Jewish Leader of Hungary’s Anti-Semites
Csanad Szegedi Image by Getty Images
Robert Zaretsky June 29, 2012
If history does act with cunning, as Hegel claimed, recent events involving Hungary’s extreme right wing Jobbik remind us that it does not always keep a straight face when doing so.
A better Hungary, according to Jobbik, the country’s third largest party, is a Hungary emptied of its Roma and Jewish communities. As a result, when a Jobbik deputy underwent genetic testing last month to prove his racial purity, the only surprise was that a scientific laboratory lent its name to the bogus enterprise.
Equally unsurprising, though for different reasons, was yesterday’s news that another Jobbik dignitary discovered that there was no need to undergo such testing. Csanad Szegedi, who serves as a Jobbik deputy in the European Parliament, was at a loss for words when he learned his parents were of Jewish origin. Worried that the discovery would crimp the anti-Semitic rants that had made him popular, Szegedi suggested that what made for a true Hungarian was not “racial purity” but “the way one behaves as a Hungarian.”
Among the many ways to behave as a Hungarian are the models offered by Nicholas Horthy and Ferenc Szalasi. As leader of wartime Hungary, Admiral Horthy behaved as a traditional anti-Semite, grounding his worldview in his Catholic faith; as leader of the fascist Arrow Cross, Szalasi behaved as a modern anti-Semite, persuaded that the Jew (and Roma) were racially inferior to the Magyar.
While Csanad Szegedi frantically tacks between these two exemplars, we should keep in mind a third way to behave as a Hungarian: as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. His ruling Fidesz Party has long sought to whitewash Hungary’s wartime behavior and repair the image of Admiral Horthy. Orbán has remained silent over the behavior of Jobbik’s gentile and Jewish anti-Semites — a silence as resistant to reality as Horthy’s title of admiral after Hungary became a landlocked nation.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
