Category Archives: Hungary

The Russian plan to blow up a Czech ammunition depot may have been directed from Budapest

The 2014 Czech explosion scandal is rapidly expanding. Yesterday, demonstrations were held in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague over the alleged Russian involvement in the explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbětice in 2014. Soon after, the government announced its hope for support and solidarity on the part of the European Union and its NATO allies. Thus, as Szabad Európa remarked yesterday, “the Czech spy scandal has become an EU-wide issue.”

My first piece on the affair ended by wondering whether Hungary would join Slovakia and Poland in supporting the Czech Republic, as requested by the government of Viktor Orbán’s friend Andrej Babiš. In vain does one look for any sign of a Hungarian response to the Czech call on the Orbán government’s website, but the Polish government placed the following announcement on their own: “We, the Foreign Ministers of the Visegrád Group, condemn all activities aimed at threatening the security of sovereign states and its citizens. We stand ready to further strengthen our resilience against subversive actions at both the national level and together with our NATO allies and within the EU. The Foreign Ministers of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary express solidarity with recent steps taken by our close partner, ally, and neighbor, Czechia.”

According to Paraméter, a Hungarian-language Slovak internet news site, it was Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok who initiated the V4’s joint declaration. Admittedly, it is somewhat worrisome that the alleged perpetrator of the action is not mentioned by name. But the very fact that Hungary signed this short document is a step in the right direction.

If the Hungarian government failed to reveal its solidarity with steps taken against Russia on its website, what did they say to their domestic audience about this affair? On April 19, after a lengthy description of Hungarian complaints about Ukraine’s unfair treatment of its Hungarian minority, Péter Szijjártó said that “Hungary expressed its solidarity with Poland over the arrest of the leader of the Polish national community in Belarus and with the Czech Republic over its diplomatic conflict with Russia.” He added that “Hungary knows exactly what it is like when the rights of a national community are violated, as the Hungarians of Transcarpathia are also confronted with such an attitude.” Thus, the statement of solidarity with the Czech Republic became subordinate to a declaration of support for Poland as it responded to an act against its ethnic minority in Belarus. Russian criminal activities abroad merited only a few words and were reduced to a “diplomatic conflict.” It is true that MTI summarized the content of the document, but Magyar Nemzet simply said that the Polish, Hungarian, and Slovak foreign ministers “condemn all activities that threaten the security of sovereign states and their inhabitants.”

Expelling 18 Russian diplomats from the Czech Republic was a very strong response to the revelations of Russian involvement in the explosions. Past experience suggested that the “aggrieved” partner would “outdo” the original slight. And indeed, in no time, 20 Czech diplomats had to leave Moscow within 24 hours. That meant that the Czech Embassy would be left practically unattended. Perhaps because of the Russian response, Prime Minister Babiš tried to appease the Russians by saying that “Russia did not attack the Czech Republic but the goods of a Bulgarian arms dealer who was probably selling these arms to parties fighting Russia.” Opposition politicians, however, were not in the mood to mollify the Russians, and thus Babiš was forced to retreat.

Bulgarian-Russian affairs are not in the best of shape either. In March, Bulgaria expelled two Russian diplomats accused of spying after Bulgarian prosecutors indicted six people, including current and former military intelligence officers, for spying for Russia. According to Bulgarian authorities, the spy network passed classified information to the Russian embassy in Sofia about Bulgaria, NATO, and the European Union. Given the already strained relations between the two countries, it is not surprising that Ekatrina Zahavieva, Bulgaria’s foreign minister, expressed full solidarity with the Czech Republic against the violation of its national sovereignty by Russia. This was pretty much expected considering that the ammunition stored in Vrbětice belonged to a Bulgarian arms dealer whom the Russian agents subsequently tried to poison in order to prevent the shipment of arms and ammunition to Ukraine. Zahavieva also expressed “full solidarity with Ukraine over Russia’s dangerous escalation of tension at its borders in recent weeks, [which] is absolutely unacceptable.” Long gone is the traditional friendship between Bulgaria and Russia.

There is no question that Slovakia will stand by the Czechs. As Foreign Minister Korčok put it, “we will decide in such a way that there is no doubt where the Slovak Republic stands” on that issue. At the same time, he saw “an opportunity to develop a clear position within the V4 on the situation in which the Czech Republic has found itself.”

International opposition to Russian aggression and the brazen activities of the GRU, the foreign military intelligence agency of the Russian Armed Forces, in Great Britain and countries of the European Union will make it difficult for the Orbán government to stand by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is especially the case since in the last few hours further details emerged, thanks to the joint work of Bell¿ngcat, Respekt, The Insider, and Der Spiegel, which puts Budapest at the center of a six-man Russian operation.

