Nóra Köves, organiser of a flashmob against the article by Zsolt Bayer, speaks in front of the entrance to the building where Magyar Hírlap has its office on Tuesday. The placards read: “This is how it started in Germany/ Cambodia/ Rwanda/ Srebrenica.”

In the past few years while visiting my native city of Budapest and reading the news, I have often thought that public discourse in Hungary has hit rock bottom.
I was wrong.
The new rock bottom arrived on Saturday with the vitriolic publication of an opinion piece by Zsolt Bayer, the holder of the No. 5 Fidesz party card, famously a close friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In this piece, Bayer, who has been criticised and reviled in the past as antisemitic, deciding that this was not enough, wished to prove that he was also anti-Gypsy.
No, he does not believe that there are no “good” Gypsies in Hungary. He even commends December’s winner of the popular TV talent show X-Faktor, Gergõ Oláh, as a role model, using the fact that the viewers voted him as the winner to demonstrate to “those bastards calling Hungarians racists”, as he puts it, that they are wrong.
But then, the despicable attempted murder of a group of athletes on New Year’s Eve, allegedly by a group of Gypsies, prompted this Oracle of the ruling Fidesz party, this populist public prophet, to vomit onto paper a tirade against Gypsies that even the Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer would have envied.
The Associated Press account of the fierce reaction from many public figures in Hungary against the views expressed in this article is correct. The text quoted, though, does not reflect the severity of the language used in the article.

What he said

Bayer wrote: “The facts are as follows: a significant part of Gypsies is not fit for coexistence and is not fit to live amongst people. This part of the Gypsy world are animals and behave as animals. Seeing anyone, they get into a state of rut [become sexually excited and want to act on it] whenever and wherever they want. When they meet resistance, they commit murder. They relieve themselves whenever and wherever the urge overtakes them. If they feel that they are prevented from doing so, they commit murder. They want to get whatever they see. If they don’t get it, they take it and then commit murder. This part of Gypsy society is incapable of any type of human communication. Mostly inarticulate sounds stream forth from their animalistic skulls, and the only thing they understand from this miserable world is violence.
“Meanwhile, this half of the Gypsy world that has turned into animals does use Western ‘inventions’. Let everyone look at the way they pose on Facebook, with weapons in their hands, with gold necklaces around their necks weighing half a kilogram, with an expression on their muzzle that says ‘I can do you in whenever I want, you stupid Hungarian peasant’. Just look at the rat who stabbed Gergõ Sávoly, and his friends, and you’ll see that all three are potential murderers.  Eo ipso murderer. No tolerance and understanding is needed but revenge. And it is here that the Western world’s idiotic politically correct segment commits the biggest sin. Out of mere self-interest and calculations, it pretends that these animals, for whatever reason, can be tolerated, understood, or even respected, as if they were owed any type of esteem or human dignity… .”
The article concludes with these chilling words as Bayer rephrases a popular contemporary poet’s work (it must be noted that Virág Erdõs, the poet, has immediately protested and threatened to sue the newspaper in which the article was published): “Let all Gergõ Oláhs be and live with us happily. And the animals should not be. At all. This is what needs to be done: immediately and by any means.”

Advocating annihilation

What? Can it be that a leading publication close to the Hungarian government, Magyar Hírlap, would publish an opinion piece by a close friend of the prime minister advocating the annihilation of a “significant part” of Hungary’s Gypsy population? For make no mistake, this is what Bayer’s article advocates.

Act, Mr. Prime Minister

Can it be that days after this piece whipped up a tempest (though it may only be in a teacup), the ruling Fidesz party has not yet condemned this view in the strongest possible terms, but rather suggested that there is freedom of speech in Hungary (as Fidesz spokesman Gabriella Semleczi stated on Tuesday)? Can it be that the strongman of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is silent on this matter?
Yes, it can. Judging from past events, Hungary’s government is readying the copy/paste function in the public relations office, making cosmetic changes to the standard press release that will run as follows: “Hungary’s government condemns in the strongest possible terms all hate speech and is committed to defending all of its citizens, including its Roma minority.”
Certainly, freedom of expression should be preserved. But even more, the reaction to any suggestion of mass extermination in a country with a shameful history of mass exterminations in 1944 should be especially fierce and unequivocal.
And the reaction should have come straight from the mouth of Viktor Orbán for it to have been credible.
Now it is too late, once again.
But it is not too late for Hungary’s citizens to demonstrate that it is a country of decent human beings who abhor a heartless opinion columnist arguing for mass extermination no less than heartless criminal acts.

– David Mandler holds a Ph.D. in English from New York University. His first book manuscript, Constructing Identities: Arminius Vambery, the Half-Asian, in Victorian England, is slated to be published in Hungarian by Múlt és Jövõ Press later this year. You can check out his blog which often focuses on Hungarian issues at www.drmandler.wordpress.com.

“Meanwhile, this half of the Gypsy world that has turned into animals does use Western ‘inventions’. Let everyone look at the way they pose on Facebook, with weapons in their hands, with gold necklaces around their necks weighing half a kilogram, with an expression on their muzzle that says ‘I can do you in whenever I want, you stupid Hungarian peasant’. Just look at the rat who stabbed Gergõ Sávoly, and his friends, and you’ll see that all three are potential murderers.  Eo ipso murderer. No tolerance and understanding is needed but revenge. And it is here that the Western world’s idiotic politically correct segment commits the biggest sin. Out of mere self-interest and calculations, it pretends that these animals, for whatever reason, can be tolerated, understood, or even respected, as if they were owed any type of esteem or human dignity…”

– Fidesz founder member Zsolt Bayer  
in an opinion piece  published in Magyar Hírlap  on Saturday 5 January

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