Antisemitism in Hungary. How an Ideology Threatens to Become Violent

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ever since “modern antisemitism” emerged during the nineteenth century, this phenomenon has become a regular fixture in Hungary too. It always intensifies during times of sociopolitical crisis, most strongly in the decades following World War I and the subsequent Paris Peace Treaties, and clearly again since the collapse of real communism. Could troubling structural parallels once again lead to an escalation of violence? This lecture seeks to answer this question. Beginning with a snapshot of the current state of fear in Hungarian society and the overly narrow conception of anti-semitism in Hungary, a second section goes on to describe the emergence and development of ethnic-völkisch thought as the most important mobilizing factor behind exclusionary tendencies. A third section, on the construction of “the Jew”, draws on theory to describe the manifestations of antisemitism in Hungary, and a fourth section corroborates this theory using empirical examples of antisemitic mobilization. How this mobilization has already resulting in violence, and how the widening schism within society, the sacralization of the nation, and the nationalist victim narrative are all exacerbating the spiral of violence, is shown in the final section.


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