Recently in the spotlight

Mr. Orbán reads the cover page of the pro-government Magyar Idők daily, which features a headline warning readers about the risks of Hungary turning into an Islamic caliphate.

What’s Viktor Orbán’s end game in the refugee crisis?

If we listen to Klára Ungár, a liberal politician and economist, and over two decades ago, a much younger Viktor Orbán’s former colleague, the Hungarian prime minister has gone too far and can no longer save himself from his own downfall. “There is no longer anything that Orbán can do, in order to save himself. Whether he cooperates or digs […]

by · September 10, 2015 · Politics
Palestinian artist Hasan Abadi depicts Hungarian reporter Petra László physically assaulting Syrian children in Hungary.

Fascism and inhumanity in Hungary – illustrated by Hasan Abadi

Hasan Abadi is a 26 year old artist from Nablus, Palestine, who like millions around the world has been horrified by the ill treatment of Syrian refugees in Hungary, both by government authorities, as well as by the nationalist right in general. The story of a female Hungarian television reporter, Petra László, kicking, tripping and otherwise physically assaulting Syrian children […]

by · September 10, 2015 · Politics
A Syrian child sleeping out in the open, at Röszke, one of the main refugee transit points in Hungary. Photo: NL Café.

Orbán’s hate campaign bears fruit — Hungarian reporter brutally assaults Syrian children

Hungary’s Fidesz government has managed to almost completely desensitize its right-wing supporters and much of Hungarian society to the plight of hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees from Syria, thanks to the overtly xenophobic billboard campaign that it ran for weeks before the acute phase of the refugee crisis. This week, a female camerawoman for the N1 TV online news […]

by · September 9, 2015 · Politics
Ambassador Ódor and Hungary’s Contempt for Human Rights:  Making Excuses Instead of Amends

Ambassador Ódor and Hungary’s Contempt for Human Rights: Making Excuses Instead of Amends

Hungary’s ambassador to Canada, Bálint Ódor,  sent letters to the editor to various Canadian news outlets, in which he attempted to whitewash the shockingly vicious actions of his xenophobic government against Syrian refugees and blamed the media and other EU member states for the crisis. Here is a response from Professor Stevan Harnad: The Ódor excuses are rank and all-too-familiar […]

by · September 9, 2015 · Politics
Magdolna Rózsa

My hero, Magdolna Rózsa – free haircuts for refugees in Hungary

Magdolna is a hair stylist in Budapest and that is the only thing I know about her. On a hot day she went down to the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest where thousands of refugees were stranded. She set up a chair and started to give free haircuts for kids. She had a sign: Free Haircuts. And that is the […]

by · September 7, 2015 · Culture
Source: Zsolt Szigetváry / MTI.

The Dictator’s Bog-Standard M.O.

It is by now patently obvious that the refugee “crisis” that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has artificially and systematically created had 3 goals: (1) to divert attention from Orbán’s many mounting corruption scandals, (2) to re-assert and reinforce Orbán’s populistic self-image as the nation’s protector against the invasion of the Turks and the exploitation by the EU and (3) […]

by · September 7, 2015 · Politics
Zsolt Enyedi

Zsolt Enyedi at UC Berkeley – Hungary’s challenge to liberal democracy

Zsolt Enyedi, Professor of Political Science at Central European University Budapest, will speak at the University of California at Berkeley on September 2, 12-1:30 p.m., 270 Stephens Hall. (Details here.) For some of us it is becoming clear that Fidesz is pursuing the same far-right policies as Jobbik, Hungary’s neo-Nazi party, and the country is slowly becoming a totalitarian state. […]

by · September 2, 2015 · Politics
The famous May West revue with muscle man.

Mickey (Miklós) Hargitay – California’s Hungarian muscle man

Mickey Hargitay was probably the first Hungarian immigrant who became the quintessential Californian, the idol of an entire generation of bodybuilders. His determination helped to make the sport respectable in the United States, and Mickey also became a celebrity, one of the “beautiful people” of the Southern California crowd. Hargitay was born in 1926, into a poor family in the […]

by · August 30, 2015 · Culture
Coming or going? Budapest's Liszt Ferenc International Airport.

Hungary tries to lure émigré youth back home

While the Orbán government is busy erecting a 177 km barbed wire fence along the full length of the border with Serbia, in a thus far completely unsuccessful attempt at keeping refugees out, and sending a message to the Fidesz party’s base that the government is tough as nails with the migrants, it is also launching a program to lure […]

by · August 26, 2015 · Diaspora
István Örkény in the late sixties, with his wife Zsuzsa Radnóti.

István Örkény: Professors before the bench

Twentieth century Hungarian author István Örkény (1912-1979) was known for his bitingly sharp social commentary. As a Hungarian Jew, he survived the Holocaust and served in one of Hungary’s forced labour units during World War II, only to be captured by the Russians in 1943. István Örkény spent over two years in a Soviet labour camp, before being allowed to […]

by · August 24, 2015 · Culture