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History of The Hungarian People's Republic Part I
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After WWI, Fascist Capitalist dictators were installed in Eastern European countries with the support of the Western Powers, including the United States.
In Hungary, as in Germany, Fascist forces mustered up enormous resources to disseminate anti-Communist and anti-Jewish propaganda to lay blame for Hungary's troubles on these populations.
This is just a small part of the incredible detail the Finish Bolshevik goes into while analyzing the history of the Hungarian People's Republic.
There's so much more and if you prefer to read rather than watch videos, here's the like to Part I:
#hungarian peoples republic#socialist history#communist history#history#socialist hungary#hungary#socialism#communism#marxism leninism#socialist politics#socialist worker#socialist news#socialist#communist#marxism#marxist leninist#progressive politics#politics#marxist history#history of marxism#historical materialism#dialectical materialism#history of hungary#hungary history#ussr history#ussr#soviet history#soviet union#socialist revolution#working class history
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Say cheese
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to openly back Donald Trump in his bid to reclaim the White House, was unsurprisingly among the first to congratulate the former president on Wednesday morning, even before the final results were in and rival Kamala Harris had conceded.
âThe biggest comeback in US political history! Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on his enormous win. A much needed victory for the World!â Orban rejoiced on X (formerly Twitter).
Orban, who will be hosting European leaders in Budapest later this week, was swiftly joined by other illiberal leaders and fellow populists in Central and Southeast Europe, likewise unable to contain their glee at the return of Trump, who by midmorning Europe time had gained 266 electoral votes â just four shy from the 270 he needs to be elected the 47th US president.
Another close ally of Trump in Central Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda, who met the former president in New York earlier this year, posted excitedly, complete with emojis:Â ïżœïżœïżœCongratulations, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump! You made it happen! đđđđ”đ±đ€đșđžâ.
In the Czech Republic, the former prime minister and Trump admirer Andrej Babis posted on X: âSensational comeback @realDonaldTrump! He wasnât stopped by an assassination attempt, nor by politically motivated lawsuits, nor by a systematic smear campaign in the media. American citizens have made it clear who they want as US President. I am confident that his victory will bring prosperity to the United States and peace to the world.â
More subdued comments came from Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who Babis is looking to oust in 2025, also on X: âCongratulations to Donald Trump on winning the presidential election. Our shared goal is to ensure that the relations between our countries remain at the highest level, despite changes in administration, and that we continue to develop them for the benefit of our citizens.â
Populist Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, is currently on a state visit to China, though his ally, President Peter Pellegrini, offered his congratulations to Donald Trump on X. âI wish you and the American people all the success. Slovakia remains to be a strong and reliable Ally on NATOâs tested Eastern Flank living up to our shared commitments. I sincerely wish for a continuation of our good cooperation. Letâs make the transatlantic bond great again.â
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who visited the White House during Trumpâs first term in office that ended in 2020, welcomed Trumpâs win on X. âCongratulations to Donald Trump on his victory. Together we face the serious challenges ahead. Serbia is committed to cooperation with the USA on stability, prosperity and peace,â Vucic wrote.
Turkeyâs strongman leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he wanted to congratulate his âgreat friendâ Trump on his victory.
âIn this new period that will begin with the election of the American people, I hope that Turkey-US relations will strengthen, that regional and global crises and wars, especially the Palestinian issue and the Russia-Ukraine war, will come to an end; I believe that more efforts will be made for a more just world,â Erdogan wrote on X.
The first to hail Trumpâs win from Bosnia and Herzegovina was, unsurprisingly, the president of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik. âOne of [the] most important electoral wins in recent history of the USA but the World as well! Congratulations, Donald Trump, 47th President of the United States of America!â Dodik wrote on his official X profile.
Late last year Dodik said that a victory for Trump would mean a âbetter geopolitical situation for Republika Srpskaâ, claiming that he regretted not declaring his entityâs independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina during Trumpâs 2016-2020 presidency.
North Macedoniaâs conservative prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski, sent his âheartfelt congratulationsâ to Trump on Wednesday morning. âThis victory is a confirmation of the deep faith of the American people in the principles of freedom and democracy,â Mickoski, whose conservative, right-wing government came to power earlier this year, wrote on Facebook.
Mickoski and his cabinet are not among European leaders who fear a second Trump term could wreak havoc with transatlantic and international relations. His ruling VMRO-DPMNE party nurtures close ties with one of the biggest Trump endorsers on the continent, Hungaryâs Orban, and over the summer Mickoskiâs series of meetings with close Trump associates made his preference even more obvious.
âWe look forward to further deepening our strong partnership and cooperation,â Mickoski added.
Warm words from the Balkans
The president of Montenegro, Jakov Milatovic, congratulated Trump on his victory. âMontenegro and the USA are friends and steadfast partners, united by shared goals and values, focused on advancing democracy, security, stability, and freedom. As NATO allies, we look forward to working very closely with Your administration on strengthening our friendship and deepening cooperation,â Milatovic wrote on X.
Montenegroâs first congratulatory message came earlier from the president of the parliament and leader of the pro-Serbian NOVA party Andrija Mandic. âI am sure that together we will build bridges of cooperation and preserve peace and stability in the Western Balkans,â Mandic wrote on X.
From Kosovo, which has deep ties with the US since the 1998-99 war, President Vjosa Osmani also congratulated Trump on his White House comeback.
âThe US remains Kosovoâs steadfast partner and indispensable ally. I look forward to working with the new administration to further deepen our unique bond and strategic alliance,â Osmani said on X.
A similar message came from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. âCongratulations on a convincing victory and a second presidential term,â Plenkovic wrote on X. âI look forward to our cooperation and further progress in Croatian-American relations.â
Plenkovicâs domestic political rival, President Zoran Milanovic, hailed âthe will of the majority of votersâ in choosing Trump. He wrote on Facebook: âSince Croatian independence, the USA has been a partner and friend, I am convinced that this will remain the choice of the new presidentâ.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was also effusive in his congratulations: âI look forward to the great privilege of working with the 47th President to further enhance our partnership for peace, prosperity and further progress,â Rama wrote on X.
In Bulgaria, Boyko Borissov, leader of recent election-winners GERB and former prime minister, posted a photo of himself with Trump on social media, saying: âIâm ready for us to work together, again!â
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev also congratulated the Republican victor: âI am confident that our effective dialogue at the highest level will continue in the interest of the strategic partnership between Bulgaria and the USA,â Radev said.
Opposition party We Continue the Changeâs Kiril Petkov described Trumpâs comeback as US president as âa serious achievementâ, while noting: âOf course, Bulgariaâs fate depends first and foremost on the will of the Bulgarians, but good cooperation with the US is crucial in the positioning of our country amid the changing geopolitical reality.â
In Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis added his voice to the congratulatory messages from countries across the region. âGreece looks forward to further deepening the strategic partnership between our two countries and working together on important regional and global issues,â Mitsotakis wrote on X.
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The side entrance of the Hungarian State Opera, looking towards AndrĂĄssy Avenue (then People's Republic Road), Budapest, 1976. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.
