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George Floyd riots: Memes and commentary about peaceful Central Europe vs. chaotic West spread across web

By John Cody
10 Min Read

Central Europe has remained strikingly calm even as mass unrest breaks out in the multicultural West, where George Floyd protests and riots have left cities in the United States and Western Europe in chaos, led to billions of dollars in damage, and resulted in many police officer gravely injured and some even murdered.

Social media users who believe countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which have conservative-led governments that have rejected multiculturalism, demographic change, and liberal ideologies, have been touting the peace their countries enjoy as the West appears set for a meltdown.

Although Black Lives Matter protests and violence targeted against police and businesses originated in the United States, Europe is now increasingly facing mass protests despite lockdown measures designed to keep coronavirus in check.

In Great Britain, Winston Churchill’s statute was defaced during a Black Lives Matter protest, and the left-wing BBC described protests as “largely peaceful” in the same social media description that noted 27 police were injured.

After protesters pelted a police horse, the horse was spooked, resulting in the officer’s horse bolting and a female officer slamming into a pole at high speed. She is currently recovering in hospital with shattered ribs, a collapsed lung, and a broken collarbone, with the crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters cheering as she suffered the nearly-fatal injury.

Videos of dazed and bloodied retreating British officers at George Floyd protests seemed to exemplify a complete loss of control.

Britain was only one country in Europe that has seen mass protests, with Belgium, Sweden and France all seeing significant violence from Black Lives Matter protesters.

In contrast, countries in Central Europe, particularly Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, have seen virtually no protests, and in the cases small numbers gathered, they have ended without incident.

As previously reported on Remix News, a Black Lives Matter Facebook event was planned for Budapest in Hungary, with only three white female U.S. expats expressing their interest in attending before they removed the event from Facebook. Eventually, a peaceful demonstration was held in the capital on Sunday.

Memes comparing the chaos in the West to the relative peace in Hungary highlighted the differences.

The Visegard24 Twitter account, which highlights the Visegard alliance of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, also noted the difference in how nationalists in Poland protest versus leftist protesters in countries like the United States and Great Britain.

István Kovács, strategic director for Budapest think tank the Center for Fundamental Human Rights, said that in the event Westerners start fleeing the breakdown in order in their own countries, he suggests they apply to migrate to Hungary through legal channels. Better yet, they should stay and fix the problem themselves.

The conservative politicians that lead Central Europe, particularly in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, have forcefully rejected the conditions which have led to the breakdown in order in other Western countries. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has frequently noted that the West is deteriorating under political correctness, identity politics, and changing demographics.

“If Europe is not going to be populated by Europeans in the future and we take this as given, then we are speaking about an exchange of populations, to replace the population of Europeans with others,” said Orbán at a demographic summit in 2019. “There are political forces in Europe who want a replacement of population for ideological or other reasons.”

Orbán has noted that political correctness will not protect people and that increasingly mixed cultures feature strife and tension that is not present in Hungary. The Hungarian leader saying that compared to other European countries, there are few “people with cultural backgrounds different from ours” in Hungary. He also said the few migrants the country have respect the laws of the country, work on their own, and want to find their place in Hungarian society. He continued that there no problems with minorities that currently live in Hungary  and their numbers are not growing at a rate that would “give us a headache”

Recently, he criticized the European People’s Party, the center-right conservative party in the Euroepan Parliament that his Fidesz party belongs to, as not being conservative enough.

“We gave up the family model based on matrimony of one woman and one man, and fell into the arms of gender ideology. Instead of supporting the birth of children, we see mass migration as the solution to our demographic problem,” Orbán wrote.

Orbán said the party needs to stand up to the media forces aligned against conservatives.  However, he contends it is not only demographic changes an clashing cultures that portend disorder, but also a lack of respect for police coupled with a growing assault from the media on conservative values.

“We don’t stand up for ourselves as old and great Europeans, and don’t take on the fight against left-liberal intellectual forces and the media they influence and control,” Orbán wrote to the EPP in an open letter.

While police are kneeling with protesters in the U.S. and other countries, Orbán has also voiced full-throated support for the country’s police and emphasized that they stand their ground when confronted with disorder. Orbán said the following a speech to police officers to celebrate 100 years of police forces in Hungary:

The Hungarian language can create apt and powerful images. The Hungarian uses a single word for standing one’s ground [helytállás]. This is when someone fully delivers what is expected of them in their situation. Yes, the former and current members of the Hungarian police force are bound together by their capacity to stand their ground in fulfilling their duties.

Orbán said that police are both necessary and guarantee Hungarians’ security, and emphasized that, “our constitutional rules, constitutional order and governmental system see the existence and work of the police as necessary – in the interests of the community – in restraining, and indeed disciplining, the sometimes dominant worst side of our inner selves, our violent outbursts and our predatory greed. Not only does it provide restraint and discipline, but – in the hope of a fair trial and judgement – it delivers to the courts whatever and whoever rejects the rules designed to protect our community.”

 

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