On Inhumanity by David Livingstone Smith

Author:David Livingstone Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Dangerous Speech

“These are the facts: a significant portion of the Gypsy population is not fit for coexistence. It is not fit for living among people. These Gypsies are animals and behave as animals.”1 These are not the words of Adolf Hitler. They are from a 2013 op-ed entitled “Who Should Not Be?” written by the outspoken journalist Zsolt Bayer, a personal friend of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, and one of the thirty-seven founders of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party. He went on to list all the ways that they were depraved and like animals. He claimed that they have sex like animals, that they relieve themselves in public like animals, and that they “are incapable of any kind of communication that could be called human. Most often inarticulate sounds surge forth from their animal skulls and the only thing they understand in this miserable world is violence.”

Bayer’s article was ostensibly prompted by the stabbing of two Hungarian athletes in a bar fight in which Roma men were involved. Contemplating what may have moved the men to violence, Bayer moved on from using animalistic metaphors to straightforwardly laying out his view of the Roma as subhuman.

They did it because they are not people. Because they draw knives right away, even if there are forty of them, and stab. In the heart, often one time after another. Good Lord, how intolerable all this is, how it destroys everything that is human.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.