Hungary’s previous ambassador to Washington DC., western-educated Mr. György Szapáry refused to meet with leaders and supporters of Hungary’s neo-Nazi Jobbik party. He would walk out from the room if Jobbik members showed up at an event. With the arrival of Ms. Réka Szemerkényi, Hungary’s first female Ambassador to the US, all this has changed. Ms. Szemerkényi has personally met […]
Hungary’s parliament voted by a massive margin (163 yes votes, 11 abstentions and 2 opposed) to repeal a law enacted in March 2015, that shuttered the majority of retail stores and commercial establishments on Sundays. It took the governing Fidesz party less than 24 hours to announce its intention to repeal the highly unpopular piece of legislation, submit it to […]
The far-right Jobbik continues to slowly bleed away support, while after six months of increased popularity, the governing Fidesz party is also seeing a modest decline in its numbers. The boost in popularity that Fidesz experienced during the refugee crisis now appears to be waning, as that issue begins to recede. A new poll produced by Publicus for the Vasárnapi […]
The following pieces are based on my 2010 visit to Hungary and a journal that I kept while there. They are in a form I call “proemcards.” Proemcards are a hybrid creation of mine composed of prose and poems, thoughts, observations, impressions and experiences I had during my stay. This is the first part in a series to appear in […]
One of our readers in the United States was angered by an article we ran about far-right historian Sándor Szakály’s visit to Cleveland and his revisionist views on the Holocaust. The reader’s letter is published below, along with a brief response from HFP contributor György Lázár. Dear Mr. Lázár, I have no idea who you are but I can guess […]
One good thing about 59 year old Hungarian historian Mr. Sándor Szakály is that you don’t have to guess where he stands. He is not only a right-winger, a historical revisionist, and admirer of pro-Hitler dictator Miklós Horthy and his gendarmerie but also a Holocaust denier. Mr. Szakály speaks at events sponsored by Hungary’s far-right party, Jobbik. For example Szakály’s […]
The Alfahír website, closely associated with Hungary’s Jobbik party, ran a story about a peaceful young man who was brutally assaulted on the streets of Budapest on October 23rd, a national holiday, apparently for no other reason than for being a Hungarian “patriot.” He was beaten up by a group of seven men and women, who Alfahír reported were of […]
Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, the author of Racist Extremism in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2005), made a critically important point in an op-ed piece published Saturday in The Guardian. According to Professor Mudde, western journalists and activists who have been concerned primarily with, and focused almost exclusively on, the rise of the far-right Jobbik in Hungary have been wrong […]
Traditionally, Hungary’s extreme right was not openly Islamophobic. In fact, the Hungarian right-wing in general tended to differ markedly from conservative politicians in North America and much of western Europe in its support for Palestinian nationhood and its criticism of Israel. At the time of the war with Hezbollah back in 2006, I wrote a response to a piece published […]
When Gábor Vona, leader of the far-right Jobbik party, visited a kindergarten in the Jobbik-controlled town of Ózd, and posted over a dozen photos on Facebook of him mingling, smiling and playing with young children, he was accused by the opposition of “political pedophilia.” According to Mr. Vona’s explanation, he had asked the school’s principal, whether he could spend the […]
