Israel’s Prime Minister and leader of the Likud party invited Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to visit. Authoritarian Orbán is generally not a welcome guest in the EU or North America; President Obama and Trump have never invited him to the White House. Mr. Orbán is creating a new history for Hungary, a heroic one. His regime has decided to downplay […]
Gay bashing seems to be the official policy in Hungary. The Orbán Government has no openly gay members and there are no gays in the ruling Fidesz party either. Orbán loyalists have no gay relatives, not even gay acquaintances. Mr. Orbán’s cultural advisor Imre Kerényi wants to stop “the faggot lobby,” Budapest Mayor István Tarlós says that homosexuality as “unnatural […]
We have been here before. Fidesz crosses what appears to be that proverbial line in the sand. Hungarian civil society protests. Hungarian columnists express outrage. A handful of European Union politicians demand a firm response from the EU and, in particular, disciplinary action from the European People’s Party, of which Fidesz is a member. And then the voices of protest […]
At 80 years of age Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright has had a long political career. She served as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State under President Clinton and was the first woman to hold this high level position. Albright has Czech ancestry. Her father was a well-known anti-fascist who worked for the Beneš government-in-exile in London and later became a […]
The conflict between Hungary and Ukraine is getting out of control. The Orbán Government’s retaliatory blocking of Ukraine’s NATO and EU integration have met unanimous criticism. The dispute between Hungary and Ukraine began over the so-called Language Law. Ukraine’s Parliament passed legislation to promote the use of the Ukrainian language. Western Ukraine has a multi-ethnic population, among them ethnic Hungarians. […]
The author of this essay is a former journalist of Lánchíd Rádió, the conservative radio station that closed days after the April election, along with the Magyar Nemzet daily. The author, a former supporter of Fidesz and Viktor Orbán, contacted us this week and asked the Hungarian Free Press to use the pseudonym “blahalujza”when we publish this piece, as revealing […]
Jeppe Bjerre Trans is a Danish journalism student, finishing off his Bachelor degree at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in June. He was in Hungary in the beginning of April to report on the elections in the country, as part of his studies at the International Europe in the World program – a journalism program focusing on European politics. […]
Immediately after being re-elected in April, Viktor Orbán indicated that addressing demographic issues would form a central plank in his government’s program. The decline in Hungary’s population has been a reality for more than three decades, after peaking at 10.7 million in 1981. In 2017 alone, the country’s population decreased by 40,000, with the number of births falling by 2.9% […]
The Orbán government had high hopes that the election of Donald Trump as president would lead to improved bilateral relations between Hungary and the United States–relations that had very much deteriorated since 2010, after Fidesz took power. The Orbán government had been paying Washington lobbyist Connie Mack around $112,000 per month, primarily to secure a much coveted Oval Office visit […]
In 2015, I penned an editorial in The New York Times warning against the growing influence in Europe of Hungary’s right wing prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Last Sunday Orbán was re-elected for a third consecutive term. His hold on power is more entrenched than ever, and his xenophobic, nationalist platform continues to spread beyond Hungarian borders. As U.S. Ambassador to […]