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Hungary in 1918-1919
Nicolas de Lamberterie, 2020
"Történelmi atlasz - Középiskolåsoknak", József Kaposi, 2016
by cartesdhistoire
Defeats on the front, rising prices, and the agitation of foreign peoples created a troubled situation in Hungary, and in January 1918, a general strike paralyzed activity in Budapest. At the instigation of certain former Hungarian prisoners freed from Russia by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and converted to Bolshevism, mutinies took place, and a new general strike of a political nature extended to the entire country on June 20.
On the night of October 29 to 30, Count MihĂĄly KĂĄrolyi became the head of government of a de facto independent Hungary: it was the Aster Revolution which established the Hungarian Democratic Republic (November 16).
The head of the inter-allied military mission, the Frenchman Fernand Vix, demanded a retreat of the Hungarian armies by 100 km, an ultimatum which led to the fall of KĂĄrolyi and the formation of a government in the hands of the journalist BĂ©la Kun, who had returned from Russia where he had been a companion of Lenin: the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on March 21. To face the armed offensives of its neighbors, the government formed a People's Army which, after some successes against the Czechs, was defeated by the Romanians who advanced on Budapest. BĂ©la Kun left the capital on August 1, two days before the arrival of Romanian and Serbian troops supported by French forces (missions led by Berthelot and Franchet d'EspĂšrey, respectively).
The Bolsheviks' rise to power was poorly received in the provinces and among the Allies. In the southeast of the country occupied by French troops, a national government was formed in June in Szeged whose army was entrusted to Admiral Horthy who, at the time of BĂ©la Kun's fall, already controlled the entire South and West of the country. After negotiating the departure of the Romanians with the Entente, Horthy entered Budapest at the head of his army on November 16. The assembly elected him regent of Hungary on March 1, 1920.
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âPeterâ or âPietroâ?
I was contemplating Peterâs name, along with its origins. In the comics, heâs originally Pietro which is the Italian version. But both variants derive from the Greek word Petros, meaning âstoneâ or ârockâ, which I find ironic considering Peter is opposite to that.
It got me thinking that whilst itâs normal for people to have foreign names contrary to their nationality, Peter is originally from Sokovia. Although itâs a fictitious place, itâs in between Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are very much real countries. Meaning itâd be apart of the West Slavs. So this information lead me down a rabbit hole of looking through translations of Peterâs name in languages that relate to him.
Czech: Petr, PĂ©Ć„a (diminutive)
Slovak: Peter, PeƄo
Hungarian: PĂ©ter, Petya, Peti (diminutive).
I found that Hungarian is the second most spoken mother tongue in Slovakia (9.4% of the population) so I researched that as well.
Both his biological parents (Magda & Erik) were born in Germany, so I searched up the German translation but it also came up with just Peter.
I tried digging up Wandaâs name too, but it appears that itâs very one-dimensional. I couldnât find any different versions of it, but I did discover its Polish in origin. Of course, I hunted down the Polish translation for Peterâs name in contrast to hers. Interestingly, I discovered there was quite the variety.
Polish: Piotr. Diminutives/hypocoristics include Piotrek, PiotruĆ, and Piotrunio. (Piotr has several name days in Poland)
Erik (in the movie-verse, as far as iâm concerned) lived in Poland when he formed a new family and even spoke the language as well. Despite it not being his mother tongue, I reckon he would affectionately call Peter âPiotrâ under certain circumstances. I like to think so at least.
Amongst all the research I did though, the most challenging was finding Romani translations. I know itâs apart of Peterâs identity, so I wanted to include it. However, I came up short. Unfortunately, itâs not easy to find Romani translations like most other languages. It became really frustrating too since my research kept leading me to Romanian or Roman, even when I made sure the spelling was correct. I found myself disappointed with this dead-end but it also taught me how underrepresented Roma is and how we should keep that in mind.
Nonetheless, I still did some more research on it even if I couldnât find translations to Peterâs name. Iâm aware that the Romani language is diverse, and so I stumbled upon Carpathian Romani. Also known as Central Romani and Romungro Romani. It also happens to be native to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which we know as the countries surrounding his birthplace.
Apparently, nearly all Romani speakers are multilingual, so I find it credible that Peter would be able to speak this particular dialect, along with Slovakian or Czech (in theory). Whilst I couldnât find a new variant of âPeterâ or âPetrosâ for this language, I at least have some deeper understanding of his connection to it.
In conclusion; the discussion about whether âPeterâ or âPietroâ is better doesnât really matter, since theyâre essentially the same name. Besides, Peter being called all types of versions of the name by different people in his personal circle sounds very appealing me. With his friends, heâs Peter. For Wanda, heâs Pietro. And potentially heâs Piotr for Erik.
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Hello Professor Reames! How has the Macedonian Question influenced the historiography around Alexander?
The Macedonian Question & Ancient Macedonian Studies
(or, Come study ancient Macedonia! We cause riots!)
Iâll begin by explaining, for those unfamiliar, the âMacedonian Questionâ centers on who gets to lay claim to the name âMacedoniaâ and (originally) the geographical region, which is ethnically diverse but majority Slavic. It arose during the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912-13, then returned after the breakup of Yugoslavia, from 1989 on.
Iâve been a bit chary about replying to this simply because it is (still) a hot topic, if not what it used to be even 10 years ago. AlsoâŠexpect maps. Let me lead with three points:
1) The ancient Macedonians certainly werenât Slavic. Slavs didnât arrive in the area until the 6th century CE (AD), a millennia after Alexander lived. No ancient historian claimed they were Slavs, although some Slavic Nationalists used carefully edited quotes from ancient historians to support their own claims to the ancient Macedonians.
2) A lot of different peoples have passed through the Balkans and northern Greece (and even southern Greece) between now and 2300+ years ago. The Balkans have continued to be an ethnically contested area from antiquity to modernity, and who was âin chargeâ depended on what century it was.
3) Ancient concepts of Greek ethnicity didnât ossify until around the Greco-Persian Wars. Prior to that, Greeks were more aware of/concerned with their citizenship/ethnicity in specific city-states (poleis) and/or language family groupings (Ionic-Attic, Doric, Aeolic).
Furthermore, these views were based on MYTH. To be Greek (Hellenic) meant to be descended from the mythical forerunner, Hellen, son of the equally mythical Dukalion (who survived the FloodâŠe.g., Greek Noah). There were other children of Dukalion, including a daughter Thyia. Thyia became the mother of Makedon, the mythical progenitor of the Macedonians.
So, by ancient criteria, Macedonians werenât Hellenes (Greek). But they were kissing cousins. The ancients took these things seriously. Thatâs why I wanted to explain, so when the ancient Greeks said Macedonians werenât Greeks, it didnât mean what weâd consider it to mean today.
Back to the Macedonian Question ⊠the issue of the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians got tied up in modern politics when Yugoslavia fell apart. During the First Balkan War and the division of Macedonia in 1913, âMacedonian Studiesâ didnât exist yet. By the Third Balkan War (collapse of Yugoslavia), they did. And history was suddenly being pressed into the service of modern political agendas.
Now, let me back up and explainâas briefly as I can (so expect some judicious epitomizing)âthe emergence of modern Greece and the First and Second Balkan Wars.
The Ottoman Empire began to collapse (not just decline) in the 1800s, and was essentially kicked out of Europe entirely by the First Balkan War and World War I. The last of it fell apart with the rise of Attaturk and the Young Turk Revolution, so Modern Turkey emerged in 1923.
