Viktor Orbán's anti-Enlightenment discourse and nationalism stir homophobia in Hungary

In recent years, homophobic attacks have increased in Hungary, for example during the Budapest Pride Marches (Renkin, 2009, p. 20). Additionally, in 2017, the US-based anti-LGBTQ group International Organisation of the Family (IOF) was invited by Hungary’s conservative right-wing president Viktor Orbán to hold its big annual gathering in Budapest. This year, the theme was Building Family-Friendly Nations: Making Families Strong Again. This article argues that Orbán’s position on the LGBTQ community is part of his anti-Enlightenment nationalism which creates the right circumstances for anti-LGBTQ groups and stir homophobic violence in Hungary.

Anti-Enlightenment and tolerance

In many speeches, Orbán has attacked the European Union (EU) for its liberal values and especially immigration policies, accusing the EU of being dominated by a ‘’relativizing liberal ideology that’s an insult to families.'' By mentioning ‘liberal ideology’, Orbán not only refers to the Enlightenment and its fundamental values, such as freedom and equality, he also positions himself in a very different political tradition: the anti-Enlightenment tradition. In this tradition, the rights of the individual are deemed less important than the rights of the people, or, of the nation. A strong nation is what really matters for Orbán.

In his speech for the Building Family-Friendly Nation summit in Budapest, he again attacked Europe. ‘’Europe is old, rich and weak. The part of the world that released more and more crowds of people in the recent years is young, poor, and strong’’, Orbán said. Again, Orbán’s speech is a good illustration of his anti-Enlightenment ideology, in which it is argued that liberalism and Enlightenment produce a weak territory without a firm identity and/or faith. The inflow of (Muslim) immigrants is perceived as an inflow of people with a strong identity and/or faith, which would lead to further weakening of Europe’s identity. Thus, in Orbán’s eyes, Europe is weak because it allows diversity. Therefore, Orbán argued, ‘’it’s a national interest to restore natural reproduction. Not one interest among others – but the only one. It’s a European interest too. It is the European interest.’’

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Orbán tolerates homosexuals, but does not see them as equals

In an interview with Index – a Hungarian news site – Orbán talked about homosexuality and tolerance in Hungary: ‘’Hungary is a tolerant nation. Tolerance, however, does not mean that we would apply the same rules for people whose life style is different from our own. We differentiate between them and us. Tolerance means patience, tolerance means an ability to coexist, this is the basis of the Hungarian Constitution which clearly differentiates between a material relationship between a man and a woman and other, different forms of cohabitation. We are going to keep this.’’ This again illustrates his anti-Enlightenment position very clearly. In this discourse, Orbán tolerates homosexuals, but does not see them as equals. Besides, Orbán argues that the life style of homosexuals are different from ‘our own’ life style. By mentioning this, he argues that homosexuals are different from Hungarians, who are heterosexuals, according to Orbán. Thus, the norm is heterosexuality, which makes the national subject, the Hungarian, heterosexual. This shows that heteronormativity is part of Orbán’s conservative nationalist ideology.

Banal nationalism and message politics

Opposed to the liberal ideology, Orbán uses the conservative nationalist ideology which puts Christianity as the nation’s principle in defining the nationality of Hungarians in order to reach banal nationalism. ‘Banal nationalism’ refers to ‘’the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced […] Daily, the nation is indicated, or ‘’flagged’’, in the lives of its citizenry’’ (Billig, 1995, p. 6). Thus, the term ‘banal’ refers to the hegemonic quality of this kind of nationalism (Maly, 2016, p. 168). Orbán is constantly flagging this nationalistic identity in his message.  In many Facebook posts he is referring to the importance of the nation state. For example, in one of them, he argued ‘’The future is written in the Hungarian language.’’ In another one, he said ‘’Hungary will never become an immigrant country.’’

Romantic relationships between two men or two women do not conform to Orbán’s ‘norm’ – the traditional Christian values and (inevitably) heterosexuality – which makes homosexuals ‘different’

In order to help construct banal nationalism, the political strategy of the nationalist party ‘’has to be in line with the image of the party and its politicians, and politicians have to actively sell themselves and their message’’ (Maly, 2016, p. 169). ‘Message’ is not only about the literal content of the political talk (what is literally being said), but how and when it is said: ‘’Message does not refer to a politician’s communication about Issues so much as what the politician seems to communicate about his or her identity and personal values through selectively taking up some Issues and avoiding others’’ (Silverstein, 2012, p. 2). By focussing on certain issues, the politician acquires a ‘political persona’. Silverstein (2012, p. 2) states that ‘’Message strategists […] are fashioning […] an electorally viable political persona through all manner of signs that creatively gesture toward this persona without explicitly describing it, though the political press, the media, can generally be relied to do so.’’ In the case of Orbán and his political party Fidesz, Orbán is the one who embodies the message.

By mainly focussing on traditional Christian values – what he does in most speeches – such as family and ‘natural reproduction’, he creates the image of a true Christian man who defends Europe and Hungary and their Christian identity. His personal life fits in perfectly with this image: he is married and has five children.

Orbán also uses his Facebook page – which has over 560,000 likes – as a tool to portray this image by posting issues on Christianity. He has posted several videos of speeches in which he emphasizes the importance of the Christian identity. Besides, one of his Facebook posts shows a photo of Orbán speaking to a group of people in a church and is captioned with ‘’With Christian intellectuals.’’  In another post, he said ‘’We Hungarians made a decision to help our Christian brethren suffering from presecution, according to our strength.’’

