Hungary

[Typhoon]

Post-election.

Reuters | Orban's party signals crackdown after victory in Hungary

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party signalled on Monday it could push on quickly with legislation to crack down on organisations promoting migrant rights as soon as parliament reconvenes after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s sweeping election victory.

The right-wing nationalist projected himself as a saviour of Hungary’s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with more than 2.5 million voters, especially in rural areas.

Memory is long central Europe.

Indeed, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe watchdog said parties could not compete on an equal basis in the election, which was held in an adverse climate as freedom of the media and association were restricted.

“Voters had a wide range of political options, but intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate,” the OSCE, which monitored the vote, said. It said the technical administration of the election had been transparent.

[Doc]

Post-election.

Reuters | Orban's party signals crackdown after victory in Hungary

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party signalled on Monday it could push on quickly with legislation to crack down on organisations promoting migrant rights as soon as parliament reconvenes after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s sweeping election victory.

The right-wing nationalist projected himself as a saviour of Hungary’s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with more than 2.5 million voters, especially in rural areas.

Memory is long central Europe.

Indeed, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe watchdog said parties could not compete on an equal basis in the election, which was held in an adverse climate as freedom of the media and association were restricted.

“Voters had a wide range of political options, but intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate,” the OSCE, which monitored the vote, said. It said the technical administration of the election had been transparent.

The OSCE is not without criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizat ... y_Assembly

[Apollonius]

The safest country for European Jews? Try Hungary - David P. Goldman, PJ Media, 28 May 2018
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-safest ... y-hungary/

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and streimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants. ...

Goldman's comments about George Soros are interesting:

Hungarian politics have a unique problem. Imagine that an expatriate American-born trillionaire had spent $60 billion to influence politics in the United States. That’s 0.3% of GDP, thirty times Hillary Clinton’s record 2016 campaign budget, and almost twenty times the total lobbying budget of all US corporations. You would this expatriate trillionaire to feature prominently in political debates.

Gauged against Hungary’s $125 billion GDP, that’s the weight of George Soros’ $400 million in political spending in his native Hungary through the Open Society Foundations during the past three decades. It’s helpful to keep that number in mind. Some Western pundits accuse Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban of anti-Semitism because he made Soros the bogeyman of his last political campaign. Soros wants open borders and mass Middle Eastern immigration. Orban took a Trump-like stance against mass immigration.

[Typhoon]

Reuters | End of era beckons as Merkel says will not stand again as chancellor

Merkel, 64, has been chairwoman of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) since 2000 and chancellor since 2005. Her decision to step down as chairwoman comes after her party suffered its second regional election setback in as many weeks.

[Doc]

The safest country for European Jews? Try Hungary - David P. Goldman, PJ Media, 28 May 2018
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-safest ... y-hungary/

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and streimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants. ...

Goldman's comments about George Soros are interesting:

Hungarian politics have a unique problem. Imagine that an expatriate American-born trillionaire had spent $60 billion to influence politics in the United States. That’s 0.3% of GDP, thirty times Hillary Clinton’s record 2016 campaign budget, and almost twenty times the total lobbying budget of all US corporations. You would this expatriate trillionaire to feature prominently in political debates.

Gauged against Hungary’s $125 billion GDP, that’s the weight of George Soros’ $400 million in political spending in his native Hungary through the Open Society Foundations during the past three decades. It’s helpful to keep that number in mind. Some Western pundits accuse Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban of anti-Semitism because he made Soros the bogeyman of his last political campaign. Soros wants open borders and mass Middle Eastern immigration. Orban took a Trump-like stance against mass immigration.

Unless someone wants to claim "Jew" is a race, Soros is not a Jew. There is no argument for it.

[Ibrahim]

The mutual cooperation between open antisemites like Orban and the Netanyahu government is one of the most surprising things to me about the last couple of years, but a Jewish acquaintance told me it was quite obvious: Authoritarian nationalists in Europe admire Israel's methods of dealing with other ethnic groups, as well as the hammerlock of the Israeli right wing on domestic politics, meanwhile Israel presents leaders like Orban and Duda a place to ultimately send their Jews in order to be rid of them.

The far right in North America just loves any European party that promises to give migrants, leftists and pesky journalists a good kicking.

