The Fog of Peace and the Clarity of War

In response to my post from last night, our Hungarian correspondent László sends his observations on the war in Ukraine.

The Fog of Peace and the Clarity of War

An Incomplete View of Ukraine from Hungary

by László

First, please watch this video that allegedly shows apparently bloodthirsty Ukrainian neo-Nazi folks; I will come back to it later:

[Rumble video]

The weird phenomenon of lacking real and first-hand information about the Slavic world, which the Baron wrote about, is not only an issue in the Anglosphere. Most people in Hungary, including me, do not have much clue about what is really going in Russia or Ukraine either, for a historically long time, to the point that we are actually cut off from these countries in many ways.

It does not mean that we Hungarians do not understand them on a human level when we meet members of their “tribes”; for example, when they come as tourists to Hungary or when we go to their countries. At its base the Russian culture is not alien to us. So whenever I have met Russians or any other kinds of Slavs in my life, I got on very well with them. Kind, friendly people with very similar roots and habits.

Yes, Hungary is a language-island in a predominantly Slavic neigbourhood, but it is not just that. The total silence about the lives of our neigbours in the media during recent decades must have been politically deliberate. And, as a result, today there seems to be a schism between Russia and Ukraine on the one hand and Hungary on the other; and perhaps between Russia and Ukraine and entire “West”. But what is the “West”? Russia is part, and should be part, of the West according to its set of basic values and human and social norms. They are definitely a high civilization that is Christian and organizes itself around the humanistic Golden Rule. Basically the same goes for Ukraine.

But there have been problems with Ukraine: it is, of course, not only about the abuse of the Hungarian minority there; all the other minorities have been persecuted, first and foremost the Russians.

A recent story: the Ukrainian ambassador to Hungary, reportedly crying, expressed herself in a way that outraged many Hungarians. Index, a leftist Hungarian media outlet, is apparently on the side of the ambassador’s Greta Thunberg-like emotional outburst. The ambassador spoke on March 4 in Budapest, at a conference of Political Capital, a shady NGO that is funded by George Soros’ infamous Open Society Foundations:

As part of her understandably emotional, heated monologue, the Ukrainian ambassador also touched on the role of Hungary, and her belief that Hungary does have a chance to mobilise the West [for the cause of Ukraine].

“Strategic calm you will only have in the grave,” said Lyubov Nepop, presumably referring to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s statement on public television last Sunday that strategic calm is needed to prevent Hungary from being drawn into the war that is going on in neighbouring Ukraine.

“Do you put the reduction of household energy costs before human lives? […] The anniversary of the 1848 [Hungarian] revolution is coming up and you are talking about cutting the price of electricity? Have you no shame? Do those who put cost-cutting before freedom have the right to celebrate on 15 March? Please, only those who have the courage to stand up for freedom should take to the streets this year!” the ambassador said.

Back to the above neo-Nazi video. It was surprising and enlightening for me, because even though news about the abuse of the Hungarian minority living on the territory of Ukraine has been frequent in the past decade, I did not know the reason for it. Hungarians have been literally harassed, persecuted and handled as second-class citizens. Ukrainian Hungarians who obtained Hungarian citizenship were doxxed and put on a death-list some years ago by a neo-Nazi death squad. They have been denied equal rights, for example the right to use their native Hungarian language in schools and other public institutions; and their leaders have been physically attacked, and threatened and their offices raided by violent paramilitary groups.

So until I came across this video yesterday about a group of — apparently and literally Nazi — Ukrainians, I had no idea how exactly the oppression of the minorities could be taking place there. Do the Nazis have popular support? I had no idea. The video shows that they do, at least some. How widespread this support has been among the population at large I know nothing about. But it is clear that the Nazi authorities could count on at least a minority of Ukrainian neo-Nazis in their persecution of the local Hungarians and others.

However, I am not sure whether this sort of animosity is going on between large groups of average Ukrainian folks and the Hungarian minority — as I just wrote above, I do not have much information. But most people are just good humans, I suppose, over there as well.

I know that many civil communities in Hungary are now helping the fleeing Ukrainians in Hungary in every possible way, with food and shelter. Not only the Hungarian-speaking Ukrainians, but also those who speak only Ukrainian or other local languages are being helped, of course. And there is now an official state programme for saving those people, even housing and employing them in Hungary.

There is no conclusion to this story. Only escalation, I am afraid.

Caveat: Even if I wanted to be objective, I could not be: I do not have enough information — and that is the point. Therefore I could not show the story of the other side: the opinion of the average Ukrainian. It is not only the fog of war; it is also the fog of peace.

But there is something here that I call ‘the clarity of war’: the hitherto hidden and somewhat frozen animosities between nationalities living in the area are coming to the surface as they are being amplified under pressure. Which is most probably also a goal of the Powers That Be with this war. For the Great Fascist Reset to take place, we all have to be divided.

