Perspective

Modern Day Europe Has Become The New Austro-Hungarian Empire Writ Large

Submitted by Bryan Webb

A former leftist turned Neo-Reactionary and Western Chauvinist.

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The multinational Habsburg Empire was doomed from the beginning. It unfortunately took the maelstrom of a world war for people to realize that.

There are many on both the left and the right who see problems such as mass migration, failed assimilation and multiculturalism as novel and unique to the modern experience. Government integration projects and bilingual education are seen as progressive and forward thinking, the fact that these ambitious programs end in failure should come to no surprise given the historical record.

Although it is a common cliché to say that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it; I think that that that statement holds remarkably true in this context. For the pages of history are soaked with blood from failed integration projects. In this article I will discuss the problems faced by the doomed Austro-Hungarian Empire and hopefully connect their previous fallacies to our own.

Although principally known in the English speaking world as being Germany’s ally during the First World War. The history of Austria-Hungary goes back centuries earlier. Originating as the Habsburg domains in upper Austria, the Empire eventually came to  be the second largest country in Europe, dominating fifty two million people

Unlike most multiethnic states which generally comprise two or three main lingual groups, Austria-Hungary possessed no less than ten. Shaken by ethnic division following the 1866 Austro-Prussian war; the Imperial government organized a compromise with the Hungarians. The Hungarians who made up the Empire’s second largest ethnic group had become increasingly assertive and nationalistic. Austria became a dual monarchy: meaning that the Empire essentially became two countries ruled by a single monarch. In the age of nationalism it seemed as if there was little that the Austrian authorities could do other than slowly grant concessions in an attempt to forestall the Empire’s inevitable collapse.

Instead of appeasing the Empire’s Hungarians however, what this compromise did was ultimately embolden the Empire’s other marginal people. How much longer before the country became known as Austria-Hungary-Bohemia?

The Empires Serbs and Croats began to see their fortunes tied in with the newly formed Kingdom of Serbia. To the East many Slavs sympathized more with the Czarist Russian Empire. Even the Germans, the Empire’s core population began to doubt the reason for a small german rump in the middle of a multiethnic empire. In the end the Empire had become merely another anachronism of the last century.

Prior to the age of nationalism the Empire’s illiterate peasants were ambivalent to the national character of the Empire. By the beginning of the 20th century however… people were increasingly began to long for membership with a nation state, not a conglomeration of various hostile tribes.

Although the Imperial army was supposed to be the great unifier of the Empire… this institution fell far short of its intended goal. The officers, mainly German and Hungarian often were incapable of communicating with the Slavic peasantry that comprised the Empire’s cannon fodder. When war finally came in 1914 many of the soldiers either deserted and went home… or in some cases fought alongside the Empire’s adversaries.

Because both Austria and Hungary pursued their own domestic agenda in the years leading up to World War One… we have the opportunity to analyse the failures of two integration policies undertaken under very similar circumstances.

The Austrian or “German” side of the Empire adopted the typical approach that we tend to see with the left. Education was done in a way that catered to the lingual preferences of the inhabitants. Government officials were required to in some cases be multilingual, in others they had to adhere to the local language of the municipality. Everything from street signs to newspapers were bilingual. When the Empire became a Constitutional Monarchy and adopted a Parliament. Debates would often degenerate into incomprehensible shouting matches. The education system was signed specifically to denationalize the Empire’s various peoples. Loyalty to the aging Emperor was seen as the primary virtue of the unfortunate monarchy.

The Hungarian side of the Empire was far more repressive. Government officials increasingly began to “Magyarize” Romanian, Slovak and Ruthenian populations. Government schools made education in Hungarian compulsory. Anyone who wished to become a member of the Civil Service was required to master the language. For those of you who don’t know… Hungarian is said to be very difficult to learn.

Needless to say… neither side succeeded. The various attempts to both alter or assimilate the lingual composition of the Empire reflect a futile attempt to tweak the details all the while ignoring the fundamental problem. The lesson that we should draw here is this: the Austro-Hungarian Empire existed in various guises for hundreds of years. The period of time in which I cite in this article only represents a small piece of that history. If the Austrian authorities grappled with these same problems during the entire course of the Empire’s history… what hope do we have to solve the problems associated with multiculturalism and diversity.

