Ákos Szilágyi on uniforms and the rule of law

The poet and essayist Ákos Szilágyi reflects in the left-liberal daily Népszabadság on the phenomenon of paramilitary organisations. He focuses particularly on the Hungarian Guard, the uniformed arm of the right-wing-radical party Jobbik: "What kind of order do the soldiers' uniforms of paramilitary organisations suggest, promote and promise? The order of freedom or rather the order of the barracks yard? The order of the autonomous individual or that of the fanatical dictators of conscience who want to control him? The order of the law or the order of authority? ... Paramilitary formations elude the control of the state based on the rule of law and of the parliament. By existing alongside state forces of order or running counter to them they break the state's legal monopoly on the use of force. ... The paramilitary organisations in Hungary (above all the Hungarian Guard) are pursuing the aim of establishing an authoritarian police state. The colour of the soldiers' uniforms and the symbols in some cases recall a heroic past (in other words: the mass murders and deportations of the blood-soaked Hungarian history of the twentieth century). In other cases they project a militaristic social order into the future. The catastrophic history of the twentieth century shows that in those countries where the order of the state based on the rule of law is undermined by the order of a 'uniformed,' 'national' or racial ideology, the way is clear for civil wars and dictatorships that perpetrate mass murder."

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