(By way of background to that video and to the following report, you can read my earlier post concerning the Magyar Gárda, Jobbik's paramilitary wing, here. Harry's Place followed up with this post on Jobbik focusing on MEP Krizstina Morvai, who was featured in the video above. As the video mentioned, Morvai recently got in a bit of hot water for referring to Jews with obscenities in a public internet forum. Read here. In response, a former foreign minister wrote that Morvai's gross language was a step down from previous Hungarian fascist politicians, writing that "this tone and style astonish, unworthy of Hungarian traditions and a woman. All decent Hungarian people can only condemn this contribution. Such words were not written even by Csurka".)
The racist far-right has been taking advantage of the world financial crisis and the disarray of the liberal left and mainstream conservatives to make inroads among voters disenchanted with mainstream parties. They have been able to bring their extremist message into the mainstream. As reported in the video above, even to a greater degree than was the case with the BNP, Jobbik took a huge leap forward with their success in the European Parliamentary elections. They also scored a political victory when a Hungarian police union representing 10% of the nation's police announced that they were officially affiliated with Jobbik and published the following in their newsletter (read here and here and here):
"Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews."
...and...
"A crumbling country, torn apart by Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, could easily be claimed by the rich Jews . . . That is why we should expect a Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, fomented by Jews as they rub their hands together with pleasure."
The editor of that newsletter, and the person behind the union, is police Lt. Colonel Judit Szima (pictured below). In addition to running the racist police union, she ran for the European Parliament on the Jobbik list.
Not all the news has been good for Jobbik. Recently, a Hungarian appeals court ruled their militia, the Magyar Gárda, to be illegal. (Read here.) This ruling affirmed a lower court ruling which came after the Magyar Gárda conducted a series of violent anti-Roma rallies (including one outside an integrated public high school in Budapest and several in the integrated town of Tatarszetgyorgy) which culminated in the murder of a Roma man and his young son by fascist thugs. That was soon followed by the sudden enlistment of 400 new recruits. (Read here.) Subsequent to an appeals court affirming a lower court's ban on the Magyar Gárda, Gabor Szabo, one of Jobbik's leaders (pictured below, on the right), announced that the party would not comply with the court order and would, in fact, retain their militia. (Read here.) Jobbik organized a protest (described below) which took place 8 days ago. Another one occured yesterday.
The website Politics.hu (read here) has the following report on last week's Jobbik demonstration in central Budapest's Erszebet Square, which is adjacent to the historic Jewish ghetto (read here). Among those wearing Magyar Gárda uniforms at the demonstration were Hungary's former defense minister Lajos Fur, Jobbik chairman Gabor Vona and Jobbik MEPs (members of the European Parliament) Krisztina Morvai and Csanad Szegedi. The demonstration including other fascist groups such as the 64 Counties Youth Movement, which advocates Hungary's expanding to what it claims are its historic borders. Demonstrators were also demanding the release of Gyorgy Budahazy, who is affiliated with the 64 Counties Group. He is being tried on terrorism charges in connection with several bombings. (Read here and here.) The police broke up the demonstration when it turned violent, with demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles at police and calling them "dirty Jews". Gabor Vona was arrested (pictured in two photos below).
(Many more photos of the demonstration are available here.)
From Politics.hu:
According to news reports, Lorant Hegedus, a Calvinist pastor, not only visited the jailed Jobbik yobs, he also donned the paramilitary uniform of their Magyar Garda for this demonstation. (Read more about him below.)
It seems that Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, apparently the big winners in Hungary's European Parliament elections having won 14 of the nation's 22 seats, are actually being hoisted on their own petard. According to reports, over one million of their voters didn't vote on election day, whereas Jobbik voters came out in force. Fidesz for years has capitalized on the same anti-Roma bigotry as overtly fascist parties do, and has offered support to the fascist party MIÉP. That may have seemed like a good move as MIÉP disappeared from the Hungarian Parliament and Fidesz gained seats. Now that Jobbik is presenting them with competition, and pushing them to support more overt violence, racism and challenges to the rule of law, that strategy isn't looking quite so clever. (Read the Economist's take on this here, and the Hungarian Spectrum's take here and here.)
From Politics.hu:
"Police clashed in downtown Erzsébet tér on Saturday afternoon with a few hundred demonstrators who gathered to protest at Thursday’s court ruling dissolving the Magyar Gárda paramilitary group.
One of the 216 detained was Gábor Vona, head of the Gárda and its affiliated radical right-wing party Jobbik. He was released early Sunday morning. Most of those detained were released Saturday evening.
Police had banned the demonstration, as well as similar planned protests in other parts of Budapest.
Police used teargas to disperse the gathering after some protesters threw beer bottles and other missiles at them, as several Magyar Gárda members and supporters attacked the police. Most of the demonstrators were taken away individually, rather then driven off en masse.
