Introduction At the start of the new year, Black Rose Books and the University of Chicago Press announced the world-wide release of a new volume of essays on a revolution that threatened to derail not only the emerging world order after World War I but irritates to this day one of the most sensitive nerve endings of a people’s collective […]
Éva S. Balogh, the singularly dedicated editor and main contributor of Hungarian Spectrum died on November 30th of cardiac arrest. For over a decade, she dedicated her life to reporting on and analysing politics, culture and society in Hungary for English-speaking readers, diplomats and civil servants throughout Europe and North America, and for many democratically-minded Hungarians too, especially in the […]
Viktor Orbán and most of his Fidesz party leaders started their careers as promising young Communist leaders. Today they are staunch anti-Communists and have rewritten their life stories. Now they have also rewritten the life story of pianist Georges (György) Cziffra. The piano virtuoso was born one hundred years ago in Budapest. Hungary allocated 500 million forints (EUR 1.4m) celebrating […]
Hungary started an unprecedented campaign in the United States to bring Orbán’s xenophobic, homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic message to US audiences. His government is isolated in the US due to Orbán’s pro-Putin and pro-China stand. No active American politician (republican or democrat) would support him publicly. Budapest now relies on a small, “fringe” group of conservative individuals and organizations to deliver […]
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 […]
In spring 2o22, for the first time ever, Hungary’s strongman ruler Viktor Orbán will face a united opposition running a single slate of candidates spanning Jobbik on the right to the Democratic Coalition on the liberal left. This rainbow coalition, more disciplined in maintaining the united front needed to finally topple the rule of Viktor Orbán than ever before, will […]
One major goals of the Biden administration was to overhaul international tax rules and establish a 15 percent global minimum tax. The US wanted to reverse a decades-long race to the bottom of corporate tax rates after many major corporations shifted headquarters and profits to low-tax jurisdictions, depriving countries of much needed tax money to build new infrastructure, support education […]
Last November a new Kossuth statue arrived to Boston. It weighed about half a ton and Honorary Consul Gábor Garai asked local Hungarian Americans to store it in their garage. The statue, a generous present of the Orbán government to the City of Boston and planned to be installed at Faneuil Hall, where Lajos Kossuth gave a speech in 1852 […]
I was shocked to learn that Consul András Doncsev of the far-right Hungarian Government was present at San Francisco City Hall’s August 20th event. The photo of the one-time speech-writer of authoritarian PM Viktor Orbán was taken at City Hall and triumphantly distributed at the San Francisco Honorary Consulate’s Facebook site. Mr. Doncsev represents a government which promotes racist, homophobic […]
Will Pope Francis meet Hungary’s far-right authoritarian Viktator? Well, it depends who do you ask. Orbán controlled Hungarian media claims that Francis will meet Hungarian President János Áder and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the morning of September 12 at the Museum of Fine Arts. (Click here to read) The Pope himself never expressed desire to meet Orbán who desperately needs a […]
