On Béla Lipták’s defense of the indefensible

It’s heartening to see how the trolls come out of the woodwork when their master, Europe’s most successful affinity fraud artist, Viktor Orbán and his enablers, such as Béla Lipták, the head of The American-Hungarian Lobby, are criticized in the media. I shall pass over the refuse these trolls leave behind them in the underpass of The Hungarian Free Press and will address only two voices that have attracted my attention following the publication of a letter to the editor of the New York Times by the well-known American-Hungarian lobbyist for Orbán – Béla Lipták.

Béla Lipták

One of the voices that reached my ear came from the HFP’s underpass and belongs to Bruce E. Woych, a commentator at the HFP. The problem I have with this voice is simple. It is unable to express itself in any other key than Classical Marxism, a key utterly useless in the age we are living in. The other voice came to my attention from a rank-and file member of Lipták’s lobby group. It belongs to a self-proclaimed Hungarian-American patriot, Peter Hargitai, a retired lecturer on Hungarian poetry at Florida International University. (His comments were circulated by Lipták to members of his group via e-mail today.) Hargitai is upset with The Hungarian Free Press, and its treatment of the latest storm in a tea-cup created by his hero, Bela Lipták. Hargitai’s views on what the world needs now,are even more surreal than those of a lonely Marxist in the HFP underpass. Here they are: “What the world needs to know in a world language is the “why” behind Hungary’s “complex web of truth,” so that the world will be able to reach out and help, if for no other reason, than for the sake of justice, morality, and a sense of humanity. That is why I valued the recent Lipták op-ed and affirmed it in The Washington Post.”

My message to Mr. Hargitai is simple. What the world needs now is a relief from the insanity being hoisted upon it by an elderly Hungarian-American poet from the Everglades. Hungary’s “complex web of truth” should not be laid at the world’s doorstep, but left to the followers of the late István Bibó, who stated over 70 years ago that the “complex web of truth” about Hungary’s past, including the Treaty of Trianon, is nothing but a lie. (István Bibó. Eltorzult magyar alkat, zsákutcás magyar történelem, 1947.) Control over the future of that “misunderstood country” should not be delegated to “the world” (whatever that may mean in this Florida poet’s mind) but put into the hands of a new generation of Hungarians who can stand up to the man that filled his pockets by robbing Hungarians of their right to justice, the rule of law and sustainable economic development.

What the world needs now is a renewed sense of realism. Authoritarian story-tellers like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Erdogan, “the Little Rocket Man who loves his people”, the “Butcher” of Saudi Arabia, the Chinese Communists (sic) are hijacking humanity’s future through an elaborate affinity-fraud that is leading us towards a global catastrophe. What the world needs now is to wake up, and recognize that the emerging technologies of our age have altered not only the economic but the political rules of the game. Liberals and Conservatives have failed miserably to manage the transition to the cyber-age. The Left has no answers either. Karl Polányi was right in telling us over 70 years ago in The Great Transformation, that the failure of Liberalism to manage change will produce Fascism rather than Socialism. He based his argument on the evidence provided by history after the start of the 20th century. It is the return of Fascism on a global scale, the return of affinity-fraud artists like Orbán or Trump that should attract the world’s attention and not half-baked fairy-tales concocted by their enablers, such as Béla Lipták, and the American-Hungarian Lobby.

Cyber-Capitalism is an entity that will be characterized by increasingly “artificial” intelligence, increasing public ignorance about the boundary that separates facts from fiction. Those who will tune into Donald Trump’s address to America tonight – Jan 8th – will receive a perfect illustration of how affinity fraudsters like Trump, Putin, Orbán, and their enablers, like Lipták, harness the emotions of the ignorant public in order to hijack the truth and our ability to discuss rationally the path towards justice, the rule of law and sustainable economic development.

The struggle ahead is not about Left vs Right, Liberalism vs Conservatism, Democrats vs Republicans, Nationalism vs Globalism, Capitalism vs Socialism. It is about how to survive the affinity fraud that is spreading everywhere in the wake of the cyber-age. I preface my next sentence with an apology to the world of academia: Béla Lipták and his patriotic Hungarians in the US are as useful in dealing with the challenges posed by cyber-Capitalism to humanity, as tits on a bull.

András Göllner

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