Feature - Hungarian unrest; Neil Clark on the
difference between 'the people' and a mob
Morning Star - October 7, 2006, Saturday
By: Neil Clark
When is a crowd of protesters "the people" and when is it "a mob?" The answer
depends not on the amount of violence used or even the size of the
demonstration, but whether Western capital approves of the protest in question.
No other conclusion can be reached when one contrasts the way the West has
portrayed recent anti-government protests in Hungary with similar
anti-government protests in Serbia, Georgia, Belarus and the Ukraine, of which
the West approved.
In Hungary, the protests were triggered by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany's
confession, captured on tape, that he had deliberately lied about the state of
the economy to the electorate in this summer's elections.
Understandably, Hungarians, having to face yet another round of austerity
measures imposed by a multimillionaire prime minister and his wealthy cohorts,
felt incensed and took to the streets. But this clear expression of "people
power" got little sympathy from the West.
The Wall Street Journal, like most of the corporate media, said that the right
way to remove democratically elected governments was not through street
demonstrations or storming the headquarters of state television, but "through
the ballot box."
Yet the same paper, like others in the US and Europe, took a rather different
line when protesters stormed Serbian state television studios in Belgrade in
2000 as part of the US-funded coup d'etat to topple the democratically elected
socialist government of Slobodan Milosevic.
The violence of that night, when the director of state television and several
other journalists were severely beaten with crowbars, makes the clashes which
occurred in Budapest look tepid in comparison.
The Western media also commented on the alleged anti-semitism of some of the
Hungarian protesters.
"Who is madder, Hungary's foul-mouthed, lying prime minister or his nationalist
enemies with their anti-semitic past?" asked the Times journalist Roger Boyes,
writing in the New Statesman.
As evidence of the protesters' anti-semitism, Boyes includes extracts of an
interview with a single protester, Zsuzsa Frigyes, a member of the ultra
nationalist MIEP party.
Anti-semitism undoubtedly exists in Hungary - as elsewhere in Europe - and
should be unequivocally condemned. It is revealing, however, that the presence
of openly anti-semitic groups in Ukraine's "orange revolution" went unreported
in the Western media.
Dr John Laughland, of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, who observed
events in Ukraine at close hand, reported the involvement in the Ukrainian
opposition of the paramilitary, anti-semitic group UNSO, which originates in
western Ukraine.
He commented: "Despite its usual distaste for any manifestation of anti-semitism,
Washington isn't worried. One Republic Party insider commentated that there
wasn't a problem, there is 'no anti-semitism in Ukraine'."
Unlike the Ukraine and Georgia, Hungary's embryonic revolution was not colour-coded
- a sure sign of Western disapproval. Instead, demonstrators were referred to
dismissively as a "shell-suited rabble" or, even worse, "football hooligans."
Yet, six years ago, the West had no problems with "football hooligans" trying to
affect political change, when the Delije (The Strong Ones), an infamous group of
Red Star Belgrade fans, were enlisted by the opposition in their attempt to
overthrow Milosevic.
"As far as the Delije were concerned, it was they who led the internal
opposition, they who enacted Serbia's anti-communist revolution," writes
Jonathan Wilson in his book Behind the Curtain. Wilson describes how the Delije,
together with members of the US-financed student organisation OTPOR, smashed
open the doors of state television and set the building on fire, to hearty
Western approval.
The West has also demonstrated glaring double standards when it comes to the way
authorities clamp down on political protest. When an alleged 108 anti-government
protesters were arrested after the elections in Belarus in March, there was loud
condemnation from the US and EU. Yet, over three weeks on from the original
demonstrations, 145 protesters are still held by the authorities in Hungary, and
the US and the EU stay silent.
Many liberal-left commentators in the West have sought to portray all those
opposed to the current Hungarian government as far-right extremists.
In doing so, they are demonstrating an ignorance of Hungarian politics. It is
the nominally "socialist" MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party) which, together with
its staunchly neoliberal coalition allies the Free Democrats, is the favoured
government coalition of global capital and not the "conservative" opposition
party Fidesz, which favours public ownership of key assets and a policy of
"economic patriotism."
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurscany, whose personal fortune of $17m was made from
privatisation deals in the early 1990s, is the darling of the US embassy and
foreign capital - not just for his support for the Iraq war but for his zeal in
following a neoliberal economic agenda which has involved selling off more than
160 state enterprises, imposing VAT on medical prescriptions and abolishing a
tax on stock market profits.
"Gyurcsany's a socialist, but he's our kind of socialist," is the verdict of one
US junk bond trader, while US ambassador George Herbert Walker III, who is
George Bush's cousin, says: "Hungary's immediate future is in safe hands."
While it is true that many of those involved in recent government protests are
staunch anti-communists, the non-neoliberal left should have no qualms in
joining up with non-racist, conservative-nationalist forces to build a popular
front against neoliberalism, not just in Hungary but elsewhere in eastern Europe
too.
Such a rapprochement is already starting to happen. Co-operation between Fidesz
and the Marxist Workers Party would have been unthinkable a decade ago, yet
co-operate is what they did in 2004 in their successful campaign to force a
referendum on government plans to privatise health care.
Fidesz leader Viktor Orban, who once referred to Hungarians who had grown up
under communism as "the lost generation," now concedes that, for most
Hungarians, life is much harder today than it ever was under the progressive
communist leadership of Janos Kadar.
It is the hardship of everyday life in Hungary that is propelling people onto
the streets, though the economic reality facing most people in the country is
totally ignored by Western reporters in their attempts to explain the recent
disturbances.
The Hungarians are, of course, not alone in their discontent. All over the
world, ordinary people are beginning to mobilise in opposition to the iniquities
and injustice of a global economic system which enriches the few, but which
impoverishes the many.
What the disturbances in Hungary and elsewhere demonstrate is that the real
division of our time is not so much between "left" and "right," but between
those who support the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, tax cuts for the rich
and running the economy for the benefit of Western multinationals and those who
believe that countries should maintain economic and political sovereignty.
As a life-long socialist, I'm with those demonstrating against the Hungarian
Socialist Party. How about you?
Copyright 2006 People's Press Printing Society
Ltd
Posted for Fair Use only.