The End of Civic Compassion

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/181274/end-civic-compassion

No paywall link
https://archive.li/RZIDd

Under its autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Hungary introduced in early 2020 a new National Core Curriculum. The curriculum presents Hungarian literature as the literature of ethnic Hungarian populations, even those living outside of the borders of the state of Hungary after the Treaty of Trianon created present-day Hungary in 1920, sowing national resentment similar to that in post–World War I Germany after the Treaty of Versailles led to the loss of German land and colonies. The course includes thematic studies of topics like the Treaty of Trianon in Hungarian literature.

Besides evoking nostalgia and resentful longing for a “Greater Hungary,” it pointedly excludes the work of Imre Kertész, Hungary’s only Nobel Prize winner for literature, surrendering a national point of pride in order to erase the contributions of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. And it adds to the core curriculum Ferenc Herczeg, a minor right-wing nationalist playwright who was celebrated and praised by Miklós Horthy, the World War II Hungarian leader who brought about an alliance between Hungary and Nazi Germany. Previous revisions of the core curriculum in prior Orbán administrations had already elevated similar minor writers into the pantheon on an obvious political basis, such as József Nyírő, a member of Parliament for the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, who harbored a passionate hatred of Jews. The new curriculum presents far-right Hungarian nationalist leaders of the past as heroes.

The revamping doesn’t end there. In May 2022, Orbán reorganized his administration to place education under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for maintaining order through law enforcement. A few months later—shortly after declaring that Hungary would not become a “mixed-race” country—Orbán was featured as a main speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Dallas, where he was greeted by American conservatives with a standing ovation. In March 2024, Orbán visited the Heritage Foundation for a private event. The next day, he was fêted by Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Viktor Orbán is a darling of today’s GOP. But Americans do not need to look abroad to find their own versions of educational authoritarianism. Toni Morrison, like Imre Kertész, is a Nobel Prize winner in literature. Beloved, Morrison’s most famous novel, concerns the horrors of slavery. It became the subject of controversy in Virginia, an infamous slave state from its Colonial days until the Civil War; parents targeted the book as obscene. In 2016, the Virginia state legislature passed what colloquially came to be called the “Beloved bill.” It would have allowed parents to request that any material they deemed to have sexually explicit content be replaced by other material. As in Hungary, the bill would have effectively removed the book from any required curriculum in Virginia. Virginia’s governor at the time, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, vetoed the bill. But in Virginia’s gubernatorial election of 2021, McAuliffe went down to defeat by Republican Glenn Youngkin, who ran on a platform of “parents’ rights,” such as the right to have their children not be exposed to books that might make them uncomfortable.

*snip*

[SarahD]

1. Coming to a country near you.

If you're Mexican or Canadian.