Greece was part of that. The Greek War of Independence started in 1821, and Greece secured statehood in 1829/30, then became the Kingdom of Greece in 1832/3, which lasted until the military junta abolished it in 1973, after which it became the [Third] Hellenic Republic. From independence until the end of WWII, Greek borders expanded (see map below). Fun detail, the late Prince Philip, Elizabeth IIâs husband, was a Greek (and Danish) prince.
The First Balkan War began in 1912, which was the Ottomanâs last gasp in Europe. The Austro-Hungarians wanted to make the Balkans a subject state, Russia wanted more control over the Black Sea, and Greece wanted to push north towards Thessaloniki and âConstantinopleâ (Istanbul). Ignoring Austro-Hungary, Serbia wanted to reconstitute âGreater Serbiaâ (14th Century Serbian empire)âwhich included a good chunk of Greece. And Bulgaria, with the strongest regional army, was eying the whole area south to the sea.
Oh, and letâs add in a dose of religious difference (Muslim vs. Orthodox Christian) just for snorts and giggles.
But this was basically about SEA TRADE access. So, for the three allies against the Ottomans, e.g., Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, Thessaloniki, Jewel of the Aegean, was the prize.
The war began October 8th, and by November 8th (1912), the three Balkan allies all hurried their armies to converge on Thessaloniki as the Ottomans withdrew. The Greeks got there mere hours ahead of the Bulgarians.
"ÎΔÏÏÎ±Î»ÎżÎœÎŻÎșη ΌΔ ÎșΏΞΔ ÎșÏÏÏÎżÏ!" (Thessaloniki, at all costs!) E. Venizelos
The war itself ended the next year (in part thanks to the Greek fleet in Thessaloniki), and Greece kept the city, and with it, still controls a lot of shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean. Shipping remains Greeceâs second most profitable industry (after tourism).
Following the warâs conclusion, several issues arose, including how to partition the landâparticularly the geographical region of Macedonia. The 1913 Treaty of London split it up between Bulgaria (smallest part), Greece, and Serbia (biggest part). Again, Greece and Serbia wanted to keep Bulgaria, with the most powerful army, from gaining substantially more land.
World War I intervened, and then the rise of Attaturk in Turkey and the âMegali Ideaâ in Greece. The Megali Idea, proposed at the Paris Peace Conference after WWI (map below), got Greece in trouble. It would have involved retaking not just the islands off Turkeyâs coast, but chunks of the Turkish mainland, to match ancient Greek land claims. All THAT led to showdowns, with ongoing human rights abuses on both sides (including the Armenian Genocide earlier, which wasnât related to Greece).
In 1923, Greece/Hellas and the new Republic of TĂŒrkiye agreed to an exchange of populations. So, Ottoman Turks/Muslims in Greece retreated to Turkey (were kicked out), and Greeks in Turkey retreated into Greece (were kicked out). About half those Greek refugees landed in Athens, whose population exploded overnight, creating an economic crisis. Many of the rest ended up in areas of northern Greece, where land from fleeing Muslims was to be had. Ergo, many new immigrants had very strong pro-Hellenic, anti-Muslim/anyone else feeling, and hadnât been living for ages next to their (Macedonian) Slavic neighbors, who began to feel unwelcome. It also had negative effects on their Jewish neighbors, too. (The loss of Jewish life in WWII in northern Greece, especially Thessaloniki, is both shocking and heartbreaking.)
Keep in mind that the refugees on both sides had been living in their original countries not for a few decades, but for a couple centuries, or even longer in the case of the Greeks in Anatolia/Turkey. The first Greek colonies there date to the 700s/600s⊠BCE. Thereâs a good reason the Greeks and Turks hate each other, and itâs not just Cyprus. The atrocities at the beginning of the 20th Century were awful. Neither side has clean hands.
Anyway, there was a second Balkan War in 1913, which Iâm ignoring, except for the map below. It amounts to Bulgaria getting pissy about their short shrift in the earlier Macedonian land division.
Then came fallout from World War II, when Greece got the Dodecanese from Italy, et al. But I want to fast forward to the collapse of The Berlin Wall in Eastern Europe, November 9, 1989, and Yugoslaviaâs dissolution shortly after. That ushered in the Third Balkan War, or Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
Compared to the Bosnian Genocide and other shit going down with Milosevic, the return of the Macedonian Question seems minor. It involved the Yugoslavian province of Macedonia asking to be called âMacedoniaâ and Greece having a very public, international melt-down.
The entire dust-up confused much of the rest of the world. The number of times Iâve had to explain it to (non-Greek, non-Slavic) people, who just boggledâŠ. Iâve also seen tourists stand in polite perplexity while Greeks went on a hand-waving tear about how Macedonia has been Greek for 4000 years!!! [Iâve got a t-shirt with that on it.] Btw, 4000 years dates before the first Helladic peoples even migrated into the peninsula. AnywayâŠ.
Greeks consider the name Macedonia theirs, on historical grounds. They didnât object to the new country, but wanted it called Skopje, after the capital, or something, anything not âMacedonia.â Meanwhile, the (Slavic) Macedonians were enormously insulted and pointed to the fact they lived in a region called Macedonia, and their ancestors had been living there for centuries, so why couldnât they call their new country by the name of the region it occupied? Stated fears of actual territorial expansion by either side were largely scare tactics and fringe rhetoric. It really was all about the name. But increasingly, that began to include claims on the ancient Macedonians, or cultural appropriation. The new Macedonian state (FYROM, then) didnât do itself any favors with their choice of the (ancient) Macedonian sunburst for their flag and naming their airport after Alexander, et al.
Thatâs how ancient history got sucked into all of this in a way it didnât the first time.
Now, let me repeat. The ancient Macedonians were not Slavs. The Thracians were not Slavs either, nor the Paionians, nor the Illyrians, nor the Celts north of them. You wonât find the Thracians called âSlavicâ in Bulgarian Museums, even while they take very good care of their regional history.
By the 1990s, Macedonian history had emerged as something more than just âAlexander the Great and Philip,â and questions arose about who these people may have been. Were they Greeks like the Thessalians and Epirotes to their south and west? Or were they non-Greeks like the Thracians, Paionians, and Illyrians to their north? This was an academic (not modern political) question, and involved: 1) what did Makedoniste (âto speak in the Macedonian mannerâ) mean? Was that a dialect or a different language?; and 2) to what degree did ancient Greeks really consider them non-Greeks (e.g., barbarians)? The fact we had so little epigraphy from the area complicated the language question. And ancient Greek politics complicated the second question. Were the angry repudiations by Demosthenes & Friends a real, widely held sentimentâŠor just ancient Athenian nationalism and anti-Philip propaganda?
This was mostly nerdy stuff that should have remained safely ensconced at dull specialist panels at academic conferences.
Except âŠ. Manolis Andronikos had found the Royal Tombs at Vergina in 1978, and Greece was bursting with pride (as they should have been). Macedonia was back on the map! Tourists still largely stuck to the Greek south, but The Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport saw an opportunity, even back then, to capitalize on tourism, so you can begin to see why it was important for âMacedoniaâ to remain Greek. Canât have a country calling itself Macedonia and maybe confusing people about who Alexander and Philip had been, and where theyâd lived (and syphoning off possible tourism dollars).
