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BUDAPEST – The re-run of the Greek parliamentary election on June 17 is only the latest symptom of the most serious crisis to plague Western democracies and open societies since the 1960’s. Liberal democracies in the West today are struggling to avoid – and in doing so are exacerbating – a crisis of identity, which puts the existing social contract at risk and threatens their implosion.
The end of the Cold War bequeathed our leaders with a new set of governance challenges, which promptly grew in magnitude, in large part owing to faster globalization, the consequences of the 1980’s economic liberalization, and the 1990’s revolution in information technology. These challenges, insufficiently addressed, soon led many to question the sustainability of liberal democracy’s appeal at home and its universality abroad, and to probe the alleged merits of the “Chinese model,” best characterized as a form of authoritarian or state capitalism.
The financial meltdown of 2008, which soon metamorphosed into the deepest Western economic recession since the 1930’s, added fuel to the fire, as policymakers hunkered down in a non-transparent crisis-management mode, condoning massive state intervention in the economy and socialization of private-sector losses on a previously unprecedented scale. The resulting fiscal austerity plunged many below the poverty line and accelerated economic inequality, while many private institutions, having caused the 2008 bust, recovered on the public dime.
Adding insult to injury, in Greece and Italy, two of the hardest-hit countries, financial markets effectively deposed elected, if imperfect, governments. The hapless former Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, had to resign last year after daring to suggest a referendum to decide the economic future of his fellow citizens. (Ironically, the upcoming election will de facto serve as the referendum that Papandreou suggested in October 2011.)
At the root of the European crisis (and its equivalent crisis in the United States) is a shift in the configuration of economic, social, and political power. Liberal democracies and open societies have traditionally relied on a fine balance of these three forms of power. Over the last two decades, our elites have been unable to maintain it, as economic power has long since gone global and dislodged itself from political power, often corrupting democratic politics in the process.
At the same time, social power, which provides the oxygen for democratic legitimacy, has been marginalized and disillusioned, and is increasingly turning away from the traditional transmission belts of politics. The result is an erosion of the stature of mainstream political parties and trade unions, and all-time low levels of trust in governments writ large. Powered by new media, identities are beginning to form around new networks of social interaction that often defy state boundaries and have little connection to liberal democracy’s traditional institutions of governance.
The refusal of today’s elites to promote an effective balance of the three powers – to recognize a larger purpose beyond maximizing each individual power – has visibly translated into a waning regard for the public good. This has dramatic consequences for liberal democracy and open societies.
With political power diminished (and sometimes usurped) by the transformation of its economic counterpart, and its detachment from its social base rendering it increasingly illegitimate, this is the hour of populists and extremists. We now see them feast on enfeebled democracies in many European countries, as fringe movements become serious contenders for power and threaten to wipe out the achievements of more than 60 years of European integration. In the US, the political system has descended into seemingly intractable partisan paralysis, gravely undermining the system of checks and balances and generating a deepening sense of malaise and frustration.
We stand at a critical juncture. Recreating democracy and open societies in a global age requires investment in new ideas to rebalance political, economic, and social power at both the national and the global level. Nationally, we need to experiment with new mechanisms for policymaking and implementation, reconnecting democratic institutions to citizens and emerging networks of civil society. Globally, we must allow political and social power to establish their rightful place next to economic power.
Mere tinkering will not do; we need a transformation of the global institutional architecture. Unless we can establish a global socio-political space, we cannot legitimately deliberate over the provision of global public goods, let alone deliver them successfully. The push toward such a space needs to be spearheaded by risk takers – social and political entrepreneurs who are unafraid to work across lines traditionally dividing sectors and states, and who help to re-create a global community of purpose beyond power.
The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once described the Berlin Wall as a mirror. In view of the Soviet system, it was indeed easy to overlook our own weakness and fallibilities. As the Wall came down, our elites struggled to maintain the fiction of an inherently imminent victory march for liberal democracy worldwide, now laid bare by the economic crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.
We have lost two valuable decades to respond adequately to globalization and the crisis of liberal democracy and open societies. It is time to begin an honest reflection about power and its purpose in today’s rapidly changing world.
Csanad Szegedi, vice president of Jobbik party and member of the European Parliament, stands behind members of the far-right radical nationalist organisation Hungarian Guard during a demonstration against the Hungarian government in Budapest, Dec. 5, 2009. Laszlo Balogh / Reuters [(same AP story at) http://world.time.com/2012/08/14/hungarian-far-right-leader-discovers-his-jewish-roots/ ]
By By PABLO GORONDI | Associated Press – Tue, Aug 14, 2012
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — As a rising star in Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of "buying up" the country, railed about the "Jewishness" of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.
Then came a revelation that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.
