‘It was encoded into my life’ Interview with a former far-right student and his teacher

  • 2024. October 13.
  • Lőrinc László

19 September 2013.

László Lőrinc

You studied history for six years in high school – and I was your teacher all along. * For me it was incomprehensible, a little painful, but of course also interesting, how someone, being my student, in this student community, starts wearing T-shirts with the contour of Greater Hungary, putting up anti-Trianon stickers, and expounding the corresponding ideas in the corridors and classrooms. First of all, what were your family values, did you talk about Trianon and the like at home?

Trianon was not an issue. The values were more liberal on my mother’s side and more conservative on my father’s, but neither had much influence on me. But mostly I came to this school with a leftist liberal mindset, which maybe I also left with, but at the same time, a true hipster finds what is furthest from the mainstream of the given community, and I did that very well at AKG. (Laughs)

Were you annoyed by the way others thought and they challenged you with it?

Perhaps I sensed hypocrisy in the air and wanted to present what was not accepted by those around me. Of course, this was not entirely conscious, and after a while I obviously identified with it.

When did it start?

Maybe around 8th or 9th grade.

Here you were a living monument to being different. You actually impressed a lot of us with that, the only strange thing was that as a minority you took a stance that did not tolerate minorities.

I created a paradoxical situation. (Laughs) There’s another element to it. Most people who can lead a balanced lifestyle have an inbred worldview from an early age, which is often closed. By a closed worldview I mean a worldview that cannot be refuted by thinking in its own terms, its own categories. I lacked that: neither a religious upbringing, nor a very political upbringing, nor anything that could give me a stable worldview – which made attractive the ideologies that could give it. This upbringing combined with this rather odd personality I think leads to a high probability of some kind of extremism. It was somewhat encoded into me at that stage of my life. It might have culminated in, say, militant atheism in a religious school, or anarchism in a conservative school. I was very lucky here at AKG in that most of my teachers were able to treat it as a teenager’s quest for his own way forward, and not see me as a political enemy.

What does it mean to be a ‘weird’ personality type?

…Actually, I was a bit of a nonconformism freak…

That’s interesting, since you were a helpful, very respectful student, respectful of authority. That’s a very special type of adolescent rebellion.

Yes, in the AKG the students would scribble on the desks, and then my rebellion was to wipe off the graffiti, to clean up the mess, to stop the liberal infestation of scribbling and disrespect.

Wasn’t this the expression of a need for a safer, more orderly world for you?

Of course it was. That was basically a part of it. It was a strange mixture of a search for security and a search for freedom.

I had this sense about you, for example when we were at the King Mathias contest in Tata, that you liked military things very much, everything that had a formal order, wearing a uniform, marching, all those command words, toughness, militancy – was there something romantic about it for you?

Obviously. The ostentatious external signs of totalitarian dictatorships also exude some terrible power, and there’s always something romantic about that. But the strange thing is that before AKG, I went to a school where we had to wear uniforms, and I couldn’t stand that either. I didn’t wear it, and I would get punished for it.

Have you had any experiences or events that provoked you from the outside world that triggered you to go in this esoteric direction?

That’s a very good word, esoteric. Our little clique of a few guys back in the day convening behind the map cabinet on the third floor, during 7th and 8th grades had no political motivations. We simply didn’t want to be with the others that much. When we were in dark clothes, we were being wizards. Really. We’d read esoteric stuff about necromancy, the occult, that sort of thing. And the really weird thing was that just because we wore steel-toed boots, listened to heavy metal, wore black clothes, we got these comments that we must be a Nazi or a far-right wing. And I wasn’t. Maybe that was one of the things that made me say, “if you want it so badly, then so be it”. I don’t know.

Did you play role-playing fantasy games? It’s the Lord of the Rings line, isn’t it?

Yes, we role-played. The Lord of the Rings was there, but it wasn’t very central.

What was it that made you go further into historical esotericism? The internet, books, people?

Obviously the internet was very important, and I went to lectures on these subjects, they were a bit sectarian, I listened to conflicting alternative historical ideas, sometimes agreed with one or two of them. I can’t remember the names of the lecturers. I also looked into what happened at Trianon, under the influence of the far right’s street guerrilla campaign, and found it unfair.

Did sitting in history classes in schools with a completely different approach frustrate you significantly? How did that affect you?

As a constant reinforcement. Now the plot has come to fruition, and they are trying to infect the national consciousness of the young Hungarian generation with this Habsburg-communist concoction, they want to take away our national consciousness and say that we are not Huns, while we are.