That may sound unduly cynical, but Iâm actually with the Greeks on this, even if Iâve always rolled my eyes over the name thing. And, as noted above âMacedoniaâ was laying active claim to Philip and Alexander as if there was direct continuity between the ancient Macedonians and the modern ones. See below, the giant Alexander statue erected in Skopje (2011), the biggest in the whole city. Itâs formal name these days is âGreat Warrior,â by agreement with Greece in order to get to call themselves âNorthern Macedoniaâ in NATO. But itâs Alexander.
Like I said, they werenât doing themselves any favors, although those arguing in their defense liked to point out that Greece had started it, over the name.
Of course the increasingly heated rhetoric around the name, and ownership of Alexander and Philip, enveloped ancient history like the ash cloud from Vesuvius smothered Pompeii and Herculaneum. By the mid-1990s, âmiddle groundâ wasnât allowed. If one expressed any doubt about the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians, that was heard as, âYouâre siding with the Skopjans!â This dispute was still going strong to the point there were riots and protests at the Balkan Studiesâ 7th International Symposium on Ancient Macedon in Thessaloniki on October 16, 2002. These protests erupted over the presence of Kate Mortensen, Ernst Badian, and Daniel Ogden, albeit the protests involved different objections for each scholar. Badian, along with Peter Green and Gene Borza (not present), had long been in the crosshairs of the vehement âMacedonia was Greek!â crowd. But poor Kate got targeted because of her paper, âHomosexuality at the Macedonian Court,â and Daniel had the temerity to present about witchcraft at Philipâs court (UnChristian things!). There were some 40 police called in to protect the presenters. You cannot make up this shit.
Btw, by no means were all Greeks, especially not all Greek scholars, hostile to the (largely Anglophone) Macedoniasts who questioned the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians. Olga Palagia and Gene Borza remained friends and even wrote articles together, but Olga was retired and had a certain freedom from pressure. Manolis Andronikos and Gene also remained friends until Manolisâs death in 1992. But there was an Official Party Line that had to be maintained, or risk losing an academic job or other position in the Ministry. This also got tied into the identity of the occupants of Royal Tombs I and II at Vergina. Greeceâs official position is that these are Amyntas III and Philip II, respectively. This is far from a settled matter, however, especially outside Greece.
For more detail from somebody right in the middle of especially the early parts of the quarrel over whoâs buried in âPhilipâs Tombâ and the ethnicity of the Macedonians, check out Peter Greenâs chapter 10, âThe Macedonian Connection,â in Classical Bearings.
To return to the question about how itâs affected historiography, other than resulting in hostility towards non-compliant ancient historians (having their work essentially banned in Greece) and the occasional riot at an academic conference (!!), it also resulted in the production of TWO quasi-competing âCompanionsâ to ancient Macedonia at the end of the first decade of the 2000s.
The original proposal (A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Roisman and Worthington, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) had meant to include a number of high-profile scholars of both Greek and non-Greek background. But one of those was Loring Danforth (The Macedonian Conflict). When it came out that he was writing the chapter on modern Macedonia, the Greek contributors revolted en masse. (Some were genuinely furious, others had to, to keep their jobs.) Another Companion was put together with Robin Lane Fox at the editorial helm (Brillâs Companion to Ancient Macedon, Brill, 2011), and the Greeks (and a few others) jumped ship. That was a nice break for some younger Macedonian scholars, incidentally, who were then tapped to write chapters for the Roisman/Worthington volumeâand very good chapters, I might add. But the end result is one heavily archaeological Companion (Lane Fox) and one heavily historical one (Roisman/Worthington), and which still has Danforth.
Between the arguments of the 1990s and now, however, one important shift has occurred: enough epigraphical data has emerged, and not just later [Hellenistic], to argue the ancient Macedonians did speak a form of Doric Greek. Many/most of us are now a lot more comfortable agreeing that the ancient Macedonians can be called âGreekâ without feeling as if weâre selling our academic souls--even if we may still argue thatâs not Philip in Royal Tomb II...an identification that some of the younger Greeks also arenât sold on. And Philip in Tomb II was never the highly charged political issue that the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians was. It just got tied up in it for coming up around the same time. One Greek friend put it succinctly (paraphrased), âIt felt like the non-Greeks, especially the Americans and Aussies, were trying to take away Philip and Alexander from us. Tomb II wasnât Philip, and the Macedonians werenât even Greeks.â
That may be a bit hyperbolic, but feelings donât necessarily respond to logic, and Greece would like to have their bona fides.
So, a chunk of the tension from the 1990s has subsided. The Greekness of the ancient Macedonians is largely a non-topic in Macedonian studies today. Weâre more interested in new and exciting things like revelations from recent archaeology regarding the sophistication of the Macedonian kingdom well back into the Archaic Age, the real impact of Persia and how early, and what exactly was going on up there before (and after) the Greco-Persian Wars. Or at least, those are certainly my burning questions about the Argead Kingdom up to Philip and Alexander.
#asks#ancient Macedonia#modern Northern Macedonia#Alexander the Great#Philip II of Macedon#Macedonian Question#Bulgaria#Greece#Serbia#ancient Greece#Classics#Ottoman Empire#1923 Exchange of Populations#turkiye#Turkey#Hellenic Republic#Kingdom of Greece
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++(adding on the last ask, sorry i just forgot to put this there) it's also the very very VERY weird way they keep talking like the jewish culture was completely erased from the rest of the Europe and the german speaking countries, like we didn't know how there were people fighting and resisting and trying to create communities before and after holocaust. this does NO erase holocaust, and that's one of the most enraging parts for me too: talking like the resistance of jewish people outside israel would somehow negate holocaust and antisemitism. this is fucking bonkers?
during the whole article i was thinking "why would the Germans have ownership of the works of an writer who is from PRAGUE? writing in german does not immediately imply this, and the fact that he was born in Prague does not negate the antisemitism he faced"
Kafka writing about his experience with oppression inside a country where antisemitism was so recurrent does not make him an symbol of the israeli state, and that's mainly what they're trying to affirm. by doing this they're trying to erase the way his works relate so much with the oppression other groups suffer inside other places, including the ones being attacked by the israeli state.
Yes, Israel's whole rhetoric is very deliberately constructed narrative which often raises uncomfortable questions.
And I also agree I think it's weird how there's complete exclusion of the country that Kafka was from (but then again, was he from Czech Republic (because that didn't exist back then) or was he from Austria? That existed in some sort). In any case, Kafka identified with the minority in the Austro-Hungarian empire (Hermann also), that is with Czechs.
What Kafka's nationality was is a tricky subject overall but the reality is that Prague is in Czech Republic so it is Czechs' "responsibility" to preserve Kafka in that city. Israel and Germany are just both weird about Franz Kafka and are trying to have hegemony over his legacy when none of them actually have tangible credibility.
