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Claire Berlinski Answers Viktor Orban, Part 1 of 4
And in doing so, I’ll also answer Robert Lux. But I’d like to ask all of Ricochet if we — all of us, me included, and me especially — have this conversation in a way of which Ricochet can be proud. These are deeply emotional issues. They should be.
I feel quite strongly about the future of liberal democracy in the West and Islamic terrorism. I’ve written books about the issue, some parts of which might surprise those of you who’ve pegged me as the resident all-heart-no-survival-instinct editor of Ricochet. (Critics roundly denounced that book when it was published ten years ago as the midnight eructations of a ravening Islamophobe. They probably hadn’t read it carefully. But no one is criticizing it now — except, perhaps, for me.)
I couldn’t be closer to these questions, literally. Had my father not been in the hospital this past week; had he or I or my brother instead gone out for dinner or a drink at one of the places that was attacked, we might now be DNA samples on the pavement over which lachrymose Parisians are lighting candles and singing choked-up versions of the Marseillaise. Everyone I know in Paris has been affected.
And no one in his or her right mind thinks it’s over, yet. A few days ago I sent an e-mail to Michael Totten sketching out what I figured would happen next. He ran with the idea in this column, and needless to say, I agree:
… ISIS doesn’t need to destroy the French Republic or any other state to inflict an extraordinary amount of damage. Just look at what one guy— Seifeddine Rezgui—did in Tunisia five months ago.
He casually strolled up to a bunch of British tourists on the beach and murdered 38 of them with a Kalashnikov.
The police shot and killed him, of course, and dozens of local Tunisians tried to stop him and even volunteered as human shields, but the damage was already done. Tunisia’s tourist economy went the way of the dinosaurs.
… imagine if ISIS decides to attack France that way in the future. Rather than targeting five or six civilian targets simultaneously, they could hit a new one every day for a week. Or a new one every week for a month.
That would cause some serious economic mayhem in France or anywhere else. ISIS might do to France what it did to Tunisia. I certainly don’t intend to give them any ideas by mentioning this in public, but figuring it out on their own is no more difficult than reinventing the wheel.
My gut says the logic of this — and thus the odds of this scenario — are high enough that it’s reasonable to be concerned by it. That said, I can’t know for sure, and can’t adjust my life according to fears with no quantifiable basis, and won’t adjust my life to terrorists, and besides, my mind these days is on the much more specific fear that my father’s cardiac monitor will stop pulsing in front of my eyes. That puts all other fears in perspective.
But my point is that I’m emotional, for reasons I hope everyone will understand. These issues are very personal. They’re personal to all of us, each for our own reasons. It’s not just that I live here, but that I’m the granddaughter of Jewish refugees from Europe. The fact that I’m alive at all is a statistical fluke. The boats full of desperate refugees sinking in the sea remind me of the S.S. St. Louis, the MV Struma, of Operation Embarrass. Of course these are family memories that shape my views. My grandparents only barely escaped. My grandmother was bitter about this until she died: My grandfather had fought in the French Foreign Legion, but even that wasn’t good enough for France; when the war was over, the word went out: Enough with the Jewish refugees.
Then too, my perspective is colored by the decade I spent in Turkey. It is impossible to say to someone who lived as long as I did in the Islamic world that Islam is a singular thing. I have too many Muslim friends to think that, but even if I didn’t, I hope I’d have worked that out just on the basis of common sense. But that’s not my key point. The key point is the other thing I saw in Turkey, the thing that marked me most permanently. I saw the rise of an authoritarian regime — a real one — and how such regimes take power, step-by-step.
Turkey was of course never a liberal paradise. But I lived through a long, twilight period where the lights grew dimmer and dimmer, even as the rest of the world insisted they were blazing strongly. This didn’t happen because Turkey is a Muslim country (and in fact, it is not, technically; it is a secular country with a majority Muslim population). It happened because the safeguards against the authoritarian temptation weren’t strong enough.
