Some months ago I struck up a friendship with a Hungarian living in the USA. Cautiously we began to sound each other out on politics. I say cautiously because in the modern world, social relationships can founder on political differences.
To my surprise I discovered that my friend is an ardent Hungarian Nationalist. I have never thought much about the newly freed Eastern European States, but I know a little about the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its collapse, so we had some knowledge in common and some opinions too. I suppose I had assumed that Nationalism must have expired between the demise of Communism and the “attractions” of the EU, notwithstanding the religious and ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia.
My friend has drawn a picture of Nationalism in Hungary that is eerily like the situation of Nationalism in the U.K. Nationalists in Hungary, it seems, are a persecuted minority who find that attempts to exercise free speech and to campaign within the law are frustrated by both the State and the Media and by fair means and foul. Mostly foul! His description of what happens to Hungarian Nationalists sounds remarkably like the current experiences of Nick Griffin and his BNP comrades. They are alternately ignored and demonized by the mainstream Media and never fairly reported. As a consequence the general population is often unaware of their existence or has been brainwashed into viewing them as Nazis and beyond the political and social pale.
My friend is above all else a believer in free speech, so we have some common ground in detesting laws that restrict free speech and a Media that willfully distorts news and launders it daily to fit with an agenda. He has taken a keen interest in the current prosecution of the BNP in Leeds.
I assume that my friend’s views are in the mainstream of European Nationalism, since they have much in common with BNP policy. He is against the European Union and believes that the people of Hungary are being tricked into it and will, as a consequence forever lose independence and identity. He also believes that outside forces have plans to deprive the Hungarian people of their land ownership because land ownership is a fundamental of national identity.
My friend rejects this website’s view, that the Media is an emerging ruling class. Instead he sees the mainstream Media as only an important tool of a corporate class that we might also call “global big business”. The corporation, in his view, dominates the Media by sitting on the boards of Media companies and manipulating public information in furtherance of corporate greed. He sees the Media promotion of issues like same-sex marriage, as deliberate diversions from the “real issues” like environmental contamination. I hope I have done some justice to his viewpoint in this very brief summary.
I have touched on Hungarian Nationalism today partly to support the cause of free speech by helping a beleaguered group to reach more people on the Internet and also to show that across Europe, Nationalism is not yet extinguished. My friend is pessimistic about the future of his Nation, though I think events in France, Belgium, Holland and in the U.K. suggest that Nationalism may be about to enjoy a renaissance.
This website is not a Nationalist website, though we support the continued political independence of Nation States and oppose the nascent totalitarianism of the E.U. We also oppose the deliberate swamping of the peoples of Europe with immigrants, enforced cultural “diversity” and all the rest of the politically correct agenda.
However, we part company with those who would turn the economic clock back and who see all ills as the result of the globalization of trade and the development of giant industrial and commercial companies. It seems to us that much good as well as some harm has resulted from the global marketplace. We understand the nostalgia for much of the past – small family farms, corner grocery shops, walking to work, annual holidays at the seaside by train and much else, but we think it is good that food is plentiful and cheap at the supermarket, working families have cars in the garage and can fly to foreign countries for vacations. To us, there seems to be a puritanical socialist streak running through European nationalism. Nationalists are understandably touchy about being called National Socialists since Leftists are always eager to demonize them as Nazis, but the historical truth is that Hitler’s Nazism was purged of its socialist content when Hitler defeated the Strasser brothers, turned on his Brownshirts and won over Goebbals in the early 1930’s. National Socialism is not Nazism and we think many European nationalists are nostalgic for socialism, anti-capitalist and are uncomfortable with the profit motive and individualism.
Those who are determined to see Global Big Business as the root of all evil will not be convinced that the Media Class has no master. My friend and I will just have to differ on that and unite on defending free speech. However, the ascendancy of the Media Class can be seen everywhere by those who care to look. At Davos in Switzerland this week there will be the annual gathering of 2,300 business people, politicians and celebrities. When this smug talking shop of elitists began 35 years ago, only businessmen and politicians sat down to pretend to arrange the world economy. Today, Hollywood celebrities create the Davos “buzz”, and world business and political leaders come to rub shoulders with them and to hear their views on how to “shape the global agenda”. Last year Sharon Stone, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Angelina Jolie and Bono were amongst those heavyweight intellects with Top Billing and this year, “Stars” will include Michael Douglas, Pele and Muhammad Ali. Journalists too, will be heavily represented. Business leaders and our elected politicians will have their pencils and notebooks ready to take notes, but the real “buzz” for them will be the privilege of meeting members of the new master class in the many social events. Now that’s worth going to Davos for!!! You can bet that no-one will say anything negative about same-sex marriage or abortion and spoil the party.