#what matters is that kafka was a jewish man living in prague speaking german#the jewishness the city and the language all matter at the same time and thats why kafka isn't one thing#and cannot be claimed by one state#i think israel has the least credibility based on the simple fact that israel didn't exist back then and kafka wasn't living in israel#even austria could say more than israel lol#also about speaking german#imagine how ridiculous it would be if UK claimed every person as English just because they spoke englishâŠ#asks
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Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
July 30, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Jul 31, 2024
On Friday, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believersâ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump begged the members of the audience to âvote. Just this time. You wonât have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: itâll be fixed, itâll be fineâŠ. In four years, you donât have to vote again, weâll have it fixed so good youâre not going to have to vote.â
The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk the statement back. Instead, he said: âI said, vote for me, youâre not going to have to do it ever again. Itâs true.â âDonât worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you donât have to worry about voting anymore. I donât care, because weâre going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we wonât even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you donât want to vote anymore, thatâs OK.â
Trumpâs refusal to disavow the idea that putting him back into power will mean the end of a need for elections is chilling and must be viewed against the backdrop of the Supreme Courtâs July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the courtâs right-wing majority said that presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a presidentâs âofficial dutiesâ and that presidents should have a presumption of immunity for other presidential actions.Â
John Roberts defends the idea of a strong executive and has fought against the expansion of voting rights made possible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The idea that it is dangerous to permit minorities and women to vote suggests that there are certain people who should run the country. That tracks with a recently unearthed video in which Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance calls childless people âpsychoticâ and âderanged,â and refers unselfconsciously to âAmericaâs leadership class.âÂ
The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the âilliberal democracyâ or âChristian democracyâ championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor OrbĂĄn. OrbĂĄnâs imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: âModern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.â
Kevin Roberts has called for âinstitutionalizing Trumpismâ and pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundationâs Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term. Those who created Project 2025 are closely connected to the Trump team, and Trump praised its creators and its ideas.Â
Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Robertsâs forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create âa fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.â Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that âthe Leftâ has captured the countryâs institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they seeâinaccuratelyâas traditional America. Â
That determination to disrupt American institutions fits neatly with the technology entrepreneurs who seem to believe that they are the ones who should control the nationâs future. Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vanceâs election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote âI no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.âÂ
âThe 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,â he wrote. âSince 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to womenâtwo constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertariansâhave rendered the notion of âcapitalist democracyâ into an oxymoron.âÂ
Thiel set Vance up to invest in companies that made him wealthy and touted Vance for the vice presidential slot, and in turn, the Silicon Valley set are expecting Vance to help get rid of the regulation imposed by the Biden administration and to push cryptocurrency. Trump appears to be getting on board with comments about how the tech donors are âgeniuses,â praising investor Elon Musk and saying, âWe have to make life good for our smart people.â In a piece that came out Sunday, Washington Post reporters Elizabeth Dwoskin, Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku, and Josh Dawsey credited the influence of Thiel and other tech leaders for turning Vance from a Never-Trumper to a MAGA Republican.Â
Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that the cryptocurrency industry is investing heavily in the 2024 election, with its main super PAC raising $202 million in this cycle. Three large cryptocurrency companies are investing about $150 million in pro-crypto congressional candidates.Â
On Saturday, Trump said he would make the U.S. âthe crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.â He promised to end regulations on cryptocurrency, which, because it is not overseen by governments, is prone to use by criminals and rogue states. That regulation is âa part of a much larger pattern thatâs being carried out by the same left-wing fascists to weaponize government against any threat to their power,â Trump said. âTheyâve done it to me.â
But the problem that those trying to get rid of the modern administrative state continue to run up against is that voters actually like a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights. In recent days, Minnesota governor Tim Walz has been articulating how popular that government is as he makes the television rounds.
On Sunday, CNNâs Jake Tapper listed some of Walzâs policiesâhe passed background checks for guns, expanded LGBTQ protections, instituted free breakfast and lunch for school kidsâand asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a âbig government liberal.â Walz joked that he was, indeed, a âmonster.âÂ
âKids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and weâre a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happinessâŠ. The fact of the matter is,â where Democratic policies are implemented, âquality of life is higher, the economies are betterâŠeducational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and youâre going to have a chance to go to college, and youâre going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, youâre going to have personal incomes that are higher, and youâre going to have health insurance. So if thatâs where they want to label me, Iâm more than happy to take the label.âÂ
The extremes of Project 2025 have made it clear that the Republicans intend to destroy the kind of government Walz is defending and replace it with an authoritarian president imposing Christian nationalism. And when Americans hear whatâs in Project 2025, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Trump has tried without success to distance himself from the document.Â
He and his team have also hammered on the Heritage Foundation for their public revelations of their plans, and today the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down. The Trump campaign issued a statement reiteratingâin the face of a mountain of evidence to the contraryâthat Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 and adding: âReports of Project 2025âs demise would be greatly welcomed and should service as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaignâit will not end well for you.âÂ
The Harris campaign responded to the news by saying that âProject 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesnât make it less realâin fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.âÂ
The reasoning behind the idea of a strong executive, or a âleadership classâ that does not have to answer to voters, is that an extremist minority needs to take control of the American government away from the American people because the majority doesnât like the policies the extremists want.Â
When Trump begs right-wing Christians to turn out for just one more election, he is promising that if only we will put him into the White House once and for all, we will never again have to worry about having a say in our government. As Trump put it: âThe country will be fixed and we wonât even need your vote anymore.â
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Heather Cox Richardson#get out the vote#Letter From An American#right-wing christians#project 2025#ending democracy#autocracy#fascists#Radical SCOTUS#corrupt SCOTUS#antidemocratic SCOTUS
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Having resolved to investigate the dubs vs. subs question, the DYEWSPH2TER SOCIETY watches the new Dungeon Meshi.
IZUTSUMI (DUB): The name of your race is pretty strange. I heard it came from your kind getting one of their legs chopped off for committing too much thievery!
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: She would not say that.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: Why not?
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: "Committing too much thievery"? She's a slave bought from a freak show and she speaks fluent Ciasslcal English?
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: Is the language of the island diglossic?
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: They're ruled by the elves. But let's not get into translatology. (A horrid, ill-formed word: two parts Latin, one part Greek.) The manga renders Senshi's dialogue in an atrocious fantasy accent, but it makes clear a nuance of the original: he's a weird foreigner who lives alone in a cave and his only friends are orcs.
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: Does Izutsumi's country have a different language?
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Izutsumi's country is fantasy Japan. Look at their names. "Shuro" is a mispronunciation of a name Laios is unfamiliar with.
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: The dwarves' names also fit Japanese phonology. Senshi, Namari...
DICTIONARY: é ăȘăŸÌ
ăÌ
 naÌmaÌriÌ, lead (chemical element). Perhaps related to Goguryeo äčćż *namur; cf. Korean nap, OC (Zhengzhang) ra:b.
TYPESETTER: U+0305 COMBINING OVERLINE should render above the characters ăŸ and ă, but on some systems may display as spacing characters following them. We apologize for our inability to reliably display simple linguistic text without platform-dependent markup in 2024. đđđ©
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Vowel length in Zhengzhang Shangfang's reconstruction of Old Chinese represents Type A syllables.
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Izganda?
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: Is that an official name? The scan thought Laios and Falin Touden were Laius and Farlyn Thorden.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Lajos is a Hungarian masculine given name, cognate to English Louis. People named Lajos include Lajos Kossuth, who in 1849 presented the Hungarian Declaration of Independence. A bust of Lajos Kossuth was added to the Small House Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in 1987.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: 1987?