The interesting thing is that I have never felt any anger in you directed at me, even though in terms of this logic I was lying to you.

Not necessarily. I saw a structure. I wasn’t mad at you because I thought “well, maybe the teacher was also lied to”. And they lied to the teacher’s teachers, and even their teachers, and someone at the top of the Masonic-Jewish-gay lodge knows the truth, just hides it, and lies to everyone else.

And everything just confirmed your theory

You could fit… you could cram everything into this world view.

When the others started arguing with you, in class, in the corridor, in the hall, during breaks, did it bother you? Or did you like that situation?

Of course. How can you argue if everyone agrees with you?

So did you enjoy these situations?

Of course.

Was there any other student in your year who was on a similar journey as you?

I think nobody to such an extent. For them it was a bit like groups based on musical styles, the alternative and the hip hop and the rock, and then in this case it was the far right.

But for you it went beyond that.

Yes.

So much so that you looked for partners outside the school, among the members of the right-wing party Jobbik. How did you feel there?

Actually, I felt bad there too. It was a different kind of society, I just couldn’t fit in, even if I wanted to. And I had the feeling that fuck, everyone here is just talking the talk and pretending and I’m the only one who takes it seriously. Everyone likes the part where we cook together, but I thought we would finally do something good for the country. Maybe I just whipped myself more into it. I also read more than they did, I had a period when I was really into the ideas of Cécile Tormay and similar early 20th century right-wing authors.

What was your impression of Cécile Tormay, for example?

Obviously, I felt she was biassed in An outlaw’s diary very strongly even then, but I still could identify with it emotionally. Regardless, rereading some of her descriptions today, I find it very revolting. What really appealed to me about the radical right, apart from the similarity of our view of history, was that their economic agenda was actually the most leftist: this was the very group that was pushing social issues the most for a while. Perhaps if the red or red-and-black flags had been flying outside MTV’s headquarters in 2006 instead of the one with the red-and-white stripes, my story would have been very different.

You were there?

No, I was in 8th grade at the time, but I started to sympathize with the protesters. Gyurcsány lied and then he didn’t resign, then let’s protest. And there were a couple of protests later where I was present.

At the time we were worried about you and even we asked you whether you got involved in this kind of thing. Going back to Tata, I had a very bad experience of our endless debates there, I saw that you could not be convinced by arguments, because you were going round in circles, like in the joke: “The elephant has red eyes so that he can hide in the cherry tree.” “But no one has ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree!” “How well he hid himself, didn’t he?” It seemed hopeless. How did you live with it?

I’m sure the debate had an impact on me later on, and you must have said that then, I can’t remember, but actually the apt similes of the kind came much later. But then the debate made me even more convinced that, yes, that is what Freemasonry is like, that Finno-Ugrianism has so deeply embedded itself in the teaching of history that history teachers are so well equipped to teach the lie, and that I have to convince everyone even more that it was the evil Freemasons who caused Trianon.

When did disillusionment come out of all this?

It’s hard to point it out like that, obviously it wasn’t a moment of enlightenment, but things were slowly falling apart. For example, at one point I realised that I am not thinking freely if I accept such paradigms and so think in a closed system. Then another realisation was important. The main motivation for the alternative view of history is that, for today’s age, political conclusions can be drawn from the fact that the Sumerian-Scythian-Aryans were living here and were Christians in 6000 BC, and that they were us. And from such things they try to deduce that this is why Trianon was unjust. No! And that was one of the things that struck me, that who was here in the Carpathian Basin and when, should not have political consequences for today. And then we can really think in terms of what happened, not in terms of issuing a title-deed to the present. But there were also smaller moments, for example, the realisation that the flag-waving and flag-burning people in black uniforms protesting against Trianon in Hungary were so much like the flag-waving and flag-burning people in black uniforms celebrating Trianon in neighbouring countries. I remember once taking part in a demonstration where a Slovak flag was burnt and it outraged me.

This is interesting. Do you remember that in one of our lessons on Trianon we watched a ppt with pictures of young Slovak and Romanian people in DocMartens bbots who protested together against the Hungarians?

Yes. That had something to do with my coming to that conclusion, although I was most impressed by my own experiences. The chauvinism and especially the immeasurable boorishness began to be distasteful after a while.

And the discussions you had with the other students during the breaks, in the lobby, did they have an effect on you, did they mature you, even in a hidden and delayed way?

