Holocaust denial is far more common in Hungary than in western Europe, a new study into antisemitism in the former Eastern Bloc nation has concluded. It also notes a troubling relationship between antisemitic attitudes, party preferences, and the media Hungarians consume.
The study produced on behalf of the Mazsihisz — the country’s oldest and largest religious Jewish federation —found that in the years 2019 and 2020, overall levels of antisemitism (as measured by recorded incidents) were lower in Hungary than in Britain, France, and Germany. The number of incidents has, however, increased since 2015.
The Mazsihisz’s Security Service — the equivalent of the CST — logged 53 incidents in 2019 and 70 in 2020. Hungarian Jews fear physical attack to a lesser extent than Jewish communities in western Europe, but as the number of physical attacks and acts of vandalism have decreased, hate speech and other forms of antisemitism in public life have been on the rise.
The latter trend has been driven by a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, the Hungarian government’s campaign against the philanthropist George Soros and the politicisation of the Holocaust and Hungary’s experience of Nazism and communism.
The Mazsihisz noted a preponderance of antisemitic incidents “related to the one-sided presentation of certain historical events of concern to Jewry” and the rehabilitation of “openly antisemitic, far-right historical figures”.
The percentage of Hungarians who agree with statements such as “during the war, non-Jewish Hungarians suffered as much as Jews” or “the number of Jewish victims was much less than is generally claimed” has increased since 2006.
The most frequent perpetrator of antisemitism in public life was the Our Homeland Movement—a far-right splinter party that broke off from the Jobbik party in 2019 following its turn towards the mainstream right.
Yet it is also clear from the Mazsihisz’s report that the Hungarian state plays a critical role in shaping public attitudes towards Jews.
Following a concerted propaganda campaign against Mr Soros led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, by 2018, 61 per cent of Hungarians believed he was “mainly a power-hungry, selfish businessman who strives to promote his own interests on a global scale” as opposed to a “generous billionaire supporting good causes who spends huge sums on important social problems” (31 per cent).
Those who watch state media channels as opposed to private or support Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party over opposition factions were far more likely to view Mr Soros in a negative light.
Hungary is home to around 100,000 Jews, of whom about 10 per cent belong to one of three religious communities: the Neolog Mazsihisz, Chabad Emih, and Orthodox Maoih.
In April, the latter two took the Mazsihisz to the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, claiming the latter receives a disproportionate allocation of state resources and funds associated with the restitution of property seized by the Nazis.
The Mazsihisz claims Emih declined to negotiate with them over funding and accused Chabad of “trying to transform and destroy the modern and open Hungarian Jewish community” in order to replace it “with an insular and exclusionary one”.
