Standing on a little wooden chair and encircled by fans, this image of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán summed up effectively the bogus, foundationless nature of the Orbán regime that has ruled the country for 12 years. Fidesz is, after all, the party that embraces the conceit of being the sole legitimate representation of all that is Christian and patriotic. Yet it’s also the party of monstrously corrupt oligarchs like Lőrinc Mészáros, of cocaine-laced parties in Ibiza, of gay orgies in Brussels at the height of the pandemic, of the Chinese communist party’s growing influence in Budapest through the establishment of the sprawling Fudan University campus, and Fidesz is also the party that is attached at the hip to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — allowing the murderous former KGB agent to use a nation once the hallmark of brave anti-Soviet resistance as a gateway to Europe.
Fidesz is the party that ran an outrageous hate campaign against Syrian refugees and migrants in 2015 — convincing Hungarians through a dense forest of billboards that the Syrians are coming to destroy Hungarian culture and steal Hungarian jobs. Fidesz is the party that legislated the explicit harassment of the homeless by authorities. Fidesz is the party and Péter Szijjártó is the seemingly sociopathic foreign minister that has reportedly turned a blind eye to Russian hackers affiliated with Russia’s Federal Security Service hacking into the ministry’s computer systems. For ten years, Russian security agents have been gaining confidential inside knowledge on the internal plans of Hungarian Foreign Affairs, as well as Hungary’s involvement with NATO. And Fidesz has allowed this to happen.
Viktor Orbán without a stage
This month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has levelled searing criticism against Mr. Orbán for taking a hands-off approach to Russian’s aggression in Ukraine and for showing none of the courage demonstrated by Polish political leaders — traditionally close allies of Budapest. Mr. Zelenszky noted: “There can be no Russian branches in Europe that divide the EU from within, that are trying to help Russia make as much money as possible even now. Everyone knows very well who in the European Union opposes humanity and common sense, and who does nothing at all to help establish peace in Ukraine. This must stop, and Europe must stop listening to the excuses of Budapest.”
Mr. Zelensky is almost correct here — except that Mr. Orbán isn’t offering excuses when it comes to his unwillingness to support Ukraine when faced with murderous Russian aggression. It has to do with what is at the core of the Orbán regime. Fidesz is entirely amoral. What even the most cynical parties and politicians possess in terms of some moral compass, no matter how deeply buried, Fidesz simply does not have. Mr. Zelensky can appeal to Mr. Orbán’s conscience by pointing him in the direction of the shoes along the Danube, that stark Holocaust memorial in the heart of Budapest. It simply won’t make any difference. Mr. Orbán will still callously speak of Hungary’s political and economic interests, with an unwillingness to even contemplate any sacrifice — even when the airwaves are overwhelmed by images of death and destruction in Ukraine.
There’s no point in smearing lipstick on a pig. There’s no hope of appealing to Mr. Orbán’s conscience — or that of anyone in the Fidesz orbit. There’s only one thing left to be done. On April 3, 2022, we must pull the chair out from under Hungary’s authoritarian ruler by voting for Péter Márki-Zay’s United for Hungary.
Christopher Adam your perspective is no different from the hate campaigns of György Lázár and Andrew Göllner. The three of you are specialists in smearing Orbán and present-day Hungary. I had hopes for a while that your youth and your academic training would enable you to rise above such mud-slinging and be able to be somewhat more objective. This was not to be! Shame on you and your distorted view of the Hungarian and Central European world.
