Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] HUNGARY: ANTISEMITIC PREJUDICE 451TABLE 4CONTENT OF ANTISEMITISM IIAgrees withat least one ofAgrees with both the Agrees only Agrees onlyall the political and with the with thepolitical and the political discriminative Agrees withdiscriminative discriminative statements statements none of thestatements statements (one or two of (one or two of statements(%) (%) them) (%) them) (%) (%)2006 2011 2006 2011 2006 2011 2006 2011 2006 20117 9 19 21 26 22 7 7 48 50As the results show, the percentage of non-antisemites remained essentiallyunchanged, but the structure of the group agreeing with antisemiticviews altered. The proportion of respondents agreeing only with the discriminativestatements did not change, but the propensity to discriminateincreased among the political antisemites. Accordingly, the proportion ofrespondents agreeing only with the political statements decreased slightly.A greater propensity to discriminate among the political antisemites mayindicate an increase in the mobilization potential of antisemitism over thepast five years—i.e., that is to say, among those who already show supportfor anti-Jewish views, the propensity to accept antisemitic politicaldemands is greater now than it was five years ago.Already at the time of the 2002 survey we found that discriminativeantisemitism was more common among groups of lower social status andthat political antisemitism was more common among groups of highersocial status (Kovács, 2010, pp. 114-121). The findings of the 2011 studywere similar: respondents agreeing only with the discriminative antisemiticstatements were more likely than average to be rural dwellers, male, unemployed,and to have no more than elementary schooling. Meanwhile,respondents agreeing only with the political antisemitic statements weresignificantly more likely than average to live in Budapest or another urbanarea and to have a university education and a higher-paying, white-collarjob. The data of the current study also confirm the finding of previousresearch that political antisemitism by itself is not necessarily closely linkedto a personal antipathy for Jews. As Table 5 shows, among respondentswho are exclusively political antisemites, the emotional rejection of Jews isnot much stronger than the average for the whole population. Moreover,these antisemites are less hostile to Jews than they are to all other ethnicgroups in Hungary listed on the questionnaire, with the exception of theGermans. (It should be noted that even the hard core of antisemites—the