Excerpts from the interview published in Hungarian on Index.hu, by Ágnes Szűcs, on 3 December 2019
The half-brother of the French star DJ is a Member of the European Parliament, whose book on Hungary was published last spring. He draws from his fifty years’ experience as a journalist when he claims: the illiberal movements are about to run out of steam, because a policy of social justice provides answers that are more credible.
“I am surprised how differently my Hungarian friends are speaking now, after the municipal elections, than one and a half years ago, when I was collecting material for my book. They were apathetic then, they were preparing for having Orbán in power for another fifty years. Now they are reinvigorated” – Bernard Guetta, French Member of the European Parliament (EP) told EUrologus.
The name is not familiar by accident: the politician from the EP’s Renew Europe group is the half-brother of the French star DJ, David Guetta. About his relation with his brother he reveals only: “We love each other, but we are like the day and the night.”
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Forever a journalist
It was after fifty years of experience as a journalist that he decided to put himself to the test in European politics, too. “I wanted a challenge, because articles, I could write with my eyes closed.” He worked as a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde in the pivotal period between 1979-1990. At the beginning of the decade he gave an account to French readers of the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, from 1983 he reported on American politics of the end of the Cold War from Washington, then, during four years from 1987 on, he portrayed the social-economic processes that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1991, he had a segment in the morning show of the France Inter radio station.
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Mr Guetta is convinced that we have reached a new stage of the European integration. This is why he accepted the invitation to become MEP. In 1983 he said no when Le Monde wanted to send him to Moscow. “Thank God I said no, and I only went four years later, when I could experience the “perestroika” and the change of the regime.”
When they asked him to become a politician, he thought there was nothing more important than European unity. He also thought: “I am soon 69 years old, and it was very appealing to begin a third life, and, for such an old gentleman, to set out on something exciting.”
He feels that three important goals of his have come about since July: the EP awarded Ilham Tohti Uyghur human rights activist with the Sakharov Prize, the Renew Europe group asked him to prepare a report on the relationship between the EU and Russia, and the EP passed a resolution that condemns the aggression and intimidation against Algerian religious minorities and civil society.
“As a journalist, I was a lone wolf, I did not care about anyone, I said what I wanted to say. Here, I also say what I think, but I need to find allies. It is a surprising experience, and tough, psychologically.
„At an intellectual level I have always stood by the idea of the compromise, but to do it myself, it is a whole different animal. I do not like it”
– Mr Guetta reveals, and also admits that as an MEP, he works the same way as he did as a journalist. Not only because he regularly publishes writings on his multilingual site – which is available in Hungarian, too – but because “I talk with everyone, I ask for meetings, I ask them how and why voted the way they did. I use a journalist’s weapons.”
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Mr Guetta, who was familiar with similar political circles in his youth, finds it logical that he has joined the liberal-centrist Renew Europe group. “I have supported the moderate, centrist Left my whole life. My heroes are Pierre Mendès France and Michel Rocard, the personalities of the second French Left. In the Renew Europe, there still sit those liberals who represent the legacy of Thatcherism, but they are in a massive minority. The majority of the group are centrists who are led by the ideas of the Scandinavian social democracy or the German social market economy.”
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His book about Hungary reads like a long report in a quality newspaper: he asks every side, he listens to everyone, from time to time he slips in his own observations, then he subtly interprets what had been said. The result is an obviously subjective, but a tangible and, for a Western reader, well understandable explanation on what happens in Hungary at the end of the 2010s. Mr Guetta listens to the words of Tamás Lánczi, the editor-in-chief of [the government-friendly] Figyelő, or the views of Zsuzsa Hegedűs, sociologist and advisor to the Prime Minister, but his dedication to liberal democracy never falters.
Illiberalism running out of steam
“Gifted with a huge amount of political talent, Mr Orbán was able to turn the particularities of the Hungarian situation to his advantage: for example the astonishingly profound social dissatisfaction and the feeling that economic policy only serves the interests of the higher circles” – he explains his conclusions in Brussels, in his office in the European Parliament. “Mr Orbán came up with and popularized the word “illiberalism” and he launched an assault against liberalism. He totally confuses the notion of economic neoliberalism and political liberalism, and therein lies a tragedy” – he says. Both are liberalisms, but the Thatcherite neoliberalism of the 1980s, or the economic school of the Chicago boys that inspired the economic policy of the Hungarian regime change, too, are not the same as the most important idea of the French Enlightenment: the respect of individual freedoms.
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The climate demonstrations that mobilize tens of thousands of people call to his mind the protests of the 1960s. “Not their content, their format: a protest that permeates the whole continent. Back then, the revolution brought a release from the rules of the school, the family, the church. Now it frees us from inequality. It strengthens and demands a role for the state, a state which brings justice to the clash between labour and capital, and creates a regulatory framework which looks into the future” – the politician reckons.
Mr Guetta claims:
“This wave will erase illiberalism because it is much more credible, stronger and heeds the zeitgeist.”
He does not exclude the possibility that even Orbán and Kaczyński will change. “All the more so because Kaczyński is an honest man. Orbán is different, of course. He is a cynic.” The publicist’s view on Orbán is flattering and critical at the same time: “He is an autocratic leader who does not tolerate any objection to his rule, and who is incredibly sure of his own mental superiority. Which is real, but not to such an extent.”
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Macron and Orbán joining hands
During his investigation in Budapest, Mr Guetta was looking for an answer to the question: how is it possible that the Hungarian prime minister agrees with French president Emmanuel Macron in the issue of a European defence policy. Even Orbán’s supporters could not resolve the contradiction that a common defence also means federalisation. Mr Guetta thinks that the explanation lies in the fact that “Orbán is a cynical demagogue who nevertheless understands the necessities of international politics.”
According to the MEP, “President Trump says rudely and sometimes ridiculously what Obama had said politely and with style”, but in the end, the message is the same: it is not the USA’s vital interest to guarantee Europe’s security, while the American public opinion has grown tired of American interventionism, and it only wants to protect its economic interests in the Far East.
He believes that all the nationalistic, anti-Brussels statements coming from the Hungarian prime minister are the true essence of demagoguery.
“He does not mean a single word of what he is saying. What drives him is only his political interests in Hungary. At the same time, he is a very clever man who is able to recognize that the American protective umbrella is done for, and the European states really need a common defence policy. Not only the small countries, France and Germany do, too.”
In the third stage of the European integration, – the first was the period before the introduction of the euro, the second the era of the euro – “even though he denounces “the new Soviet power and the dictates of Brussels”, Orbán will become aware of their necessity.” The politician admits: it is a paradoxical situation where Orbán supports Macron in defence policy, but he finds the German support for the same much more surprising, because the Germans have become pacifists on account of the Second World War and the Nazi regime, they had not wanted to set up a real German army and as a consequence, they have not wanted a European defence policy so far.