For previous essays by László, see the László Archives.

20 thoughts on “The Fog of Peace and the Clarity of War

  1. It is looking like Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Western Russia will become “enSlav-ed” to the new fascist order rather soon, and after they get past their learning curve, the rest of us on other continents are next.
    I was aghast when Madame Hilarity stridently called for public and even volunteer support for Ukraine this past weekend, but then I remembered who was the Secretary of State when Ukraine broke free from Russia in 2014. She also had done a lousy job with Arab Spring and Lord knows what else.
    Shoot, she even tried to use U-Kraine to lift Trump out of the Presidency that she thought was hers. Crazy last days we have here.

      • I am sorry, I got my timelines wrong. Did Madame Hilarity serve in Obama’s first term? I had thought that it was the other way around. Of course, George Soros was the big boss anyway.

    • So your idea of people being “enslaved”, is that they want to go – East or West – instead of bowing down to the wishes of a thuggish dictator who threatens them with bombing and invasion?

      • No, en-Slav-ed. Russians, the last time I checked, are of a different race. The Poles, Hungarians, and Ukrainians are Slavs with relationships that go back almost a millennia.

        • “Slav” was not originally an ethnic signifier; it comes from the Latin for “slave”, due to the many people taken as slaves by the Ottomans from central and eastern Europe, which included, for example, Hungarians.

          • Hungarians are not slavic. never were, never will be.
            and the word for Slaves are not coming from the Ottoman times..

  2. Good analogy. Since the COVID-19 hoax has come to pass, I expected an even greater psychological operation from the hidden hands. What concerns me most is what may be the next card in their deck. I presume it somehow includes a western led one world digital currency

  3. It all started right after the collapse of the USSR. I already wrote about this before.
    Instead of building a prosperous country (at the time of the collapse, Ukraine was much more economically and socially developed than Russia), they began to look for enemies and oppose their eastern neighbor. They began to invent a national identity for themselves. Moreover, not on the basis of Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkov, but on the basis of Galicia annexed in the 1940s

    After the 2000s, videos “Moskalyaku – on a gilyak” appeared on the network (the inhabitants of Moscovy should be hung on a branch) and Children sang the songs “Bandera – our father.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofEF5l72sjQ

    Apparently, ethnic Russians, whose ancestors fought Bandera, did not want to identify themselves with him too much. Instead of reaching an agreement with a part of their population, the authorities decided to forcibly force them into Ukrainization.

    And so in 2014 this split occurred in the country.

    I think the Ukrainians would allow the Hungarians to have their own identity. But then I had to do the same with the Russians. But they really didn’t want to.

    Well, something like that. All that I described is a very well-known mechanism.

    • Ya kinda sorta forgot all of those Russian Divisions that changed sides and fought ole Uncle Joe didn’t you Elana? Including a large number of Russian and Ukrainian Generals that changed sides. Or the vast majority of Ukraine population who sided with the Germans against Stalin, especially after what the Soviets did to them.

    • Obviously Ukrainians weren’t as developed or prosperous, as they wanted to be…

      And now they’ve tasted Western-style freedom, they don’t want to give it back…. Can you blame them?!

  4. There used to be discrimination against ethnic Hungarians in Serbia, though my Serb (and part-Hungarian) ex-wife didn’t appreciate my mentioning it.

  5. Concerning discrimination of Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries, in the 1990’s the Hungarian government mentioned Kyiv as the one positive exception in that compared to Bucharest, Beograd and Bratislava. Now Ukraine seems to be worst in this respect, partly because the Slovakian and Roumanian goverments had to adapt their stance after accepting EU-membership, and Serbia is also on the EU waiting list. What I wonder about is when did this change to the worse happen in Ukraine, because historically the Ukrainian and Hungarian nations have always been friendly towards each other. Was it something that started after the Majdan, when anti-Russian forces were unleashed, in combination with Orban trying to remain friends with Russia? Or is it mainly the discrimination of Russian speakers since 2014, also repercussing on other national minoroties i Ukraine?

    • Definitely started after Maidan, when the government were replaced with DS puppets. They felt aggression towards Hungarians especially toward the non-liberal (illiberal) government led by Viktor Orban. Its a fact, under their leadership cared very little about the needs of the local population. They worked on goals dictated by their owners.

  6. Ukraine seems to be an artificial country, the same as, say, Syria. Different people, with different origins and cultures, thrown together for the political and economic purposes of outsiders. Ukraine’s borders have been shifting around for centuries.

  7. I wonder if patriotic Ukrainians in the western part of the country would want to break off from the other parts? Have their own sandbox?

    Part of Transcarpathia would go to Hungary, the rest to Slovakia, since their history is completely different, and they were not part of Galicia. That’s the small oblast all the way west. There is truth in their claim that the western Ukrainians have been put upon by the various powers that be.

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