Police later launched criminal proceedings against four people and charged others with hooliganism and disobedience, said spokeswoman Éva Tafferner. One of those arrested had attacked police so crudely that the prosecutor’s office kept him in detention. Another of the detainees was on a police top ten wanted list.
Some 17 people were injured, while a HírTV staff member was hit on the head by a bottle and a correspondent of the Index website was kicked, Népszabadság reports. Calm returned to the square by 8 p.m.
After his release, Vona told reporters “we shall defend the national camp from being smashed and Hungarians who swore to be Gárda members from the terror of those in power. We shall not allow a Socialist Party hurtling towards collapse and the Free Democrats an annihilated horde who betrayed the nation to intimidate the Gárda which has broken no law. We expect Viktor Orbán and Fidesz to make a statement on the current situation.”
During the night MEP Krisztina Morvai and extreme right Calvinist pastor Lóránt Hegedûs Jr. visited Vona and Gárda members at the jail on Buda’s Gyorskocsi utca."
According to news reports, Lorant Hegedus, a Calvinist pastor, not only visited the jailed Jobbik yobs, he also donned the paramilitary uniform of their Magyar Garda for this demonstation. (Read more about him below.)
It seems that Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, apparently the big winners in Hungary's European Parliament elections having won 14 of the nation's 22 seats, are actually being hoisted on their own petard. According to reports, over one million of their voters didn't vote on election day, whereas Jobbik voters came out in force. Fidesz for years has capitalized on the same anti-Roma bigotry as overtly fascist parties do, and has offered support to the fascist party MIÉP. That may have seemed like a good move as MIÉP disappeared from the Hungarian Parliament and Fidesz gained seats. Now that Jobbik is presenting them with competition, and pushing them to support more overt violence, racism and challenges to the rule of law, that strategy isn't looking quite so clever. (Read the Economist's take on this here, and the Hungarian Spectrum's take here and here.)
Yesterday, the Magyar Garda defied the courts to hold two more rallies in Budapest, one week after the first one. (Read here. See photo below.) According to the Budapest Times report:
For those who want to watch some very boring Jobbik propaganda, embedded below is a video they posted on YouTube featuring a brief but tedious interview with Gábor Vona, along with dull rock music and the usual Attention Deficit Disorder camera work and editing. As is typical of neo-fascists, Vona portrays his party as the last, best hope to preserve Hungarian national identity in particular, and Christianity in general, from the barbarian horde (i.e. Jews and Roma).
I briefly mentioned Lóránt Hegedüs Jr. above. Read more about him here and here and here. You can read about how he hosted David Irving's several visits to Hungary here. That post points to a connection between Fidesz and the group which hosted Irving's 2008 lecture at a Hungarian church in New York City.
"(Gábor) Vona told the crowd that Jobbik was 'preparing to govern' and its deputies, if in the next parliament, would be wearing Guard (i.e. Magyar Gárda) uniforms at its first session. He added that his party would continue its fight against the ban on the Guard. It is not the Guard, but 'Gypsy criminals, drug users, multi-national companies, Israeli acquisitions in the country and the government itself that the people find terrifying'."
For those who want to watch some very boring Jobbik propaganda, embedded below is a video they posted on YouTube featuring a brief but tedious interview with Gábor Vona, along with dull rock music and the usual Attention Deficit Disorder camera work and editing. As is typical of neo-fascists, Vona portrays his party as the last, best hope to preserve Hungarian national identity in particular, and Christianity in general, from the barbarian horde (i.e. Jews and Roma).
I briefly mentioned Lóránt Hegedüs Jr. above. Read more about him here and here and here. You can read about how he hosted David Irving's several visits to Hungary here. That post points to a connection between Fidesz and the group which hosted Irving's 2008 lecture at a Hungarian church in New York City.
Hegedüs is both a minister of the Hungarian National Synod of the Calvinist Church (or Hungarian Reformed Church), and a senior deputy of the far-right MIÉP party. In August 2001, while a member of Parliament, he published an infamous article (read pdf here at page 25) in which he wrote:
That call for expelling Hungary's Jews was condemned by many Hungarians, but not all did so right away. Karl Pfeiffer argues persuasively (here) that, the Hungarian Reformed Church, which had chosen to ignore Hegedus fascist and racist activism for years, was finally forced by the attention of foreign media to take some action. In response, they issued an order for their clergy to stay out of partisan politics. In connection with the article, Hegedus was indicted by federal prosecutors for incitement. He accepted a plea bargain in which he agreed to resign from his seat in Parliament and received an 18 month suspended sentence., however, this verdict was annulled in 2003. His article ended up eliciting wide support both from his own party and from many others on the right, such as the supposedly mainstream right-wing party Fidesz. In fact, Fidesz subsequently emerged as a not very secret "secret ally" of MIÉP, and even pushed to have MIÉP removed from the European Parliament's list of banned parties. (Read here.) Lorant Hegedus' article went on to be broadcast repeatedly by a radio station called Pannon Radio and supported in every detail on state-run Kossuth Radio's weekly Sunday talk show "Vasarnapi Ujsag" (Sunday News), which is associated with Fidesz.
