I am still sometimes surprised by the true extent of the Orbán government’s small-mindedness, its pettiness and the remarkably arrogant, self-serving use of public funds. It has been 25 years since the formation of Hungary’s first democratically elected parliament in May 1990. The government-funded Veritas Research Institute, led by historian Sándor Szakály–who callously called the deportation of Jews during the […]
For years, as a matter of principle, Hungary’s left-leaning ATV news network didn’t allow the far-right Jobbik’s politicians into its studios. All of that changed just over a year ago and now party chairman Gábor Vona and other prominent Jobbik politicians are regular guests. Fortunately, most of ATV’s hosts are skilled, shrewd journalists and they are able to scratch below Jobbik’s new, “improved” and […]
Ukraine may not be in the headlines at the moment, as a lull in the fighting that claimed over 6,100 lives in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions appears to be largely holding, but both the U.S. State Department and experts on Russian foreign foreign policy strongly suggest that it’s merely a matter of time before the war is reignited. Russia […]
Ever since the governing Fidesz party’s defeat in the Tapolca by-election to the far-right, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been shamelessly scrambling to appease and win back the support of those who voted for Jobbik. A few days ago, I wrote about the Orbán’s government overtly xenophobic “national consultation,” where a series of loaded questions suggest that immigration and terrorism […]
A group of young Czech libertarians planted a flag on a 7 square kilometer tract of land, nestled between Croatia and Serbia, which has been abandoned, uninhabited and disputed since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s. The heart-shaped plot of land, located along the shores of the Danube, is considered to be a terra nullius, although according to an agreement […]
There is a very common misconception in the West that Fidesz is somehow the lesser of two evils when it comes to the Hungarian right and the rising fortunes of the far-right Jobbik. Nothing could be further from the truth. For Fidesz, the only thing that counts is political expediency. To some extent, being effective politically, and thus being ideologically […]
How can one use the language of “love,” “cooperation” and “unity” to bring masses of people into a frenzy and to make them obedient? András Göllner, the founder of the Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter, explores this question in an essay published in HFP’s sister paper, the Kanadai Magyar Hírlap (KMH). For those HFP readers who are proficient in Hungarian, we strongly […]
The far right Jobbik party’s politicians are engaging in their first major political tour of Hungarian diaspora communities in the United States, with stops in Boston, Washington D.C. and New York City. In New York City, Jobbik Members of Parliament Gábor Staudt (who had previously given a highly controversial talk in Toronto) and István Szávay descended upon the offices of […]
Hungary is a small country and early twentieth century author Frigyes Karinthy’s theory on the six degrees of separation isn’t really applicable to a society of this size. As it turns out, during his university days, the chairman of the Left Party (Balpárt), Szilárd Kalmár, lived in the same dorms as Gábor Vona, the leader of the far-right Jobbik party. […]
The Polish government is in the midst of a polemical and defensive historical debate around World War II and the Holocaust. The official Polish narrative could have been taken directly from the speaking points of the Orbán government in Budapest, which has enshrined in the country’s constitution the preposterous idea that Hungary was purely a victim of German occupation and […]
