Liberal Transylvanian politician on national homogeneity
June 24th, 2015A Transylvanian commentator fears that the PM’s claims about Hungarian national homogeneity are mistaken and chime badly with the interests of transborder Hungarians.
The Hungarian nation is a culturally and linguistically diverse community, Béla Markó, former leader of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania writes in Népszabadság. Markó criticizes PM Viktor Orbán, who in the debate over immigration and multiculturalism said that Hungary has always been a homogeneous country (although Mr Orbán said this when comparing Hungary with Western countries that have sizeable communities of Asian and African origin). Hungarian communities within and outside the borders of Hungary use different dialects, Markó notes. He adds that different parts of the Hungarian cultural community often encountered very different political challenges in their history, and thus it would be hard to find a common Hungarian historical memory. The Transylvanian commentator recalls that the slogan of putative national homogeneity has a nasty tinge in Transylvania, where Hungarians’ rights were curtailed under the Ceausescu dictatorship, in the name of strengthening Romanian national homogeneity.
Tags: culture, immigration, Orbán, trans, transborder politics