Furthermore… with the exception of the Bosnian Muslims, almost every citizen of the Empire was white, Christian and and had lived in close proximity with members of other ethnic groups. If conflict and division was allowed to emerge between these people, image the fallout that Muslim and North African migration will bring to Europe.

Like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the people of Europe seem to be trying to make subtle changes…failing to see the fact that the entire system is in fact flawed. I only hope that it doesn’t take the maelstrom of another world war for people to finally see that.

 

Vincent Law
the authorVincent Law
I have a Hatreon now! If you like my writing and want me to write more, consider supporting me there. https://hatreon.net/vlaw/

35 Comments

  • So a couple of Serbian nationalists with 7,65mm handguns and grenades walk into a parade, and…

  • All empires fall eventually. The Hapsburg Empire lasted about 400 years. That’s ten times more than the European Union so far. Maybe not such a successful analogy.

  • I think some parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire would really have preferred to remain connected to Vienna: I’m thinking of Moravia, Galicia, Tyrol, Carniola, Istria. I think people in all of these places would have preferred living in a German-language empire than what happened instead.

    But Czech and Hungarian national ambition were irrepressible — and therefore should not have been repressed.

    • The Ausgleich was a decent compromise between the Habsburg Empire and Hungarian nationalism. The problem was that the other ethnic minorities than wanted the same rights that had been granted to the Magyars. Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s solution was to create a federal empire of nations.

      • I get the impression, from the history, that many Slavs were insulted by the idea of being ruled from Budapast — but wouldn’t have felt so insulted if they were dealing directly with Vienna. In other words, Slavic loyalty to the Habsburg empire could have been secured if the structure of the dual monarchy didn’t have the Hungarians mediating the Viennese-Slavic relation at every step.

        And to me this strongly suggests that it’s the Hungarians who should have been cut loose. The Hungarians wouldn’t play along unless they were granted rights to LARP as their own mini-empire, with neighboring Slavs as their subjects. This arrangement — empires within empires — is highly destabilizing, because it undermines a sense of central imperial authority. So, the question is, which groups in the empire wanted to participate without those kinds of destabilizing requirements? Which groups wanted to engage in a simple transaction where they learned German and showed loyalty to the emperor, in exchange for which they got a direct political and economic connection to a great world city like Vienna? I think the list is: Moravians, Tyroleans, Galicians, Carniolans (Slovenes), Istrians, Slovaks, and of course the Austrians themselves.

        • If the Austrians had cut the Magyars loose, then the Czechs, Croats, and Poles would have demanded to be cut loose as well. The Magyars were the second largest ethnic bloc in the Habsburg realm. It took the Russians intervening on the side of the Habsburgs to crush the 1848 Hungarian Revolution and end any Magyar dreams for independence.

          What really should have happened in 1848 was the establishment of a Pan German state with Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV as Sovereign. But Friedrich Wilhelm refused to lead any new, liberal German state that would have necessarily done away with the Habsburg Empire. In such a scenario, an independent Greater Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and South Slavic state probably would have taken shape out of the non-German parts of the Austrian Empire. The catastrophe of World War I, which began over Great Power rivalries in the Balkans, has its roots in the inability to move beyond Metternich’s Congress Europe and the consequent failure of nationalist movements in 1848.

          • A Quora article suggests Wilhelm refused the crown because he saw it as “from the gutter” — i.e. from the German common people and thus beneath him. I guess he was waiting around for the Holy Roman Imperial throne to come back so he could claim that sovereign authority instead? The old aristocratic class was a strange lot.

          • Berlin would have been the capital, because Prussia had eclipsed Habsburg Vienna as a great power.

          • Well, this would have been a problem. That eclipse was a temporary condition — Austria has proven to be a much more rooted, and enduring, cultural entity than Prussia.

