“If we look at what’s left after you peel away the objects of the haters such as non-Hungarians, the others, migrants, the Roma … a scary construction is left in the middle: white, Christian, heterosexual men — there also women among them. That’s their vision of a family.”
Many people in Hungary have taken issue with this and have begun attacking Niedermüller, accusing him of racism and intolerance. Though I welcome seeing the Left roasted on their own spits, I feel this form of objection misses the mark somewhat.
To begin with, accusing NM of racism and intolerance places the objection firmly within a Leftist framework. This form of protest incorporates leftist language and approaches the problem from a leftist mode of thinking; this seems like a bad way to go about it, in my opinion.
Firstly, it diminishes and degrades the issue down to their level of 'discourse'. Secondly, it pits the challenge squarely within a battlefield the Left feel comfortable fighting in. Thirdly, it utilizes the same sorts of weapons the Left has been using for over two hundred years.
Now, there is certainly some satisfaction to be had in using the Left's own weapons against them, but those launching racism and intolerance accusations appear to be unaware of one startlingly obvious fact - no one understands these weapons better than the Left. And no one knows how better to neutralize these weapons should they fall into 'enemy' hands.
Yes, NM's statement can be classified as racist and intolerant, and yes, modern people do seem preprogrammed to react negatively to this sort of thing, but is the racism and intolerance NM expressed really the core issue here?
For his part, Niedermüller has already begun to dissemble by claiming his words were taken out of context and misinterpreted. He claims he was not specifically disparaging or stigmatizing white, Christian, heterosexual males and their families, but merely pointing out that the exclusionary aspects of the Orbán government's current family policy, the results of which, if the proper deductions are made, will end up producing a society that marginalizes everyone but Christian, heterosexual males and their families.
See how easy that was? So much for the Niedermüller is racist and intolerant line of attack - despite the obvious truth it contains.
I submit that Niedermüller's statement addresses a far deeper and far more relevant issue. That issue is the Left's unending war on Christian families specifically and on human families in general.
In my view, this is the only objection that matters because it drills down beneath the Left's apparently righteous objections to traditionally oppressive familiar structures and gets right to the metaphysical essence of why the Left truly seeks to destroy what Niedermüller so scornfully calls 'scary constructions.'
Much has been written about the war against the human family and family values, and I have no intention of wading into every single aspect of this conflict here. Evidence of this ongoing conflict are apparent everywhere in the world around us. Instead, I will make an attempt to briefly summarize why the Left purports to challenge the human family and then juxtapose this with what I feel to be the true, underlying reason the Left is so vehemently obsessed with dissolving what has often been termed 'the building blocks of human civilization'.
As is the case with almost everything else, the Left defines the human family as a social construct - that is, as something that does not exist in objective reality, but exists as a result of human interaction.
This point is paramount and must not be taken lightly. In the Left's view, objective reality supersedes human interaction. In other words, the way in which people interact in this world and the structures and understandings they develop through these interactions have no really bearing on objective reality. Keep this in mind, for it reveals the inherent evil within leftist assumptions.
Put another way, families only exist because people have agreed to form them and have developed a certain degree of communal understanding and agreement about their nature and function. They are not 'natural' formations. Instead, they are 'unnatural' constructions that have been invented to create, serve, and protect certain societal functions or power interests. At their very core, the Left does not believe families are 'real'; that is, the family has no inherent place in objective reality.
As such, the Left tends to promote ideas of the family as a functional unit within other functional units or as an oppressive social construct in much the same manner it promotes the idea of gender and race as oppressive social constructs.
In this light, the traditional family model in the West is reduced to an organ that exists only to serve other organs within civilization through a variety of material interactions, or as an oppressive patriarchal structure that immediately disempowers women in favor of men. These traditional family models make up the larger society in which the more privileged families oppress and exploit the less privileged families.
Children, regardless of which families they are born into, are immediately oppressed from birth through the inculcation of 'unreal' social constructs and tyrannical ideologies, thereby ensuring the maintenance of the status quo. Thus, at its core, the Left tends to view the family as a solely material phenomenon and as something 'unreal' that is used to build further 'constructs' that are fundamentally unjust, inhuman, and tyrannical.
Of course, it isn't that simple or black-and-white. There are literally dozens of leftist sociological perspectives on family, many of which acknowledge the existence of the material, psychological, cultural, and social benefits a family provides its members. At their most basic levels, however, leftist theories concerning family are inherently faulty or wrong because they neglect or refuse to recognize the metaphysical realities underpinning human families. By defining human families as social constructs, leftists basically deny the fundamental nature of reality; a reality that necessarily includes the spiritual, which the Left, of course, callously dismisses as fantasy.
Here's the thing though - not all on the Left dismiss the spiritual as fantasy. Some not only understand, but also wholeheartedly acknowledge the fundamental nature of Reality with all of its spiritual aspects intact, but do not support or accept this Reality.
On the contrary, this minority within the Left actively repulses and rejects Reality. Put another way, some on the Left know full well that we all exist in Divine Creation, but they are hostile to it. As a result, they actively work to pervert, corrupt, and ultimately undermine Divine Creation.
While the majority of the foot soldiers on the Left believe they are working exclusively in the material, their commanders quietly work away at the immaterial. While the foot soldiers labor at liberating people from all social constructs and forms of material oppression, the commanders work to ensure any and all new liberties the foot soldiers secure will ultimately lead people away from the Divine toward self-damnation.
Unlike the majority they control, this minority within the Left does not regard family as a 'scary construction' because the family oppresses family members, or supports social mechanisms of oppression, or hinders women's rights, or maintains exploitative capitalism, or sows the seeds for fascism, or guarantees material inequality, or cultivates nationalism, or any other of the endless list of injustices the foot soldiers associate with family.
What scares the minority within the Left about family, about the Christian family in particular, is this - the family not only exists in objective reality, but it also represents the very essence of Reality itself - the ultimate Reality of Divine Creation and the Love that nurtures and binds it all together.
The objective reality of family is the Reality of human interactions: relationships, kinship, unions, responsibilities, and bonds. Simply put, the human family provides people the opportunity to experience the true nature of Divine Love, which comes down to relatedness and interaction, the ultimate expression of which is the participation in Creation in this world through the having and nurturing of children. In this sense, human family, and the Christian family in particular, is the most 'natural', most real thing in this world because it provides the opportunity to experience objective Reality intensely and personally.
Our family experiences of Love on earth not only provide us the opportunity to understand the nature and essence of Divine Love, but also allow us to participate in Divine Love as it moves within the frameworks of our own specific family situations. The stronger the flow of Love becomes, the more the family is drawn to the Divine. As such, it erects a defensive barrier against the unreality the Left promulgates thereby decreasing the chances of self-damnation and increasing the chances of salvation and, possibly, theosis.
Bearing all this in mind, it becomes rather clear why those who seek our damnation regard the family to be such a 'scary construction.'