Fascists Love Misogyny
By 
The Trump of central Europe, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, acts like you would expect, like all the fascists do, when it comes to women.
The number of students impacted by the ban is small–only 11 applicants were admitted this year at ELTE and two at CEU. The maximum number of students that ELTE can admit any given year is 18 and those enrolled this coming academic year will be the last to take this program in Hungary. The decision to give those impacted 24 hours, in the middle of the summer vacation, to respond to this plan is a prime example of the spectacular arrogance that this regime has displayed for the past eight years. Gender studies in Hungary hardly pose a risk to the social narratives espoused by Fidesz and the Christian Democrats, but this regime is best known for kicking people and sectors of the society when they are down.
Although the government is not formally citing ideological reasons for its decision to cancel gender studies (the official reason is that this program is not “economically rational”), circles within Fidesz, most notably its Christian Democrat (KDNP) wing, have been calling for this for some time. In 2017, Lőrinc Nacsa, the leader of KDNP’s youth wing, labelled gender studies at ELTE as a wasteful luxury and also as destructive. “We must raise awareness to the fact that these programs are doing nothing to lift up our nation. In fact, they are destroying the values-centered mode of thinking that is still present in the countries of Central Europe,” wrote Mr. Nacsa in his letter to the rector of ELTE.
As well, HVG reminds its readers today that State Secretary Bence Rétvári (KDNP) in the Ministry of Human Capacities questioned whether gender studies even qualifies as a legitimate academic field, adding that this field of research is at odds with everything that the Fidesz government espouses.
The Trump administration would do the same thing if they could. And Republicans at the state level are certainly doing what they can at the state level to make sure that we don’t study the oppression of women, through trying to end the funding of such programs and sometimes through attacks on the professors who dare teach such horrors.