I’ve come to believe that absent those safeguards, it’s not — as I and many others’ hopefully thought in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall — mankind’s natural disposition to move forward into broad, sunlit uplands of liberal democracy. I no longer believe there’s a natural trajectory of history at all. But certain forms of government seem to become popular at various periods of history. The form of government for which the early 21st century will be noted by historians is not liberal democracy, but competitive authoritarianism, Viktor-Orban style.
I’m emotional about all of these things. But let me continue the plea with which I began. Let’s discuss this — all of this — with all the patience, respect, calm, warmth, and dignity we can muster. Let’s assume our interlocutors’ good will as a matter of conversational discipline, even if we have no reason to assume it epistemically. We are all here, presumably, because none of us really wish to truck with the vulgarity and invective of the typical argument on the Internet.
So let’s make our cases as carefully and politely as possible, however strongly we feel, not least because what we feel is immaterial — feelings aren’t arguments. Let’s try, as well, to listen to what others are saying, not jump to conclusions or caricaturize the arguments of others. And while it is right to feel emotion about these subjects, let’s attempt to make robust arguments in preference to blackmailing one another with our feelings: It is what civilized men and women do.
***
So, Robert, Viktor Orban seems compelling in that video, doesn’t he? If it were all I knew of him, I might nod and say, “I’ll hear him out.”
I did, in fact.
My response to him falls under three categories. The first treats the specifics of his speech. The second treats him, specifically, and his record in Hungary. The third treats the political philosophy he represents. I’ll address them seriatum in the coming three posts.
Before I do, though, I thought it would be helpful for us all to have a transcript of his speech. I couldn’t find one on the Internet, so I did it myself. Forgive me if I omitted a word; it’s just a transcription error and not deliberate. Nor do I speak Hungarian, so any errors in translation are owed to the translation provided.
I’ve skipped the first minute and a half, in which he begins by offering his condolences to France.
At 1:33, Orban says,
Until now, we Hungarians were focused on closing the border from the flood from the Middle East and Africa. And so we got our punishment that this is not ‘humane.’ But here we have before us the question: What is more humane? To close the borders against the illegal border crossers, or to risk the lives of innocent European citizens? The right to life precedes all other rights. Just as the right to self-defense is stronger than anything else. No ideology or economic interest can allow us to put the lives Europeans citizens in danger. Howsoever, we can see that the EU is drifting. It is weak, unsure of itself, and paralyzed. There are conferences and negotiations unto exhaustion. But there are no solutions. We are writhing in a web of ideologies, instead of acting based on common sense and our own personal cultural traditions. The leaders of many European nations still, to this day, are wracking their brains about how to solve the transportation and acceptance of masses of immigrants, instead of finally taking united, practical steps to stop the flood.
In Brussels, they still claim that immigration is a good thing. Despite receiving proof day by day that immigration is a bad thing. This situation is not “win-win,” but “lose-lose.”
Esteemed House, we feel that Europe’s existence is at stake. Brussels, however, keeps sending bad messages, newer invitations to migrants, instead of us finally and honorably sending them the straightforward message that here, what they expect is not at all what awaits them.
Esteemed House, we have repeatedly warned the leaders of the European Union to not invite these people into Europe. Everyone who has, through common sense, considered the likely consequences of unchecked mass immigration must clearly know what dangers lurk in the mass pouring in illegally and unchecked, across our borders.
The European and American security specialists, secret service and intelligence bosses, police leaders, have constantly warned Europe of the growing danger of terrorism. Every politician, all of Europe’s leaders, knew of the danger. And the Greeks have said long ago, at the start of the summer, it can no way be ruled out that jihadists arrive along with the masses of migrants. Standing on the ground of common sense and viewing it from there, it was apparent that completely simply, masses must not be allowed inside unchecked. Hundreds of thousands of sorts of people, we know not where they come from, we don’t know who they are, and we don’t know what they want.
