Ken Early: Nationalism takes you to peculiar places … especially at Euro 2024

I was idling at my desk in the press box before the start of the Hungary-Germany match in Stuttgart last week, when my attention was attracted by what was happening in the Hungarian crowd behind the goal to the right.

It was about 20 minutes before the game, the time when the warm-ups finish and Uefa play a special song for each of the two sets of fans. England’s, for example, is “It’s Coming Home”, while Germany’s is “Major Tom (Coming Home)” by Peter Schilling.

So evidently this was Hungary’s song. A downtempo soft-rock ballad, a male singer, a piano accompaniment that followed the vocals. The tone was mournful and out of context, you might have assessed the overall impact as slightly depressing.

But that was not the effect it was having on the Hungary crowd. Thousands of them had suddenly produced Hungary flags which they were holding aloft without waving, in what looked a well-practised ritual. The sight of all these red-white-and-green streamers gently fluttering in the same direction created a powerful impression.

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The really striking thing was how passionately the fans were getting into the song. The Hungarian crowd is dominated by the black T-shirted Carpathian Brigade ultras, who have a kind of biker aesthetic — big men with big beards who look like they lift big weights. They are not what you might imagine to be the natural audience for weepy ballads, but it was obvious that they were powerfully affected by this cheese rock, whatever it was.

I asked the Hungarian journalist next to me what the song was. He typed something and showed me his screen: “Nélküled”, by the band Ismerős Arcok. “It means ‘Without You’,” he explained. I looked it up.

“Like a dying flower cut down,” a verse goes,

Like the five million Hungarians whom the world cannot hear

Like a seed that has fallen to dust and will never grow again

— If you don’t look after us, we’ll be the same without you …”

The emotional peak — belted out with wild fervour by the Hungary fans — comes with the repeated chorus lines:

“So that whatever happens while we’re alive and we’re dead

We are of the same blood.”

The song is about the five million Hungarians who make up the Hungarian diaspora. Some are emigrants to distant countries like the United States, but perhaps the more relevant members are the ethnic Hungarian populations in the countries that border Hungary: Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia.

These people never left Hungary — Hungary left them. They became exiles after the Treaty of Trianon which was imposed on the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire after the first World War. The terms of the treaty stripped the former kingdom of Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and nearly half of its ethnic Hungarian population.

If you had perhaps naively assumed that Hungary might have got over this by now, think again. The injustice of Trianon is, apparently, a big thematic preoccupation for Ismerős Arcok and other bands on Hungary’s burgeoning and now heavily state-sponsored nationalist music scene.

Nélküled has become a quasi-national anthem for Hungarians. It was performed live to consecrate the gigantic new Puskas stadium in Budapest. For Viktor Orban, international football is a favoured way of “performing the nation” and this scene of unbridled patriotic passion in Stuttgart embodied his nationalist-spiritual project.

The Hungarian outpouring was only the most spectacular demonstration of a trend that has been evident at this Euros — the surge in nationalism, particularly of the kind of irredentist nationalism that implies irreconcilable differences with neighbouring nations and nationalisms. Hungary is not the only European country imagining a “Greater” vision of itself.

No European country is pursuing irredentist dreams more aggressively than Russia, banned from this competition but not forgotten. Polish fans gathered at the Russian embassy in Berlin to sing “Ruska Kurwa” (Russian Bitch) — while the Georgian fans have chanted “Putin Khuylo” (Putin Dickhead) during their matches.

Serbian, Romanian and Albanian fans have all displayed flags showing maps of the “Greater” versions of their countries. Greater Albania shows startling ambition — the vision of the Albanian irredentists incorporates not just Kosovo, but also chunks of Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece.

Serbian fans spent several minutes of every game chanting “Kosovo is Serbia,” while at the match between Albania and Croatia the fans at either end joined forces to chant “Kill! Kill, kill the Serb!”

Albania have been fined after their fans unfurled Kosovo Liberation Army flags but there was also some consternation in Switzerland when the same flag appeared in the Swiss end during their game against Germany. The Swiss captain, Granit Xhaka, is the son of immigrants from Kosovo. When the SRF radio commentator Kathrin Lehmann enthused that Xhaka “could be our William Tell” she was attacked in the right-wing magazine Die Weltwoche, which argued, essentially, how can Xhaka be our William Tell? He doesn’t even sing the anthem!

The same Weltwoche carried another article during the first week of the tournament by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician Björn Höcke, considered a leading figure in the more radical wing of that party.

Höcke began by referring to the words of the ZDF commentator, Oliver Schmidt, who introduced the German anthem before the opening match against Scotland as follows: “And now the German anthem — Unity and Justice and Freedom [these are the opening words of the anthem] — and above all, Diversity.”

Schmidt’s mention of diversity had caused uproar among those Germans, like Höcke, who complain that the woke agenda is constantly being forced down their throats. “[Stadiums] today are cathedrals in which quasi-religious global agendas (multiculturalism, gender ideology, climate rescue, etc) are liturgically practised,” he wrote.

Much of the article consisted of a glowing review of a new book by the literary historian Günter Scholdt: “Football Was Our Life: how business and politics have almost destroyed the world’s most beautiful pastime.”

The 78-year old Scholdt fulminates at the hijacking of football by “progressive” political agendas in what he characterises as our “post-democratic” society. The cover juxtaposes a drawing of a smiling 1954-era German footballer holding a ball under one arm and raising the World Cup trophy with the other and one of a modern player — it looks like Joshua Kimmich — wearing the new pink Germany shirt and a rainbow armband, taking a knee, raising his left hand in a fist and holding the right over his mouth.

Scholdt admits that political forces have always tried to exploit sport (look at the stadium that will host the final of this competition) but argues that what is new is the extent of the penetration: “The dose makes the poison.”

Höcke enthusiastically agrees, claiming he can no longer identify with the German team because of all the woke stuff. He says he has not watched a game of football since the 2014 World Cup final.

He and Scholdt are both disgusted that the Germany team, once “Die Nationalmannschaft” — the national team — now just “Die Mannschaft” (team). According to Oliver Bierhoff, the change came at the suggestion of Angela Merkel. What will they do next, wonders Höcke, with awful predictability. Get rid of the word “Mann” and leave us with just “Schaft”?

Does stuff like this ruin football for that many people? Following the tournament here in Germany, it doesn’t feel as though Germans are uninterested in their team, even if they sometimes wear pink shirts. (Actually the pink shirts are Germany’s fastest-selling away strip ever).

But that’s the gamble the AfD seem to be taking as they set themselves up against a popular and potentially successful team, which people like Höcke must now be hoping will lose. Sometimes nationalism takes you to strange places.