The Doctoral School of History and the Department of History cordially invite you to the
Public Defense of the Doctoral Thesis in
History
by
Szele Áron
on
The Arrow Cross. The Ideology of Hungarian Fascism.
-A conceptual approach-
will be held on
Monday, November 30, 2015 at 11:00
in the
Senate room
Central European University (CEU)
Budapest—1051
Nádor 9
Defense Committee
Chair:  András Bozóki, Department of Political Science, CEU
Supervisor:  Balázs Trencsényi, Department of History, CEU
Members:    Constantin Iordachi, Department of History, CEU
Roger Eatwell, University of Bath
Reader:  Béla Bodó, Missouri State University
D ISSERTATION ABSTRACT
I arrived in Budapest in the beginning of 2007, as an MA student at the CEU, to an atmosphere of tension and discontent. Hungary, by that time, was gripped by a recession and a general dissatisfaction with the powers that be coming from a significant section of the population. The loss of credibility of the political left, and the subsequent rise of the right-wing, in its conservative and far right manifestations, was palpable. As a Hungarian coming from the diaspora, I had the quality of a semi-outsider, and had a unique perspective, being accustomed to Hungarian culture, but not its contemporary politics. I could not help notice the situation, and contrast it to that of my native country, Romania, where the far right had all but died out as a political phenomenon. As a historian, I attempted to interpret the situation in a diachronic manner, comparing past situations to the present. As asymmetrical as these comparisons were, they opened up my interest in investigating a hitherto under-researched area, that of the far right and fascist ideologies in interwar Hungary. These past political projects were conspicuously present in the symbolism and legitimacy of the contemporary far right, which glorified the interwar period. Reading further into the material that became available to me, I came across certain trends of interpretations that seemed implausible and anachronic (see the literature review). Beyond simple intellectual curiosity toward the topic, I attempted to explain the apparent populist and mimetic leftist rhetoric of both the interwar fascism and contemporary far right.
The dissertation is structured into three major chapters, which constitute the body of the thesis. The first chapter is dedicated to explaining the current state of the research on the topic, and attempts to place my work within the major international historiographic debates on the subject of fascism. It also provides the reader with the needed socio-political context, in order to show the
political, intellectual and social background which gave birth to fascist ideology in Hungary. This also includes external influences, for I have partly explained the phenomenon as a product of domestic tendencies and adaption of foreign ideologies. The second chapter contains the actual results of my research, structured into four major sub-chapters, each dedicated to a certain group of ideas or concepts. In the first sub-chapter, I attempted to discuss the attempt of interwar fascism to create a certain type of national community through discourse and practice, and to define the nation on ethno-racial terms, all the while attempting to place Hungary as high up as possible in a European new world order. Closely following this, the second part of the chapter discusses the role of the narrative of leadership and charisma in creating hierarchies of power within state and society. These hierarchies were formed a binomial between leadership and the people, who were also given an important role, as fascism attempted to level social difference in favor of an organic community of the people, with a singular leader. This kind of definition of the people constitutes the topic of my third su
bchapter. The final sub-chapter of the second part of the thesis analyzes the narrative in which these concepts of people, nation, and leader were arranged. The narrative theorizing was disguised as historicist, but ultimately was an a-historic and anti-historic theory. The Hungarian nation would enter into a new phase of existence that would constitute the end of history, a sort of perpetual golden age. In the final chapter, I provided the conclusions to my work.
BIO
First Name: Áron
Last Name: Szele
Adress: str. Matei Voievod, nr. 115-123, Bucharest, Romania
S TUDIES:
- graduate of “Ady Endre” theoretical high school of Bucharest, specialization: mathematics and IT, class of 2003
- Graduate of the University of Bucharest, Faculty of History, with the specialization of Modern European History; period of studies: 2003-2007.
- Master of Arts in Comparative History at the Central European University, Budapest, Department of History, class of 2007-2008.
- Presently Ph.D. Candidate at the Central European University, Budapest, Department of History, year of enrollment: 2008
S CHOLARSHIPS AND G RANTS:
- 2008: Ion Raţiu Family Foundation Study Grant
- 2008: Dinu Patriciu Foundation “Open Horizons” Scholarship
- 2014: Central European University Write-Up Grant
B OOK:
National movements and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The activity and discourse of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania 1900-1914, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken, 2014
B OOK
C HAPTERS:
-Nationalism, Racism, Internationalism. The White Power Music Scene in Hungary and Romania, in the book: Anton Shekhovtsov (ed.), White Power Music in Europe, Searchlight Magazine Publications, Northampton, 2012
-Contributor for the chapter Hungary in Martin Langebach, Andreas Speit (ed.)Europas radikale Rechte: Bewegungen und Parteien auf Straßen und in Parlamenten (Europe’s Radical Right: Movements and Parties on the Street and in Parliament), Zurich, Orell Füssli, 2013
-Geo-Historical Overview in 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The State of Integration of East and West in the European Union, European Commission, Brussels, 2014
-History in the use of diplomacy: France, Turkey and the EU facing the question of the Armenian Genocide in Peter Balazs, Ahmet Evin (eds.), Turkey and the European Union: Strategic Partners and Competitors, CEU Press,Budapest, 2015
-The visual politics of the radical right in Hungary, in Fabian Virchow, The far right and visual politics, 2015 (forthcoming)
-
Fascism in Hungary in the book: Constantin Iordachi (ed.), Fascism in Interwar East-Central Europe. A reappraisal, Brill, 2015 (forthcoming)
A RTICLES:
-The Political language and activity of the fin-de-siècle Transylvanian Romanian Elite.
Postmemorandism: toward a new ideology, in The Scientific Bulletin of the Transylvania University of Brasov, vol I. (50), 2008, pp. 291-301
-  A nemzettest formálása. Állampolgárság és szavazati jog Romániában (Formatting the National Body. Citizenship and Voting Rights in Romania), together with Zselyke Tófalvi,  in Pro Minoritate, Spring 2011 Issue, pp. 61-70
-The Public Relations and the Image of the Hungarian EU Council Presidency, in EU Frontiers,  nr. 8, June 2011, pp.24-30
-Extraordinary Situations, Extraordinary Means: A Comparison between the regenerative projects of the Hungarian Radical Right yesterday and today, in The CEU Political Science Journal, 2012
leftist-
Фашистська харизма у міжвоєнній Угорщині: до поняття харизматичної влади (Fascist Charisma in interwar Hungary), in Ukraina Moderna, Tom 20, Fall 2012

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