Posted on 08/26/2009 1:18:34 PM PDT by lizol
Round the Danube Bend
by Balint Szlanko 26 August 2009
Those upstart Slovaks are at it again, sneering at the nation that ruled them for a thousand years.
The Slovak thugs have finally shown their true colors. As if their archaic language law limiting the use of Hungarian in public were not enough, last week they banned Laszlo Solyom, the Hungarian president, from visiting Komarno, where he was due to speak at the unveiling of a statue of St. Stephen, an 11th-century Hungarian (and by extension, Slovak) king.
The Slovaks have been a thorn in the side of the Hungarian government and public since the election of Robert Fico’s government in 2006. He is a silly little populist, social democratic in the basest sense of the word (i.e., buys his votes by jacking up state benefits), who is also prone to nationalist outbursts.
He also linked up with Jan Slota’s Slovak National Party, a far-right rump outfit whose leader once famously called on his compatriots to get into tanks and level Budapest. It’s a typically pathetic Eastern European story because it’s based on nothing – Slovak nationalism, I mean come on. It’s more silly than scary.
The language law and the incident with Solyom (allegedly banned because his visit fell, insensitively, on the anniversary of Hungary’s and other Warsaw Pact allies’ invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968) are Heaven-sent. There can no longer be any doubt in the mind of any right-thinking person that these people have gone nuts.
Some analysts will tell you that Slovak nationalists are merely stirring up anti-Hungarian sentiment to get votes, now that the Slovak car-manufacturing economic miracle has ground to a halt (no pun intended). Perhaps. Yet there is little difference: such cynicism, if it is that, amounts to much the same thing.
The problem with all this is that it strengthens the Hungarian narrative, not a lot less silly in the same sad Eastern European fashion. While Hungarians are doubtless very right to be concerned about their fellow Magyars living on the other side of the border (some 10 percent of Slovakia’s population), it isn’t as though they’ve got so much to be proud of. Quite the opposite.
For one thing, Hungarians just gave 15 percent of their European Parliament vote to the Jobbik party, an outspokenly anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy group that runs a banned paramilitary outfit and that wants to revise the 1920 Treaty of Trianon that carved the Slovak territories off Hungary. So voting for quasi-Nazi idiots is not a Slovak specialty, although giving them ministerial positions might be (well, we’ll see about that).
Will Slota’s xenophobic antics in Slovakia teach Hungarians some political moderation? Or at least scare them into voting for only centrist parties at next year’s parliamentary election? Again, we’ll see about that.
For another thing, the casual patronizing attitude shown by many Hungarians toward Slovaks and other nations around the Carpathian basin (with the exception of the Austrians, naturally), is very painfully last century. The myth that Magyars are culturally and politically the most developed nation in Central Europe can only elicit raucous laughter, especially now that Hungary is the economic basket case of the region and Slovakia has just entered the eurozone.
Slovaks are jealous defenders of their independence, finally gained in 1993. Everywhere they see Hungarian plots to seize their land for some Greater Magyar empire. Silly, of course. Except if they read the Hungarian press, which they assuredly do, if only because a lot more of them speak Hungarian than Magyars speak Slovak. What they find is that even measured left-wing writers airily refer to their country as Felvidek – the Highlands – as it was called during imperial and royal times. Not a country, just a region (of Hungary).
Incidentally, in the same vein, Hungarians like to speak of Transylvania almost as a separate entity, allegedly more Hungarian than Romanian (a numerical nonsense for a very long time), giving Romanians the same paranoid jolts.
Hungarians, it’s true, don’t bully their minorities like the Slovaks do, because they haven’t got any. Except half a million Gypsies, of course, six of whom have been murdered since November in apparently racially motivated violence. I fail to see how we’re any better than the Slovaks.
There are few more ridiculous and pathetic sights than two small countries in a nationalist rage, both screaming, red in the face, at the other, not noticing just how similarly sad they are. The Serbs and Croats at least had a proper war, for God’s sake.
Doesn't work there so why do these guys think it will work in Europe (bwahahahahaha!)
Please give link to original source.
Sisi would not be pleased at this hit job. Not at all.
One of the reasons my Slovak grandparents came to America in the late 1800s was that the “Hungarians were taking over everything”. In America, two of their four children ended up marrying Hungarians. A true melting pot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.