Hungarian Conservative

An interview with French professor of philosophy Rémi Brague about politics and the political, historical ignorance, secularization and Islam.

‘What better explains the atrocities committed: coercion or the individual’s capacity or inclination for cruelty? Perhaps both, but to varying proportions.’ Author and historian László Borhi points out in his 2022 book The Strategies of Survival that, in his research, it was not always possible to draw a clear line between the different roles. ‘Several were convicted of collaborating with the Nazis and collaborating in atrocities, while other witnesses claimed that the person in question saved their lives’.

The life and works of Sándor Márai, a prolific Hungarian writer and intellectual, serve as an example for conservatives everywhere, urging them to protect their nationhood and oppose totalitarian ideologies.

While resistance to Hitler and Nazism is widely researched and celebrated, those who opposed National Socialism from the right are often forgotten. Zoltán Pető therefore attempts to shed light on a lesser-known chapter of anti-Nazi resistance.

Gerő sees classical liberalism as the idea of a constitutionally limited state and individual liberties, based on natural law. According to Gerő, classical liberalism professes the principles of government being accountable to parliament, the separation of powers, and popular rule by suffrage. In that sense, Gerő sees the reform era of Hungary (1825–1848) as the beginning of the equality of civil rights.

‘The American left is seeking what they call ‘Social democracy’ and claim it is not ‘democratic socialism’, but everyone knows it is indeed the same ideology. This socialist ideology reflects that of Rousseau’s, who had an abstract idea of society’s restoration towards man’s ‘natural equality,’ but this idea is fundamentally flawed. As Edmund Burke, the prominent British political thinker, wrote in response: “their abstract perfection is their practical defect”.’

The rhetoric of spiritual mobilization, of Russia’s responsibility for the fate of the world, and of the ‘burden of the Russian people’ is becoming dominant once again as it was many times before during tragic periods in Russian history. Economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation as the punishment for the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine are interpreted by the Russian regime and the majority of Russians as confirmation of progressing Anomia in the West, and will strengthen the Katechonic argument.

‘There was something about the past that could only be conveyed by being where it took place. Although I had already studied the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War, being in the actual face of such evil, in the literal place of it, shook me to my core.’

Sowell begins his book by stating that there are many explanations for inequalities, which broadly fall into two extreme categories: some believe that inequality is rooted in descent, in genetics, while others believe that the less well-off are exploited by the rich. Sowell believes in neither as an exclusive explanatory factor. Instead, he holds that success depends on certain preconditions, where even small differences can lead to big differences in outcomes.

Today, confirmed anti-Semites may be the ‘great friends of the Jews’, but members and sympathisers of the government that proclaims ‘zero tolerance’ regarding anti-Semitism at all international and domestic fora, and which unequivocally stands by and up for Israel, can be labelled as the ‘new anti-Semites’. Israelis cannot invoke the Holocaust as an argument of her legitimacy and a historical event of her people, because the ‘new Jews’ are Palestinians and migrants. Now ‘Nazi’ apparently denotes a right-wing Jew in some circles, while Nazis seem to be the ‘guests of honour’ at seder tables.

How long do we have to put up with the relativisation of the Holocaust, and the irresponsible usage of the ‘Nazi’ attribute? Does the wish to overthrow Viktor Orbán really justify anything now?

EU memory politics places almost exclusive emphasis on Nazism and downplays the significance of Communism in the historical experience of East-Central European members states.

‘I myself believe that extreme politics, whether right-wing or left-wing, is equally half-hearted, harmful and dangerous.’

Sometimes post-war transformative justice did catch real war criminals, but sometimes completely innocent men like Antl were caught in its machine.

According to Douglas Murray, the rise of identity politics and wokism in the West shows that Europe has forgotten about what ‘communism’ means – so those who had lived under oppressive totalitarian regimes should gently remind the West of the dangers of communist sentiments.