(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.)
Sebastian Gorka aka Gorka Sebestyén.
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.
Far-right event Visegrád Disputa poster in 2003 featuring Mr. Sebestyén
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.)
Balázs Lenhardt is burning an Israeli flag
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.)
Mátyás Usztics (left) and Jobbik leader Mr. Gábor Vona.
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.
Mária Wittner (right) with Jobbik leader Mr. Gábor Vona
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
The smoking gun in Mr. Gorka’s closet is his failure, “to disclose the full extent of his neo-fascist, anti-American, anti-Democratic political activities in Hungary prior to being given American citizenship, and access to a network of unsuspecting high profile political contacts, including Donald Trump – all of it, thanks to his multi-millionaire wife’s connections and money.
The full extent of Gorka’s dirty past will come out eventually. Mr. Gorka’s active political involvement with and support of Hungary’s neo-fascist, anti-democratic “alt-right” political movements is empirically verifiable. It goes back to the time, that he returned to Hungary as a young man, in the early 1990s and worked along the anti-Semitic, and anti-American former Deputy Minister of Defense, Ernő Raffay. Lili Bayer’s article on Gorka, in Forward is only the tip of the iceberg about Gorka’s destructive, anti-democratic activities in post-communist Hungary.
If it’s “guilt by association” to call someone a Nazi, because he is a member of a Nazi party, so be it. Mr Gorka is guilty by association for working to undermine democracy in Hungary during the 15 years he was politically active there, and before he went to the US, whitewashed his past, and assumed a new identity.
Lest we forget: he founded, along with 3 other neo-Nazis a political party in 2007. He was a correspondent for years for the neo-Nazi journal, Demokrata, and was a well known member of the Hungarian anti-democratic movement, that considered even Viktor Orbán’s authoritarianism too tame. Mr. Gorka claims to be a member of the Order of Vitéz (he puts a small “v” before his name. The v signifies his formal membership in this knighthood.) The Order of Vitéz does not admit Jews, and was created by Admiral Horthy as his personal guard. Horthy declared war on America, and sent 460,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Gorka must be investigated before he engages in the same kind of anti-democratic destructiveness in America, as he did in Hungary for 15 years. Three cheers for Lili Bayer, György Lázár, the HFP and all those who are contributing to this work. We shall overcome !
According to Nepszava (NY) Gorka failed security clearance in Hungary and thus could not continue in his position. Soon after that he “disappeared” from Hungary.
Now he is an associate of Bannon and privy to classified information.
Gorka claims his father received the vitez order. This order was given by the Horthy regime. The war ended in 1945 when Gorka’s father was 9 years old. The father went to England (where Gorka was born) in 1957 when he was 21 years old. He was never in jail in Hungary.
Karl Busch:
There is something wrong with either your numbers, or Gorka’s claims. Gorka claims, his father was imprisoned, as a young man, by the Communist regime of Mátyás Rákosi and was released from prison during the 1956 uprising, at which time, he fled to England. I suspect, the father or Sebastian received their “vitéz” ranking after 1990 from the ultra right order that was resurrected after 1990. The anti-Semite editor of Demokrata was also admitted into this order along with other neo-nazis. What unites them all is a wholehearted allegiance to the principles of Admiral Horthy, who declared war on the USA, curtailed democracy in Hungary during the interwar years and sanctioned the deportation of 460,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers. This is what the Order of Vitéz stands for. This is the “Order” that Sebastian Gorka is a member of. His high office, in the White House is a scandal that should be exposed. Responsible and decent Americans anywhere should be outraged and ask for his immediate dismissal.