Furthermore, Esteemed House, these are territories where the EU is currently performing military campaigns. Such a thing has never happened before. We are accepting, no, transporting unchecked people in their hundreds of thousands from areas that are at war with the European Union. It has been proven that terrorists are knowingly and in a well-organized way are using mass immigration to melt into the mass of people abandoning their homes in hope of a better life. We don’t think that everyone who comes from there is a terrorist. But we don’t know, and no one is able to say, how many terrorists have arrived with the migrants so far. How many are already here. And how many are arriving day by day. Even one terrorist is too many. It hurts to even think about how many terrorists may have crossed our homeland. It’s time to put an end to this all throughout Europe.
My esteemed representatives, it is clear to every normally-thinking person that Europe cannot sustain this many people. We all know that the European economy cannot tackle such massive pressure. But beyond the financial and economic realities, mass migration possesses three severe dangers, each of which alone are sufficient to clinch the human tide.
First of all, on Friday night, we could experience that mass migration means an exponentially increased threat of terrorism. Moreover, today we aren’t referring to the threat of terror anymore, but a fact. Real terrorism.
Secondly, mass immigration increases the danger of crime. It’s not “PC,” politically correct to talk about this. Moreover, the Western world openly denies these facts. But despite that, it’s still a fact. In Europe, where there are many immigrants, there crime has greatly increased, and security has decreased. There are more thefts, robberies, harassment, severe physical assaults, rape, and homicide. Even if we do not talk about it, these will remain facts.
And thirdly, the mass settlement of people arriving from other continents and cultures represents a danger to our culture, our way of life, habits, and traditions.
Now even those, who lived under the failed conception of multiculturalism, and who even wanted to force that mistaken conception on us, they can see where all this leads.
Esteemed President, my esteemed representatives, esteemed House. In the light of these events, we must speak about the obligatory quota question, too. We are still there, where someone from outside Hungary, they want to tell us whom we, Hungarians, need to live with. This is what this quota is about. I recommend to this esteemed house to still not accept this. Let’s keep sticking to deciding for ourselves whom we want to let in, whom we want to live with. The obligatory quota system is, completely, simply, not Europe. It stands in sharp contrast to the spirit of Europe. It is pointless, because it does not fix the crisis, but deepens it. It can be easily seen that the obligatory settlement quota does not keep migrants away, but rather acts as an invitation. It does not lessen the pressure, but increases it. And due to the suddenly increased pressure, the European nations will restore their internal EU borders. If this continues, it is only a matter of time. This will mean the end of the Schengen system and freedom of movement.
The obligatory quota, my esteemed representatives, is also unlawful, since the EU leaders don’t have the authority to make such a decision in this question. They have no authority to force a single member nation such a measure concerning refugees and migrants that the given nation does not want. In the light of the terror attacks, Brussels can especially no longer deny that member nations have the right to defend themselves.
Namely, the obligatory settlement quota is dangerous because it would disseminate terrorism throughout Europe. Facts and tragic events point out that we need a new kind of European politics. It is not enough to pat and patch and fix up the old. I recommend that we cast aside the dogmas, forget political correctness, let’s speak straightforward and open. I recommend that we return from the world of ideologies back to common sense, and to rethink European politics on the basis of four self-evident commandments. First of all, we must protect the external borders of the European Union. Because security begins with protection of borders. Second, we must protect our culture, because the essence of Europe lies in its spiritual and cultural identity. Third, we must protect our economic interests, because we Europeans must remain central to the world economy. And fourth, we must give people the right to be able to influence European decisions, because the Union must stand on democratic ground. Esteemed representatives, the European citizens did not want hundreds of thousands of unknown aliens to illegally and in an uncontrolled manner cross our borders and trample our countries. This sort of power was never given authority or permission by anyone, anywhere. People want to live in safety, and they want to enjoy the advantages of the EU. And for us parliamentary representatives, and to governments across Europe, our job is to hear the voice of the people. Thank you for your gracious attention.
That’s all for now. In other news from Paris, police assaults are underway in Saint-Denis; a woman there has blown herself up; Abaaoud and several other suspects are believed to be holed up in an apartment building there, helicopters are flying over the building and police have cordoned off the area, and it seems there are a few more suspects still at large.