Orbán Viktor

Orbán has never actually said he is the defender of the Christian identity in Hungary and Europe, but several media did that work for him instead: they have picked up the signs and described the image he portrays. Implicit to his image is the rejection of homosexuality. By using the term ‘natural reproduction’ in his speech, Orbán refers to the reproduction involving sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Romantic relationships between two men or two women do not conform to Orbán’s ‘norm’ – the traditional Christian values and (inevitably) heterosexuality – which makes homosexuals ‘different’. In the anti-Enlightenment discourse, this can be described as the ‘natural order’: the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and there are and should be merely two genders. In this sense, LGBTQ people are perceived as ‘unnatural’ and ‘unequal’ as opposed to heterosexuals.

Billig (1995, p. 1) stated that much of the ‘slaughter’ of human beings by one another this century has been performed ‘’in the name of the nation […] to protect the very principle of the nationhood’’. A nationalistic discourse that is built on an explicit ‘us versus them’ logic always leads to exclusion of certain groups. When ‘the other’ becomes more and more constructed as ‘the other’ and ‘less worthy', there will be a greater chance that exclusion eventually will lead to violence. In this sense, ‘slaughter’ can be defined as the exclusion of or violence against the LGBTQ community justified by religious beliefs.

Global identity versus national identity

Orbán’s nationalism does not merely focus on the nation itself. Instead, in his anti-Enlightenment nationalist discourse, he seeks to improve Hungary by transforming the EU with its liberal values. Besides, he argues to be open to non-Hungarians, though this is very minimal. For instance, Orbán excludes (Muslim) refugees, but says he welcomes Western European ‘refugees’ – the ones that are oppressed by liberalism – to ‘seek asylum’ in Hungary. ‘’The panicked German, Dutch, French and Italian politicians and journalists, forced to leave their countries will find here the Europe they lost at home,’’ says Orbán. This shows that the western Christian culture fuels Orbán’s nationalism: not migration itself stirs nationalist protest, but migration from another culture does. 

The connection between the national identity and the global identity stirs the most anger at Hungarian Pride Marches among Hungarian right-wing nationalists

Also, the message indicates an invitation for groups like the anti-LGBTQ organisation IOF. Moreover, the message is appealing to radical right media that share the same ideology as Orbán, such as Altright.com and white supremacist online magazine American Renaissance. They describe him as ‘’one of the most important politicians in Europe today’’, ‘’the sort of leader the majority of people want for their own countries’’ and ‘’a true statesman.’’ As Maly (2016, p. 266) pointed out, ‘’the radical-right populist and nationalist parties have capitalised on the losers of globalisation. They position themselves in relation to new cultural and socio-economic cleavages and present themselves as protectors of the people against the threats of globalisation.’’ Orbán presents himself as the defender of ‘the people’ from the threats of globalisation – on both national and international level – though this group of people he stands for represent only a small part of the whole: he is only referring to white Christian right-wing conservatives.

Homophobia in Hungary can also be explained by this anti-globalisation position which is part of Orbán’s anti-Enlightenment nationalism. Because of the national-transnational tensions, the LGBTQ community and politics are associated with the nation’s transnational ‘others’ – especially ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ (Renkin, 2009, p. 24). In this view, LGBTQ people can be seen as the symbols of the liberal transnational ‘other’ of the EU or the West. The Pride March, for example, is the symbol of the global gay identity. In every Pride March around the world, people wave the rainbow flag, wear pink clothing, and carry around posters with slogans such as ‘The Gay Family’. Even the timing of the Budapest Pride March matches with the all the other European Pride Marches. By participating in this march, LGBTQ people identify themselves with the western community and its Enlightenment values – especially equality.

At the same time, the LGBTQ community in Hungary identifies itself with the nation by marching through public and nationally symbolic spaces, instead of through the ‘gay cruising zone’ (Renkin, 2009, p. 28). For example, in 2001, the march started at Heroes’ Square, the most symbolically national space of Hungary where public national rituals are being held. The connection between the national identity and the global identity stirs the most anger at Hungarian Pride Marches among Hungarian right-wing nationalists: ‘’His visible embodiment of a pride simultaneously gay and Hungarian […] drew by far the strongest reaction that day: a veritable storm of insults, spitting, and threats barely held back by the police line’’ (Renkin, 2009, pp. 30-31). Being gay, in this sense, does not match the heteronormative national subject, which makes homosexuals the nation’s ‘other’ who align themselves with the transnational liberal community.

Conclusion

What the above shows us is that Viktor Orbán’s anti-LGBT stance is an index of his anti-Enlightenment nationalism. Anti-LGBTQ thinking is implicit in his discourse about the nation and the ‘natural order’. He carries out this way of thinking through message politics. By doing so, Orbán is another politician who has taken part in the new international far-right network. Orbán’s anti-Enlightenment discourse has led to the banalisation of his nationalism and the idea that homosexuals are not equal to the heteronormative national subject. Moreover, it has created a mismatch in the identity of the Hungarian LGBTQ people who seek to identify themselves with both global as well as national community, which results in more anger among Hungarian right-wing nationalists. As a result, Orbán’s anti-Enlightenment nationalism stirs homophobic violence and creates a ‘safe haven’ for anti-LGBTQ groups in Hungary.

References 

Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.

Lempert, M. and Silverstein, M. (2012). Creatures of Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Maly, I. (2016). ‘Scientific’ nationalism. N-VA and the discursive battle for the Flamish nation. Nations and Nationalism 22(2), pp. 266-286. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12144

Renkin, H. (2009). Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary. Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology 53, pp. 20-37. DOI: 10.3167/fcl.2009.530102