Two nights ago on a long coach journey back to Nottingham, I put on my headphones and tuned in to an opposition radio station in Hungary to follow the early results of the national elections with a glimmer of hope that the ever increasing hatred, division, corruption and outright racism of the Orbán régime might suffer at least a setback.

I started to become increasingly optimistic with talk of a record turnout favouring opposition parties who had finally started to shelve their differences and cooperate. Some of those parties are pretty distatseful, but anything has to be better than the dark spectre of fascism creeping across Europe.

It soon became apparent that the big increase in turn out had been almost exclusively to the benefit of the government, following a campaign intent on fuelling fear of foreigners and daring to suggest that Orbán would protect some kind of racial purity.

I know many people who had hoped that Orbán’s increasing xenophobia, which was the focus of the campaign, would turn people off. It hasn’t. Whatever the reason: the government’s destruction of any meangingful media plurality, demonisation of foreign NGOs, cheap bribes to old age pensioners…. he won. Hatred won. Divisiveness won.

And yet I refuse to lose hope in a country and a people that means so much to me, so much that it is almost in my blood, a part of my DNA.. I spent some of the most important years of my life living and working in Hungary, I speak the language and immediately feel at home the moment I am in the country.. Hungary has given me so much over the years that I cannot and will not believe that this is irreversible.

A couple of my friends (one Hungarian, another living in Hungary) posted in a group earlier that there is no point in fighting hatred with hatred, that the only way forward is not through political parties or dogma, but through one to one dialogue, that change has to come through exchanges between ordinary people.

Someone once challenged Buddhist philosopher Daisaiku Ikeda that his philiosphy of doing the same would take a very long time to achieve any kind of change. Ikeda agreed but said words to the effect of ‘but what is your alternative.’

If you’ve read this far, congratuations, you deserve a medal.

Sziasztok!

Postscript

As the dust settles, it seems the Orbán régime’s intent on creating a paranoia around migrants was what gave him victory on such a scale.

It is important to say one thing; Hungary these days has almost no objective media outlets. The State tv channels are heavily controlled by Orban’s party and are little more than government propaganda machines- so bad that I can no longer watch them.

Several opposition media outlets have been shut down or severely curtailed in their licences.

Big adverts along the highways which make UKIP’s migrant poster during the referendum campaign look tame are a sickening sight when put up in the name of a government, as are the clearly anit-semitic posters attacking George Soros. (By the way, they even adapted UKIP’s famous migrant poster as well, just made it even worse)

An election held in those circumstances is very questionable in its democratic credentials.

I actually doubt very much thet Orbán himself holds these racist views himself… he may do, may not.

He is driven by an obsession, which is the destruction of the left. He was, to his credit, a key figure in his young days in mobilising young people in the time preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The irony is that in his behaviour he is now coming to resemble more and more certain leaders of the country’s communist past, such as János Kádár.

How sad, David; thanks for posting that; yes I've been watching and worrying too. It reflects the power of Increase Borders, the exact opposite of my philosophy of Open All Borders. ITK and others will say I'm wrong and they are right; the majority are racist and full of hate. It's why Trump won. It's why Brexit won. Yes of course there were other reasons but closet racism, often concealed even to the racists, was a huge part of the reason. Like the attacks on Corbyn who is clearly not anti semitic. It's extremism, simplicity tools these days. It is throughout humanity and that's what makes me sad. Humanity is losing its humanity.

Perhaps they don't want to become like the uk, fearing terrorist attacks, losing their identity, depressed wages, child grooming, honour killings, acid attacks, crash for cash, atm fraud, whilst all the politicians are cosying up to the them because they provide cheap labour for them.

robbiex wrote:
Perhaps they don't want to become like the uk, fearing terrorist attacks, losing their identity, depressed wages, child grooming, honour killings, acid attacks, crash for cash, atm fraud, whilst all the politicians are cosying up to the them because they provide cheap labour for them.

Ditto. Please don't forget about stabbings, vicious attacks on the elderly and muggings on the vulnerable.

It's a growing rejection of the EU, by the people who were never asked if they wanted to be a part of it.
A large number of voters fear the EU more than they fear extremist parties.

PaulB wrote:
It's a growing rejection of the EU, by the people who were never asked if they wanted to be a part of it.
A large number of voters fear the EU more than they fear extremist parties.

I'm surprised at how the point I was trying to make has somehow not registered.

Disagree or debate by all means, but.....

If you read all the above, this is not about some Hungarian equivalent of Nigel Farage and Brexit.

(In fact, in spite of everything the government does and says, Hungarians as a whole remain positive about EU membership).

This is about a man who has changed from a champion of democracy to one who is destroying it pretty rapidly, and pretty ruthlessly.

I'm all for having debates about immigration, Islam etc but that is not what this is about.

Please re=read the above.

If Nigel Farage (or anyone else) came to power in the UK and systematically closed down almost all media outlets that disagreed with him, so that the only voices that could be heard throughout the country were those of fierce government propaganda, would you feel ok with that?

If a head of government in your country was spouting his fierce Christian faith (which I doubt Orbán has) at the same time as launching very blatant anti-muslim *and* anti-semitic attacks across public media and billboards, would you feel comfortable? Remember, Hungary lost 400,000 Jews to the gas chambers. I have Jewish friends in Hungary who are very scared right now.

I thought this post might get a few replies equating the situation in Hungary with simple euroscepticism, or dissatisfaction with immigration.

This is far more serious.

Remember, fascism doesn't come knocking at the door, announcing itself, it creeps in by stealth.

A final, very interesting point:

Since 2006, the scourge of Hungarian politics has been the neo-Nazi Jobbik party, who gained in excess of 10% of the vote in most recent elections. In the last year they have undergone an extreme makeover and re-positioned themselves as a centre-right party.

Why have they done this? Because Orbán and his Fidesz party have taken over their territory.

Dangerous times.

Very thoughtful and informative post David; made me "smile" that posters apart from jk have demonstrated the point you eloquantly make regarding bigotry and hatred of minorities providing easy "answers...

as if the litany of aggressive behaviours listed are exclusive to Britain and attributable to immigration solely...idiotic...

wyot wrote:
Very thoughtful and informative post David; made me "smile" that posters apart from jk have demonstrated the point you eloquantly make regarding bigotry and hatred of minorities providing easy "answers...

as if the litany of aggressive behaviours listed are exclusive to Britain and attributable to immigration solely...idiotic...

fully agree.

Very informative post David.

andrew wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Perhaps they don't want to become like the uk, fearing terrorist attacks, losing their identity, depressed wages, child grooming, honour killings, acid attacks, crash for cash, atm fraud, whilst all the politicians are cosying up to the them because they provide cheap labour for them.

Ditto. Please don't forget about stabbings, vicious attacks on the elderly and muggings on the vulnerable.

It's called democracy,and using it to stop Hungary getting in the same mess we have got into.

Indeed Andrew wrote:

It's called democracy,and using it to stop Hungary getting in the same mess we have got into.[/quote]

hmmmm, shutting down newspapers, radio stations etc that don't toe the government's line.....

Rigging, sorry redesigning, the electoral system so that a party with 49% of votes gets 67% of the seats and therefore can pass constitutional amendments to cement itself in power forever.

Creating scores of ghost parties with very similar names to existing opposition parties, making ballot papers confusing or misleading.

Yep, that's democracy alright.