In some ways, yes. But in many of those debates they made logical errors which weakened their impact. What really had an impact were the ideas about worldviews that emerged during history lessons and during the Hungarian lessons of teacher Borbála Hites. And most of all, Judit Misley [the school librarian], I talked to her a lot, and she was the only person with whom, when I argued, I didn’t feel obliged to defend myself. She gave me the publicist volume by Endre Ady called Predictions about Hungary. It put the idea that ‘the evil Freemasons prevented István Tisza from defending Hungary from international intrigue’ in an interesting light for me. It was then that I began to suspect that Tisza and Prohászka might not have been just good guys. For example, the servant issue came up. Another thing that had a very strong impact on my change of worldview was when I hitchhiked to Amsterdam with my friend Zsiga. I had a conviction that Muslim immigration in Western Europe was a serious problem that was threatening the functioning of society and that it had to be stopped. And hitchhiking, I found that when the Dutch and Germans heard our accent, they pretended not to see us, let alone pick us up… again, a paranoia that it was because of our accent… while in the Netherlands, with one exception, only Turkish and Arab immigrants picked us up. My experience was that here I was seen as more of a foreigner, because I had a little stubble and a backpack because of the long journey, I spoke with a strong accent, and the immigrant families were more welcoming.

Was there a moment when you thought, ‘I’m not going to rub shoulders with this right-wing group anymore?

Yes. About a year or a year and a half before I graduated, I checked out because I had got to the point where I said no, this is unacceptable to me, this political side. There was one particular event that really outraged me: a decree criminalising the homeless in the 8th district, supported by the local branch ofJobbik, and I had been involved in street demonstrations against it.

So you were still in high school at the time of your turnaround?

Absolutely. In the last year I was very active against the far-right side, in NGOs, but I didn’t make a big deal of it because I didn’t want you to think that your pedagogical method was so good.

How important is the national sentiment to you now, how has it changed?

Nationalism is so much a part of my embraced values that I have an emotional need for it, just as some kind of religion would be emotionally nice, but I consciously don’t want to let my vision of reality be blurred by such things.

Were you looking for religion?

It happened to be the case. I spent a lot of time at school reading a lot of this stuff. But I wouldn’t like to count myself as an adult with imaginary friends, even if it would be nice.

If you meet a man in London who is equally a Slovak as a Hungarian you are, would you argue on Trianon?

We would probably agree, not disagree. As a Slovak, I would think that we are happy for Hungarians living in Slovakia because they add something to the culture of the country and this should be preserved. Let them preserve their culture, let them study in their own language, and let us move towards a unifying peaceful Europe together with our neighbours.

That’s too good, especially compared to the time we went to Krakow on a class trip and you and your friends on the bus kept trying to convince us that Slovaks were nerds. One couldn’t decide if it was provocation or if you really saw it that way.

We didn’t think this through either… But actually, if I meet a Slovak or a Romanian in Western Europe, we form a group, we are the Eastern Europeans who know how much we earn at home doing the same job of a barman as we do here for much more money, and we may be looked down upon for our accent, but we know much more about the world.

How has your image of gypsies changed in the meantime?

For a while I ignored the question. But after a while, I began to see the prejudices that were circulating as part of a system. Instead of using the phrase ‘gypsies stole this or that…’, I used ‘gypsy crime’ as a ‘technical’ term. I saw the change in the ethnic proportions of the population as a serious threat. My prejudices against the Roma community were eventually overcome by the feeling that it was unfair to distinguish between equally poor people on an ethnic basis. Then I began to get annoyed by the callous attitude of viewing social issues as a law enforcement issue. I also began to see the use of the term ‘gypsy crime’ as unfairly stigmatising. After a while, I became explicitly indignant at hearing it.

Did the school Roma Project Week, the lessons dedicated to the idea of coexistence play a role in this?

No.

What do you remember from all this?

The conclusion that I think is important to draw from this is that we think in so many closed paradigms, even in cases where this is a completely accepted, majority opinion, but we have to be able to critically deal also with these paradigms, and see through them: they can be economic paradigms, religions, nationalism. It is not a great achievement to be able to refute something that is very absurd and very far from common understanding, but to refute something that is commonly accepted.

And will you be less likely to fall into similar traps?

Yes, definitely. Otherwise closed systems are not necessarily harmful, I could take Marxism as an example. If you can be critical of them, if you can treat it like a pair of glasses with tinted lenses, it helps you to understand the world, you just have to be able to put on different glasses to understand the world from more than one perspective.

László Lőrinc, 19 September 2013.

Last update: 21 September 2013.

*Born in 1993, the interviewee was a student at AKG (the Alternative Economics High School) from 2005-2012 and is currently a student at University College London.

Slovak and Romanian radicals celebrate the Trianon Peace Treaty