Fidesz’s Rehabilitation of István Csurka is No Surprise. Their Denial of his Antisemitism is.

István Csurka’s influence on contemporary Fidesz ideology has long been clear but it’s never been admitted. Until now.

On 7 December, the statue of the late writer and MP István Csurka (1934-2012) was unveiled in Hungarikum Park in Lakitelek. In attendance at the unveiling was chief Fidesz ideologue Mária Schmidt, Csurka’s former fellow MDF party member and current deputy speaker of the Hungarian parliament Sándor Lezsák, as well as Fidesz politician Kristóf Szatmáry. In the days before unveiling the statue, Schmidt also held a conference to discuss the legacy of István Csurka in an overwhelmingly positive tone and spoke of him highly on state TV.

Csurka was the leading figure of the Folkish Writers or the Folkish Opposition in socialist Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike the Democratic Opposition, which consisted of urban, liberal intellectuals, the Folkish Opposition did not lead dissident lives under the rule of János Kádár but tried to balance between being an opposition to the system and trying to change it from within. The main grievances of Csurka and his colleagues (such as Sándor Lezsák, Sándor Csoóri, or Dénes Csengey) with Kádár’s system related to its unwillingness to stand up more forcefully against discrimination against Hungarians in neighbouring countries and its inability to tackle rural poverty and hopelessness. As Csurka was not a banned author, his plays about contemporary Hungarian society were shown regularly in Hungarian theatres in the 1970s and 1980s. That his statue was unveiled in Lakitelek is no surprise: it was there in 1987 in Sándor Lezsák’s back garden that the Folkish Opposition formally organised itself and became MDF, the first governing party of post-socialist Hungary, elected in 1990.

István Csurka in 1989. Source: Fortepan / Imre Prohászka

Csurka is primarily known not for his plays or short stories but as an essayist and politician. The main difference between Csurka and the Democratic Opposition was that, while he was against the socialist system, he did not imagine Hungary’s future to lie in Western liberal democracy under capitalism. Csurka advocated for a “third way.” The buzzword of the “third way” later became a prominent feature of Hungarian far-right parties in the 21st century. Both Jobbik and Mi Hazánk have used them frequently.

In the 1980s, Csurka critiqued both socialism and capitalism. The former for dismantling traditions and thus stripping Hungarians from their identity and purpose. The latter for being obsessed with money and consumption. He also criticised the Kádár regime for embracing the culture of consumption and criticised the Hungarian public for compromising on the values of 1956 and sacrificing it on the altar of slightly increased living standards.

In Csurka’s view, mindless consumption, and especially mass television viewing, was a grave danger for humanity as it was supposedly dumbing down mankind. For Csurka, mass consumption was incompatible with democracy, hence he did not consider either Western societies or Kádárist Hungary democratic. He often wrote that in the 1980s, Hungarian society was nihilistic, at a major “moral low point,” and (channelling the ever-present anxieties of Hungarian nationalist thinkers) at risk of dying out. He even argued that moral nihilism contributes to the oppression of Hungarians outside the country’s borders. He called for the establishment and renewal of népfőiskolas, rural institutions which would provide education for the people of the countryside to ensure social mobility.

But these are not the works Csurka is mostly famous for in Hungary. He is primarily known for his 1992 essay full of antisemitic conspiracy theories in which he blamed communism on the Jews “who had a dominant influence” under Kádárism and were now jealous of his party, MDF, for taking such influence away from them and threatening their “hegemonic position.” He also claimed that the Democratic Opposition and liberalism were merely a continuation of socialist rule. The essay sparked one of the greatest political scandals of the Third Hungarian Republic, which at the time was in its infancy. The same year, Csurka was thrown out of MDF and quickly became shunned across the political spectrum. He founded the far-right party MIÉP which had parliamentary representation in the 1998-2002 cycle.

Csurka never clearly defined the idea of the “third way,” he only set out its contours. Based on its outlines, however, his influence on Viktor Orbán is clear. His 2014 illiberalism speech and much of his ideology since then - constructing a hybrid regime halfway through between authoritarianism and democracy as well as his idea of Hungary as a state between East and West clearly echo Csurka. So does the claim that the Third Hungarian Republic was merely a continuation of socialism in disguise.

