by Clifford D. May
The European Union's quarrel over immigration intensifies.
Most people want to survive. What could be more natural than that? Most peoples want to survive, too. That’s no less natural.
For a thousand years, the lands inhabited
by the Hungarian people have been invaded, their settlements sacked,
men, women and children enslaved and slaughtered. Mongols, Ottomans,
Nazis and Soviets were among those who conquered and ruled the
Hungarians. Somehow, they’ve survived.
Hungarians today, a clear majority, believe
their national existence – their unique identity, language, culture and
traditions – is threatened again. This time, however, it is not by
nomads on horseback or soldiers in tanks. It is by German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and the European Union.
In 2015, Merkel decided, on her own
initiative, to establish an open-door policy for “migrants” from the
broader Middle East and Africa. Since then, she and other EU leaders
have been pressuring Hungary to accept its “fair share.”
All members of the EU have a “duty to make
legal migration possible to help countries that are in trouble,” she has
insisted. Hungary should demonstrate “solidarity” by agreeing to
participate in a “fair system of distribution” of those who have arrived
– more than a million in 2015, several hundred thousand since – as well
as those who will arrive over the years ahead.
Here in Budapest just over a week ago, a
conference was convened by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Hungary’s
largest multidisciplinary college. Its title: “Migration: The Biggest
Challenge of Our Time?”
A featured speaker was former Czech
President Václav Klaus, who argued that there was no need for a question
mark on the sentence above. He accused “European elites” of seeking to
replace the continent’s existing nation-states with a single “European
nation,” and attempting to create a “truly European man, a Homo
bruxellarum.” To accomplish that, he said, “they have to dissolve the
old existing nations by mixing them with migrants from all over the
world.”
He added: “Mass migration necessarily leads
to substantial cultural, social and political conflicts, shocks and
tensions. It touches upon fundamental aspects of citizenship, community
and identity of our countries. The European political leaders pretend
not to see it. This is unacceptable.”
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy
made clear that he didn’t quite agree but he defended “my friend Viktor
Orbán,” the controversial Hungarian prime minister, and called for
compromise among the nations of a now “greatly divided” Europe.
Orbán took the podium next. He observed
that the population of Africa is predicted to rise by a half billion
over the next 13 years and that the gap between the quality of life in
Africa and Europe will widen. He urged more economic assistance be given
to Africans in their home countries.
He distinguished between asylum seekers –
for whom Hungary has an application process in place – and other
would-be immigrants, especially “men of military age, unarmed but in
military style.”
The mainstream media mostly ignored the
conference. The only CNN story I saw was headlined: “US sending
diplomats to speak at migration summit – in hardline Hungary.” It
criticized the Trump administration for not addressing “concerns over
the spreading influence of far-right ultra-nationalist parties on the
continent.”
CNN is entitled to its opinions – though in
days gone by distinguishing opinions from news was a skill its
reporters and editors were expected to master.
Here’s my opinion: I think Hungarians have a
right to make decisions for themselves, especially about issues likely
to have profound and long-lasting economic, political, cultural and
demographic impacts.
We all say we value diversity and
pluralism. Doesn’t that imply that different peoples are entitled to
make different choices? Hungarians make such choices by casting ballots.
Last year, Orbán won his third consecutive term in office, with a
two-thirds majority in parliament. Oddly, however, democratic outcomes
disapproved by the “elites” of whom Klaus spoke are reflexively
disparaged as “populist” (or worse).
Some proponents of open borders and mass
migration are undoubtedly motivated by humanitarianism. But the remedy
for poverty in the developing south cannot be to resettle all the poor
in the developed north.
Opponents of mass migration are often
called nationalists, a term meant to be pejorative, and often justified
by the assertion that it was nationalism that caused World War II and
the Holocaust.
But Hitler – born in Austria – founded the
Third Reich, meant to be understood as a new empire. Its goal was to
conquer and rule other nations. So Nazi Germany was not nationalist but
imperialist.
Can nationalism lead to hypernationalism,
chauvinism, and supremacism? Sure, just as having a cocktail before
dinner can lead to alcoholism. But that’s no justification for the
defamation of either.
In “The Virtue of Nationalism,” Israeli
political philosopher Yoram Hazony argues that to be a nationalist
simply means believing that the world is “governed best when nations are
able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own
traditions and pursuing their own interests without interference.” Does
that sound “far right ultra” to you?
Orbán’s priority, and that of those who
have been voting for him, is the preservation of what Hazony would call a
“national collective characterized by bonds of mutual loyalty and
unique inherited traditions.” Again, I ask: Is that so radical?
Hungarians, Orbán said, “don’t want to
change, we’d like to stay as we are. We have our faults, of course,
which we’re happy to go about correcting, but in essence, we don’t want
to change.”
Merkel and other EU leaders are not obliged to agree with that view. They might be wise, however, to tolerate it.
Clifford D. May
Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-hungarian-resistance/
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