(In a series of articles, HFP will be looking into the meteoric rise of Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s counterterrorism adviser. Recently questions have been raised about Mr. Gorka’s competence and his connection to anti-Semitic groups and individuals. This piece is the second installment of our series.)
In a recently published article David Reaboi defends Sebastian Gorka. He writes that it is unfair to connect Mr. Gorka to the Hungarian far-right because the accusations are nothing more that “guilt-by-association”. He also claims that Mr. Gorka “fought and tried to undermine the anti-Semitism of the far-right” in Hungary. Several other Breitbart pieces depict Mr. Gorka as a victim of a well-orchestrated, unfair and unfounded media attack. (Read Mr. Reaboi’s article here.)
Mr. Reaboi writes: “In 2007, Gorka was approached by two former members of Jobbik, who rejected the party expressly because of its retrograde, anti-Semitic extremism. They sought help with a new initiative, called the New Democratic Coalition (UDK), to create space in Hungary for a pro-Western, classical liberal political party to be a counterweight toward the anti-American and anti-Semitic Jobbik party.”
We would like to point out that Mr. Gorka’s troubling association with Hungary’s far-right fringe had started much earlier, well before 2007.
On October 19, 2003 Tamás Molnár (later far-right Jobbik Party’s Vice Chairman) organized an event in the Hungarian city of Visegrád to discuss the future of “Hungarian National Radicalism,” a euphemism for the Hungarian neo-Nazi movement. Prominent far-right activists were invited to the Visegrádi Disputa as they called it, among them Gorka Sebestyén aka. Sebastian Gorka, today President Trump’s counterterrorism adviser. No mainstream political party would attend.
The event poster depicted an angel wrapped in a US flag with EU stars around him and Hungarian Stalinist symbols in the background. The Hungarian far-right is equally anti-Communist, anti-American and anti-EU. They believe that Hungary should revive its mystical eastern past, the Turul, the connection with the Turkish and Kazakh people and the Aryan brotherhood with the Iranian people. They called for a fight against worldwide Zionist conspiracy, or what the Hungarian far-right frequently called at that time, “the New-York Tel-Aviv axis.” Let’s take a quick look at the participants:
Balázs Lenhardt: Mr Lenhardt later became a Jobbik MP. He has flashed Iranian flags at soccer games and burned an Israeli flag with a blowtorch in 2012 before his neo-Nazi comrades. (Watch his Israeli flag burning event here.)
Mátyás Usztics: Mr. Usztics is an actor and one of the first members of the later banned neo-Nazi Magyar Gárda – Hungarian Guard. (The Magyar Gárda was Jobbik party’s Stormtroopers unit.)
Z. Kárpát Dániel: Long time far-right activist, he is currently an MP of the Jobbik party.
Kornél Döbrentey: Mr. Döbrentey is a poet and long-time far right activist. He recently inaugurated a statue of Albert Wass in a park at Margitsziget, Budapest. Mr. Wass was a convicted World War II criminal and a writer who depicted Jews as rats.
Mária Wittner: Ms. Wittner fought in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and received lengthy prison sentence after that. She supported the creation of Magyar Gárda, attended several far-right Jobbik rallies. Later she switched colors and became a ruling Fidesz party MP and also developed a close relationship with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
István Lovas: He is a journalist and author of numerous anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic pieces.
A couple of years ago Mr. Gorka gained US citizenship but recent press reports indicate that he has no security clearance in the White House and it seems that he failed to disclose the full extent of his activities and associations in Hungary. It might worth to take a closer look again at his far-right connections. The late Congressman Tom Lantos considered some of the Hungarian fascists dangerous; not to be admitted to the United States. He introduced a bill in Congress, House Resolution 4197 in 2007 “to prevent the admission of any member or leader of the Magyar Garda into the United States, and for other purposes.” (Read here the HR 4187.)
György Lázár