ABSTRACT
The chapter is concerned with the rhetoric and symbols of the Hungarian extreme right movements, inspired by two posters from a municipal election campaign in Budapest in the autumn of 2010 by the most influential extreme right wing party, Jobbik. The inscription on the first picture says, “Budapest is the capital of the Hungarians”. By means of a simple rhetorical trick, the sentence implies the exclusion of others, the non-ethnic Hungarian citizens, such as Romani and Jews, who are, by the force of this definition, “foreign occupants”. According to the ethno-nationalist, populist, right-wing views, Budapest is a town ruled by “strangers”, the city is a “foreign body in the heart of the nation”. The text on the second poster reads, “Do you really want to stop parasitism? If yes, you are a Jobbik voter!” The slogan, accompanied by a picture of a mosquito, opens a vast space of imagery; the iconography of anti-Semitic propaganda is full of bloodsucking insects, vermin, lice, spiders, rats, and other repelling animals. Our “skin ego” (Anzieu, 1989) is, a psychological shield that defends against penetrations that endanger our integrity or self-identity. The main function of the biological skin is abjection: eliminating impure, toxic, undesirable substances and bodily products. A similar function, it is argued, can be attributed to 22the psychological and social “skin”. The author discusses Imre Hermann’s arguments from The Psychology of Anti-Semitism, where Hermann applies his concepts of “clinging”, “going-in-search”, and “separation” to understanding the roots of anti-Semitism. He evaluates these interpretations in the light of present psychoanalytic and social psychological approaches and recent political developments, especially the rapid success of the Jobbik party that culminated at the European election in 2009.