ENCYCLOPEDIA: "A Gift to the People of the United States from the American Hungarian Federation"
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Did you think he was more important? At any rate, he was a nobleman.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: It sounds Greek to me.
HANPHECIUS HUMBUG: Hungarians don't have saunas.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: Didn't you think he was Faroese? It's a fantasy west.
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Why would Japan care about Hungarian names? But this is a stupid diversion. Where were we?
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: Dubs vs. subs.
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Of course! A critical matter. A noble pursuit. In this fallen world, in which the noblest by nature are forced to toil in drudgery while petty-minded merchants build generational fortunes that their mediocre heirs piss away, many are unfortunately unable to read Japanese. So we debate dubs vs. subs.
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: I grew up on 4Kids. I can't stand the English VA voice. The Japanese one is bearable.
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: Thank you for your valuable contribution.
VRISKA: why do you all have the same voice
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: We live in a bourgeois republic.
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: Let's grant that Izutsumi's country speaks a different language. "Committing too much thievery" is a clumsy phrase. "Thievery" sounds silly compared to "theft". And it's a vague Latinate verb that lets the noun carry the meaning - very indirect! We don't live in the kingdom of nouns.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: Why couldn't Asebi, Toshiro's retainer, have been taught to speak like that? Toshiro went to the island for training. But would they pay real islanders to teach them the nuances of the language?
SIMPLICIO J. RHETORICUS: She was bought at the age of six; even if the circus had the same language as the island, that's well within at least the tallman critical period.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: She would've been taught out of dictionaries, which don't say anything about connotation.
VRISKA: okay not to be rude but can i say something about some of the papers i've read
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: I didn't pay that much attention to "thievery". It's simpler, more regular. For all I know "theft" might be too hard a word to put in a mass-market translation. "Committing too much theft" would still sound too classical. It seems like the wrong intent.
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: Why couldn't a slave learn the acrolect?
GIANLUCA D'BOVRIL: How broad-minded. Would your escaped slave also write her own sermons?
VRISKA: oh my god shut up
VRISKA: what does the sub say
IZUTSUMI (SUB): That odd name for your race. I heard it's because lots of you got a foot lopped off for stealing.
VRISKA: the manga?
IZUTSUMI (MANGA): I hear that the reason your race got that name is because a bunch of halflings got punished for theft by having one of their feet cut off! Guess they had to deal with having half as many, huh?
VRISKA: yea the dub is bad
ZEPHANIAH EZEKIEL THUD: It could be a deliberate choice. I personally think that "thievery" is awkward, but it's a possibility to keep in mind. We'll see if what follows bears it out.
VRISKA: marcille sounds like a college republican horse girl
VRISKA: #notwrong
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Watch "History of the Hungarian People's Republic PLAYLIST" on YouTube
Fantastic work by our comrade The Finnish Bolshevik. It is a series on the History of Socialist Hungary.
If you'd prefer reading the series, you can find it here:
Western Historians would have you believe an "Imperialist" Soviet Russia just went around at the end of WWII invading Eastern and Central Europe and setting up Soviet "authoritarian dictatorships" under Russian control.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I will try to put together each part into seperate posts throughout the day or over the next few days, but I can't be sure I'll find the time to do that with all 10 or 11 parts.
Each part is not that long, roughly 30-40 minutes, and makes for easy viewing in chunks.
In the videos, The Finnish Bolshevik deep dives into the history of the Hungarian State, how Western Imperialist Powers installed a Fascist Dictatorship, the impact of World Wars 1 and 2 and their aftermath, Hungary's Socialist Revolution, and Hungary's transformation into a Socialist State becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union and much more.
#socialist hungary#hungarian peoples republic#soviet history#socialist history#history#socialism#communism#marxism leninism#socialist politics#socialist#communist#marxism#marxist leninist#progressive politics#politics#socialist worker#socialist news#ussr#ussr history#soviet union#marxist history#dialectical materialism#historical materialism#history of the ussr#hungarian history#hungary#communist history#working class history#working class politics#socialist revolution
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Hungarian people's army Female NCO in summer dress 1970s
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Even as a growing number of foreign governments commit to protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) people, others are actively marshaling their resources against them. From the Hungarian governmentâs legal and political attacks on LGBTQI+ people to Iraqi legislation that punishes those who âpromote homosexualityâ and increases criminal penalties and fines for same-sex relations, the negative trends are significant and concerning.
In many places, politicians blame LGBTQI+ people for a wide array of societal ills to boost their popularity at home and their geopolitical interests abroad, distracting from the real economic, social, and political challenges their countries face. In Georgia, for example, the ruling party may have used anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric to manipulate the political landscape ahead of elections. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, a country long considered relatively welcoming for LGBTQI+ people in the Middle East, one activist described a political leaderâs rhetoric as âthe manufacturing of a moral panic in order to justify a crackdown, and to deviate public attention away from their unpopular policies.â
Although human rights are seen by some as a lower-priority foreign-policy issue for the United States than so-called hard security threats, the failure to protect them abroad can have significant negative consequences for U.S. interests. Now more than ever, the United States needs to push back against foreign-government repression of LGBTQI+ rights while also doing this work at home. As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it recently, this matters ânot just because we have a moral imperative to do so,â but because doing so âhelps strengthen democracy, bolster national security, and promote global health and economic development.â
Across a range of issues, itâs clear that anti-LGBTQI+ policies and rhetoric can cause significant damage to many of the United Statesâ top foreign-policy priorities.
To start, efforts to repress LGBTQI+ rights are often a canary in the coal mine for more severe persecution to come. A 2022 report found, for example: âFrom Nazi Germany to genocide in Darfur to the breakup of former Yugoslavia, the imposition of âmoralâ codes that directly assault sexual and gender identities and freedoms came before widespread state-led physical violence and atrocity crimes.â
The targeting of LGBTQI+ people can also be a precursor to, or occur alongside, abuses against other vulnerable populations. The Taliban-promoted sexual assault of and life-threatening attacks on LGBTQI+ people, for example, have occurred concurrently with brutal restrictions on womenâs and girlsâ participation in education, work, and other aspects of public life. Likewise, vicious torture of gay men in the Russian Republic of Chechnya has taken place against a wider backdrop of long-term human rights abuses by Chechen authorities.
Erosion of LGBTQI+ human rights can also signal and exacerbate the breakdown of democratic norms and institutions, including restrictions on independent media and judicial review, serving as a bellwether for the state of civil society more generally. Russiaâs recent detention and prosecution of LGBTQI+ people have paralleled its crackdown on independent journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society.
Countries in which the human rights of LGBTQI+ people are less respected also frequently have greater levels of corruption, partly because discriminatory legal regimes create barriers to reporting wrongdoing by corrupt officials, making LGBTQI+ people an easy target for extortion. Corruption, in turn, compounds other pressing problems: It degrades the business environment, drives migration, and impedes responses to public health crises and climate change. States with endemic corruption are also more vulnerable to terrorist networks, transnational organized crime, gang-related criminal actors, and human traffickers. This is, in part, because threats to transparent and accountable governance are among the root causes of radicalization, and restrictions on LGBTQI+ and other civil society organizations reduce the capacity of those groups to mitigate the conditions conducive to violent extremism, terrorism and other criminal activity.
