Other Voices and Other Budapests

A few of you sent me this reflective illustration essay by Stephen Hiltner , an American photographer. Hiltner was the son of a US executive who sent him to Hungary in order to run their business. Although I do not agree with Hiltner’s political views, I found it enjoyable to read. It is a great thing that Hiltner did not rely solely on American media reports regarding Hungary’s life, but actually went and saw it for himself. Let me just gently disagree with some of Hiltner’s claims.

For example:

The influence of [Viktor Orban’s] autocratic tendencies has also seeped into the country’s civic and cultural life, leading to the expulsion of a liberal university and affecting the leadership and offerings at theaters and museums.

I sensed some of the troubling undercurrents within minutes of my arrival, when Laszlo, on our drive from the airport, began echoing Kremlin-friendly conspiracies about the war in Ukraine, which have been widely disseminated via the state-owned media and pro-government news outlets.

Well, hang on. You can certainly find conspiracists in Hungary, as well as on the state-funded Hungarian media. It is regrettable to say the very least. What I would remind you, though, is that what sounds to Americans like “conspiracy theory” might — might — be an alternative opinion about the war. In Budapest, I met Hungarians that are truthfully conspiratorial fools. In Budapest, I also met Hungarians with fact-based and well-reasoned opinions that were different from the US-NATO war narrative. While I do not intend to be a conspiracy theorist, it is important to remember that Hungarians who disagree with the US-NATO war narrative are not necessarily conspiratorialists. PM Orban’s recent critical remarks in Transylvania analyzing the war are a model of foreign-policy realism, and ought to be seriously considered.

The “expulsion” of a liberal university was not imposed by the Hungarian government. CEU chose to leave in part — “in part” because there is still a CEU campus in downtown Budapest — because it did not like government interference in its business. This distinction may not be significant, but it is important. In a must-read 2019 essay in Claremont Review of Books, Christopher Caldwell wrote somewhat sympathetically about what Orban was doing. The following is a portion of Caldwell’s essay on the CEU controversy.

The government began harassing the CEU by punctiliously enforcing regulations that had heretofore been ignored. As the 2018 election season heated up, anti-Soros ad campaigns began running on billboards and streetcars.

Orban worried about foreign money’s influence on his country’s political life. Many mocked Orban for doing this. But obviously, when the most powerful country on earth has just brought its democracy to a standstill for two years in order to investigate $100,000 worth of internet ads bought by a variety of Russians, it is understandable that the leader of a small country might fear the activism of a political foe whose combined personal fortune ($8 billion) and institutional endowment ($19 billion) exceed a sixth of the country’s GDP ($156 billion), especially since international philanthropy is (through the U.S. tax code) effectively subsidized by the American government. In an early version, the Stop Soros bill proposed to tax foreign philanthropy.

The political nature of the agendas of non-governmental organizations was less apparent in smaller countries than when liberal governments were at power. This became evident when a nationalist government was in power. During this time, NGOs were able to assist (or stand in for) the opposition parties in the same way that the U.S. judiciary had done in Italy and America. George Schopflin (an Anglo-Hungarian philosopher) was a member the European Parliament For Fidesz. He asked, “Why didn’t it appeal against the Education Law to the Hungarian Constitutional Court?” However, Hungary isn’t the only plane where multinational charities operate. It might be presumptuous for any nation to assert jurisdiction. The European Union was the real controlling legal authority that charities had to worry about. CEU had announced its plans for moving its headquarters from New York to Vienna over the winter. However, these plans seem to have been put on hold.

That was 2019. Viktor Orban knew that George Soros was the chief financier of CEU and the founder of the organization. His agenda is to de-nationalize Hungary. This would be diametrically opposite to what Orban and the Fidesz Party hold dear. Viktor Orban understood that Soros was training new generations of Hungarian elites according to his ideology. Sometimes, it is said that Orban’s government banned gender studies from Hungary. It simply pulled funding for and accredited gender studies programs. What is the point of this “ban?” What is the significance of this distinction? Academics don’t like being told what to do by the people who fund their universities. Orban correctly recognized that Gender Studies programs can lead to radicalization. This radicalization is what leads to the moral horrors that we see today in America, where hospitals are using cross-sex hormones on minors as well as performing surgeries to alter their sex. That was not what he wanted for his country.

He also understood that in small countries like Hungary, an illustrious billionaire could control the top education institutions and capture elites to his globalist agenda. Soros’s plan would see the demise of Hungary. Are Western-style standards for “academic freedom”, even at risk of national suicide, necessary? Orban believed otherwise.