          • Only because Prussia had its heartland wiped out and ethnically cleansed by the Soviets. Would Austria still exist if Vienna and Graz were handed over to the Czechs? Because that’s what happened to Prussia, the Germans were kicked out of Konigsberg and Breslau and most Prussian territory. The Soviets knew exactly what they were doing, to borrow a phrase from Marco Rubio.

          • The Prussians suffered a genocide which the world still won’t acknowledge. However, their situation in their lands was far more fragile than that of the Austrians. The Soviets were channeling and of focusing a longstanding Slavic sense that the Baltic coast was theirs, and not the Teutons’, by right. As far as I know, Vienna has been German since the Dark Ages, and what’s more it’s protected by mountains.

  • Um, no.

    Europe is analogous to the USSR. A genocidal Skype tyranny enforced by nearly 100 thousand American troops stationed on the continent.

    • All things considered, Austria-Hungary wasn’t that bad. Franz Josef was a decent, good man, although his average intelligence rendered him unable to overcome the problems of his realm. only a true genius would have kept Austria-Hungary together. Austria-Hungary also had a political system that guaranteed some rights for the smaller ethnic minorities, unlike the EU where the globalist Franco-Germans dominate.

      • Indeed, but it is also shows a true strength of a genuine nationalist sentiment. If and when people decide that they want self-governance nothing will stop and/or placate them. I think there is a lesson here for current US multicultural elites who think that they are sooooo clever…

        • The difference is that America, unlike Europe, doesn’t have ancient ethnic homelands. What Spencer and others are trying to bring about is similar to what Jews did with Zionism. In the distant past, Jews had an ethno-state. Within living memory for some, American whites had an ethno-state. In fin de siecle Europe, Zionism was regarded as a weird and stupid idea. Same in the Current Year with a huwhite ethno-state.

          • Well, Spenser does credit Herzl as a source of inspiration and as a template.

          • Exactly. And the use of Herzl and Zionism disarms Jewish counter-arguments. If Jews could found an ethno-state in a territory 2000 years after they were expelled from the same territory, then whites can create an ethno-state out of territory they built into an empire 50 years after Jews turned it into a “proposition nation.”

    • This. We need to stop pretending Western European plight is do to anything other than the migrations of Jews. Rhodesia and South Africa collapsed after Jewish migration. Now America, Australia, Canada, and Western Europe is suffering the same fate. To think we can simply allow them to move again is beyond autistic.

  • I’ve been to Hungary and I like their people and culture but Hungarian is not a European language. Why should an asiatic language like Hungarian have any sway in Europe?

    • Magyar is a Finno-Ugric language (Ulralic language family) which can be dated back to Western Siberia in the first millennium B.C.E. There are Hungarian loan words dating further back to ancient Iran, the same place Indo-Aryan languages are derived from. Proto-Indo-Europeans from prehistoric Eurasia were kicking about in the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.E. Over several millennia both language types asserted their influence in the European continent. The Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian (European) languages have as much right to be alive and kicking in modern day Europe as modern day derivatives of Indo-European languages do.

    • Because the Magyars are white people. Just because the Magyar conquering elite brought a non Indo-European language with them doesn’t mean that the Hungarians aren’t White. Are the Basques, Finns, and Estonians also non-White?

      • Maybe I misspoke. I do not question that Hungarians are White Europeans. I’ve been there. A beautiful nation and people. I only meant that Hungarian is not an Indo-European (Aryan) language and though it is fine for the Hungarians, Estonians, and Finnish to speak their native tongue other White Europeans, such as those living under Hungarian rule in the past, should not have to learn a language foreign to Europe. If Europeans have to learn another language then it should be an Aryan language. Not only is it easier for us to learn related languages but it is also simply more natural. Hungarian for the Hungarians.

    • You realize that the Etruscans (the founders of Rome) also had a Non Indo-European language right? Just because a language is not Indo European, does not make it Non-European…
      “Asiatic” is a very misleading word you are using, considering that Magyars came from West Siberia and Iran. Yet Aryans and Indo Europeans also came from Iran (Asia) So Indo-European is as much “Asiatic” as Hungarian. Judging by your pseudo scientific arguments I’m guessing you’re a Romanian who just hates Hungarians.