[Mr. Perfect]

Sounds like you have some racist anti semite friends.

Did a quick search, there appears to be no indication that Orban is an open antisemite.

For example this guy is an open antisemite, in case you are confused about what the word means.



Here is another one.

[Ibrahim]

This guy makes a few interesting points:

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Hungarys- ... ism-563642


Orban couches his words just enough to allow his admirers to feign ignorance or uncertainty, but everybody knows the real score.

[Mr. Perfect]

Cool story. However you claimed he was openly anti-semitic, which is a false claim. It's weird you would feel the need to make false claims.

[Mr. Perfect]

Orban couches his words just enough

What would be an example of that. Be specific.

Maybe this is an example of projection.

Also, how do you know what "everyone" thinks.

[Ibrahim]

From the article:

So is Orban an antisemite? He certainly denies such an ugly moniker and has stated that antisemitism in Hungary is nonexistent. This despite a recent report of a survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League that indicated that Hungarian antisemitism is the highest in Europe.

Under Orban’s Fidesz, Hungary is adopting the Polish model of denying their country’s role in the murder of Jews. Hungary erected a memorial to the victims of German aggression that implied that Hungary was also a victim. It’s no wonder that Jews living in Hungary are uneasy about the Fidesz government.

[Orban's] adulation of Miklos Horthy, the war-time leader of Hungary, a self-confessed antisemite and friend of Hitler, adds to the feeling of mistrust.

In addition to honoring war time antisemitic politicians, Orban’s Fidesz has also revitalized the High School curriculum by including the writings of numerous antisemitic writers. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary wrote an open letter to the Ministry of Culture, urging them to remove these writers from the HS curriculum.

He erects a memorial to the tens of thousands of Jews shot into the Danube by Hungarian Arrow Cross Nazis, without mentioning that the victims were all Jews. He allows his partner in the government, the ultra-right wing Jobbik Party, to make threatening anti-Jewish speeches, without any reprimand.

[Mr. Perfect]

Seems like your claim of Orban being an open antisemite is still false as I originally stated, and it seems like you were unable to come up with any of Orban's words that he couched, so it seems like some apologies and retractions are in order.

Also, how do you know what everyone thinks.

[Ibrahim]

I'm not buying it, Mr. P. Your heart isn't in this one.

[noddy]

the Jews as symbols of both international capitalism and globalism tend to get the worst of both sides.

in Australia the uber nationalists on the right and the uber socialists on the left are both quite strident with this tedious rhetoric

according to the wki , this is also true of Hungary, for the same cast of characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemit ... ry_Hungary

According to János Gadó, an editor for Hungary’s Jewish periodical, Szombat, antisemitism is an increasing problem on the left of the political spectrum, as it is shrouded in criticism of Israel’s policies. “A significant proportion of the anti-Jewish rhetoric in Hungary’s right-wing press is characterized by the left-wing’s language of anti-Zionism … according to this Israel is ‘oppressive,’ ‘racist’ and tramples on the rights of Palestinians".[16]

[Mr. Perfect]

I'm not buying it, Mr. P. Your heart isn't in this one.

Not buying what.

[Ibrahim]

the Jews as symbols of both international capitalism and globalism tend to get the worst of both sides.

in Australia the uber nationalists on the right and the uber socialists on the left are both quite strident with this tedious rhetoric

according to the wki , this is also true of Hungary, for the same cast of characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemit ... ry_Hungary

According to János Gadó, an editor for Hungary’s Jewish periodical, Szombat, antisemitism is an increasing problem on the left of the political spectrum, as it is shrouded in criticism of Israel’s policies. “A significant proportion of the anti-Jewish rhetoric in Hungary’s right-wing press is characterized by the left-wing’s language of anti-Zionism … according to this Israel is ‘oppressive,’ ‘racist’ and tramples on the rights of Palestinians".[16]

Orban's worship of Horthy really highlights the difference between the far left and far right in Eastern Europe. All of these authoritarian right leaders talk about "anti-communism" and "fighting the communists," which makes sense in the context of Eastern Europe's battle against Soviet domination following WW2. But what were these groups doing during WW2? One side was shipping people to concentration camps and the other side was liberating those camps.

There is a clear difference between socialists complaining about Israeli settlements and admitting your historical hero was an ally of Adolf Hitler who sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to death camps.

