Sixty-five years ago Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian Revolution. The Soviet Union started a propaganda campaign blaming the West for the uprising and the bloodshed. Howard Norton, a journalist with the Baltimore Sun reported from Moscow that the Soviets had spread their version why Russian troops were fighting in Hungary. Not surprisingly, they put the blame unequivocally on the West and on America.
According to Moscow the revolution was started „by earnest and honest Hungarians who merely wanted to improve their standard of living.” Western agents manipulated them after they saw the chance to seize power and revive the Capitalist system in Hungary. These „enemies of the people convinced and confused many honest laboring people.”
The Soviets also blamed outside interference. „Western money was used for releasing propagandist literature over Hungary from balloons and for making subversive radio broadcasting and setting up a reactionary underground inside the country.”
And as a proof that the uprising was the West’s conspiracy the Pravda wrote, „the bourgeois press greets with glee the news of the actions of the counter-revolutionary element.” The West was also deliberately destroying Hungarian society by promoting human rights.
Many of the Hungarian revolutionaries also blamed the West, especially the United States for failing to provide military assistance to the uprising. Hungarian émigré radio broadcasts made many Hungarians believe that American troops would come to the rescue of the rebels. Nothing was further from the truth.
India also squarely put the blame on the West, specifically on Britain and France. Nehru told India’s Senate that the Soviet intervention in Hungary was due at least in part to Russian alarm over the Anglo-French attack on Egypt. The Suez-crisis deviated attention from Hungary and the Russians attacked.
Today, on the 65th anniversary of the failed revolution, the Orbán government uses the same rhetoric. Budapest blames the West for the failure of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Mr. László Kövér, Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament recently talked about the “betrayal of the West” and claimed that the West cannot be an example for Hungary. (Read here in Hungarian)
On this anniversary the Orbán regime brings its anti-West and anti-American message to the US. Mr. Peter Szilágyi, a junior minister will bring the message to Passaic, to the St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Márta Mártai, the Deputy Speaker will bring Mr. Kövér’s message to Pennsylvania.
In Hungary today the West is blamed for everything. Western NGOs are destroying Hungary; LGBTQ “agents,” the Biden administration became enemies of Hungary’s thousand-year old traditions.
Just like the Soviets 65 years ago “Western arrogance” is mentioned and Mr. Orbán claims “the West isn’t happy just being successful, they also insist that they are correct. It’s not enough for them that they’re free and get to live how they want and enact decisions their peoples want; they also want everyone else to acknowledge that their decision is the only right one and to adopt it. So they want to tell us how to live.”
A couple of days ago Mr. Kövér went one step further, he stated that the West “would prefer to collaborate with a neo-Bolshevik group today.”
65-year-old anti-West and anti-American Soviet propaganda is recycled in Budapest and even exported to North America on the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.
György Lázár
There are certainly shades of what we saw later in Iraq (dessert storm), where the US government encouraged the Kurds to rise up, hinting vaguely that some form of help would be provided. It ended badly for the Kurds. There is certainly no shortage of historical examples where Western powers sacrificed people in this manner for their greater goals & interests.
Even now, EU rules prevent local capital from forming, taking root, and thriving in the Eastern part of the EU. A region with 100 million people, similar to Italy in size of the economy, does not have one single Fortune 500 company. It is an economic trap that leaves the region with a similar economic relationship that India had with its colonial master. Britain spent money on infrastructure, schools, hospitals. But they owned all the production capital. Factories, plantations, mines. Indians provided the labor and also bought many of the goods and services provided by British capital, with the surplus being exported. Remarkably similar to the economic relationship of the Eastern EU with the West. Only difference is that West is actually using the ownership of capital, the threat of closing the market, as well as the threat of withholding those development funds as the form of coercion meant to keep them in line, instead of the threat of military force. Things change. If Britain were still the colonial overlord over India, it would probably give up on military occupation and use its economic dominance to keep India inline instead, then cynically claim that India is “free”. They are basically exploiting these countries, sucking them dry, preventing them from economic development, thus endangering the very existence of these nations in the longer run. Sacrificing them for their own interests. It is the true nature of the supposedly morally righteous Western World.
Only the Hungarian people should decide what kind of government they wish to have. Interference from foreign governments is unacceptable. The US interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan, the result was disastrous. Brussels interference is also should not be tolerated. Liberal governments have never guaranteed success for its citizens.
“Liberal governments have never guaranteed success for its citizens.”
The fools actually believe that the current living standards are owed to their ideological success, while in fact, it is the inheritance of 500 years of Western global domination that they are now squandering.
I see the trolls have arrived – HFP should rename this crawl space, Instead of “Comments” it should be designated as “Trollspace”
You must feel very important indeed, if you expect HFP to tailor the comments space to reflect your constant interventions, devoid of substance, and mostly focused on personal attacks.