Viktor Orbán spoke with unusual frankness for a European leader about how the neo-Marxist, progressive left is confusing multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism, the Director General of the Center for Fundamental Rights Miklós Szánthó explained to the Mandiner newspaper concerning the Prime Minister’s speech in Tusványos, which caused a large media storm.
He also pointed out that the war is bad for Hungary, and those who started it as aggressors have harmed our country, but the answer is not to shoot ourselves in the lungs.
“Nazi racist theory” and predictions of a “doomsday scenario” are just some of the labels used by some to describe Viktor Orbán’s speech in Tusványos. The influential Hungarian Jewish organization, Mazsihisz, has protested, and Zsuzsa Hegedüs has resigned. Is this fear justified?
Fear, even indignation, is justified — I mean this in the context of the liberal agitation and the panicky reactions it is causing. Indeed, the prime minister has spoken with unusual honesty for a European politician against the neo-Marxist side, which claims to be progressive, and is confusing multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism. Orbán pointed out precisely how many people are falsely calling for silence, and making those who defend the European cultural community feel guilty by saying: “Why are you talking against migration, you were migrants once!” But this is a blatant lie.
They deliberately equate Europe’s multi-ethnic character with its shared cultural traditions, with the influx in just a few decades of masses of people from outside the Judeo-Christian cultural sphere, with customs radically different to our own. Moreover, as part of the “ideological ploy” referred to by Mr. Orbán, the flamboyant approach of multiculturalism, in the name of equality and neutrality, essentially denies any protection to our continental tradition.
It is explicitly aimed — and this is often what political correctness and “racial sensitization” are about — at denying and hiding our cultural and historical roots and traditions, so as not to offend immigrants, while they must “naturally” be guaranteed all the freedoms that are otherwise the fruit of the natural rights philosophy that is homegrown in Europe.
So far this seems true, but it is highly abstract.
Ideas have consequences. There is a strategic danger that the masses of people who have flocked here in the name of multiculturalism will — realistically, I might add — perceive that there is no such thing as “European culture” to which they should be accustomed and integrated into. In return, however, there is a liberal human rights framework that offers them the opportunity to remain unchanged not only as individuals, but also as communities. The results are parallel societies and no-go zones in Western Europe.
Roger Scruton was right: The fundamental problem with the left is that they have illusions about human nature and believe that their virtues are justified if they propagate these illusions. Therefore, anyone who punctures these illusions is not just a killjoy, but a threat. Viktor Orbán, for example.
Yet critics at least say that such terms are “inappropriate” to use in the 21st century. Is that so?
When it comes to deceit and self-righteousness, the left is truly unbeatable. Is this really coming from those who gleefully ran for election in an alliance with the Jobbik party whose deputy chairman talked a few years ago about listing Jews, and whose ingloriously failed ex-chairman talked about Jewish leaders themselves fomenting antisemitism in order to profit from it? The ones who backed László Bíró, the politician who ran for a seat in parliament after uttering unpardonable antisemitic slurs? Those who thought Z. Kárpát’s — an opposition politician from the anti-Fidesz electoral pact — Nazi salute was okay? Who maintained an embarrassed silence when Márki-Zay, during his campaign, spoke of “negros” and counted the number of Jews in Fidesz? Are they really the ones to talk about what is and is not appropriate?
They are using accusations of antisemitism now as they did against the Antall cabinet, or during the first Orbán government, and practically every day since 2010. They lie day in and day out. The really sad thing is that all this is clear proof that for them, the “fight against racism and antisemitism” is merely a political tool, nothing more, with zero moral content.
If not that (antisemitism), what were the main messages of the speech and what do the reactions show?
As I watched, in the first couple of hours after the speech, left-wing fake news media hadn’t even discovered the “racist” part of the speech for themselves — it was such a broad speech, encompassing so many geopolitical and strategic aspects, that they didn’t immediately catch on. The description of the general situation — that unless there is a change of direction very quickly, the West will continue to lose global influence — and the prescription offered for ourselves — to be a local exception to the cardinal rule of global recession — is hard to argue with.
When I think about why there is all this hysteria around the speech now, I think the left is not just frustrated with Viktor Orbán, but has an inferiority complex. They are mad with reality: the fact that Mr. Orbán is so far beyond their puny comprehension; that there is no other practicing political leader in this country, or in all probability in the world, who, beyond the day-to-day management of the give-and-take, can outline geo-strategic connections with incredible insight, and use that to steer his country in the right direction. They don’t understand, they can’t understand, because their dogma demands that the right be merely muck, it must be pedestrian and narrow-minded. That is why they are angry with us, with the world, but most of all, with themselves. That’s the long and short of it.
The question that arises from the above is: Does Hungary still belong to the West, or are we
moving towards the East?
In the 21st century, geopolitical relations will enter a completely new, more “global” dimension. Therefore, questions like, “Is Hungary with the West or with the East?” will become less relevant. An old historical lesson must be absorbed and digested again: that Hungary must side with Hungary, with herself. The national interest must always be identified and practical action be based on that.
Today, it is in Hungary’s interest — and I think it will be for a long time to come — to be a member of the European Union and NATO, but just like many other countries, it also has other alternatives for relations on certain issues, be it foreign trade, capital investment, or energy. We are members of the EU, and this is beneficial for all parties involved, but when a policy or a decision taken in Brussels goes against Hungarian interests — for example, on energy sanctions or escalating the war — it should not be supported. We are members of the EU not because “this is the EU and that is Europe,” but because membership is beneficial for us. It is, however, only adequate as long as it serves our interests.
From this, many conclude that the lack of ideological commitment makes the Hungarian government “pro-Russian.”
I can only laugh at accusations of being pro-Russian — as if the Hungarian right had not suffered enough under Moscow’s thumb when MSZP’s (Hungarian Socialist Party) predecessor was the state party, and one of the leaders of the KISZ KB (Central Committee of the Communist Youth Organization) was named Ferenc Gyurcsány.
It is also amusing how the great powers always talk of an idealistic foreign policy, and yet their actions remain firmly grounded in cold, hard realism. We, too, must act on the basis of our interests on the Eastern front: The war is bad for Hungary, and those who started it as aggressors have harmed our country, but the answer to this is not to create a sanctions mechanism that leads to us having to cut back on our gas consumption, while Russia is pushed into China’s embrace, even as they sell their raw materials elsewhere. We have shot ourselves in the lungs in the short term, and in the medium term our global influence will fade.