[Mr. Perfect]

What would be some examples of Orban's worship. Where did Orban proclaim Horthy as his historical hero. Or are you couching language.

[Ibrahim]

What would be some examples of Orban's worship. Or are you couching language.

https://www.ft.com/content/2032f1c2-66e ... 38dcaef614

Last month, the Hungarian prime minister praised Miklos Horthy, the nationalist leader who colluded during the second world war in the dispatch to Nazi death camps of Hungarian Jews. He counted Horthy among the country’s “exceptional statesmen” — drawing criticism from Jewish groups. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum said such statements created the impression that the government “believes that anti-Semitism, racial and religious prejudice, and genocide merit praise rather than universal condemnation”.

[Mr. Perfect]

Really. How can you construe 2 words into hero worship. Eg, Hillary Clinton has had stronger praise, far stronger, for virulent racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger yet nobody has made the claims that Clinton condones eugenicism or racism. And of course there are countless more examples of that. Here is Bill Clinton sanitizing a former member of the KKK.

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So far it appears that you have made a series of false claims. It seems like if you felt like you had a strong case you wouldn't have to do that.

PS, also your quotation made a significant edit.

[Ibrahim]

I'm going to save you some time going forward, Mr P, and tell you in advance that I don't care about the Clintons or Obama, and I don't believe that one wrong justifies another wrong in any circumstance.

It seems a bit like you're just casting about and trying to change the subject.

[Mr. Perfect]

It seems like you are trying to change the subject. Your started out claiming Orban was an antisemite, openly. This is obviously a false claim and I am baffled why you would make it, as there is zero evidence to believe that. Then you appear to have tried to change the subject from your false claim.

You then claimed Orban worshipped Horthy as a hero, and that this was evidence of him being an antisemite, based on two words. I looked up the speech and he was among 3 people Orban mentioned that day, and he was speaking of their actions post WWI, nothing to do with WWII.

As such, this is not a basis for hero worship. Much could be debated about his statement, but hero worship at this point isn't in the cards. Eg Winston Churchill was a racist imperialist, but he was critical in the defeat Nazi Germany. That is a moral ambiguity we all have to live with forever. And of course there are many other examples of that. For example all the Confederate generals whose statues everyone wants torn down were all Democrats.

At any rate, it would help if you didn't make false, dishonest or inaccurate statements going forward. All you had to do was say "Orban said 2 words I found objectionable" and there wouldn't have been any problem.

[Ibrahim]

It seems like you are trying to change the subject. Your started out claiming Orban was an antisemite, openly.

He is. But he does it in such a way that people who approve of the rest of his political program can claim that he isn't.

You've actually demonstrated this in practice quite well, your digression into Clintonland aside.

[Mr. Perfect]

He is. But he does it in such a way that people who approve of the rest of his political program can claim that he isn't.

You've actually demonstrated this in practice quite well, your digression into Clintonland aside.

No, this is openly gay:



This is non openly gay:



Liberals fleshed out this concept and expanded on it here:

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This is openly anti semite:

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Here is another open anti semite.

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And of course Orban is not that. This might help you.

Here is an "openly gay" man. That is, he publically identifies himself as gay, and does not hide it or deny it.

http://time.com/5447591/jared-polis-ope ... -governor/

In terms of Orban, he is clearly not openly anti semitic, as you originally claimed. He has denied it, and has never openly stated anti semitic views or identified himself as such. You also claimed to know what "everyone" thinks, so the number of things you say that you can't substantiate is making a pretty good list.

You also claimed Orban worshipped Horthy as a hero based on 2 words. This is clearly not the case. I mean, all these things could be true in that people in the closet are in the closet. For example, you or noddy or myself could any one of us be pedophiles but there is no evidence of that in the public domain.

As such, there is no evidence of Orban being an anti semite in the public domain, no evidence he worships Horthy as a hero, so instead we simply have a string of false claims from you.

[Mr. Perfect]

I'm going to save you some time going forward, Mr P, and tell you in advance that I don't care about the Clintons or Obama,

When did this happen. When they are racist why don't you care about it.

[Mr. Perfect]

who approve of the rest of his political program can claim that he isn't.

Also, what does the rest of his political program have to do with antisemitism.