Take the skinheads, er, fruit and veg shopping??? **

File under only in Hungary (?)

Last night's wintry wonderland of snow falling, white, fluffy, Laura and my virgin footprints along the snow covered tram tracks after midnight on the near-carless eve...you get the idyllic image I'm sure. It was purty.

The scene could only be marred of course by our seemingly innocent detour to the non-stop produce stand at Déli Palyaudvar (that's the southern rail station to the rest of us) where the late night hangers on were standing around, sipping their Hungarian beer from the can, with the tunes cranking, only the unmistakable and painfully repetitive refrain said stereo was some aggro tune that sounded somehting like "blah blah magyarol SKINHEADS blah blah magyarol". There was nothing ironic about the message, whatever the missed nuances might have been. To be honest, there was nothing about the looks of the possee that made the reading of this scene any less vague.

This encounter might be less telling were it not for a very real sense that the oppositional political landscape is being dominated by right wing nationalism rather than liberal, progressive opposition. And the most visible face of this right wing nationalism is of course a growing (did it ever shrink?) skinhead crowd. This is the same crowd that throws eggs, epitaphs and verbal assaults and threats at gay pride marchers. The same ones that are kicking off in the streets on Hungarian national holidays. And they are the same ones who support the growing skinhad music scene dominated by bands that lash out in hateful language against jews, gypsies and queers. It's ugly. It's dangerous. And it's increasingly violent and confrontational. I mean, when I was in London, and a rock was thrown through the window of a decidedly dodgy (and quite gnarly punk rock) bar, the thought that it might have had any racist tinge to it never crossed my mind. Even in Millwall country. Drunks abound, and drunks do stupid things like throw rocks through windows. But last week, while at Siraly, a really lovely cafe that is known (and promotes itself) as a hip space for Jewish youth culture, someone throw a beer bottle at the glass door. maybe just a drunk, but that's not the immediate conclusion my friends came to. Even if it was 'just' a drunk, the thought that it was a very real possibility that it was a hate crime, changes the stakes immensely. Last year, I was waiting for a taxi with a friend Ivona (read- female) outside of Cafe Eklectica, an openly gay-friendly restaurant in a city with few such self-defined places. We had an egg thrown at us in an aggressive fashion from a slow moving car. Coincidence? I quite doubt it. It would be difficult to come up with another reading of that scene, especially considering the violent and aggressive backlash against the gay pride march later that year.

I saw with Eva a really great documentary about this movement in Hungary, a film that focussed on one particular band from this scene. The film is called Rocking the Nation and it is very good. Scary, disturbing, depressing, but very good. While there are some critiques that would of course be shared across ideological perspectives (anger at the corruption of the existing government and party politics, concern over the power and shape of global capitalism, opposition to the former soviet communist regime. But these broad, sweeping concerns is about where the sharing stops.

Anyhow, my point is that it's all fine to watch a film, or avoid the nationalist uprisings on Hungarian independence day, but it's not so nice for the aural assault when all you really wanted were a few oranges on a snowy night.



* reference to Camper van Beethoven, a great and yes, ironic, song about bowling with skinheads :)