This morning a strongly worded letter addressed to Angela Merkel appeared in the European edition of Politico. The letter was signed by academics, writers, and activists who are “deeply disturbed by [her] complicity with the attacks on Hungarian democracy.” In addition to Viktor Orbán’s well-known assaults on the media, the judiciary, and NGOs, the letter also accuses the Orbán regime of fanning “the flames of anti-Semitism” through his mass propaganda campaign that suggests that “a Jewish banker is the puppet master behind an international conspiracy to destroy Hungary’s Christian culture.” Merkel, according to the authors of the letter, “failed to condemn either Orbán’s anti-Semitic rhetoric or his concerted attacks on democratic institutions.” Moreover, Merkel’s party “remains allied in the European Parliament with Orbán’s political party.” They charge that her “inaction has effectively made [her] an ally to anti-democratic and anti-Semitic forces.” The letter suggests that “the only minimally honorable course of action that remains open to [Merkel] at this late stage is to condemn Orbán’s attack on democratic values and to call on the European People’s party to expel Fidesz.”
It just happened that yesterday József Szájer, who is for all practical purposes head of the Fidesz delegation in the European Parliament, wrote a lengthy editorial in Magyar Idők on the occasion of his party’s spectacular victory. In it he profusely thanks his fellow MEPs, especially Manfred Weber and Joseph Daul, for their assistance. Both of them materially helped Fidesz succeed. As he puts it, “the victory of Fidesz is the success of the whole People’s Party.” He reminds his colleagues that with the tremendous victory, which translates to a 49% plurality of the voters, Fidesz “is the strongest member-party of the European People’s Party.” I guess this is a not so friendly reminder that the EPP needs the large Fidesz contingent, which has a strong mandate as a result of the party’s recent victory.
Having praised the EPP, Szájer devotes the rest of his piece to the tremendous difficulties Fidesz had to face both at home and abroad. Critics of the Orbán regime often talk about the alternative reality the Orbán propaganda created. Szájer’s description of the electoral campaign is a perfect example of this Fidesz-created phantom world. Fidesz, according to this narrative, faced almost insurmountable difficulties, among them the existence of seven parties that all ganged up against one party. Fidesz had to fight for every vote because its opponents “had an overwhelming media majority, possessing unprecedented influence and almost limitless financial resources.”
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József Szájer’s shamelessness knows no bounds. It is a well-known fact that an independent and/or anti-government media barely exists in Hungary. In the last year and a half two important national newspapers closed and the regional papers were purchased by Orbán’s oligarchs, whose “national” news is centrally edited by government-hired propagandists. Only a few days ago The Guardian reported that “editorial directives produced by staff at the prime minister’s office are cut and pasted to give journalists talking points with which to carry out character assassinations of Hungarian citizens who are openly critical of the government.”
As for the limitless resources, we all know that most of the opposition parties are penniless. They couldn’t even afford to rent advertising surfaces, and the few posters they managed to put up Fidesz activists systematically tore down and destroyed. Szájer claims that the unlimited resources of the anti-government media came from Lajos Simicska and George Soros. It is true that Simicska funded Magyar Nemzet, Lánchíd Rádió, and Heti Válasz, but they had a limited impact on public opinion. By now, even these media outlets are gone. As for George Soros’s contribution, it was truly minimal. Two or three internet sites received small grants from the Open Society Foundation. The truth is that the opposition parties are dirt poor and their media practically nonexistent.
Szájer also claims that, in addition to the “unlimited financial resources” of the opposition parties, they also received western assistance, especially from “the biased European press and politics.” Szájer considers all criticism of Fidesz rule “slander and an evil attack,” which is politically motivated. He was happy to note that these charges amounted to no more than ineffectual “cacophony.” The European liberal media “has slavishly taken over the slanderous accusations of the Hungarian opposition parties,” figuring that readers in Sweden, Spain, or Romania are unable to check the true facts. But in Hungary, Szájer stressed, the people did and found the country’s current situation the best of all possible worlds.
Szájer spends considerable time on the accusation of anti-Semitism. “Yes, we are firmly against the influence of [George Soros] in our country just as our friends in other European People’s Parties across the Balkans and elsewhere,” but “to call us anti-Semites because we have a dispute with somebody who happens to be Jewish is absurd.” To strengthen his argument on this front, Szájer calls attention to Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the political influence of George Soros.
The open letter to Angela Merkel also talks about the anti-Soros campaign and its possible anti-Semitic implications. It quotes Viktor Orbán, who in the authors’ opinion implicitly equates Jews with enemies of the Hungarian nation. “We are fighting an enemy who is different from us,” Orbán said. “This enemy hides rather than operating out in the open; he is crafty rather than forthright; base rather than honest; has loyalty to foreigners rather than compatriots; speculates with money rather than believing in work; and, lacking his own homeland, feels he owns the whole world.” And yet the regime is extraordinarily sensitive to any portrayal of the government’s anti-Soros campaign as latent anti-Semitism. Szájer, for example, accuses foreign and domestic critics of desecrating the memory of Holocaust victims by using the label of anti-Semitism for campaign purposes. He charges the “domestic and foreign accusers with being much more permissive when it comes to Jobbik” just because this formerly anti-Semitic party is now an enemy of Fidesz.
Here is a footnote to the discussion of anti-Semitism. In the most recent New Yorker the “Shouts and Murmurs” page has a piece titled “Take My Globalist Wife.” It is a series of vignettes about “globalists” and their opposites. The impression it conveys is that “globalist” in certain circles was code for “Jewish.” Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the Orbán government’s relentless fight against anything global and in favor of everything national, combined with a campaign against an “international speculator,” produces the impression of a government ideology that can easily be interpreted as anti-Semitic.
