Dancing Over Catastrophes: The Far Right and Roma in Hungary

Ágnes Daróczi—today Hungary’s most prominent Roma rights activist—cut her political teeth in Miskolc. Yet she finds little inspiration in her memories of those heady days. “I’m afraid if we built this sort of solidarity action now,” she told me in a resigned voice, “we would not overcome.” Daróczi’s sentiments represent more than a veteran activist’s nostalgia for the heyday of Hungarian liberalism. Tensions between the country’s Magyar majority and Roma minority are at an all-time high. In the provinces, real and imagined cigánybnözés (“Gypsy-crime”) has galvanized neofascistic militias that terrorize Roma communities. At the national level, 17 percent of Hungarians have now embraced the explicitly anti-Roma platform put forth by Jobbik, arguably Europe’s most dangerous far-right party. Widespread dissatisfaction with the economic outcomes of transition and Western integration have relit the smoldering embers of Hungarian nationalism—undermining democratic values and institutions that had only begun to take root.