Tribalism

When we try to make sense of the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust, of the
murder to millions of Jews in Europe during WWII, we tend to be overcome by
the scope of it all. If we instead focus on one aspect some things become
clearer. At the dedication of the memorial adjacent to the Great Synagogue
in Budapest for the 600,000 Hungarian Jews who were murdered in 1944-5, the
Hungarian Prime Minister said "we are here to commemorate the deaths of
600,000 Hungarians who were murdered by other Hungarians. Never again must
Hungarians be allowed to kill Hungarians." This is an interesting statement
because it does not mention the word "Jew" but instead emphasizes that they
were Hungarians. Until recently there would have been few Hungarians who
would have regarded Jews as Hungarians, even if they were born there and
even if they only spoke Hungarian.
It is common in the West to regard tribalism as an ancient and dead topic.
But, tribalism was very much alive and well in Europe and was one of the
main causes of WWII. It should be remembered that the Hungarians were a
group of tribes who in 896 CE arrived in what we now call Hungary and
decided to stay. They conquered the land from the surrounding Germanic and
Slavic tribes. Hence Hungarian is a strange alien language within a
surrounding sea of Indo-European languages with which it has no connection.
It is interesting to note that this conquest is seen as legitimate, while
some others are not.
After WWI, because it was an ally of Austria and Germany, under the Treaty
of Trianon, Hungary lost about 2/3 of its territory. It lost Slovakia to
what became Czechoslovakia, Croatia to Yugoslavia and Transylvania to
Romania. It entered WWII on the German side expecting to capture these
areas back, but since Germany lost the war, Hungary lost those areas
forever. But, there were and are still large Hungarian-speaking minorities
in these surrounding countries. The matter was settled only about 10 years
ago in treaties signed between Hungary and each of these countries (Croatia
and Slovakia now independent countries) in which they agreed to respect the
linguistic rights of their Hungarian inhabitants in exchange for a guarantee
that Hungary accepts the current borders.
Thus, was tribalism converted, thru wars and conflict, and treaties into the
modern concept of the constitutional state that guarantees the human rights
of all its citizens. It took 150 years more or less for the American ideals
of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to percolate into the tribal
soul of Europe.
It is as well to remember that the diabolical fate of Germany's Jews rested
on the same paradigm. Namely that Jews and other ethnic groups were of
distinct races, and that blood was more important than culture, that Jews
could not also be Germans or Hungarians and that Hungarians could not also
be Germans. Only recently Germany amended its citizenship laws to include
non-Germans. Civilization prevailed, but at what price?
Now again we see the same stirrings of anti-Semitism in Europe, but
ironically in a united Europe, within the EU, because Jews are once again
seen as outsiders, not European enough to share the same tribal instincts as
the rest. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.