Did you two visit the same country?

First, I read Anne Applebaum.

Hungary’s ruling party respects no restraints of any kind. It has gone much further than Law and Justice in politicizing the state media and destroying the private media, achieving the latter by issuing threats and blocking access to advertising.

Then I read David P. Goldman.

And then we have Viktor Orban, who has governed Hungary for eight years, long enough for the voters to get to know him, with an enormous popular majority. . . . Mr. Orban’s opponents claim that he has put his thumb on the scales by using state institutions to build media support for the government, but no one says that he has falsified votes or intimidated opponents. Opposition politics in Hungary is open and uninhibited.

The Hazony Question, of nationalism vs. transnationalism, is salient in both pieces. Applebaum’s piece speaks to the dangers of nationalism, with one group using the power of the state to deny status to other groups. Goldman’s piece speaks to the dangers of transnationalism, with unelected officials injecting themselves into internal affairs.

8 thoughts on “Did you two visit the same country?

  1. Without reading Applebaum I’m guessing that by “blocking access to advertising.” she means shifting government advertising money from left leaning media to right leaning media.

  2. Consider this embarrassing line from Applebaum:

    In Hungary, the lie is unoriginal: It is the belief, shared by the Russian government and the American alt-right, in the superhuman powers of George Soros, the Hungarian Jewish billionaire who is supposedly plotting to bring down the nation through the deliberate importation of migrants, even though no such migrants exist in Hungary.

    Come on, what kind of logic is “even though” here? Talk about the collapse of standards of rigor in our public intellectual life. How would Applebaum like this line: “Donald Trump supposedly wants to finish the border wall, even though no such additional miles exist” as evidence of a “big lie”? Ridiculous.

    And there is of course no question that Soros’ International Migration Initiative proudly and openly works assiduously to try to relax border controls, to advocate for amnesty and against detention and deportation of illegally present aliens. Billions of dollars with progressive winds to its back can certainly buy lots of influence, especially in developing countries.

    “Bring down the nation,” is irresponsible rhetoric. What people in those countries – any many more developed ones too – are opposed to is the irreversible demographic (and thus, political) transformation of their nations, the introduction of corrosive identity politics as a permanent feature of life, and the kind of bad results they can observe in Western nations which were cavalier in their management of the issue.

    As usual, progressives don’t really care for ‘democracy’, but only a “democracy of convenience”, that is, “democracy with correct, progressive results.” As soon a politically significant number of voters oppose some progressive initiative, democracy must be overruled by ideology.

    Or overruled by demographic transformation, that is, “dissolving the people and electing another.” For example, California’s One Party State.

    • In terms of nationalism versus trans-nationalism, I still see the transnationalism over-stating the dangers of the nationalism and nationalism supporters having any clear picture of the nationalism goals outside of raging against Muslim immigrants and liberal colleges.

      1) At this point, I am not seeing a clear picture of nationalism goals. In Europe the movement against Muslim Immigrants seems to only have limited impact and here in the US, I still trying to understand how stopping illegal aliens mowing lawns in Dallas increases factory jobs in the Mid West Rust Belt. (Also that the flow of illegal aliens has lower the last 10 years than before and it is lot more over-stayed work/student visas.)

      2) The transnationals have been caught flat-footed politically but I still see the economic elite, Koch & Apple, transnationals winning. (In 2016, I did miss that a lot of Midwest voters blamed the Clintons for outsourcing and not Koch Brothers.)

      3) In terms of Trump nationalism, he comes across a the Phantom autocrat that is relatively ineffective at governing. He has not started his wall. (which is most unpopular in the border states)

      4) In terms of California, the really big change politically was not the Hispanic-Americans (who had a baby boom in the 1980s & 1990s) but the increase of white and Asian-American voters going Democrat. Yes there was Hispanic-Immigration over the decades but a lot of it was Hispanic-Americans have a lot more babies in the past.

      5) For the life of me, there is a solution to illegal immigration but we don’t want to go after small businesses (who get mostly small fines for this stuff.)

      • “At this point, I am not seeing a clear picture of nationalism goals.” Duh. Open your eyes. How about making the economic, social and political interests of people who are actually citizens a much higher priority that the interests of people who are not citizens. Despite specious claims of CATO and the like that illegal immigrants are a net economic positive for the country as a whole, there is plenty of evidence that they are not. And they are certainly not a social positive if the resist assimilation, as many do.
        “I still trying to understand how stopping illegal aliens mowing lawns in Dallas increases factory jobs in the Mid West Rust Belt.” Again, Duh. Is it your contention that there are no US manufacturing jobs being filled by illegal aliens? I certain there are, and more than a trivial number. Including in the Midwest. But you’re still missing the point. Most of the blame for the loss of manufacturing jobs is being placed on bad international trade agreements. I happen to think that is not the main cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs, but is a cause.
        “He has not started his wall.” Just factually wrong. Not on the scale its proponents would like, but that’s the fault of congress, not trump. And it take 60 senators to get that done. So mostly the democrats fault.
        “which is most unpopular in the border states” Now you’re just making stuff up.