Update: two people are dead, as is a police dog.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism
Then I suppose the question is what “liberal principles and methods of social organisation” means. The raided NGOs in question were dedicated to “civil society”, “transparency” and “awareness raising” whatever the hell that means.
The word liberal can mean anything from John Locke, to Islamist democracy activists, to baked flower children. From what I know about liberals in North America none of the three mission objectives listed above means anything good.
What got me is this part of #13:
Cantankerous, it looks like we posted at the same time.
Comment 13 is a vague mishmash of paraphrases and single line quotes. “Illiberal states based on national foundations” could have a thousand meanings. Singapore and Russia don’t have the same system, so it matters which one he’s drawing on, and Singapore’s is apparently pretty good.
I presume Claire will fill in the details when she gets there.
Sorry about that. I defer to Sabrdance’s comment #64 ^
It logically precedes all other rights, since a person has to be alive to have any other rights.
Claire no political institution in my adult life has worked harder or more consistently to stamp out democracy as a pernicious nuisance than the EU. If Mr. Orban is a neo-fascist it’s probably because of the moral bankruptcy of the democratic examples he’s had to learn from – starting with Obama’s gridlocked USA. I look forward to your next installments but I can tell we are probably going to disagree.
Changing topics: could you comment on the booing of a moment of silence for France at the Turkish soccer stadium, followed by the allahu Akbar chants from the crowd?
I posted about that in the Member Feed:
http://ricochet.com/turkish-soccer-fans-chant-allahu-akbar-during-moment-of-silence-for-paris-attacks/
Ein Volk… I’m trying to remember how the rest of it goes.
One thing the Palestinians have taught us is that Arabs are unappeasably attached to their ancestral homelands. Being away from it feels to them like the worst form of exile. They dream of returning to it every night, and the keys to the old family home are treasured and passed down from generation to generation.
Therefore it should be the case that all the Syrian refugees will more than happily return home once peaceful conditions are re-established. They’ll eagerly return to their farms and factories, their olive-groves and Mercedes concessions. Germans and Swedes and other reproductively-challenged Europeans should not try to retain them in their Bowers of Bliss.
And one thing the Israelis have taught us is that you can put your own people first without being Nazis. There is a positive version of nationalism that wishes no ill on other peoples who wish no ill on its own. And to do this may at times require mobilization of a rational form of paranoia quite clearly distinguishable from the psychotic form practised by Stalin and Hitler.
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. But may I make a suggestion? Inevitably when discussing a subject like European fascism, we do have to talk about the Nazis, so it shouldn’t be out-of-bounds to bring up their ideology or even to point out that some expressions of sentiment among people who would never dream of identifying with the German Nazi party do have points of commonality — and perhaps dangerous ones — with sentiments expressed by the Nazis. But let’s not hasten to get to that place, since it’s such an offensive charge. “We are a people” is not even in the same time zone as Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer — not much difference between saying “We are a people” and saying, “We, the people,” is there? (The latter implies the former.)
“We are a people” doesn’t connote (as does Ein Volk) that here must be only one people, acting in unison as a bundle (fasci); nor does it imply the Führerprinzip — one and only one leader, whose word is above all written law. Agree?
I haven’t, but given the good reviews it’s getting here, I’ll order it; sounds interesting
Good question. I thought about that a bit after posting, and decided that there IS a difference in connotation between “a people” and “the people,” so let it stand. “A” people implies a level of unity, uniformity and cohesiveness that “the people” does not.
And yes, I know how the phrase ends. I don’t want it to go there, which is why I didn’t spell it out in full. I didn’t want to imply that the commenter was going that far, but that we need to be careful not to. I prefer not to spell those things out, but rather to let people think about them for themselves.
I must admit I am a little touchy on this subject because of some comments in the past bemoaning the loss of a common heritage in this country. And sometimes when people do that they list things in our heritage that are definitely not part of my heritage — movie characters, music. So when that’s what’s meant by “a people,” count me out.
