Racism in Hungary: top ex-judge claims national IQ level lowered by Indian origins of the Roma
16 September 2024
In a recent Facebook post, Béla Pokol, a constitutional judge appointed by Fidesz in 2011, claimed that Hungarian IQ scores remain high despite the presence of ‘Gypsies’ – who for ‘biological reasons’ have lower intelligence, bringing down the national average. If this was just another foolish old man giving voice to his bigotry, it could be dismissed as an incident of little consequence – but it is not, and it cannot – for this dangerous nonsense is symptomatic of something far more profound and toxic in Hungary today.
As 444.hu reported, the judge whose mandate expired in 2023, and who was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit on 15 March 2024, posted the following on his public Facebook account
“We are so smart. And if the Indian origin of the gypsies is correct, then the IQ of 82 they brought with them from there created a reduction of our total IQ average of 99 - counting their population of one million - not bad even with this reduction."
In addition to his constitutional expertise, the right-wing Pokol is also reputed to be a sociologist within the degraded sphere of regime intellectual life. His biologically-based concept of racial intelligence – likened to nasty bar-room philosophising by 444.hu – marshals long-discredited dodgy data to assert that Hungarian IQ is in fact higher than the measurements show, the average score brought low by the Roma. This is the calibre of the man who was awarded the State’s highest honour "in recognition of his responsible work for the protection of Hungary's constitutional order, his (...) research, and his valuable public activity."
Since the 1990s, the term neo-racism came to denote strategies adopted by racists to differentiate and dehumanise others without resort to physiognomy or racial hierarchy; attempting to appear less morally reprehensible, the ‘new racists’ claimed it was not about biological superiority but rather incompatible and conflicting cultures and values. However, when it came to antigypsyism in Hungary, the elites never bothered to camouflage their racism with ‘differentialist’ trimmings; and to this day, the biological bleeds right into the cultural with consummate ease.
In 2013, Zsolt Bayer infamously wrote that “a significant part of the Gypsies is unfit for coexistence… They are not fit to live among people. These Gypsies are animals, and they behave like animals… These animals shouldn't be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved - immediately and regardless of the method.” Bayer, a founder member of Fidesz, and a long-time confidante of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán remains notorious as a purveyor of prejudice, racism and hatred. When pressed to condemn this hate speech a Fidesz spokesperson stated that Bayer wrote this article “not as a politician, but as a journalist”, and that “we don’t qualify the opinions of journalists.” The regime later awarded Bayer, the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross for his “exemplary journalistic work.”
That same year protests by university teachers, students and researchers called out Géza Jeszenszky, Hungary’s ambassador to Norway, for his suggestion in a university textbook that “the reason why many Roma are mentally ill is because in Roma culture it is permitted for sisters and brothers or cousins to marry each other or just to have sexual intercourse with each other.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that Jeszenszky could not be accused of prejudice for his words, “which he wrote as a university professor and not as ambassador.”
The slippage between the biological and cultural was unabashedly ‘out there’ when former Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Boross stated in 2015 that “the masses of Muslims” crossing the border “don’t just come from different cultures but their psychic apparatus, their biological and genetic endowments are different”, and for this reason cultural integration just does not work: “It hasn’t worked with the Gypsies, although they have lived with us for hundreds of years”.
Considering what passes for elite discourse, the ubiquity of anti-Roma racism in Hungarian society hardly comes as a surprise: in response to the proposition that ‘Proneness to criminality is in the blood of the Gypsies’ almost 60% of the population agreed. Venomous racism, propagated by the Fidesz lumpen elite, comes from the very top, and the rhetoric of the Prime Minister Orbán, illustrates the slippage between racisms old and new, between the cultural and the biological. Orbán famously posited that there is no cultural identity in a population without a stable ethnic composition, and that economic prosperity depends on preserving ethnic homogeneity ‘as life has proven that too much mixing causes trouble’.
‘Deep alarm’ was the phrase chosen by UNCERD in 2019, concerning the prevalence of hate speech targeting Roma, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and other minorities – especially that so much of it emanated from the highest levels of government. UNCERD called on the government to stop racist hate speech and incitement to violence and to “publicly condemn and distance itself, including in the media and on the internet, from racist hate speech by public figures, including politicians, and take measures to protect vulnerable affected groups.” In a 2022 speech, Orbán doubled down and stated “We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race,” said added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations”.
In a Europe where nativist far-right parties, as well as overtly neo-Nazi groupings continue to gain ground electorally, it has finally dawned on the political parties clustered around the centre that democracy itself is imperilled. Racist hate speech has become dangerously normalised as part of a wider relentless assault on decency and solidarity. Such exclusivist and dehumanising rhetoric destroys trust, foments fear, and degrades the public sphere, with unabashed bigots like Viktor Orbán taking the lead, and racialised minorities such as the Roma bearing the brunt.
