Remembering Horthy, who rode into “sinful” Budapest 100 years ago, “with...
As far as I could ascertain, the far-right Jobbik began to celebrate the arrival of the National Army in Budapest on November 16, 1919 ninety years later, in 2009, when the most radical wing of the...
View Article“We are of the same blood,” the prelude to virulent anti-Semitic comments
One often has the distinct feeling that half of the Hungarians have lost their senses. At the moment we are witnessing a surge in madness which has consumed the Hungarian right. But why exactly now? I...
View ArticleFidesz and “Our Homeland” join forces in an anti-Semitic campaign against...
It was only five days ago that, following the “Gábor Miklósi incident,” I wrote a post titled “’We are of the same blood,’ the prelude to virulent anti-Semitic comments.” Miklósi, a journalist at...
View ArticleThe legacy of the Orbán era: anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia
At just about the same time that Hungarians witnessed an anti-Semitic assault by Fidesz journalists on “alien-hearted” Jews who are unable or maybe even unwilling to “melt” into the majority, the...
View ArticleSajtóklub’s messages are not an aberration but part and parcel of the Orbán...
Ever since I finished my post last night on the latest falsehood about George Soros, I have been carefully going through the Hungarian government media for its reaction to the official denial by...
View ArticleHigh-ranking Fidesz leader’s anti-Semitic comments shake the Hungarian Jewish...
Fidelitas, Fidesz’s youth organization, had a congress where all the big guns, with the exception of Viktor Orbán, delivered rousing speeches about the great future that lies ahead for the...
View ArticleUsing a sexual harassment case for political purposes: Government takeover of...
Sometime in the middle of November, a sexual harassment case hit the Hungarian media, which happened in 2018 but surfaced only a year later. I must say that I didn’t pay much attention to it because...
View ArticleAnti-Semitic? Racist? Never mind! Beatrix Siklósi, the new head of Kossuth...
David Irving, the “historian” infamous for his denial of the Holocaust, has a long working relationship with the Hungarian far right. Irving’s career is well summarized in Wikipedia, including a...
View ArticleLászló Kövér calls members of the opposition compradors in the pay of the...
It is almost inevitable that, at appropriate intervals, a government publication or television station has a long interview with László Kövér, the president of the Hungarian parliament. It is also...
View Article444: George Soros: The man who would have killed his mother
The excellent Hungarian internet news site 444.hu published a list of 99 headlines on the “evil activities” of George Soros, whom Viktor Orbán has transformed into a monster in the last ten years. As...
View ArticleViktor Orbán and his enemies, the “libernyákok”
Viktor Orbán, after emerging disheveled from four days of day and night negotiations, announced that he would sleep for two solid days. Unfortunately, after a couple of days he reemerged reinvigorated...
View ArticleUnfounded myths from the early years of Hungarian democracy
Among the many alternative “research institutes” the Orbán government established is one with the long title of Research Institute and Archives of the Regime Change (Retörki). Its director-general is...
View ArticleThe Hungarian foreign minister lashes out
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had barely disembarked from a luxury yacht provided for him and his family by one of the supporters and beneficiaries of the Orbán regime, László Szíjj, when he fired...
View ArticleThe price of breaking Fidesz’s two-thirds majority in parliament
On August 19 I wrote a post in which I described the Orbán government’s outrage over a sentence in a lengthy interview about the lack of rule of law in Poland and Hungary. Ten days later, Magyar Nemzet...
View ArticleJohanna Laakso: Eerie echoes
Johanna Laakso is a professor in the Finno-Ugric Department of the Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft at the University of Vienna. She received her Ph.D. from...
View ArticleThe two-thirds majority stands: Fidesz won the election in Borsod
The result of the by-election held today in the 6th electoral district of the county of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén is not immaterial, even if the loss of the two-thirds parliamentary majority most likely...
View ArticleSzilárd Demeter’s loathsome attack on George Soros
It is hard to miss the fact that, in the last few days, every utterance by Viktor Orbán contains multiple references to George Soros’s pernicious influence on the European Union. The prime minister’s...
View ArticleOrbán loses key players in his match with the EU
Reverberations of the Demeter article The response both at home and abroad to Szilárd Demeter’s anti-Semitic outburst was one of uniform condemnation, accompanied by demands for his dismissal as...
View ArticleViktor Orbán lashes out against another enemy: the Germans
I discovered, thanks to an opinion piece that appeared today, that Szilárd Demeter’s infamous article “Soros” was not a singular ill-tempered outburst but part of a series of articles published in the...
View ArticleSzijjártó wrote letters to three future members of the Biden cabinet
I believe that spending another post on the Orbán government’s reception of the Biden administration is warranted, especially since I found several indications that the present Hungarian regime is...
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