TGM: The truth behind the facts

The Orban/Gyurcsany pissing match is getting Hungary's intelligentsia excited. It's ridiculous. There's no point in getting involved in this.

The Hungarian Democratic Charter is the best example of this. Andras Schiffer wrote in HVG that a collective stand against the extreme right is just a trick on the part of Ferenc Gyurcsany and his allies with the aim of creating a new alliance between the Socialists and the Liberals. Dr Schiffer adds that this approach creates a dangerous situation where gay people might appear to be Gyurcsanist left-liberals, something which might be even more dangerous than being straightforwardly LBGT. If all this is true - that seeming social-liberal or left-liberal is life-threateningly dangerous, then is this not in itself a reason to make a stand?

Hungary's press behaves as if anti-fascist stands are there just to promote Ferenc Gyurcsany and his allies at the next elections. Does anyone really think that anti-fascism is a vote-winning strategy in today's Hungary?

It's hard to decide whether it's better to laugh or weep at this astonishingly hypocritical attitude.

HVG's approach to the original Democratic Charter takes its cues from the extreme right's narrative, just as everyone else's does. For some 15 years, the far right has been saying that the original Charter was about creating an alliance between the liberals and the socialists. As one of the people behind the original Charter, I can say that this is colossally ludicrous. The Socialist Party was so irrelevant back then that the question simply didn't arise. The Charter's one goal was to reinvigorate liberal politics, creating agreement between liberals and liberals. HVG claims that "the movement's centre was in the Free Democrat headquarters, supported financially by the Free Democrats, the Socialist Party and the trade unions." At the time, the headquarters was stuffed with people who hated the Charter and the movement had no centre and needed no money. Public address systems for the odd demonstration was provided using small change. This belief is paranoid and derogatory.

Whether you believe it or not, none of these initiatives - the democratic opposition, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Fidesz, Network, the Left-Wing Alternative, the Budapest Anarchist Group, the Free Democrats, the Democratic Charter - needed or got any money. You don't need money for important initiatives. You need something that today's theorists appear to know nothing about.

Dr Schiffer, my dear friend, writes that the Hungarian Democratic Charter is not entitled to protest against attacks against gays or Roma, because the government has done nothing for women (violence within the family, for example), for psychiatric cases (I like the expression; I'll be using it), drug addicts, the ill, the Roma, the disabled, or the homeless. Dr Schiffer is right about the government, and I certainly won't be shedding any tears over the impending fall of the Socialists and the Free Democrats - they're welcome to go to hell.

But the Hungarian Democratic Charter isn't the government.

Let me remind Dr Schiffer that when Protect the Future and other left-wing groups that I had the privilege of representing started campaigning against the Gyurcsany government's healthcare, infrastructure and social policies, the biased social-liberal groups accused us of doing Viktor Orban's work for him. Fidesz organised the opposition to these policies, taking a free ride on the new social movements' efforts. Was the accusation fair? No - and nor was it true.

Viktor Orban's support did not change the fact that the referendum prevented something worse from happening. Were we Orban's agents? I'll take the opportunity to laugh at that idea in private later on.

But plenty of people continue to believe this. Tamas Bauer, another dear, kind friend, writes of Gyurcsany's and the Free Democrat's "necessary stabilisation and reform programme", which has been "shamefully attacked for two years by a Fidesz-led right-wing opposition and the 'civil' society groups that they animate."

Professer Bauer seems to believe that the National Alliance of Hungarian Trade Unions, the Hungarian Workers' Party 2006, the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Youth Movement, the Humanist Movement, Reason and Attac are all Fidesz agents along with the whole of the Hungarian Left.

This is insane!

Ferenc Gyurcsany is also involved in this anti-fascist movement. I oppose Gyurcsany's, the Socialist Party's and the Free Democrats' policies. They are harmful. But anyone can participate in the anti-fascist movement if they consider themselves anti-fascists. Gyurcsany cannot exclude me, and I cannot exclude Gyurcsany. The new Charter is just being judged according to the standards of this Gyurcsany/Orban mania.

It's quite simple: Gyurcsany is about to lose, and many fear that the stigma of defeat will be implanted on any initiative in which he is involved. If he loses power, then he can't be a nice guy.

The author is an associate of the Philosophy Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

My dear friend Gaspar Miklos Tamas!

I'm sorry that you were so angered by our articles on the Charter in last week's HVG. You are offended because you believe we have borrowed the extreme right's discourse on the original Democratic Charter. You are angry with HVG for daring to claim that the Democratic Charter was aimed at creating agreement between the Socialists and the Liberals, preparing the ground for their coalition in 1994. You argue that the Socialists were irrelevant at the time. But that's what it was all about: the Socialists had to be brought out of their isolation following the regime change, and the "fascist danger", "the risk of a right-wing putsch" were good excuses for doing this. Many reform communists and members of the democratic opposition wanted this, since they were unhappy with their party's radical anti-communism.

If it is true, as you claim, that the only purpose of the Charter was to create peace among liberals, then the Charter-affair is even more awkward: what shame it was to accuse so many people of fascist tendencies, when intra-liberal peace could have been created without paying such a high price.

It is touching the way you write of those heroic times that money is not needed for important initiatives. Even in 1997, those theorists didn't understand anything. Andras Bozoki, who cannot be accused of harbouring far-right sympathies, wrote that the Charter demonstration on 24 September 1992 was "financially supported primarily by a religious community called the Congregation of the Faith," while the costs of printing flyers were born by the Socialists, the Free Democrats and the trade unions. Bozoki also wrote that on 10 January 1993, it was finally agreed that the Charter should not be party-independent and that it should not reject financial support from parties. I understand that, when Tolgyessy was still in charge, the Free Democrats gave money to the Charter.

Regarding today's Charter, dear Gaspar, you cannot be so naive as to present Gyurcsany as a mere participant in the 'movement'. Prime Minister Gyurcsany announced this 'civil society organisation', and it was he, too, who announced that the movement's formation was to be postponed - and it was he who decided to change its name. It was the government spokesman who announced its first demonstration, on 20 September 2008. This is a strange civil society organisation. It's surely no coincidence that Gyorgy Konrad, the Charter's previous informal leader, is no longer interested.

My dear friend Gaspar! There can be no doubt that you joined the Charter movement out of honest enthusiasm and concern for your country and your compatriots. It is not your fault that some are using it for their own political aims, abusing your credulity. You should be alert.

Affectionately,

Richárd Hirschler