  3. Applebaum is deeply upset that friends she partied with decades ago won’t speak with her. This makes her observations very interesting, but puts them in a particular light.

  4. “the dangers of nationalism, with one group using the power of the state to deny status to other groups.”

    Not exactly accurate. In what conceivable way could “denying status” to other groups be considered a danger of nationalism relative to supranationalists or anti-nationalists? Much less a charitable view in any sense?

    Yes, I reject the use of “transnationalist” as inaccurate. Wikipedia explains:

    ” In practice transnationalism refers to increasing functional integration of processes that cross-borders or according to others trans bordered relations of individuals, groups, firms and to mobilizations beyond state boundaries. Individuals, groups, institutions and states interact with each other in a new global space where cultural and political characteristic of national societies are combined with emerging multilevel and multinational activities. Transnationalism is a part of the process of capitalist globalization. The concept of transnationalism refers to multiple links and interactions linking people and institutions across the borders of nation-states.”

    This clearly is inappropriate in the context of a discussion of Hungary as the term envisages retention of an autonomous nation state capable of interacting other nation states on its own terms. Orban would have to be considered a transnationalist in that regard.

    “Supranationalism” is the more accurate term. As wikipedia also explains:

    “The Founding Fathers of the European Community and the present European Union said that supranationalism was the cornerstone of the governmental system. This is enshrined in the Europe Declaration made on 18 April 1951, the same day as the European Founding Fathers signed the Treaty of Paris.[5]

    “By the signature of this Treaty, the participating Parties give proof of their determination to create the first supranational institution and that thus they are laying the true foundation of an organised Europe. This Europe remains open to all nations. We profoundly hope that other nations will join us in our common endeavour.”

    Wikipedia further explains unlike the friendly, informal voluntry cooperation implied by “transnationalism,” “supranationalism” takes into account the formal, rigid legal subjugation of member states:

    “The European Economic Community was described by its founder Robert Schuman as midway between confederalism which recognises the complete independence of States in an association and federalism which seeks to fuse them in a super-state. The EU has supranational competences, but it possesses these competences only to the extent that they are conferred on it by its member states (Kompetenz-Kompetenz).Within the scope of these competences, the union exercises its powers in a sovereign manner, having its own legislative, executive, and judicial authorities. The supranational Community also has a chamber for organised civil society including economic and social associations and regional bodies.”

    And if one wants to see examples of out-groups being denied status, just open your morning newspaper and you can read about Marine Le Pen being ordered to undergo psychological testing by supranationalist Macron’s France. As the BBC tells it: “She posted the images back in 2015, including one showing the decapitated body of IS victim James Foley. She has been stripped of her immunity as a parliamentarian and she could still face a fine or even jail.”

    In supranationalist Merkel’s Germany, Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BfV, is being forced by Christian Democrat members of Parliament to recant his findings that right-wing gangs did not chase non-Germans during a late August demonstrations in Chemnitz after the fatal stabbing of a German by a group of migrants, in order to square with Merkel’s unfounded accusations.

    And in the UK, nine people a day on average are arrested for online crimes of speech. You can be sure that the arrests are not for advocating open borders.

    No. It makes no logical sense to suppose that supranationalists are somehow more respecting of out-groups than nationalists. After all nationalists have to live with their fellow dissenters within a confined state. Once supranationalists have poisoned the local well, they can always move on to another place. And this is indeed what we see in reality. Supranationalists may have supreme confidence in their virtues, yet rarely if ever do we see such virtues displayed in practice.

  5. The journalism business has been losing ad revenue to Google and Facebook everywhere in the world.

    Destroying private media? That’s the Google and Facebook business model. With help from the kind of state media that Applebaum approves of.

    State media buys advertising with Google and Facebook too. And private left-wing media companies don’t have the funds to compete with the state’s left-wing media corporations.

    But since state media in France and Britain and Canada and Sweden is left-wing, that’s the good kind of politicized state media, the kind that Applebaum approves of.

  6. The applebaum rhetoric reminds me of the Sam Harris and Masha Gessen podcast where they are discussing Russia. Sam keeps pushing to get a feel for what “the opposition” feels like there – she keeps answering that there is none, it is disallowed and crushed by Putting.

    He keeps asking, thinking she is dodging, and she sticks to her non-answer. Seemed bizzare to me. Surely there are dissidents, otherwise who are these people getting arrested or writing from exile?

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