Not only are anti-LGBTQI+ policies a drag on economic growth, but they are also detrimental to public health. Punitive laws fan the flames of stigma and discrimination, in turn making vulnerable communities reluctant to seek life-saving and public health-protecting services. Across 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, HIV prevalence in countries that criminalize homosexuality is five times higher among men who have sex with men than in countries without those laws.
Taken together, the failure to protect LGBTQI+ peopleâs human rights can create disastrous effects for U.S. interests. State-sponsored discrimination and violence undercut the United Statesâ tremendous investments in international anti-corruption efforts, counter-terrorism programs, economic development, and public health. And, as the COVID-19 pandemic made clear, a disease threat anywhere can quickly become a disease threat everywhere. The same can be said for terrorism, corruption, and economic instability. When governments target LGBTQI+ people, they also increase the chances that the symptoms and consequences of this repression will spread in their communities and across borders.
Given the stakes, it is crucial that the United States uses the tools and powers it has to promote accountability for human rights abuses and mitigate their harms to U.S. citizens and businesses.
In this respect, the recent heightened repression by the Ugandan government is illustrative. In May 2023, Uganda signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), which mandated the death penalty for certain âserialâ offenses and a 20-year prison sentence for the mere âpromotionâ of homosexuality. Although the legislation was decried by human rights advocates, it was lauded by some of Ugandaâs geopolitical partners as evidence of shared interests. Shortly after the legislation was passed, the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Uganda and made the unfortunately commonâand demonstrably inaccurateâclaim that homosexuality is a Western import. He also identified opposition to Western support for LGBTQI+ people as âanother area of cooperation for Iran and Uganda.â In similar fashion, an editorial on the pro-Kremlin Tsargrad website summarized the law as âa geopolitical victory [for Russia], which they see as the direct result of years of their hard, methodical work [on a] global anti-LGBTQ hate campaign.â
The AHA was the final, egregious straw amid an ongoing decline in respect for human rights, including of LGBTQI+ people, and democratic backsliding in Uganda, and the United Statesâ response was swift and comprehensive. Underscoring the link between the violation of the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and broader harms to American interests, U.S. President Joe Biden described the law as part of an âalarming trend of human rights abuses and corruption.â The United States issued a business advisory; updated the U.S. Travel Advisory and Country Information Page for Uganda; expanded existing visa restrictions to include those repressing vulnerable populations, such as human rights advocates, LGBTQI+ people, and environmental defenders; supported the World Bankâs decision to pause Ugandaâs access to new funds; and imposed sanctions on the Commissioner General of the Uganda Prisons Service for widespread violations of human rights, including credible reports of physical abuse of political opposition and LGBTQI+ people. President Biden also determined that Uganda did not meet the eligibility requirements of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), âon the basis of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.â
Although the law remains in place, these actions and international attention have had effect: Ugandaâs government has not conducted widespread roundups of or ordered death sentences against LGBTQI+ people. But violence, abuse, and evictions have increased in the country, and arrests of LGBTQI+ people have persisted and likely risen under an earlier, colonial-era law that criminalizes same-sex conduct.
As the situation in Uganda demonstrates, the United States has options to respond to foreign governments that fail to uphold their human rights obligations. These measures can be unilateral, as is the case for issuing travel advisories or removing trade preferences, or multilateral, which could involve working with the United Nations, the World Bank, or other multilateral institutions. They can also be affirmative, as opposed to punitiveâfor instance, expanding humanitarian and development assistance for human rights defenders and mobilizing private sector capital to support businesses that operate consistent with international non-discrimination standards.
As with all diplomatic efforts to address wrongdoing, the choice among these options will vary depending on circumstances, such as whether a government is launching a new campaign against LGBTQI+ people or has an older but little-enforced criminal law on its books. Inevitably, the importance of raising human rights concerns will be weighed against other U.S. priorities, and human rights will not always prevail. However, increasingly, LGBTQI+ issues are being integrated into bilateral relationships, even when doing so is not easy and when quiet diplomacy is the only option. In all circumstances, consultation with LGBTQI+ civil society must be prioritized in weighing the benefits and risks of action to ensure that efforts do not contribute to backlash or negative repercussions for LGBTQI+ people on the frontlines of global human rights movements.
In a recent State Department convening on LGBTQI+ rights in U.S. foreign policy, Secretary Blinken made our commitment clear, telling civil society leaders: âOur promise is this: We will be with you every step of the way. Weâll persevere with you. Weâll listen to you. Weâll learn from you. Weâll help resource and support your fight. And weâll bring our strength together with yours so that finally together we can build a world where all people are genuinely freeâfree to be who they are, free to love who they love.â
Although this work may have been in the spotlight during Pride month, it requires our focus year-round. Indeed, our national security depends on it.
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Perhaps the most shocking thing about Hamasâs pogrom is not so much the attack itself â although it was horrifying â but the accompanying glee we see on the Western left, most obviously and appallingly on college campuses.
Jewish students were besieged at a library at Cooper Union by a crazed pro-Hamas mob. Jews at Cornell University were threatened with gruesome death. At Harvard, students chant, âFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,â a call for the genocide of Israeli Jews. At George Washington University, jihadist and genocidal language was projected on the library building. A Jewish student was attacked at Columbia University and Jewish students said that they donât feel safe there.
To add insult to injury, more than 100 Columbia University professors signed a letter defending students who support Hamasâs âmilitary action.â A history professor at Cornell proclaimed that he was âexhilaratedâ by what happened October 7. A Yale professor sneered that massacres of Israelis are fine because they are all âsettlersâ anyway and âsettlers are not civilians. This is not hard.â
Colleges have long cultivated a simplistic ideology that bifurcates all of humanity into two buckets: the âoppressedâ and the âoppressor.â This childish division of all human activity allows for zero nuance. If youâre oppressed, all is allowed, even atrocities. If youâre the oppressor, nothing you do is justified â you are guilty, whatever you do or donât do.
According to this absurd ideology, Israel is an oppressor. Therefore, everything it does â even existing â is unacceptable.
On the other hand, Hamas is the voice of the oppressed, so anything and everything it does â from wanton massacres to explicitly admitting that it only cares about its fighters, and not for the people of Gaza who, it says, are the international communityâs responsibility â is cloaked in righteousness.
Nothing is allowed to penetrate the alternative reality of this dogmatic ideology, which is why posters depicting kidnapped Israelis must be ripped down. Israelis are demons, you see, even the babies.
It is all depressingly reminiscent of an earlier time, between the two world wars, when Jewish students throughout Europe were terrorized by ideological fellow students.
âPolish universities became the stage of the most extreme antisemitic activities,â writes Celia Heller in her book On the Edge of Destruction. Polish universities in 1936 and 1937 had âJewlessâ days and weeks. Radical students called for a quota on Jewish students and âghetto benchesâ where Jews would be forced to sit. Administrations, weak then as now, caved.
Heller writes, âViolence was condemned in words, but encouraged in deeds through concessions granted to the perpetrators of violence at the cost of the victims of violence. Further violence was the result.â Radical students âtook walks in the evening to hunt for the Jewish students.â
All the while, most students and faculty remained silent.
