After terminating or “re-assigning” some 200 career diplomats, who were not perceived as staunchly loyal to the Orbán government, Fidesz has axed 190 civil servants at Hungary’s Ministry of National Development (NFM). In June alone, NFM “lost” 179 employees. An additional 14 mid-career civil servants were removed in July. Despite the fact that after winning the April 6th elections and […]
Seventy years after the murder of 600,000 Hungarian Jews, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government appointed an ambassador to Italy who declared that Jews were “agents of Satan” and has erected a monument in Budapest with the aim of denying Hungary’s role in the Shoah. It is a surreal turn of events for a government that sought to use the Holocaust […]
The pro-government (although essentially neoconservative and occasionally libertarian) Mandiner blog published an opinion piece, noting that Viktor Orbán’s infamous statements in Tusnádfürdő/Băile Tușnad represent nothing new in how the prime minister views East vs. West, certainly nothing novel in his nationalist and irredentist rhetoric or in his serial vilification of liberals, leftists and the “1968 generation.” I should note that […]
Zoltán Lovas, a prominent Hungarian journalist and activist whose name is certainly not unfamiliar to those who have followed the on-going Freedom Square protests, published a Facebook post Tuesday afternoon, in which he called for a boycott of the municipal elections scheduled for October 12th, 2014. Mr. Lovas believes that since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s infamous speech in Tusnádfürdő/Băile Tușnad, […]
Mária Schmidt, a prominent Hungarian pro-government academic, wrote that “the historian cannot project the ideological schemes of his age on the past and cannot observe the past’s narratives with today’s sensibilities.” Ms. Schmidt took issue with the much-maligned “left-liberal intellectuals” who she believes are trying to insert a type of “intellectual terror” into any discussion of twentieth century Hungarian history […]
Gáspár Miklós Tamás, a prominent Hungarian political philosopher summarized on ATV’s Straight Talk (Egyenes Beszéd) program what key ideas form the pillars of the new regime that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced in his speech at Tusnádfürdő/Băile Tușnad, Romania, when Mr. Orbán spoke with great enthusiasm about the final demise of liberal democracy in Hungary. The government seeks to build […]
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor is seeking to build a political system that would ensure that he has unchecked powers, according to László Majtényi, the country’s former ombudsman and privacy commissioner. Mr. Majtényi noted that Mr. Orbán’s speach in Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tușnad), Romania, made it official that Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister no longer sees the regime change of 1989/90 and the […]
Emil Boc, mayor of Cluj-Napoca, has appealed a ruling by a county court that would pave the way for bilingual, Romanian-Hungarian, street signs. The court’s ruling would make it possible to include Kolozsvár, the Hungarian version of Cluj, on signs, even though the city’s Hungarian population no longer exceeds the 20% threshold normally required to implement bilingual signage in Romania’s municipalities. […]
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is hardly being welcomed with open arms, as he plans a trip to the United States for this coming October. According to media reports, not only will Mr. Orbán be unable to meet President Barack Obama, but he stands little chance of a photo-op with Secretary of State John Kerry. The Hungarian prime minister would […]
Pressure from the World Jewish Congress (WJC) may have been decisive in convincing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to drop Péter Szentmihályi Szabó as its new ambassador to Rome. Szentmihályi Szabó, who in the far-right Magyar Fórum weekly referred to Jews as being “agents of Satan,” announced that he was no longer interested in being appointed as Hungary’s ambassador to […]
