Us and them
Should Europe intervene in our affairs?
Memorandum of the former Anti-communist Opposition
The nation is the community into which we were born, whereas the European Union is the community which we chose for a democratic Hungary. Both are important and even indispensable for us. In the past decades we have struggled to have our innate community (the nation) and our chosen community (the Union) be imbued with the same set of values. We owe responsibility for both of them.
It is not by mere chance that when as opponents of the communist regime we were not yet a member state of the European community in a political sense and just hoped to join it one day, we claimed as a matter of course that the communist regime be confronted with the values of liberal democracy, so blatantly ignored or breached by that regime.
Nothing has changed since.
We reject the populist view that strives to divide and alienate along the “them” and “us” dimension. The anti-European, xenophobic populism of Fidesz is the ideology of an autocratic regime that under a national disguise labels any kind of external demand for maintaining democratic norms as an attempt of colonization.
At the same time, by publicly announcing that the Hungarian socialist members of the European Parliament refuse in its present form the Tavares report dated on 8th of May, which strongly criticizes the situation concerning the rule of law in Hungary, not only runs in the face of the commonly approved set of European values, but also serves to satisfy, instead of rejecting, a populist demand.
Just as we condemn “dirty solidarity” that turns a blind eye to the violation of democratic values under the pretext of party solidarity, we do not wish to be part of “hypocritical solidarity” either, which implies solidarity with an autocratic government. If the present Hungarian democratic opposition is determined to defeat Fidesz in this populist arena and challenge the ruling party that governs in collusion with Jobbik, then it is doomed to defeat itself as well as its own country.
9th of May 2013, Budapest
Attila Ara-Kovács, former diplomat
György Dalos, writer
Gábor Demszky, former Mayor of Budapest
Miklós Haraszti, former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
Róza Hodosán, former MP
Gábor Iványi, pastor
János Kenedi, historian
György Konrád, author
Bálint Magyar, former Minister of Education
Imre Mécs, former MP
Sándor Radnóti, philosopher
László Rajk, architect
Sándor Szilágyi, art writer