In 1920, under student influence, the Hungarian parliament passed the Numerus Clausus Act, which limited Jews to six percent of the student body of universities. There were continuous antisemitic student riots throughout Hungary in October 1928. Students attacked Jews at a university in Budapest in 1930.
Most notorious are the students of Germany, who were among the most radical elements of the interwar Weimar Republic and the early Nazi period, and an important constituency of the Nazi Party. German students conducted a campaign of intimidation against Jewish students and, infamously, burned more than 25,000 books in 34 university towns on May 10, 1933.
The National Socialist German Studentsâ Association expressed the need to âcleanseâ and âpurifyâ German language and literature from âJewish intellectuals.â It was this thinking that was behind the book burnings.
The notions of âcleanlinessâ and âpurityâ were highly important ones in Nazi ideology. The Nazis desired a Judenrein (âpure of Jewsâ) Germany, and then Europe (and beyond â the Jews of the Middle East, too, would have been murdered if Rommel hadnât been defeated at El Alamein).
Fast forward to today. A New York City public school student displayed a poster reading âPlease Keep the World Cleanâ with an illustration of a Star of David in a trash can. A virtually identical poster was held by a Norwegian medical student in Warsaw. This is Nazi language.
Campus radicals today are also intimidating Jewish students while administrators issue mealy-mouthed statements. Students are in thrall to a totalizing ideology that brooks no dissent and burns with hatred for Jews.
American Jews feel that they have seen all this before, and they are right. Universities are once again incubators of moral rot and antisemitism.
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Hungarian People's Republic, 1949-56.
by Stalker213311
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President Kim Il-Sung's Visits to Czechoslovakia. 1984
"Czechoslovakia is a federal socialist republic consisting of two ethnic groups: Czech and Slovak. It is a landlocked country with no sea, and it stretches from east to west. Area: 127,870kmÂČ. The population is 15,395,000 (1982), consisting of Czechs (64.3%), Slovaks (30.5%), and some Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Poles. The official languages ââare Czech and Slovak. Capital Prague (1,183,000 people)."
"In September 1945, Czechoslovakia was liberated from the tyranny of Hitler's Germany, and in 1948, under the leadership of the Communist Party, the Czechoslovak people suppressed the maneuvers of imperialists and reactionary forces and established a people's government. In 1960, the constitution was revised and the country received its current name. After that, it strongly promoted socialist construction and became one of the most advanced socialist industrial countries in Eastern Europe." "With the constitutional amendment in 1968, the Czech Socialist Republic (capital Prague) and the Slovak Socialist Republic (capital Bratislava) became a federal state." "A federal state has a federal parliament (the highest organ of the state) and a federal government (the highest administrative executive organ), and each republic has an ethnic council, a government, and a supreme court." "The Federal Parliament is a bicameral system consisting of the People's Assembly (200 members) elected from all of the federations, and the Ethnic Assembly, consisting of an equal number of representatives from the Czech Republic and Slovakia (75 members, for a total of 150 members)." "The head of state of the federal state is President Gustav Husak. The head of the federal government is Prime Minister Lubomir Strougall." "The political party is the Communist Party (founded in 1921), and the current leader is Gustav Husak, general secretary. In addition, there are the Socialist Party, the People's Party, and the Slovak Reconstruction Party, which form the National Front with the Communist Party." "Since diplomatic relations were established with Korea in 1948, cooperative relations have gradually developed. The friendly and cooperative relationship between the two countries is likely to further develop with President Kim Il Sung's recent official goodwill visit."
"President Kim Il Sung arrived in Czechoslovakia's capital Prague on June 4th by special train." "President Kim Il-sung shook hands with President Husak at Prague Central Station."
"President Kim Il Sung of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, attended a party and state delegation at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, President Gustav Husak of the Czechoslovak Socialist Democratic Republic, and the government. He led an official friendly visit to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from June 4th to 6th." "This visit to Czechoslovakia was a historic event that further deepened the friendship between the developing Korea and Czechoslovakia and greatly contributed to the promotion of peace and the cause of socialism." During his visit, President Kim Il Sung met with President Gustav Husak and other Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Party and government officials, further deepening their friendship and trust. The Czechoslovak people also recognized President Kim Il Sung. They warmly welcomed and entertained him as their most valuable guest." "The citizens of Prague warmly greeted President Kim Il Sung by singing songs of friendship along the roadside. The President's visit to Czechoslovakia was an important opportunity to strengthen and develop to a higher level the traditional friendship and unity between the two countries, the two parties, the two governments, and the people."
"Children in Prague sent a bouquet of flowers to President Kim Il Sung."
"President Kim Il-sung returned the warm welcome to the citizens of the border city of DÄÄĂn."
"President Kim Il Sung's visit to Czechoslovakia was warmly welcomed by the citizens of the country's border city of DÄÄĂn, waving the national flags of both countries."
"Prague citizens warmly welcome President Kim Il Sung"
"President Kim Il Sung and President Gustav Husak inspected the Prague City Guard Headquarters Honor Guard."
"President Kim Il Sung visited the former Prague City Hall on June 4. The mayor warmly welcomed President Kim Il Sung's visit to Czechoslovakia, wished him a long life, exchanged a toast, and presented him with the key to the city of Prague."
"On June 4, President Kim Il Sung had a chat with President Gustav Husak in a friendly atmosphere."
"A meeting between President Kim Il Sung and President Gustav Husak was held in Prague on June 5th."
"The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and the government held a grand banquet on June 4 to welcome President Kim Il Sung."
"President Kim Il Sung left a commemorative note after visiting the factory."
"On June 4, President Kim Il Sung laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on VĂtkov Hill in Prague."
"President Kim Il-sung returns to the welcome of factory workers."
"President Kim Il-sung returns to the welcome of factory workers On June 6, President Kim Il Sung toured the Avia automobile factory in Prague." "Factory workers enthusiastically welcomed the president, holding national flags and bouquets of flowers." "President Kim Il Sung looked at various cars produced at the factory."
"Prague Citizensâ Assembly welcomes President Kim Il Sung"
Text on the Image. "Long live the friendship between the peoples of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea!"
"President Kim Il Sung and President Gustav Husak shook hands after their speeches."
"A Prague citizens' convention to welcome President Kim Il Sung was held on June 6th at Prague Palace." "The Citizens' Assembly is a joint effort between Korea and Czechoslovakia, which is growing stronger and stronger every day, united in a common struggle to oppose imperialism and build socialism based on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. It was a powerful demonstration of friendship and unity among the people."
"President Kim Il-sung shakes hands with President Gustav Husak."
"President Kim Il Sung of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, departed Prague by special train on June 6th after successfully completing an official goodwill visit to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic." "The citizens of Prague are committed to developing to a new height the traditional friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries, the parties, the governments and the peoples of Korea and Czechoslovakia, and strengthening the unity and cohesion of the socialist countries and the international communist movement. He enthusiastically saw off President Kim Il Sung and his delegation as they departed after completing their visit without a hitch."
"The delegation departed Prague with a warm welcome from party and state officials of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic."
"We took a commemorative photo with the executives who were seeing us off."
Photos and texts from Chongryon magazine, âæéźźç»ć ±â issue 10, 1984.
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