A Piece in the New Yorker

Hari Kunzru

Since my last entry nothing much has happened to change things in Hungary. Prime Minister Orbán has not distanced himself from Zsolt Bayer's encouraging hints at genocide against Roma in Magyar Hirlap as referred to below, so presumably he does not disagree with it. Fidesz hasn't distanced itself either so presumably the party does not disagree with it, just as it didn't distance itself from Bayer's earlier outburst against Jews when he expressed his sorrow that 'Unfortunately, they [Jews] were not all buried up to their necks in the forest of Orgovány."

But then last week the novelist Hari Kunzru wrote his fine piece about threats to cultural freedom in Hungary for the New Yorker from which I quote a passage or two:

The courts are being packed with government loyalists, and media is scrutinized for “balance,” with the threat of crippling fines for those deemed to have strayed. Dozens of “opposition” journalists have been fired from state-run media...

In the art world, an organization called the Hungarian Academy of Arts (M.M.A.), founded as a private association in 1992, has recently been made into a public body and given control of the lion’s share of the national cultural budget...The eighty-year-old head of the M.M.A., György Fekete, has said that, in addition to artistic excellence, “unambiguous national sentiment” is required for membership in his organization. A member has to be “someone who feels at home and doesn’t travel abroad in order to revile Hungary from there.” He has pledged to prevent blasphemy in state institutions...Asked about the separation of church and state, he said that he wished it were not so, despite the fact that the separation is central to modern democracy. “I don’t give a damn for this modern democracy, because it’s not modern and it’s not a democracy.”...

Unlike Germany, which has transformed itself through a national process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”), Hungary remains in a wistful, toxic relationship with the nineteen-thirties, with a fantasy of Jewish conspiracy and national moral decline. As the memory of the iron curtain fades and Europe recenters itself, Hungary’s fascist resurgence should be a matter of concern for all...

Since I am directly quoted in the article I have been rung up by some people, and today I had a conversation with CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and will record an interview with them next week, when, incidentally, I also fly to Iraq for the Erbil Conference, on which more material tomnorrow. I am also to give talk at the South Bank on Bartók and Nationalism, or rather about the context of nationalism. More on that too. In the meantime Bad Machine is published on the day I fly out, the 24 January and is launched on 31 January in Norwich, on the day I return. Life is going to be very hectic indeed in the next three weeks. I must breathe evenly.