Christopher Adam is right – there is no point in smearing lipstick on a pig. Orbán is as immoral as that other pig who sat in the White House between 2016-2020 and claims, without any proof that he scored a massive victory in 2022, and is leading the American Republican Party by its nose with this lie, and over 100 million Americans as I write these lines. With the cyber-age, politics has moved beyond morality, the pursuit of truth no longer matters, the foxes are running free inside the chicken coop. Mr Orbán will win his 4th term this Sunday because he has perfected the technique for destroying the ability of his fellow human beings to distinguish illusion from reality. As I’ve written here and elsewhere, these techniques did not come from the East, but from America. All of the crooks who run the new Republics that once formed the former Soviet Empire, including Putin, are governed by the devotees of these techniques , techniques of “information management” that were introduced to the East after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and field-tested for their efficacy by the American carpetbaggers (e.g. Arthur Finkelstein, George Birnbaum, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, etc) , who concocted Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, and who have snake-charmed the Republican Party into championing this approach in the Americas today. This is our brave new world and not only Mr. Orbán, or Trump, but millions of their misinformed followers are as happy in it as a pig in shit.
Mr. Ludanyi,
You must be getting your information from Fox News or, if you read Hungarian, from the entirely Fidesz-controlled magyar prress, TV, and radio waves. If you were in Budapest, you should have seen the striking underpaid and exploited teachers’ demonstration and heard Donald Tusk’s speech at the opposition’s March 15 rally, among other manifestations of the people being discontent with the Orban mafia’s robbing the country blind. And Orban is in Putin’s pocket: it is shameful that he hasn’t even acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and he has also turned blind eyes to the Russian hacking of the Hungarian foreign ministry’s files that has been going on for quite some time.
My advice to you is to stay with the disinformation-laden Fidesz, Russian, and US-Republican sources and spare the Hungarian Free Press from your opinions.
Mr. Divényi,
We Ludányi and I are getting our information from our everyday life in Hungary.
András Fodo
@ Ludányi
You’re dad fought for the Nazis in Ferenc Szálasi’s army and was a consenting participant in the effort that slowed down the liberation of Auscwitcz by the Allies at the end of WWII. As for you, diuring the past 12 years, you have chosen to fight for the gangster that considers Admiral Horthy his role model (the Admiral sent hundreds of thousands of Hungary’s Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz during his watch, and hitched Hungary’s wagon to the Third Reich after he crushed Hungary’s quest for democracy when he acme to power in 1920). I know where you’re coming from, loser.
Ludányi ! You have chosen to be an errand boy down here for Orbán, the crook who hitched Hungary’s cart to that ex-KGB appaaratchik’s “joy ride” – the one that hijacked democracy from the people of Russia, and is committing genocide in the Ukraine as I write these lines. . Ludányi ! Before you come down here to pollute the air with your perverted, ignorant diatribe against those who refuse to buy into your twisted view of the good life, look in the mirror and wipe off the years of disdain you have shown to the oppressed, abused, misinformed children of God in Hungary. Once you have done that, and if you have any courage, any backbone in your body, stand in front of me in a public place to defend yourself against the intellectual crimes you have committed against those who want to travel on the path of justice, constitutionalism and ecologicallly sustainable communal well-being. I consider you a looser, a sell-out to those who have sworn to uphold the truth and nothing but the truth. You have disgraced yourself as an academic by your efforts to portray fraud as a virtue. Shame on you.
Zelenskyy
ZELEN WINES
SKYY VODKA
HE WAS AND IS AN ACTOR. A PUPPET FOR THE STATE OWN GAS COMPANY IN UKRAINE. THE IMAGES OF DESTOYED CITIES ARE FROM AN ABANDONED CITY IN NORTH UKRAINE CALLED PRIPYAT.
I AM NYAKAS HORTHY KAROLYI A POLITICAL REFUGEE IN THE UNITED STATES. KING OF HUNGARY! I AM HUNGARIAN RUSSIAN UKRAINIAN ROYALTY AND I HAVE INFORMATION THAT CAN POSSIBLY STOP THE FIGHTING IN UKRAINE
King Nyakas,
Any chance that you’re running for the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party (Magyar Két Farkú Kutyapárt)?
Ludanyi,
You should be repenting – your father- May his bones rattle without any peace – and believe us -they are.
Never again!
