The Orbán government has teamed up with the Ville de Montréal and Air Canada to organize quite an extravagant week of Hungarian cultural programs in Montreal, with the aim of presenting Budapest — and by extension Hungary — as a hipster, avant-garde, inclusive and welcoming place of free-flowing and uniquely rich cultural expression. Anyone who has visited Budapest recently will […]
Dániel Gazsó is a researcher and employee of the Budapest-based Research Institute of National Policy (in Hungarian, the Nemzetpolitikai Kutatóintézet – NPKI). In November 2015, Mr. Gazsó–a cultural anthropology graduate of the Universidad de Granada–contacted hundreds of Hungarians living in diaspora communities, who happened to volunteer for local Hungarian-language radios, television broadcasts, newspapers and news sites. Mr. Gazsó asked those engaged in […]
Hungary’s Orbán government is organizing a talk in Toronto for the local Hungarian community, in which Sándor Szakály, a historian closely tied to the far-right, but currently tasked with leading the state-funded Veritas Institute, will give a talk entitled: “Dutiful irresponsibility: How long will Europe be able to withstand, and for how long will there still be a Europe?” The […]
“Don’t listen to what I say, but watch what I do!” — Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary An essay by András B. Göllner in honour of Elie Wiesel and Randolph L. Braham What is Affinity Fraud ? Affinity fraud is the oldest scam in the book. Eve used it to con Adam into tearing off the forbidden fruit from […]
We are ready to join a community. We share the love of Hungarian culture, its history and language but we are even more different than the same. Some of us like reading fiction and some like non-fiction, some have a good ear for music and some just don’t get classical. Some love the traditional dances and dressing up at folk […]
The Second World War ended in Hungary in April 1945. The old regime was gone, to be replaced by a new one based on idealism, lies, hypocrisy and lust for total control and cruelty. The new regime, called Communism, had a new ideal for its citizens. The new man would be of the working class background, intelligent, dedicated, courageous and […]
Democracy is not a right. Democratic values must be fought for and protected every day, sometimes in seemingly small ways, and even in Canada. This was the overarching message of this past Sunday’s commemoration of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery, organized by the Ottawa Hungarian Forum. The Forum is a fledgling grassroots community group in the Canadian […]
My grandfather fled Hungary in January 1957, never to return, but his young family stayed behind. Between 1954 and 1956, he was a prisoner sentenced to hard labour at the coal mine near the village of Csolnok, in northwestern Hungary, after having been found guilty of conspiring against the state. He fled to Canada in 1957 and from his new […]
First off, I should explain my silence on these pages over the past several days. In addition to a very busy period at work, I have also been involved in a new grassroots movement taking off here in Ottawa, within an ageing and–for many of us–not especially welcoming Hungarian community. On October 18th, 2015, the Ottawa Hungarian Community Centre (OHCC) […]
Last Thursday, fifteen local Hungarians in Canada’s capital met at a “neutral” location to chart a course that would transform the small, but active local Hungarian community into one that is much more inclusive than it is now, welcoming a plurality of people, backgrounds, life experiences and views. This past Sunday’s Hungarian-language radio broadcast on CHIN 97.9 FM was a […]
