Pro-regime Hungarian Canadian organization enraged that defence of Orbán goes unpublished

The National Alliance of Hungarians in Canada (NAHC), an openly pro-regime group founded in 2012 to defend the actions of Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government, wrote a letter to the editor to the Globe and Mail earlier this month, after London-based correspondent Mark MacKinnon wrote two pieces in which he was critical of the governing party, and of Mr. Orbán’s pro-Russian foreign policy. Mr. MacKinnon wrote, in connection to the widely condemned monument in Freedom Square, which the government erected, in order to deflect responsibility for the Holocaust away from Hungary and onto Germany:

“That Hungary is again debating the role it played during the Holocaust is a testament to the dark turn the country’s politics have taken over the past five years, as Mr. Orban – who has positioned himself as something of an heir to 1930s strongman Miklos Horthy – has consolidated his hold on power.”

Hungary's authoritarian Viktor Orbán defended by the National Alliance of Hungarians in Canada.

Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán defended by the National Alliance of Hungarians in Canada.

NAHC, led by Ottawa-based Professor Dániel Feszty, wrote a response to the article, but their piece was not published. In its apologetics, NAHC wrote:

“As Canadians of Hungarian origin, as well as representatives of the largest Canadian Hungarian organization, we aim to promote the friendship between Canada and Hungary, two allied nations within NATO. This, however, requires fair and facts-based reporting about either country in the other’s media. We hope that The Globe and Mail will strive to ensure that the highest journalistic standards are upheld and that it will contribute to reporting about Hungary to Canadians by fair and facts-based reporting in the future.”

NAHC turned to Hungarian Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust surviver Imre Kertész — who only a few months ago was absolutely despised by the Hungarian right — to effectively prove that “even a Jew” agrees that Mr. Orbán has not built an anti-Semitic and authoritarian regime.

“Finally, for the suggestion that Hungary is turning into a dictatorship, it is best to cite the 2002 Nobel Prize winner for literature, Mr. Imre Kertész of Hungary, who as a Holocaust survivor and one who lived decades under the communist rule in Hungary, has experienced two dictatorships first-hand. In a recent interview to the New York Times (NYT), Mr. Kertész replied to a direct question from journalist David Straitfeld that although he is ‘not pleased with everything happening in Hungary today, …. but certainly Hungary is no dictatorship.’ (…) It demonstrates the true greatness of a Nobel Prize winner that his opinion – which he based on facts – could not be distorted neither by the popular trend of unjustly portraying Hungary as the ‘enfant terrible of the European Union’ (as Mr. Mackinnon writes) nor by his own subjective views.”

While NAHC turns to blatant tokenism in its defence of the Orbán regime against accusations that it is dictatorial and often catering to anti-Semites, true to form NAHC’s letter was published in the Montreal-based Magyar Krónika paper along with a virulently antisemitic response to the Globe piece, which was also rejected by the editors.

Charles Sucsan, who signed his letter as a “free thinker,” believes that Hungarians are being “enslaved” and that they are simply “seeking liberation from a satanic group who want to dominate the world. (…) Accusing the Hungarians of being far right extremist, looks to me as the auto defence of western powers criminal culpabilities for having destroyed the Hungarian Kingdom with the Trianon Treaty on June 4 1920. Since then Hungarians were enslaved with the communist regime who caused 775,000 Hungarians holocaust (sic), for what The Globe and Mail never was disturbed.”

And then Mr. Sucsan turns to Maidan and believes that Mr. Orbán is the guarantee that what happened in Kiev would never occur in Budapest:

“This concerted campaigns with the menace of an other Majden (sic) in Hungary should not shake the Hungarian government in its goal to reform the politically corrupted Europe, who need men like Orban with vision and create a new era badly needed to protect democracy for which Hungarians fought in 1956. (…) This is why the fear of this genius Orban with thoughts that cannot be killed. Shame on all the media, who sold their soul to the Devil of the Satanic world Empire, especially The Globe and Mail.”

The National Alliance of Hungarians in Canada certainly keeps interesting company…

Their anger, however, at the fact that the Globe and Mail would not publish their piece seems a tad hypocritical, considering that their own paper, The Hungarian Reporter, not only allows for no dissenting opinions in the form of letters to the editor, but it also prohibits any readers from commenting.

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