The conditions in Turkish refugee camps were said to be excellent — apparently these were the best refugee camps in the world; they’ve received widespread praise — but I don’t think Turkey can do any more than it has without massive financial help. The camps in Jordan are said to be unspeakable, truly unspeakable. The latter account comes from Senator Chris Murphy and is absolutely congruent with everything I’ve heard:
I don’t know much about conditions in Lebanon. I didn’t visit camps in Turkey, although I met many Syrian refugees in Turkey — they’re not (by any means) all in camps. They definitely didn’t leave Syria because they thought life would be marginally easier somewhere else — they fled for their lives. Some had been tortured by Assad’s forces in ways that I still have trouble thinking about. I don’t want put the emphasis on the effect this had on me, because clearly that’s missing the point, but I’ll say that interviewing people who’ve been tortured left me pretty unstrung, psychologically, and leave it at that. My only reason for mentioning how I feel about this is to make the point that if a fairly stable person can be left with nightmares for years just from hearing about it, imagine the effect on the people who experienced it.
I suspect that by now the ones I interviewed are dead: they probably went back to fight, given the chronology, and the odds of guys like them still being alive now are small.
I don’t think it’s anywhere near as sure that a Syrian refugee would face death upon returning to Syria as it was that a Jewish one would upon returning to Germany, but the risk of death (or torture, or rape) is high enough that it isn’t gross hyperbole to liken Syria to Nazi Germany. (The journalist who wrote this story’s a friend of mine, and I trust his commitment to accuracy completely. These stories are completely consistent with everything else we’re hearing about what’s happening in Syria.) As for whether the refugees are safe once they reach Jordan, Lebanon, etc — I’d say they were, at first, but the numbers are now so great that they’re not: The World Food Programme has run out of money, as have many of the other large programs that provided food and medical care, so I think their lives are, increasingly, at risk even in the refugee camps.
I was born in 1968, so obviously I interviewed no refugees from Nazi Germany at the time they were refugees. I did of course speak at great length with my grandparents about their experiences and with other Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. I was very struck by the commonality of the language they used to describe their experiences, from the accounts of utter loss — of their families, their homes, even the loss of things like deeply personal possessions (my grandmother had to leave behind all the letters her mother had sent her when the Nazis invaded Paris; I’ve met Syrian refugees who likewise focus on a loss like this — some last, personal connection to a loved one), to the astonishment that people didn’t believe their stories about what was happening, to the words they used about their realization that there was no hope ever of going back; to the way they described the frantic scramble for papers and documents that would get them somewhere safe, to the descriptions of what prompted them to take risks like getting on boats that might sink — it sounds very familiar, and while I think the Holocaust was exceptional in history, I suspect that refugees from major conflicts everywhere probably go through similar things, so it’s not so surprising that they say similar things and sound similar.
Does that help? If I’ve misunderstood your question, let me know; maybe I can give a more helpful answer.
Melissa, I’m very eager to read this, especially because you’re in a very good position to discuss the issue. (For those who don’t know, Melissa and her husband run the Danube Institute, which is a very good resource for people who want to know more about Hungary.) I hope to see your post on the member feed soon …
That’s good to know about.
I’m currently listening to The Price of Freedom by Alex Domokos. I found it interesting to hear about his experience as a refugee at the same time the refugee issue was coming to be a top issue a few days ago. Earlier this year I listened to Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution by Victor Sebestyan. Those are two very different perspectives on the 1956 revolution; both leave me wanting to learn more about Hungary and not just the revolution. (Well, the Domokos book is about more than the revolution, but I still feel I’ve just scratched the surface.)
I don’t disagree with drawing parallels to Nazi Germany. I think another poster said it well that all ISIS really lacks is German efficiency. They would commit atrocities on a similar scale, I don’t doubt it.
You understand better than most the psychological fallout this kind of conflict can produce, obviously from your grandparent’s experience and having been so close to people dying in the current conflict.
