Progression

I would like to talk about the difference between free love and mandatory free love, in other words, about human freedom. To do this, let’s recall the era of the “three Ts”, “tolerated, forbidden, supported”. The three Ts precisely marked a lack of freedom, the space where a person is not free. Comrade Aczél was the leader of the stake-movers in the desert of “socialism with a human face”.

But to understand what kind of freedom we’re talking about we need to step slightly away from Hungarian reality. Let’s designate a year that we can interpret as a turning point: 1968. This year indeed proved to be a watershed in the history of Western culture. On this side of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet leadership, with the help of Hungarian military among others, crushed the Prague Spring; our communists did not tolerate deviation.

Beyond the Iron Curtain, the so-called sixty-eighters wanted to turn the world upside down. To avoid any misunderstanding and not be accused of biased interpretation, I would quote from an article in an opposition newspaper: “the sixty-eighters challenged traditional social institutions considered burdensome, such as marriage, family, church or religion. The generational movement, feeding on Marxist-anarchist intellectual roots, meant primarily the French student riots, American peace movements and far-left terrorist groups in Italy and Germany in the West, and the Prague Spring and generally anti-communism in the East”.

So, in the West, movements started from a Marxist-anarchist intellectual base, while in the East, we were moving in the opposite direction, trying freedom stunts against communism.

It’s not at all the same. It’s not at all the same what we mean by progression. It’s not at all the same what the nature and direction of progression is.

It’s not at all the same what kind of freedom a person is missing. Because only what we know can be missed. When our artists in the era of the three Ts pushed the boundaries, venturing into ever newer paths driven by their creative power, they unleashed that creative uplift that made Europe free, and thereby great.

They wanted to live freely in that culture which the heirs of the Western sixty-eighters now want to erase. They wanted to create freely, which presupposes free thinking, free speech, and free expression of opinion.

Today’s progression is fighting against these very things. We could list a multitude of examples: if your opinion differs from the progressive mainstream, you get verbally lynched, existentially negated – if you can give voice to your thoughts at all. What one of the intellectual leaders of the Western sixty-eighters, Herbert Marcuse, called “repressive or liberating tolerance” is a daily practice today; they’ve always been strong in word magic. In essence, Marcuse’s 1965 proposal is quite similar to György Aczél’s “three Ts”. I quote from Marcuse’s infamous essay: “Liberating tolerance would thus mean intolerance against right-wing movements and tolerance of left-wing movements.” A bit further, and even Comrade Aczél would nod vigorously at this: “true peace demands that tolerance be withdrawn even before the act: at the level of communication, in speech, print, and image”.

It doesn’t matter what we call the thought police, three Ts or repressive tolerance, it remains thought police. The Hungarian progression of the late sixties and early seventies is proof that the culture of “dead white men”, intended to be erased by woke, will create our freedom, even if our “own” communist dictatorship sprouting from Marxism would forbid it. We can trust in this. Our freedom is indelible. Even if, in the vocabulary of those progressives, or at least those who call themselves that around here, the duality of homeland and progress has lost the homeland.

Notes:

Historical context:

“Three Ts” (Három T): A cultural policy in communist Hungary, representing “Tűrt” (Tolerated), “Tiltott” (Forbidden), “Támogatott” (Supported). This system categorized cultural products and activities based on their alignment with communist ideology.

Iron Curtain: The ideological and physical boundary dividing Europe into Western and Soviet-influenced Eastern blocs during the Cold War (1945-1991).

Prague Spring: A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which was suppressed by Soviet military intervention.

Political figures:

György Aczél: A prominent cultural politician in communist Hungary, known for implementing the “Three Ts” policy.

Herbert Marcuse: A German-American philosopher and sociologist associated with the Frankfurt School, influential in the New Left movement of the 1960s.

Cultural and political movements:

“Sixty-eighters”: Refers to the generation involved in the cultural and political movements of 1968, particularly in Western Europe and the United States.

Woke: A term originating in the United States, referring to awareness of social issues and injustices, often used critically in this context.

Philosophical concepts:

“Repressive tolerance”: A concept introduced by Herbert Marcuse, critiquing the idea of unlimited tolerance in society.

Literary references:

“Homeland and progress” (haza és haladás): A classic phrase in Hungarian political thought, originating from the 19th century, emphasizing the dual goals of national development.