Hungary has the third-highest rate of anti-Semitic prejudice in the EU
According to a recent international survey, anti-Semitism is the third most widespread prejudice in 16 European countries. Based on the data, anti-Semitism is greater among individuals who endorse right-wing ideology, but approximately a third of opposition voters have a prejudice against Jewish people, too.
While being openly anti-Semitic is still taboo, left-wing anti-Semitism has become more prominent than “traditional” right-wing anti-Semitism in Western countries, such as the United Kingdom. Anti-Israel sentiment and behaviour are also widespread in other parts of Western Europe, but anti-Semitism is more characteristic of the former socialist countries, writes Telex.
According to a recently published international study on prejudice, Greece has the strongest manifestations of anti-Semitism. Violence against Jewish people is clearly most common in Western European countries with large Islamic groups.
“The current research has shown that the number of serious acts of violence and the degree of anti-Semitic prejudice are basically unrelated,” explains András Kovács, Professor at the Nationalism Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the Central European University.
“In a number of countries with high levels of anti-Semitic prejudice, like Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, only a negligible number of acts of violence have been registered. In contrast, many anti-Semitic crimes − attack, harassment, and vandalism − occur in countries with low rates of anti-Semitic prejudice, such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.”
Although the definitions and categorisations of anti-Semitic behaviour can vary by country, most surveys in recent years (such as the annual research of Medián) agree that
about 30 to 40% of the Hungarian society agree more or less with certain anti-Semitic statements, such as that Jewish people try to benefit even from their persecution during the war.
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In the latest study, András Kovács and György Fischer called this latent anti-Semitism. They also found that
24% of Hungarian society are strongly anti-Semitic, 18% are moderately anti-Semitic, and Hungary has the third-highest rate of anti-Semitic prejudice in the EU.
For example, according to the survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jewish people conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, among the EU Member States, the highest levels of comfort with having a Jewish person as a neighbour were found in Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands in 2018. In contrast,
the lowest mean level of comfort with having a Jewish person as a neighbour were indicated in Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, and Poland.
The data of the study done by Kovács and Fischer confirmed that anti-Semitic prejudice is slightly higher among men than among women, and anti-Semitism is more prevalent among the elderly, the less educated, and those living in larger rural cities.
Source: fra.europa.eu, telex.hu