Ridiculing The Non-Western Other: Opiate of the Asses

At a political summit of the "Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States" (to be sure, in spite of the handsome presence of Turkic loan words in it, Magyar is mos def not a Turkic language, in case anyone really cares), the current Prime Minister of Hungary claimed that "there are Kipchaks in Hungary, many Hungarians have 'Kipchak blood' in them (sic), they have their own self-governments, and Mr President Nazarbayev (sic) (of Kazakhstan) is forever the President of the 'Hungarian Kipchak tribes' (sic) as well."

As such, while it sounds depressingly off-topic (what does "blood" have to do with language, for chrissakes? -- wars have been fought on lies smaller and less offensive than this), that is not my point here.

I'm interested in the reaction of--mainly Budapest-based--liberal opposition intellectuals. Social media space is awash with cultural racist comments invoking tropes such as "the Orient," "despotism",  not to mention "Oriental despotism," including, as of this morning, a video that starts (for the first 20 seconds or so) with Orbán's comments, followed by moving images of a group of attractive central Asian young people dancing in open fields, underlain with a very crude sound tract, in Magyar, ridiculing Kipchaks, Kipchakness, the way the word sounds in Magyar, from an unmistakeably disparaging-orientalist / cultural racist perspective.

To me, this vignette demonstrates the presence of a some kind of a compensation mechanism, compensation for powerful inferiority complexes on both sides of Hungarian politics. It is, in many ways, a textbook example of a shared cultural understanding by both sides, a deeply rooted cultural racism vis-a-vis "the Orient"--and, with that, I have said all I will about this, for now. It is also getting a little repetitive. But, here is a little sample of the rich literature that could serve as background to this depressing subject, should anybody deem it important enough to look into it. Or, we could just forget about it.

Edward Said: Orientalism 

Simon Weaver, "Liquid Racism . . ."

Raúl Pérez, "Racist Humour. . . "

Suzana Milevska - Arun Saldana: "The Eternal Return of Race . . ."

Nasar Meer - Tahseen Noorani: "A Sociological Comparison of Anti-Semitism and . . ."

Steve Garner, "A Moral Economy of Whiteness. . ."

A. R. Kushner: "Selling Racism . . ."

Cristina Sandru: "Joined at the Hip? About Post-Communism in a (Revised) Postcolonial Mode"

Jo Haynes: "Music, Difference, and the Residue of Race"

Böröcz-Sarkar: "The Unbearable Whiteness of the Polish Plumber . . . "