My parents in law came to Canada from Germany after the war. They refused to speak about those war years. I had to hear their stories from relatives here in Germany. Like many ordinary Germans they carried that guilt with them to their graves. I think they felt they had to. This generation in Syria could be ruined in a similar way.
This is unacceptable. Between the west and Gulf states surely we can get our collective acts together and fund these guys. I had no idea the conditions in Jordan were so bleak, and I can understand risking the sea crossing in some of those cases.
A good answer to this which I think you will enjoy reading is Jaffa’s “Equality, Liberty, Wisdom, Morality and Consent in the Idea of Political Freedom.” It prefigures and can be read as very condensed version of his magisterial first two chapter of New Birth of Freedom. The founders were already Americans in the decades leading up the Revolution — they were already political. They were not in some universal or cosmopolitan world…
I did, under Mike’s post in the Member Feed.
I think you’ll like reading Jeremy Rabkin’s essay “Continental Drift” — still very pertinent. Which provoked an exchange between Rabkin and Manent: scroll down to “The Problem with Europe.”
And then William Allen’s “Making Citizens.” Which, among others, provoked Manent’s “A Reply to My Critics.”
I’m in about the same place on this. For example, the use of “homeland” to refer to America since the Dept. of Homeland Security was formed just grinds me. It’s an expression that I never heard used in this country before and sounds too close to “fatherland” and “motherland” for comfort. What unites us is, and should be, the founding American idea, not the piece of dirt we share, nor any accidental similarities.
The Dept. of Homeland Security was an invention of progressives and some neoconservatives. It enlarged a labor union and provided cover for domestic spying. It is kind of funny that neoconservatives talk homeland sometimes when they are up to mischief regarding internal freedoms and the jarringly founding American idea when they are attempting to use the United States as an Israeli reform school for a group of people that don’t believe in a one of those founding ideas. With regard to “motherland” or “fatherland”, I have never heard any American I know use either of those terms. This is just a not so clever way of trying to guilt an American into shutting up about being an American. Claire was equally subtle with her helping describe this with German words bringing visions of Nazis to the mind. I don’t think that your American idea is an invitation to a suicide pact, in fact it would provide obvious protections to blindly allowing immigrants to flood into our country and undermine those very ideas. The ideas of Claire and her fellow neoconservatives will lead to further tribalizing the United States and all the violence that entails. We have enough of that stuff existing among Americans and don’t need to invite outside trouble. I would prefer to be an American where freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to protect myself are values that we can agree on. If you want to be a citizen of the world, searching for those that share your idea, go do it.
Take it easy, you’re making it seem like the American people are sleep-walking through history. One day, the DHS was foisted upon them & they never quite woke up, although more than a few had invasive-finger-induced nightmares. These people who live in America in their hundreds or millions, do they not know that tribalization is bad & America as it was is good? Or was good?
Also, neo-conservative is a name for public policy experts who wanted to assess, improve or change the Great Society welfare state.
Or at least let’s not talk about them as some kind of foreign-policy cabal!
I hope Claire comes forth with Part 2 (or even Part 2(a)) before this descends too far.
Next: Someone is going to hope we’ll all be civil.
Pretty good summary.
Yeah, well, then there is no politics or politics is the dream they dream-
Yes. We are hoping for it – well, more than hoping. Civility is part of the neocon plot, dontcha know?
The editors and moderators have been alerted to some of the stuff on this thread.
Neoconservatives lost interest in that stuff a long time ago. I will always check in with Bucharest before I comment on my own country.
No crisis should go to waste or something like that. A more American quote is that, “Crisis is the rallying cry of a tyrant”.
Not if you listen to our multicultural experts. We apparently need more tribes, ones that would see us as second class citizens.
Owen brought up the term homeland. I was making it clear that it wasn’t any term I am fond of. Maybe he is more connected to it if all be known.
When somebody tries to attribute to me motherland (Russia) or fatherland (Germany) or explain to me my thoughts using German words, I can see what they are attempting to do.
You need to say that in German or explain it as virtue of the Fatherland for me to get it.