Reference of Michael Stewart's book: : This is a lengthy, scholarly work – though in the main it is not difficult to read. It deals with a serious and disturbing issue that has come to the fore in the past half-dozen years – the increasing manifestation of anti-Gypsy hate speech and anti-Gypsy (often violent) actions.

With no “homeland” of their own and with traditions that seem alien to many, Gypsies are the “natural” outsiders in many societies. Like antisemitism, anti-Gypsy prejudice has a long history. Sometimes it lays dormant, at other times it rises to the surface of public discourse. We are in one of those “other times” at the moment.

It is a historical moment of difficulties – economic and psychological. In the wake of the global financial crisis, material progress appears to have been halted, reflected in increased poverty and unemployment. In addition, dreams of a new world, particularly in post-1989 Eastern Europe, appear to have been shattered.

What’s gone wrong? Who is responsible? Who can we blame for our woes? The others, of course, the outsiders. Is it the Jews this time, or the Gypsies – or maybe the Muslims?

The German political activist and writer August Bebel (1840-1913) is often attributed with the phrase, “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” The idea behind this curious comment was presumably that it was nonsense to be against Jewish people as a whole, simply because many of those who were the targets of socialist criticism – bankers, industrialists, etc. – happened to be Jewish, even though that was a fact.

Similarly today, you might say that anti-Gypsy sentiment is the righteousness of fools. One parallel lies in the fact that much crime, for example, is committed by Gypsies, but it is foolish to conclude that all Gypsies are criminals or prone by nature to commit crime. Yet that is the conclusion drawn by many, particularly by supporters of far-right political parties.

Such admittedly complicated issues are at the heart of The Gypsy ‘Menace’. However, the book is not a theoretical treatise. It rather deals, by and large, with practical matters. The book, a compilation of essays by different authors, is divided into three parts. The first section includes a number of national overviews relating to, for example, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Italy and France. There then follow some detailed case studies and, finally, a set of five essays under the heading “Combating Extremism”.

Much to say about Hungary

Interestingly (and perhaps, in a way, sadly) Hungary features prominently. One out of the six essays in the first part, one of four in the second section and two of the five essays in the third part are specifically about the country. And there’s even a third essay in the final section that is focused to a large extent on Hungary. It’s not that other countries such as Romania or Slovakia are ignored, but Hungary seems to get more than its “fair share” of treatment.

Perhaps that’s because of what the book refers to as “an unprecedented sweep of violence against the Roma community”, which took place in Hungary in a series of nine incidents from July 2008 to August 2009, and which drew international attention.

Fire bombs and hand-guns were used to attack the dwellings of Roma families across the country with the result that six people were killed and others were badly injured.

One of the most notorious events occurred on 23 February 2009 when a 27-year-old man and his five-year-old son were shot dead as they ran out of their burning home in the village of Tatárszentgyörgy. The man’s wife and their two other children suffered from severe burns.

Tracing the manifestations and the roots of a complex issue

The book is not a catalogue of violence, though sometimes it reads as such. Rather it seeks to trace the causes and significance of the upsurge of anti-Roma prejudice witnessed in recent years, and how some extremist political groups have used this for their own purposes.

The issues are complex and while there are many general characteristics (important in themselves for a broad understanding) there are also many specifics that cannot be said to be “international”.

Can we really compare, for example, attacks on the dwellings of Romanian Roma in the village of Sanmartin in Romania by ethnic Hungarians in May 2009 with the attacks on the houses of Romanian Roma in Belfast by so-called Loyalists the following month? The book touches on both incidents and, unsurprisingly, the contextual understandings readers can derive are somewhat different.

This is not a book with easy answers to a difficult problem, but – particularly with its third section analysing a variety of responses to anti-Gypsy extremism – it is a work that explores some avenues of progress, even though many of the roads that have been trodden so far have only produced ambiguous results at best.

Buy the Book

The Gypsy ‘Menace’. Populism and the New Anti-Gypsy Politics

By Michael Stewart (editor)