Following weeks of Internet rumors, Szegedi acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother's side were Jews — making him one too under Jewish law, even though he doesn't practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labor camps.
Since then, the 30-year-old has become a pariah in Jobbik and his political career is on the brink of collapse. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
At the root of the drama is an audio tape of a 2010 meeting between Szegedi and a convicted felon. Szegedi acknowledges that the meeting took place but contends the tape was altered in unspecified ways; Jobbik considers it real.
In the recording, the felon is heard confronting Szegedi with evidence of his Jewish roots. Szegedi sounds surprised, then offers money and favors in exchange for keeping quiet.
Under pressure, Szegedi resigned last month from all party positions and gave up his Jobbik membership. That wasn't good enough for the party: Last week it asked him to give up his seat in the European Parliament as well. Jobbik says its issue is the suspected bribery, not his Jewish roots.
Szegedi came to prominence in 2007 as a founding member of the Hungarian Guard, a group whose black uniforms and striped flags recalled the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which briefly governed Hungary at the end of World War II and killed thousands of Jews. In all, 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust, most of them after being sent in trains to death camps like Auschwitz. The Hungarian Guard was banned by the courts in 2009.
By then, Szegedi had already joined the Jobbik Party, which was launched in 2003 to become the country's biggest far-right political force. He soon became one of its most vocal and visible members, and a pillar of the party leadership. Since 2009, he has served in the European Parliament in Brussels as one of the party's three EU lawmakers, a position he says he wants to keep.
The fallout of Szegedi's ancestry saga has extended to his business interests. Jobbik executive director Gabor Szabo is pulling out of an Internet site selling nationalist Hungarian merchandise that he owns with Szegedi. Szabo said his sister has resigned as Szegedi's personal assistant.
In the 2010 tape, former convict Zoltan Ambrus is heard telling Szegedi that he has documents proving Szegedi is Jewish. The right-wing politician seems genuinely surprised by the news — and offers EU funds and a possible EU job to Ambrus to hush it up.
Ambrus, who served time in prison on a weapons and explosives conviction, apparently rejected the bribes. He said he secretly taped the conversation as part of an internal Jobbik power struggle aimed at ousting Szegedi from a local party leadership post. The party's reaction was swift.
"We have no alternative but to ask him to return his EU mandate," said Jobbik president Gabor Vona. "Jobbik does not investigate the heritage of its members or leadership, but instead takes into consideration what they have done for the nation."
Szegedi's experience is not unique: The Holocaust was a taboo subject during Hungary's decades of communist rule that ended in 1990, and many survivors chose to keep their ordeals to themselves. Russian far-right firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky was anti-Semitic until he acknowledged in 2001 that his father was Jewish.
Szegedi, who was raised Presbyterian, acknowledged his Jewish origins in June interviews with Hungarian media, including news broadcaster Hir TV and Barikad, Jobbik's weekly magazine. He said that after the meeting with Ambrus, he had a long conversation with his grandmother, who spoke about her family's past as Orthodox Jews.
"It was then that it dawned on me that my grandmother really is Jewish," Szegedi told Hir TV. "I asked her how the deportations happened. She was in Auschwitz and Dachau and she was the only survivor in the extended family."
Judaism is traced from mother to child, meaning that under Jewish law Szegedi is Jewish. Szegedi said he defines himself as someone with "ancestry of Jewish origin — because I declare myself 100 percent Hungarian."
In the interview with Hir TV, Szegedi denied ever having made anti-Semitic statements, but several of his speeches and media appearances show otherwise.
In a November 2010 interview on Hungarian state television, Szegedi blamed the large-scale privatization of state assets after the end of communism on "people in the Hungarian political elite who shielded themselves in their Jewishness."
Speaking on a morning program in late 2010, he said that "the problem the radical right has with the Jews" was that Jewish artists, actors and intellectuals had desecrated Hungary's national symbols like the Holy Crown of St. Stephen, the country's first Christian king.
Szegedi also complained of "massive real estate purchases being done in Hungary, where — it's no secret — they want to bring in Israeli residents."
Szegedi met in early August with Rabbi Slomo Koves, of Hungary's Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch community, whose own parents were in their teens when they discovered they were Jewish.
"As a rabbi ... it is my duty to receive every person who is in a situation of crisis and especially a Jew who has just now faced his heritage," Koves said.
During the meeting, Szegedi apologized for any statements which may have offended the Jewish community, and vowed to visit Auschwitz to pay his respects.
Koves described the conversation as "difficult and spiritually stressful," but said he is hopeful for a successful outcome.
"Csanad Szegedi is in the middle of a difficult process of reparation, self-knowledge, re-evaluation and learning, which according to our hopes and interests, should conclude in a positive manner," Koves said. "Whether this will occur or not is first and foremost up to him."
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