March 31, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Build up of Consensual Anti-Semitism of Hungary in 1920s
Only if you were to have lived in Russia
along with Russians for a considerable amount of time would you have an
understanding of this contemptuous sentiment of Bela Kun towards Russians that
is in general held by most Europeans.
When Bela Kun was ousted and the short
reign of the Communists ended in Hungary it was time for the change of sides to
unleash violence and terror.
Now it would be the time of White Terror under
the officers of Horthy’s National Army to begin.
These strings of revengeful
counter-reprisals would last for two years targeting Communists, Jews,
progressives and peasants – in short, anyone who was perceived to be holding
and disseminating the repulsive Communism ideology.
So it was about this time when the
Hungarian society had broadly developed a consensual anti-Semitic views and
feelings that was generally gaining grounds all across Europe.
This anti-Semitic mood was further
amplified by yet another factor: the disproportionate and rather perplexing
success of the Jewish community in the Hungarian society of 1920s.
By this time the Jews in Hungary
represented roughly 5% of the population and yet when it came to academics,
commerce or finance, they quite remarkably outnumbered others.
In the Budapest stock exchange of 1921 88%
members of it were constituted by Jews and 91% of the currency brokers in the
Budapest currency market were Jews.
As much as 80 or even 90 percent of the
industries in Hungary were owned by Jewish families albeit they were few and
closely related.
Yuri Slezkine who is the professor of
Russian history and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European and
Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley is best known for
being the author of two books.
The first of the two is ‘The Jewish
Century” that he published in 2004 and the second of the two was “The House of
Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution” which he published recently in
2017.
He characterizes the Jews as Mercurian
people “who specialize exclusively in providing services to the surrounding
food-producing societies” who he labels as Apollonians.
Let me clarify for you what these two
strange and yet at the same time familiar words mean.
In Greek mythology, Apollo is the god of
livestock and agriculture that favors and delights in the foundation of towns
and establishment of civil constitution.
Thus Apollo and thereby Apollonians signify
settled existence in general.
The Roman god Mercury (similar to the Greek
God Hermes) is the god not merely of financial gain, commerce, travelers but
also luck, trickery and the thieves.
The Latin root merx stands for merchant or
commerce.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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