@ Hungarian Free Press
Kis nyakas is not running for the two-tailed dog party. She’s just a bitch, with her two tails tucked between her hind legs in Orbán’s dog kennel. Give her a bone to chew on and she’ll be as happy as Ludányi or Fodor going round and round on Orbán’s little choo choo train in Felcsút.
Dr. Fodor,
You are getting your information from the Hungarian press, TV, and radio entirely under Fidesz’s control, FYI, I am also in your Hungary and am seeing with my own eyes and hearing with my own ears the output of Orban’s propaganda machine he copied from that of his friend Putin.
May your vote today be cancelled by those voting for the opposition.
in 1999 NATO, led by the US of A, bombed Serbia in support of the Kosovo separatists. Similar story to the Ukraine-Russia saga in many ways, except no NATO ground troops, were used. Frustrated with the fact that Serbia managed to keep its anti-aircraft systems largely intact, NATO kept expanding target lists, increasingly going after stationary objectives, including many civilian sites. The end result was “amoral”, with 500 civilians murdered, their deaths no less tragic than Ukrainian civilians dying due to Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Now, out of curiousity, did Christopher Adam take a similar position then, arguing against Hungary’s joining such an “amoral” coalition? Or are his perceptions driven by his own ideological bias, including on issues of morality? On prety much every subject he raised in his anti-Orban rant, there are similar questions in regards to his objectivity when it comes to his weighing of what is “amoral”. It is a subjective concept.
Joe,
While the Yugoslav-Serb/Kosovar-Albanian conflict was brutal and bloody, and while the NATO intervention was well planned but terribly executed, you cannot talk about it without mentioning that 1.5 million Kosovars were driven out of their country and thousands were killed by the Serbs.
The whole region is still an ethnic hatred mess and the UN should take a much more active role i. Trying to address the underlying issues and problems.
Why not?
We are talking about the Ukraine conflict as if in the past years, Ukraine did not use cluster munitions on ethnic Russian civilian targets. Neo-Nazis did not burn dozens of ethnic Russians to death in an Odessa building, with not a single one of them held to account to date. They stationed Neo-Nazi battalions in the ethnic-Russian East, including Aid-Dar, Azov, which have been accused of atrocities against civilians there. Even now, we are talking about this conflict, without discussing the fact that civilians fleeing Mariupol are alleging that the Azov group there has been commiting attrocities, including killings, rape and using the ethnic Russian civilians there as human shields.
I guess people of Russian ethnicity are sub-human, so no need to talk about it! CNN prefers to talk about Irina’s “harrowing experience”, who fled Western Ukraine and is now due to be employed by Audi Hungaria. A half hour sob story, while to my knowledge not a single Western Journalist has gone to talk to some of the countless civilians who fled Mariupol who alege vitnessing horrible atrocities at the hands of Azov. But I guess the Neo-Nazis are the good guys now, and Christopher Adam is trying to convince us that Hungary’s government is imoral, because it refuses to arm such groups. Groups that one day may use those weapons on the ethnic Hungarian minority in Western Ukraine, given the overal culture that has been nurtured among Ukrainians since the Maidan-coup.
@ Joe
“I guess the Neo-Nazis are the good guys now, and Christopher Adam is trying to convince us that Hungary’s government is imoral (sic), because it refuses to arm such groups”
Pervert ! The unprovoked massacre in the Ukraine by your fortune-hunting hero, the massive destruction inflicted on the territory and people of a sovereign nation is not a guessing game. I suppose for you Putin is entitled to grab Ukraine’s possessions by the same token as Trump is entitled to grab any woman he fancies by the pussy? Maybe you’d like to do that too, huh, Joe, and call anyone who opposes your groping a Neo-Nazi, huh, Joe? Nice try Joe but I’m afraid the only cigar that a pervert like you is entitled to is a well lit one up your rectum. You’re not just a troll Joe, but a pervert. You should be kept in a kennel rather than in this underpass.