Arguably, Orbán, by naming and eventually successfully constructing an illiberal state, built on Csurka’s ideas of the third way and put them into practice. But only to an extent. The wealth accumulation of Fidesz-affiliated business circles goes against Csurka’s critique of capitalism. Besides, similarly to Kádár, Orbán’s legitimacy and popularity derive, in part, from Hungarian society’s ability to consume (hence why it is going through a crisis now). “Let Ukraine be conquered so that we can have cheap heating in peace” appeals to the selfishness and moral rot of the Kádárist residue within the Hungarian soul.

Speaking of Kádárist residue, Csurka’s willingness to criticise the broader Hungarian society for its immoral compromises also makes Csurka distinct from contemporary Fidesz thinking. As true “populists,” Orbán and the wider Fidesz intelligentsia tend to claim that they are fighting out-of-touch elites by exercising “the will of the people” whose opinion is sacred and should not be criticised. Finally, Csurka’s embrace of the idea of the népfőiskola is in sharp contrast with the System of National Cooperation’s (arguably willful) lack of care for the Hungarian education system and its total disregard for social mobility.

The surprising (though because of the aforementioned differences, perhaps not illogical) element in Fidesz’s long-coming rehabilitation of Csurka is that it is not only directed at the Csurka of the eighties but primarily that of the, politically much more problematic, nineties. In her speech at her conference, at the statue unveiling, and on Hungarian public TV, Mária Schmidt did not stress Csurka’s ideas about rural hopelessness or the dangers of mass consumption. She was defending elements of the 1992 essay and its arguments.

Schmidt declared that Csurka was “almost never wrong in his diagnosis” and that he was simply right too soon. On TV, she argued that Csurka was framed as an antisemite only by “communists of Jewish heritage” and only because the word “Jew” was tabooified in Hungary. What statements to make by Fidesz’s chief ideologue and memory czar who not so long ago was supposed to be in charge of designing a holocaust museum!

Embracing the Csurka of the 1990s is questionable as the Fidesz intelligentsia could have found some genuinely less problematic material in Csurka’s pre-1990 past if they wanted to (though János Kis, the leader of the Democratic Opposition remarks in his memoirs that, unlike the case of Sándor Csóóri who only became antisemitic after being exposed to it in right-wing circles, he never really had doubts about Csurka’s antisemitism and recognised the dangers he posed already in the 1980s).

Fidesz, until now, tried extremely carefully to avoid antisemitism accusations by cosying up to Israel and supporting some conservative Jewish organisations in Hungary. Schmidt’s statements that “Csurka was the first to uncover the Soros network” are quite surprising exactly because they contradict Fidesz’s vehement denial of the accusations that their anti-Soros posters and campaigns are antisemitic. It will be interesting to see if Slomó Köves’s EMIH, a conservative Jewish organisation, come to rethink their unspoken alliance with Fidesz after the party’s embrace of the Hungarian Third Republic’s most notorious antisemite.

It is perfectly possible that despite Orbán’s personal affinity to Csurka (it is alleged that most parties did not want Fidesz to be part of the 1989 roundtable discussions and it was only István Csurka himself who stood up for them and convinced the others to let them participate), he did not attend the statue unveiling only to avoid backlash from Jewish communities (MAZSIHISZ, a more progressive Jewish organisation not affiliated to Fidesz, already condemned Csurka’s rehabilitation).

The question is thus not why Fidesz embraces Csurka, whose ideas about Hungary’s place between East and West and whose rejection of both socialism and liberal democracy have always been the basic tenets of the Orbán regime. The question is why they feel the need to embrace the István Csurka of the 1990s specifically. The answer might be simple: it is because Csurka was the first major politician to outright reject the Third Hungarian Republic. Fidesz’s visceral hatred for the period and their joy in being able to go against everything it stood for is, after all, the cornerstone of their politics. Csurka’s rehabilitation is a power exercise in memory politics. It serves to double down on the idea that the republic and its values are gone for good. The man who was shunned by the Third Hungarian Republic gets a statue in the System of National Cooperation.

Ábel Bede