were they perhaps due to the economic policies of the government?

And here is the modest and totally illogical answer. No, the good numbers have nothing to do with either. We must thank “the people who want to work.” Four or five years ago “we were a country where many thought they would rather live on the dole than work…. It is a cultural change, a change in mentality, that is behind our achievement–what I mean, behind the country’s achievement.” I assume I don’t have to dwell on the absurdity of this claim. The first problem is that the economy is not better than it was four or five years ago; it is worse. And the explanation for economic growth as simply the willingness of people to work is total nonsense. The serious economic crises in the 1930s or in the 2008-20012 period had nothing to do with lazy people who refused to get out of bed.

I suspect, however, that Orbán truly believes this absurdity because later he returned to the theme: “There is growth in Hungary if the people want to work harder. And people want to work more if they see a reason to do so.” Here, of course, he is alluding to the very unjust flat tax introduced by the Orbán government, what Gordon Bajnai called Viktor Orbán’s “original sin.” As if people’s well-being depended solely on the number of hours they work or how hard they work. We know that, thanks to the flat tax, the rich have grown richer and the poor and middling sort are doing worse financially. Naturally, this income disparity is not a result of the rich working harder and the rest of society slacking off.

Yet Orbán repeats this nonsense ad nauseam and couples it with a paean to the virtues of Hungarians. “The Hungarian is an industrious kind [fajta]. There are groups of people where this is not so unequivocal, but in Hungary if an opportunity presents itself and if the people see that with more work one can prosper then they will be willing to work harder and longer hours…. In my opinion this is the engine of economic growth in Hungary. This new public spirit, this new mentality, the vital instinct, this Hungarian vital instinct.” One could ask which groups of people or nations Orbán had in mind when he alluded to societies whose members are slothful. Moreover, today there are almost half a million people who cannot find work in Hungary. Another half a million have already left Hungary to try their luck abroad. What are we talking about?

And finally about half way through the interview Orbán again used the controversial word “fajta.” “We are an endangered species. Our numbers continually decrease. There are more burials than christenings. Consequently, as long as we don’t turn this tendency around, it doesn’t matter how well we might live; in reality, the Hungarian nation, individually and collectively, cannot feel secure. In fact, we will be in a serious life threatening situation.”

Since when do we talk about burials and christenings instead of the birth rate and mortality rate? I guess since Orbán discovered his religious soul. First of all, not all inhabitants of Hungary are Christians. Second, I know that a lot of parents don’t bother to have their children baptized, especially since the churches are unwilling to baptize a child whose parents themselves were not baptized or whose marriage was not blessed by the church. As for having a church wedding, the “pagan” couple must undergo extensive religious education prior to the wedding ceremony. Not too many people will go to all that trouble. So, I suspect that there are many children who never get baptized, especially since about 25% of the adult population describe themselves as atheists. As for the burials. More and more people dispense with burials and opt for scattering the ashes of their loved ones in their favorite forests or in the Danube.

Viktor Orbán sees a Hungary that doesn’t exist; it is a figment of his imagination. I’m convinced that by now he cannot distinguish between the imagined and the real. But yes, I agree with him that Hungarians are in grave danger–as long as they are led by someone like Viktor Orbán.