Every year on July 4 the US Embassy in Budapest has a garden party with a couple of dozen invited Hungarian guests to celebrate Independence Day. This has become a decade-long tradition. It seems that Ambassador Cornstein likes to give big parties, I mean giant parties. On July 9 he invited 800 guests (yes, eight hundred) to a sit down […]
According to Nancy Goodman Brinker, the former US Ambassador to Budapest, Hungary is now a “former ally.” In a recent opinion piece at the über-conservative media site Newsmax.com, Brinker, a 72-year-old Republican concludes that Hungary’s alliance with the US has turned “unsavory.” (Read Brinker’s opinion piece here.) Brinker writes: “Two decades ago, Mr. Orbán was a centrist who praised the […]
On Wednesday. July 24, 2019, tens of millions of Americans and others around the world were given an opportunity to hear directly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the man in charge of the investigation into the relationship between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Thanks to his 5 hour testimony, we now know that crime pays in America. Mr. Mueller agreed […]
Ágnes Bátory and Sara Svensson both from the Central European University Budapest co-authored a remarkable paper about public consultations. They analyzed Viktor Orbán’s national consultations in Hungary, these are probably the most wide-scale consultative exercises in contemporary Europe. Some of our readers might not know that the Orbán government repeatedly sent questionnaires to every household in the country in some […]
According its official description HungaroFest, a two-day festival recently held in Toronto, was meant “to recognize and celebrate the history, existence and integration of the Hungarian people within Canada.” The festival included Hungarian music, folklore and dance. Local artists were invited along with performers from Hungary such as Republic, Budapest Bár and Tom White & the Mad Circus. The festival […]
In January this year Lord Peter Lilley, member of the Upper House, came to Budapest to the invitation of the Danube Institute to give a lecture about the Brexit and its prospects. (The video of the lecture can be seen here.) It was early days to form any judgement about it, but there were questions abound already. His presentation was […]
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and Jobbik both had their respective rendez-vous with destiny on Sunday night. At the same time, former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Democratic Coalition (DK) and the fledgling Momentum party, both underestimated in opinion polls, caused much surprise by their strong showing in European Parliament elections in Hungary. The results were as follows, with turn-out at […]
László Kövér is an Orbán loyalist and Hungary’s Parliament Speaker. The 59-year-old politician was born in the city of Pápa where he hails from a privileged Communist family. Mr. Kövér started out as a staunch Communist himself; he even worked for the Politburo. In 1987 as a young liberal leader he received a Soros-fellowship and was one of the founders […]
On January 24, 2017, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit by Hungary. The award was presented in Washington D.C. with great fanfare by Orbán loyalist Ambassador Réka Szemerkényi and Kaptur expressed her support for the Budapest government. Hungarian taxpayer’s money was not spared. The award ceremony was preceded by a piano concert […]
The Mi Hazánk, or in English the Our Homeland far-right party announced the formation of a paramilitary group called the National Legion on 14 May 2019. This new group follows in the footsteps of the banned Magyar Gárda, once the paramilitary wing of the Jobbik party–back when it represented the hard right in Hungary. The Gárda, whose uniform closely resembled […]
