|
Bela Bodo, “’White Terror,’ the
Hungarian Press, and the Evolution of Hungarian Antisemitism After
World War I”
This article examines the emergence of the
right-radical press in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I. It
argues that right-radical newspapers served three interrelated
functions. First, they protected the political and military elite
from justice and popular retribution for their role in the outbreak
and the conduct of the war. Second, they sought to explain the war
and the revolutions to their mainly lower middle-class audience and
in the process gave meanings to the events. Third, they justified
militia violence against Jews, workers and peasants during the White
Terror. The new type of journalist employed by the right-radical
press functioned as, and used the language of, a political agitator
serving mainly elite interests. The article looks at the role that
the right-radical press played in the creation and dissemination of
new anti-Jewish stereotypes, and examines the techniques that the
journalist-agitators used to anchor anti-Jewish hatred in the minds
of their readers. It argues that the right-radial press helped a
peculiarly vicious type of antisemitism to survive within
middle-class subcultures, especially among military and police
officers, and by further widening the emotional gap between Jews and
non-Jews, they paved the way to the tragedy of Hungarian Jews during
World War II. |
