PAUL HOLLANDER
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have been undertaken on purely or even largely humanitarian or moral
grounds. For understandable historical reasons, Hungarians, both edu–
cated and less educated, are inclined to profound cynicism in public–
political matters. They were systematically lied to during forty years of
communist rule, and the three freely elected governments since
I989
have not inspired much confidence either, since they have tolerated or
abetted corruption. Hungarian history as a whole lends little support to
positive conceptions of public morality and politics, as this small coun–
try endured a succession of invaders, occupiers, and betrayals. The self–
less heroes of Hungarian history usually lost. There is a psychology of
suspicion in a small and weak country toward the big and powerful-in
this case the U.S. and NATO. A skeptical moral relativism is an under–
standable response to decades of fraudulent official certainties. Julia
Lang wrote (in
Nepszabadsag,
the most widely read daily newspaper):
It has become acceptable that the superplanes of the Good Alliance
should nightly fly over our heads to smash the Evil Empire and we
must rejoice over this. Because at last we are on the side of Virtue.
Because it feels so good
to
believe that this is all there is to it: that we
cannot allow genocide to go on here, in the middle of Europe....Did
we appoint ourselves as the best? Are we designing the new world
order, deciding between truth and falsehood, Good and Evil? On
what grounds?
Another journalist, Gyula Hegyi, asked in the daily
Magyar Hirlap
why
the Serbs have been singled out as the symbol and repository of evil in
the world. He theorized that this happened because Serb nationalism
collided with the interests of "globalism" (a murky and overused con–
cept in Hungary as in the United States); the Serbs could not have been
allowed to challenge these interests with impunity. Conspiracy theories
included the belief that Hungary was admitted to NATO a short while
before the airstrikes began only to provide bases for the bombardment
and possible ground invasion. While a majority did vote in favor of join–
ing NATO, many were jittery about the specific obligations membership
would entail. There was also disbelief that the bombing of the Chinese
embassy in Belgrade could have been accidental-an attitude combin–
ing an overestimation of the military power and technology of the
United States with some conspiratorial scenario: if it had not been
decided upon at the highest level, it could have been some rogue element
in the CIA! Many Hungarians also voiced the suspicion that the Lewin–
sky affair motivated President Clinton to push for intervention to divert
attention from his problem, as was the case in the well-known movie.