It is also a joke for Americans to complain about academic freedom in Hungary. However, we all know that American universities are being dominated by the woke left and have de facto eliminated academic freedom by requiring professors to take DEI loyalty oaths. Even though the government is not involved in curriculum development, American higher education is being destroyed.

To Hiltner’s claim that Orban’s government interferes with Hungarian cultural institutions’ offerings, we once more see that the Left cannot accept the idea that someone would ask them about their management style. These institutions are strongholds for the Left, even though they have been funded by Hungarian taxpayers over many years. A knowledgeable Hungarian answered my question about the matter. He said that only the Orban government had made these institutions more ideologically diverse. Are there any problems with this, given that these institutions are funded by the Hungarian taxpayer? Caldwell noted in his article that it is common practice in Europe for the ruling parties to appoint their own cultural leaders. Viktor Orban doesn’t seem to be an exception.

I tell this to question the American media’s narrative. They would like you to believe that the situation in Hungary was simpler than it is. While you can believe Orban did the wrong thing, the truth is more complicated. In a democratic society, it is normal for voters to hold the state-funded institutions responsible through their elected representatives. If you have been operating without any restrictions for some time, it can feel like harassment.

A California-based Twitter antagonist told me the other day that Hungarians must support their government. Anyone who’s been to Hungary knows this is ridiculous. This passage was written by Hiltner,

If Hungary has become the European Union’s most defiant state, then Budapest has become Hungary’s most defiantly liberal enclave — to the extent that short-term visitors to the city might easily miss the signs of a tense political environment.

The opposition parties are noisy. Protests are commonplace. In part as a response to the passage of recent anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, the Budapest Pride march has drawn huge crowds in recent years, and L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly venues are on the rise. Even the existence of progressive community centers — like Aurora, a social hub that offers a bar and a concert venue and has rented office space to N.G.O.s that focus on marginalized groups — suggests a kind of political and intellectual tolerance.

And yet behind many of the organizations that are out of step with the ruling party’s politics is a story of instability — regarding funding, legal protection, reputation. According to a 2022 report by the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Hungarian artists and institutions that oppose Fidesz “find it increasingly difficult — and some speculate even futile — to earn state support without yielding to governmental demands and thus compromising their artistic or personal integrity.”

I recommend you to review the AFI report. The report states that “In Hungary the last decade has witnessed a gradual increase in government supervision and control over the arts and culture sector.” This is a common practice in many European countries. I remember back in the late 1990s, interviewing a well-known French film director about his very dull new film, which was government-funded. I asked him why he made films for friends and didn’t care about what other people thought. This is possible if you are friends with the Ministry of Culture which has a major role in funding French arts.

My point isn’t to defend particular actions taken by Fidesz in relation to arts and cultural organizations. They are too complex for me to know the facts. But, my point is that it’s not beyond government authority for the government to monitor how state money is used by state-funded organisations. My view is that critics are not pointing out that the state exercises oversight but rather that it has values that do not align with those of the arts and culture community. Viktor Orban, unlike conservative American politicians sees the culture war as a serious matter and doesn’t believe that the government should subsidise an arts and culture sector that is attacking the values of those it expects will pay the abuse. My view is that the best standard must support artistic diversity and quality. It should not be a monoculture diet of leftist agitprop.

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I was doing some reporting in Washington in the early 1990s when funding for the National Endowment of the Arts was a controversy. At the center was agency funding of a sadomasochistic performance by HIV-positive artist Ron Athey, who, in his stage show, cut designs into the back of an assistant, pressed paper towels on them to soak up the blood, and sent the blood-soaked towels out over the audience, via a moving clothesline. It was intended to attack complacency and the AIDS epidemic. This was useless trash and a waste taxpayer money — yet the arts community laughed at the Republicans who asked why taxpayers funded such pathetic garbage.

I am merely pointing out that journalists complain about Viktor Orban’s clampdown on artistic freedom. It might have been, and it may make perfect sense.

I hope that you read Hiltner’s essay ,, and enjoy his stunning photographs. He really does love Budapest and I am fine with anyone who loves Budapest. He quotes an elderly liberal Hungarian who expressed sadness at the Orban system being desired by Hungarians. Although I disagree with the views of that elderly man, I do appreciate his recognition that it wasn’t forced upon anyone and that Hungarians voted four times for it. That quote was a nice touch. This is something that Western media rarely report on Orban’s Hungary. It’s not often seen in Western media coverage. Orban represents the majority of Hungarians who aren’t urban and globalist liberals. Budapest can be a great place to live if your a globalist urban liberal. It’s more than that. Professor Peter Boghossian, an anti-woke left-wing atheist discovered during his visit to Budapest that there’s far more freedom for expression there than in the woke precincts in American cities. The Left in Hungary is more liberal than the US.