Multiculturalism in Europe:Who is Behind It?

" Hungary's future: anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Roma?.....Considering Hungary’s precarious economic situation, one might anticipate politicians would use the popular (but frequently refuted) accusation that new migrants can create a financial burden on a country’s resources. But Orbán has found a different emphasis: the apparent inability of Hungary to be multicultural. Multicultural societies, Orbán said in his annual state of the nation speech in Brussels, are just a ‘delusion’ and Hungarians are just not capable of living in one. “The Hungarian man” Orbán said in one particularly unforgettable quote “is, by nature, politically incorrect. That is, he has not lost his common sense”.

Orbán’s disavowal of multiculturalism (“Hungary has never been multicultural” he also stated, “We consider it a value that Hungary is a homogenous country”) and his positioning of the average Hungarian as a monocultural drone are disturbing as he negates the (albeit turbulent) multicultural and intellectual history of Hungary. Hungary, just as other nation states in the region – such as Austria and the Czech Republic - have not always presented themselves as ‘pure’ cultural and linguistic nations. In fact, the multiculturalism of the Habsburg Empire that once encompassed the region was the norm, and there is renewed interest in how pluralist approaches to diversity were pursued and what we can learn from them in present day Europe.

As one of the spoof posters declares in a perfect repost to Orbán’s declarations of homogeneity, “A monocultural and monolingual kingdom is weak and fragile”. This is not a phrase invented by activists, but in fact a 1,000 year old quote from King István himself – the founding father of Hungary and its first king....."
Source: Hungary's future: anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Roma?





 

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