  • When the Hungarians attempted to magyarize ethnic populations living within the Kingdom of Hungary it was to ensure that both the legal language of the courts and the professional language in universities / academia would be consistent. In hindsight, the more ‘politically correct’ diplomatic solution would have been to use Latin as the legal / professional language and allow the different cultures to slowly assimilate into the Hungarian administration. The Hungarian Kingdom was never made up of multinational states. It was always a Hungarian nation with ethnic diversity within the Kingdom’s borders, and this diversity was encouraged by the Hapsburgs after Hungarian population losses from the Ottoman-Hungarian Wars between 1366 and 1526. As a result of tolerance towards ethno-diversity in the Kingdom, plus Hungary’s failure to obtain full sovereignty from the Dual Monarchy (KuK), and a little while later after the criminal Trianon Treaty in 1920 (and the 1947 Treaty of Paris in regards to the new Hungarian / Romanian border) newly invented ethno-states Slovenia, Slovakia, and renamed counties in Carpatho-Ukraine, Transylvania (formerly Erdély) and Burgenland (in modern day Austria) were created resulting in further ethnic cleansing of Hungarian populations from these territories and a whole lot of anti-Hungarian historical revisionism by these same new nations during the Soviet era and up until the present day. If the Central Powers are ever rejuvenated then lessons should be drawn from Hungary’s tragic past and Western Europe’s current downfall. The entire drama has been a petri dish experiment to how the West is being disassembled by alien agent provocateurs and a race replacement programme.

    • German should have just been the lingua franca of the Habsburg Empire, with Magyar accorded dual and official status. Making ethnic Croats, Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, and Romanians learn a difficult and internationally unimportant language like Magyar just pissed off the ethnic minorities in the Kingdom of Hungary.

      The Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburgs was much bigger than it should have been and the Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary actually worsened the feelings of minorities like the Czechs towards the Habsburg monarchy. When Hitler awarded territory to Hungary during World War II, he even offered Horthy an Adriatic coastline. Horthy refused the offer and only wanted traditional Hungarian lands like Szekely Land in. Other lands like Burgenland were never really ethnically Magyar to begin with.

  • “……image the fallout that Muslim and North African migration will bring to Europe.”

    The Problem is……

    A Large Percentage of the Alpha Male Robust Warrior Genes were wiped out of Western Europe in the two WW’s……

    Now, the Beta Cucks are in Charge…….

    The Alpha Male Robust Warrior Genes remain in the Far Right Nationalist Groups/Parties……

    But, the Cuck is so Strong and Pervasive in Western Europe……

    …..that the Native Europeans are scared to even VOTE for their own Self-Interests…….

    …..let alone Shed any Blood……

    Western Europeans will continue to be Wiped out by their own Low Birth Rates and Open Borders…..

    Non-Whites will eventually take over…….

    Since France and England have Nuclear Weapons and Europe has significant Military Prowess……

    ……how this plays out with Russia is a Mystery…….

    But, by then…….

    NATO will be dissolved…….

    And Russia will possibly be a Refuge for Whites fleeing America and Western Europe and elsewhere…….

    Seeing how Russia dominates its Non-White Islamic Client States…….

    …..there might be a similar peaceful relationship with Islamic Western Europe……….

    How the Brazilian Mess that America will become in 100yrs fits into this Equation…….

    …..is anyones guess….

    It’s much more likely that we will see Racial Civil War Secessionist Bloodshed in America than in Europe……..

    • Whites need to get over there fear of …… whites that are in charge … this is the main and only problem .

      • the old whites that don’t care about whites, only wealth they think they created, are in charge. they need to be retired before they unleash the army on us. they care about nothing but a long rich retirement

      • yeh they are all rdy to explode but there is no point when US will just come quell any nationalists that try. if we don’t rebel, no1 can. hopefully Russia will help us and not the government

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