"The Christian Hungarian state would have warded off the [ill effects] of the Compromise of 1867 had not an army of Galician vagabonds arrived who had been gnawing away at the country which, despite everything, again and again, had always been able to resurrect from its ruins the bones of its heroes. If their Zion of the Old Testament was lost due to their sins and rebellions against God, let the most promising height of the New Testament's way of life, the Hungarian Zion, be lost as well.... Since it is impossible to smoke out every Palestinian from the banks of the Jordan using Fascist methods that often imitate the Nazis themselves, they are returning to the banks of the Danube, now in the shape of internationalists, now in jingoistic form, now as cosmopolitans, in order to give the Hungarians another kick just because they feel like doing so...
"So hear, Hungarians, the message of the 1,000th year of the Christian Hungarian state, based on 1,000 ancient rights and legal continuity, the only one leading you to life: EXCLUDE THEM! BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T, THEY WILL DO IT TO YOU."
That call for expelling Hungary's Jews was condemned by many Hungarians, but not all did so right away. Karl Pfeiffer argues persuasively (here) that, the Hungarian Reformed Church, which had chosen to ignore Hegedus fascist and racist activism for years, was finally forced by the attention of foreign media to take some action. In response, they issued an order for their clergy to stay out of partisan politics. In connection with the article, Hegedus was indicted by federal prosecutors for incitement. He accepted a plea bargain in which he agreed to resign from his seat in Parliament and received an 18 month suspended sentence., however, this verdict was annulled in 2003. His article ended up eliciting wide support both from his own party and from many others on the right, such as the supposedly mainstream right-wing party Fidesz. In fact, Fidesz subsequently emerged as a not very secret "secret ally" of MIÉP, and even pushed to have MIÉP removed from the European Parliament's list of banned parties. (Read here.) Lorant Hegedus' article went on to be broadcast repeatedly by a radio station called Pannon Radio and supported in every detail on state-run Kossuth Radio's weekly Sunday talk show "Vasarnapi Ujsag" (Sunday News), which is associated with Fidesz.
Riding on this celebrity, and on the assistance of Fidesz, Hegedüs(unsuccessfully) headed the MIÉP list in the 2004 European Parliament elections.
This Hungarian Spectrum piece is full of valuable information on the connections between the supposedly mainstream Fidesz and the overtly fascist MIÉP, Jobbik and Magyar Garda.
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As an aside, the Hungarian Spectrum post about David Irving's New York lecture elicited a number of commenters who found the website via Irving's blog. Irving actually posts a comprehensive list of links to webpages which mention him, which is both kind of sad and kind of amusing. His loyal followers follow these links and leave the sort of comments you'd imagine that they'd leave.
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As an aside, the Hungarian Spectrum post about David Irving's New York lecture elicited a number of commenters who found the website via Irving's blog. Irving actually posts a comprehensive list of links to webpages which mention him, which is both kind of sad and kind of amusing. His loyal followers follow these links and leave the sort of comments you'd imagine that they'd leave.
The Hungarian Spectrum recieved a number of comments endorsing David Irving's Holocaust denial (from people such as internet hate literature monger and David Irving's NYC advance man Michael Santomauro,and Danish hate blogger Balder). Interestingly, the blog also recieved a comment supporting David Irving's claim that the post-war Hungarian Communist regime was led by Jews, and that 1956 Hungarian uprising was a fight of Christians against Jewish oppressors. They chose the wrong place to try that one.
The commenter wrote:
The commenter wrote:
It should also be noted that David Irving also wrote an excellent book on the 1956 Hungarian uprising, called 'Uprising - One Nation's Nightmare: Hungary 1956' which was described by Ferenc Kunszabo, editor, Hunnia magazine. Budapest, as 'the best work on the 1956 uprising in the English language'.
The Hungarian Spectrum's Eva S. Belogh, had this to say:
The only problem with this book review (is) that it appeared in a far-right magazine and that the book in question is useless. I who took part in that revolution can attest from personal experience that it was not a revolution against the Jews as Irving claims. It tells a lot about Kunszabo that he finds this the best book on the revolution. Trash it is.
Check out the comments here. Eva later posted this article to further debunk the specious claims by Irving and his fascist friends concerning Jewish culpability for communist crimes.
Remember that one way MIEP gained support was by attempting to rehabilitate the collaborationist wartime Prime Minister, László Bárdossy(read here). The fight against fascists who would distort history in the interest of a current agenda of hate continues.
