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András Heisler’s speech in the presence of Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Orbán
Your Excellencies, Lord Mayor of Budapest, Chief Rabbi of Hungary, Rabbis, Honored Guests! Today may be the first time in the history of the Hungarian Jewry that our community can host two prime...
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Censured journalists: The case of Lili Bayer
On September 5 the notorious 888.hu, one of the many government news sites, published a list of “foreign propagandists” of George Soros. These “foreign propagandists” for the most part are Hungarian...
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Do we know what Jobbik is all about?
I have somewhat neglected the affairs of Jobbik, but the speech that Gábor Vona, the leader of the party, delivered on October 23 was significant enough to prompt me to take stock of what’s going on in...
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Jobbik’s Krisztina Morvai: A portrait
I promised a post on Krisztina Morvai, one of Jobbik’s three members in the European Parliament. Her name came up a few days ago when she gave a lengthy interview to Magyar Idők in which she spoke so...
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Gábor Vona and Katalin Rangos in the Spinoza Theater
On Thursday in the Spinoza Theater on Dob utca, in the middle of the “Jewish quarters,” a lengthy conversation took place between Gábor Vona (Jobbik) and Katalin Rangos, a well-known journalist. It...
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Hungarian anti-Soros campaign hatched in Jerusalem?
Hungarian political life is winding down for the holidays. Normally, in the morning it takes me a couple of hours to read the news of the day in Hungary and elsewhere. But today there was not much to...
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The far-right Orbán government’s attack on György Konrád
It has been going on by now for a whole week, and there is no end in sight. I’m talking about the incredible onslaught against György Konrád, the internationally renowned Hungarian writer, recipient of...
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Angela Merkel, Fidesz, and the European People’s Party
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...
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Viktor Orbán’s meddling in Austrian affairs
Hungarian government-sponsored propaganda papers enthusiastically greeted the results of the October 2017 Austrian parliamentary election. Origo exclaimed that “Viktor Orbán also won in the Austrian...
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Jews and Jewry in Hungary in 2017
A few days ago an important book was published–Jews and Jewry in Hungary in 2017: Results of Sociological Research, edited by András Kovács, the expert on the subject who teaches at CEU, and Ildikó...
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An anti-Semite’s attack on György Konrád
Bear with me a little longer. Yes, this post will again deal with the nowadays fashionable topic of the Orbán regime’s assault on the “liberal cultural elite.” What does “liberal” mean in the land of...
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Whitewashing an anti-Semitic murderer
The Orbán government has always been super-sensitive any time the charge of anti-Semitism is leveled against it. The allegation is usually made in connection with the regime’s anti-Soros campaigns,...
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Frans Timmermans in Budapest
In the last few days, the government’s many media outlets have been full of articles about Frans Timmermans’ visit to Budapest. The occasion for the visit was the nominating convention of MSZP, which...
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László Kövér on “hidden power” and “identity protection”
A friend called my attention to a summary of a speech delivered by László Kövér at this year’s plenary meeting of the Forum of Hungarian Members of Parliament in the Carpathian Basin (KMMK). Kövér, as...
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Honoring anti-Semitic literati on the national holiday
I don’t know about the practice in other former communist countries, but in Hungary government awards for artistic, literary, and scientific achievement are bounteous. Hundreds are honored twice a...
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How does one create a national hero? The case of Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky
Since today is Whit Monday, a holiday in Hungary as in many other countries of Europe, the pickings are slim when it comes to political news. I was therefore happy to see an intriguing interview with...
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You cannot fool all the people all the time: U.S.-Hungarian relations
I’m returning to U.S.-Hungarians relations, focusing today on attempts by the Orbán administration to change the generally unfriendly attitude on the Hill and in the State Department toward the present...
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The extreme right is on the rise again in Hungary
Today I found a fascinating puzzle in Index, one of the leading Hungarian internet news sites. The reader had to guess whether certain quotations originated with László Kövér, president of the...
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Kövér rails against “bolshevism”
At the end of 2018, I wrote a post on the Orbán government’s decision to recreate the memorial to the victims of the Hungarian Red Terror, originally erected in 1934 on a small square adjacent to...
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László Kövér’s “intellectual terrorists” all happened to be Jewish
We may find László Kövér’s linguistic and historical theories laughable, but his latest speech at the unveiling of a reincarnation of a 1934 irredentist statue commemorating the martyrs of the 1919 Red...
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