“The unprovoked massacre in the Ukraine”
Down on the troll farm, our supervisor taught us that “truth is always the first casualty of war”.
Chemical attacks in Syria, automatically blamed on the government, turned out to be the democracy-loving Islamist rebels we armed.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-chemicalweapons/exclusive-chemical-weapons-used-by-rebels-in-syria-sources-idUSKCN0SU2PZ20151105
Justification to bomb Serbia in 1999 turned out to be mostly exaggerations:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3
We should in my view as a troll hold off on passing judgment on Ukraine massacres.
One thing that we can pass judgement on, is the fact that the Ukraine war could have been avoided. Days before the start of war, Germany’s chancellor implored Zelensky to give up on the whole joining NATO rhetoric. NATO itself could have just anounced out loud the fact that it has no plans to admit Ukraine, instead of constantly insisting on BS. I am sure US of A would react no different if Mexico were to try to Join the China-led Shanghai cooperation organization. Not sure Amecians could tollerate the idea of Chinese bases in G of M or just over the Rio Grande, any more than Russia can tollerate the idea of NATO aliance extending even closer to its borders. Our globalist oligarchs wanted this war. Ukrainian lives be damned! It is a chance for regime change in Russia, meaning that if they can gain control of Russia’s vast resources, it would be the final piece of the puzzle in gaining dominance over pretty much every government on the planet, not just Western governments. Eyes on the prize!!!
Finally, my sex life is my business, aside from rejecting any alegations of any of it being in any way non-consensual.
Ad for Trump’s pussy-grabbing claims? The key to that statement was “they let me”. Perhaps a distinguished academic like yourself can explain how any of that suggests anything but a consensual encounter.
Yes, I know, a barrage of MSM spin suggested it means non-consensual. So I guess in academia, where they mostly teach “jumping on the bandwagon 101” and “groupthink for dummies”, it does mean “non-consensual” if the dummies are told it is so.
@ Joe
“We should in my view as a troll hold off on passing judgment on Ukraine massacres”.
You would say that troll, as you do when any of the crimes of your kleptocratic buddy are brought to light. Your nose is getting very brown not to mention long, trollsky. Go back to your farmer’s almanac and stop polluting the atmosphere down here with your BS.
“when any of the crimes of your kleptocratic buddy are brought to light”
You mean, like when NATO bombed Serbia based on false claims about such crimes?
Does your demand for us to trust in our institutions to tell us the truth and act on it hold water, given the endless examples of their lies, distortions and misinformation?
Evidence suggests otherwise, but clearly a minion of the globalist oligarchs such as yourself cannot process this concept!
Well said, Andras!
As to the Ukrainian invasion (please don’t let anyone call ot war), Putin is only doing what any self-respecting Soviet would do: make ot sure that it has control over his Union. I left Budapest in 1956 after witnessing its destruction and the killing of many of its citizens by Soviet soldiers who didn’t even know where they had been sent by Moscow. But Khrushchev, to his credit, did not call the Hungarians who had risen up against his rule Nazis. And he died relatively poor compared to Putin when he finally has his well-deserved massive stroke.
@ Joe
“You mean, like when NATO bombed Serbia based on false claims about such crimes?”
Don’t try to interpret what I mean Joe because you do not have an interpreter’s license. Your license is only to disinform and to cut the cheese down here.
NATO did not bomb Serbia based on false claims, but based on empirically verifiable evidence that Milosevic and his troops were murdering tens of thousands of civilians, and pursuing a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the same way Putin is doing so today in the Ukraine. I know that you would love it if we all agreed with you and started a rally down here, proclaiming the butchers’s innocence, but I’m afraid the Serbian butchers will have to complete their sentences, and their friend Vladimir will, if we survive his bloodthirsty excess will be their newest cellmate. You belong in the same place as your heroes Joey. I’d love to help you fulfill your dreams.