The Stranger at Hand

In 2010 an extremist party with openly racist views, using barely concealed antisemitic language, received 17% of the votes in the parliamentary elections in Hungary. How can this awkward development in a newly established European democracy be explained? In this book the author examines antisemitism in post-communist Hungary in light of the empirical sociological studies of the past 20 years. The principal aim is to reconstruct the range, intensity and content of anti-Jewish prejudices as well as the factors affecting their change over time. The author also reveals the social background against which the newest political developments should be analyzed, and helps to determine whether in Hungary today antisemitism is only an ephemeral, temporary phenomenon or a gradually articulating, dynamic political ideology.

"…his work is indispensable for understanding politics and its historical, social, and cultural background in contemporary Hungary.” Gabor T. Rittersporn

András Kovács, PhD (1973) in Sociology, ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary, Doctor of Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is Professor at Central European University, Budapest and senior researcher in the Institute for Ethnic and Minority Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His main research fields include Jewish identity and antisemitism in post-war Europe, socio-economic attitudes, and political choice.

“[…]while the revival of anti-Semitism in post-communist East and Central Europe
has been examined on more than one occasion by competent pollsters in the past,
none of them matched the analytical finesse that Kovács displays in this book.”

Michael Shafir, Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări, vol iv, nr. 1 (2012).