I recently wrote about the visit of Mr. Levente Magyar, Hungary’s Deputy Minister and Parliamentary State Secretary to Toronto to attend HungaroFest where Canadian officials inaugurated a plaque to commemorate the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
The event took place on June 1 at Budapest Park in Toronto, and on the podium the Hungarian politician was sitting next to a member of the Vitézi Rend who was proudly flashing his Horthy insignia. I also noted that according to US State Department directive FAM 302.7 the Vitézi Rend (Order of Heroes) is a fascist “criminal organization” as defined by the international Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
After publishing the article I received numerous emails and I learned that the gentleman with the Horthy insignia is vitéz Ervin Kulcsár, the event’s keynote speaker. Vitéz Kulcsár arrived as a refugee to Canada after 1956 and frequently appears with visiting Hungarian politicians and diplomats, among them Ambassador to Canada, Bálint Ódor. His incoherent speech was often xenophobic and included shocking comments.
Vitéz Kulcsár spoke at the Hungary’s Consulate in Toronto in 2016, Ambassador Bálint Ódor (far left) Consul Ms. Stefánia Szabó (behind).
First, I am disturbed that an elderly member of a retrograde group considered to be a “fascist criminal organization” is hobnobbing with Hungarian diplomats in Canada. US President Trump fired his advisor Mr. Sebastian Gorka after reports surfaced that he wore the Horthy insignia.
Second, Mr. Kulcsár insulted Mr. Arif Vinari, Canada’s Parliamentary Secretary of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship who donated the 56-er plaque and was sitting behind him! Mr. Virani is a Muslim, an immigrant himself born in Kampala, Uganda. He was visibly shocked and did not applaud.
Something very strange is happening in Toronto. The Orbán government is exporting its far-right xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic agenda and financially rewarding Hungarian immigrants who are willing to participate in this project. I want to assure Mr. Virani that very few Hungarian immigrants in North-America share Kulcsár’s xenophobic view of immigration.
Please watch Mr. Kulcsár’s speech by clicking here and if you agree that he insulted Mr. Virani please send an email with your apologies to Arif.Virani@parl.gc.ca to the House of Commons of Canada.
György Lázár
Mr. Làzàr,
What stands out in this Kulcsàr character’s speech is that
– after spending most of his adult life in Canada he still can’t speak proper English (draw your own conclusions);
– typically, he pushed the myth of Hungarian superiority, which is as delusional as it is popular in these chauvinistic circles;
– he blatantly lied about the partially imagined suffering or about the grossly exaggerated numbers of Hungarian victims of the Ràkosi regime and of the Soviet intervention: eg. the street gunfights of 1956 and the following repression’s took the lives of approx. 2500 persons altogether; compare this to eg. the 3200 civilians executed within three days by the Hu army in Sobodka, occupied Yugoslavia, in January 1942.
– In the light of the above, his sermon on immigration even if transpiring hardly contained hatred, doesn’t stand out – it’s was part of the whole disgusting package delivered courtesy of the new fascist regime in Hungary.
If anything I’d ask the Canadian gov to resist and fight the new fascism as it did the old one.
Well, well, a simple-minded bigot, and member of a fascistoid organization (Vitézi Rend) has been invited (by whom? why?) to give a talk at an event commemorating the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Apart from making some incoherent, triumphalist remarks about the “freedom fighters” (even then a mixed crew of genuine democrats alongside crypto- and overt fascists and xenophobes), this grateful “$5 immigrant” (whatever that means) who in the ensuing 6 decades managed to earn a living in his new home, but not to learn its language, uses the occasion to malign subsequent generations of immigrants to the country that generously and humanely took him in, managing to insult Canada’s current Parliamentary Secretary of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Arif Vinari, in the process. And this shameful spectacle was no doubt orchestrated and bankrolled by Hungary’s current current fascistoid, anti-immigrant government. What an irony! Hungary has long lost whatever admiration it inspired in the rest of the world in ’56. Kulcsár is right that (some) Hungarians are different. But not in the way he imagines…
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This Horthy bandit old donkey can hardly talk or move.
Let’s let him RIP old jerks want their 10 minutes of fame- a bitter, failure of a Fascist….
Just look at Israel and Jews today and he sees we won!!!
Consul stefuniman Szabó you can giggle all you want – disgusting as well – you know your fascist tendencies show jealousy and “egy viszamaratt no-t” ….
Just a provincial clerk.
The Vitezi Rend had nothing to do with fascism. After WW I Horthy was elected as Governor and as such had no right to grant nobility. In order to recognize outstanding soldiers of the War the “Vitezi Rend” was created.
Mr. Molnár.
Why don’t you read a bit of history. Horthy was not elected – he marched into Budapest on horseback took over the reigns of power after Béla Kún fled Hungary on August 1st, 1919.
The vitézi rend had nothing to do with fascism? It was expressly created for the protection of fascism, the anti-Semites and the privileged classes that Horthy represented to the bitter end.