July 10, 2008, 11:29 CET
Hungary's legal approach to "extreme" political speech now officially insane
So I'll try to keep this short, because if I think about it too much I'll probably have a nervous breakdown. As you may have heard, two interesting and potentially far-reaching court decisions were handed down on Tuesday regarding political speech in Hungary. In the first, the European Court of Human Rights struck down a law banning the communist-style red star, which Hungary enacted back in 1994. Meanwhile, that same day a local court in Budapest ruled that egg-throwing is a form of protected political speech, provided people cut it out if the cops tell them to. While this might seem like a massive victory for free speech, there's one small (i.e. huge) problem: according to index.hu, the Strasbourg decision does not apply to the swastika or the arrow cross, the display of which are still rigidly controlled by the original law against "symbols of tyranny." So just to quickly connect the dots here, it's now legal to pelt people you hate with eggs, but not to show them a picture that might hurt their feelings. Obviously the next important theory the country's constitutional eggheads need to work over is whether it's legal to paint a picture of a swastika or arrow cross on an egg and then throw it at someone...
EMAIL ARTICLE
ADD A COMMENT
SITE FEED3 Comments
Published every Wednesday, the Politics Hungary newsletter contains all the previous week's headlines from Politics.hu, as well as related stories from other All Hungary sites.
Recent Comments:
- Hungary to mark anniversary of 1848 Revolution on Monday
- New music festival planned for Budapest
- International higher education conference held in Budapest
- Hungarians live shorter, less healthy lives than EU peers, survey reveals
- Palace of Arts to celebrate birthday with gala concert, photo exhibition
- Press photo exhibition opens in Budapest
- Photographs reporting Mongolian election campaign on display in Budapest
- Another flu epidemic unlikely in Hungary, health official says
- Hungary to set new parking, gun rules
- British royal couple to pay three-day visit to Hungary next week
- Versatile Hungarian singer to launch new album
- PM says crisis has sobered up Hungary
- Balaton Development Council head resigns as coordinator of racetrack project
- Television ad revenue in Hungary drops 16% to Ft 60 billion in 2009
- Budapest municipal council approves Ft 539 billion budget
- State acquires 95% of Malév through capital raise, in line with earlier agreement
- Magyar Telekom takes first steps to enter retail gas, electricity markets
- Fitch says Hungarian Bank sector to recover after stress test
- Analysts see average annual inflation overshooting NBH, gov't targets
- Fidesz committee to focus on deficit, CO2 quotas
- The Ultimate Chef's Table (With Wine)
- How About Some Czech, Mate?
- First Era of Coffee-to-Go in Hungary Over as Gloria Jean's Liquidated
- Are Power Plants and Scheming Slovaks Really The Most Pressing Issues Facing Tokaj Winemakers?
- Survey Reveals Hungarians Are Increasingly Conscious of Food Safety
- Apropó is... Apropos
- New Culinary Gurus to Tackle Eternal Tokaj-Tikka Masala Mystery This Thursday in Budapest
- Come Back and Share Your Horror Stories of Gluttonous Thursday 2010, Assuming You Make it Out Alive
- Campaign Promise to Dilute Ban on Home Pálinka Distilling Receives Mixed Reactions
- No Wonder We Got Licked By the Austrians in 1848
- Dumb New Records (II): Chicken Lays Mega Egg With Assist From Paks Nuclear Reactor
- Dumb New Records (I): How Many Hours Can a Person Watch Cartoons Before They Are Officially Braindead?
- Metro Drivers Arrive at their Wedding in Full BKV Glory
- Is That a Nokia Box Under Your Coat or are You Just Happy to See Us?
- Balaton Sound Festival Gears Up to Party Like it's 1999
- Are Foreigners Hungary's Demographic Savior, or Just a Bunch of Chainsaw-Wielding, Cat-Shooting Maniacs?
- Health Portal Fails Viral Marketing Hygiene Test
- "Statueatory" Rape Crisis Continues as Beloved Village "Madonna" Pinched
It looks to me like Hungarian judges are deeply interesting in exploring the relationship between the ontic and the oneiric.
One now has to distinquish between what actually happened and what we image the perpetrators of various acts think happened/should of happened.
The egg is merely a manifestation, the haeccity and quiddity, of a semantic construct. As such the owner of said semantic construct can hardly be held responsible for the form of expression that these ideas decide to take. These people are merely vessels for their thoughts.
It's a continual battle between parousia and apousia, as Heidegger might have put it.
I say their attempt to tackle these profound philosophical issues is brave.
Just glancing through the judgement of the ECHR, I am not certain Swastika's will stay banned. It depends on the weighing of the criteria in points 48 through 57. I looked at it for a minute and think you could try to build a case that the Swastika falls within the freedom of expression guaranteed in article 10. I especially think of the case when Hindus use the symbol as a religious item. I guess political use will quickly amount to a kind of hate speech, which can be prohibited. (That can also be said of the red star though. Apparently nazis can hate, but socialists can not.)
Nonetheless, Germany has a problem if their law categorically bans the swastika.
2 things come to mind about this egg-story:
a) I read somewhere that the police before the Parade, whe the discussions were high that the BP Police had banned it, stated that it was not "illegal" to throw eggs. This was the Police opinion before the Parade, making anyone ask how then they could actually apprehend anyone for throwing eggs?
2) As I wrote after Parade 2007, the local Police commander (or something similar) actually told the anti-demonstrators that "throwing of eggs are OK, and a rush into the Parade is also OK. We hate the gays as much as you do".
On the other hand one can easily judge this years Policing and crowd control as more professional than last year. Last year it was of course not over 2.000 officers involved, just a few hundred.