Understanding the rise of the far right from a local perspective: Structural and cultural conditions of ethno-traditionalist inclusion and racial exclusion in rural Hungary

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the reconfiguration of social relations in rural Hungary after the collapse of socialism as well as the cultural idioms in which these changes were interpreted in order to unearth the connection between structural transformation, the re-articulation of ethnic and peasant traditions and the discourse on Roma as a threat to communal harmony. The locality in the focus of our case study is a village that played a major role in the rise of the far-right Jobbik party. By applying an ethnographic approach, we seek to uncover structural forces, discourses and agencies that help explain the success of the anti-Roma mobilization campaign that ended with Jobbik’s electoral victory.

KEYWORDS:

• Far right
• xenophobia
• racism
• nationalism
• Hungary
• Roma minority

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the organizers and participants of the following conferences where previous versions of this paper have been presented: ASN World Convention, Columbia, 24–26 April 2014, panel CE2; 13th EASA Biennial Conference, Tallinn, 31 July–3 August 2014, panel co-chaired with Peter Hervik; Far-right right extremism in crisis driven Greece and beyond, St. Anthony’s College Oxford, 3 June 2014; Race in/outside post–WWII Europe: On the Politics of Governing and Knowledge Production, CEU IAS, 10 June 2014. We would also like to thank Ecopolis Foundation for its support of the fieldwork and the Centre for Social Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for supporting the subsequent analytical effort. Special thanks go to Éva Deák from Partners Hungary Foundation with whom we shared many thoughts about the conflict that erupted in Gyöngyöspata and to Susan Gal, Jon Fox, Chris Hann, Attila Melegh, Mihály Sárkány, Mónika Váradi, Tünde Virág, Enikő Vincze and Violetta Zentai for their comments on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Empirical research results offer only weak support to the ‘ethnic competition’ thesis. Using individual-level data, Rydgren (2006) found that voters living in areas with many immigrants were more likely to vote for the far right in Denmark, and the Netherlands, but not in Austria, Belgium, France or Norway (Minkenberg 2003). A more recent study of Sweden has, however, confirmed the plausibility of ethnic competition as an important source of far-right support (Rydgren and Ruth 2011).

2. According to a representative countrywide survey conducted in 2003, 38% of Roma men aged between 15 and 49, and 20% of Roma women of the same age, were employed in Hungary. In the case of Gyöngyöspata, the corresponding numbers were approximately 5% and 0%.

3. It is important to mention that Hungarian citizens of Roma origin, who were historically excluded from land ownership, did not benefit from the Compensation Act of 1991.

4. Official statistics released by the police do not show an increase in crime rates. In 2010, 55 criminal acts were committed in Gyöngyöspata (of which 31 were related to violation of property rights). In 2011, until the conflict’s eruption in March, nine criminal acts were registered. This, according to Gyöngyös’ police chief, means that the village’s crime rate is not worse than average. To what extent these numbers reflect reality is a hotly debated and highly politicized issue. Many non-Roma believe that the situation is in fact much worse because a significant number of criminal acts were not reported by victims.

5. The reality is that income generated through welfare benefits never reached the minimal wage, although in the 2007–2009 period the sum of welfare benefits that could be claimed by families affected by unemployment did come close to that level. The issue was widely discussed in the press and spawned anger and resentment nationwide. As a consequence, the left-liberal government cut welfare payments and introduced an obligation to perform community work for claimants (Virág 2010).

6. The report was circulated to the local notary, the parliamentary representative of the Gyöngyös electoral district as well as the police chiefs of Gyöngyös and Heves County.

7. For a more detailed description and analysis of events, see Szombati and Feischmidt (2012).

8. It is worth noting that the Gyöngyöspata campaign marked a strategic U-turn. After its entry into parliament (in April 2010), Jobbik sought to distance itself from the Guard and its successor organizations in the hope of broadening its support base. However, instead of attracting new supporters, the party’s popularity began to decline, due to the surfacing of internal tensions and the party leadership’s inability to place new issues on the political agenda. It is in this light that the leadership’s decision to return to the kind of ‘street politics’ that had catapulted Jobbik into the spotlight should be understood (see Krekó, Juhász, and Molnár 2011).

9. Similar structural forces and social processes are at work in other depressed regions of Hungary and in other corners of the post-socialist region (Efremova 2012; Feischmidt, Szombati, and Szuhay 2014; Kovách 2012; Hann 2015; Kovács, Vidra, and Virág 2013; Vidra 2014).