Map provided by Bell¿ngcat

The operation was apparently organized and directed by two highly placed operatives, Alexey Kapinos and Evgeniy Kalinin, who under their own names but with diplomatic passports landed in Budapest, allegedly carrying mail to the Russian Embassy. Kalinin is assumed to have been supervising agents Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. It was these two who most likely masterminded the attack in the Czech Republic.

The investigation is far from finished; more revelations are promised.

April 20, 2021

The Orbán regime on the Orbán regime

An amusing article appeared today in 444 titled “The Orbán regime’s 10 best books about the Orbán regime.” As the title of the piece suggests, these books were all written by admirers and supporters of Viktor Orbán and his political system.

Márk Herczeg, the author of the article, recalls that in the “Jacobine-Bolshevik type of regime … anyone who wanted to make a career for himself was advised to also write ‘scientific studies’ of the regime he served or led.” A classic book that analyzes this genre is a 2018 work by Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy. It was fairly promptly translated into Hungarian as A pokolí könyvtár, diktátorokról, a művekről és a betűvetés egyéb katasztrófáiról. From Kalder’s work we learn that, almost without exception, these books are appallingly bad. From the few reviews that have appeared by independent critics, the admiring works written about Viktor Orbán and his political system since 2010 belong in “the infernal library.”

Herczeg begins his list with a book that was originally published in Bulgarian by Georgi Markov and translated into Hungarian in 2020 as The Orbán Phenomenon. According to some of the reviews, “Markov’s book was an explosive success in Bulgaria, with writer-reader meetings in several cities, where crowds of people waited in queues for the book signing.” Markov’s most often quoted line is “I love Viktor Orbán because I love Hungary.” Markov, who is a member of the Bulgarian parliament (GERB), claims that there is an enormous curiosity about Orbán in Bulgaria. He set out to satisfy this curiosity by presenting “Orbán’s views on liberal and illiberal democracy, his fight to preserve Europe’s Christian values, and his struggle with Brussels bureaucrats, the European Parliament’s liberal wing, and the Soros Empire.”

Markov’s book was slim, a mere 160 pages, but the next one, A Thousand Years in the Middle of Europe: The Character of the Hungarian State, edited by Balázs Orbán and Zoltán Szalai and published by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, makes up for it, at 533 pages. At the book launch, Orbán “described the Hungarian character as freedom-loving, defending the constitution and the rule of law, critical of foreign ideas, defending his country and Europe, and both Western and Eastern, united and divided.” Thirty authors in thirty articles analyze these topics. I think that Herczeg is right when he claims that no one will ever finish these deadly boring “studies.”

As opposed to most of the books on Orbán cited in the article, I am familiar with Igor Janke’s biography of Viktor Orbán, titled Hajrá magyarok! Az Orbán Viktor-sztori egy lengyel újságíró szemével (Come on, Hungarians! The story of Viktor Orbán through the eyes of a Polish journalist). The advertisement for the book claims that “the work of the Polish conservative journalist and blogger Igor Janke is more thorough, more objective, more informative, and a better book than any biography of Viktor Orbán published in this country so far.” How objective is Janke’s book? I think that even the title of the book gives him away. “Although Viktor goes forth like a battering ram, there is more to him than just being above the rest. And that something more means that everything he does is subordinated to a clear historical goal: to put Hungary back on its feet. To restore to Hungarians their historical consciousness and pride.”

Janke’s book is clearly a favorite of Orbán and his coteries. Heti Válasz in 2013 published a long interview with Janke, who was portrayed on the magazine’s cover holding on to the Hungarian translation of his book, the “Bestseller from Warsaw.” A couple of years later, Magyar Hírlap boasted about the English translation of the book which, according to the paper, was made possible by Robert Belteky, a Hungarian businessman from Australia who “believes that it is important to raise awareness of Hungary and the aspirations of Hungarians overseas, and therefore his aim is to get the publication into as many Australian bookshops as possible.”

Another tome, which is 520 pages long and apparently weighs about 4 kgs, is Belonging Together, Hungary 2010-2020: Chronicle of Ascent, which from the description sounds like a coffee-table book. It was published by Demokrata and edited by András Bencsik. Printed on high quality paper with over 500 illustrations, it is currently available on sale for about $32, reduced 20% from a list price of $40. Viktor Orbán himself wrote the introduction. I don’t think I’m wrong in speculating that it was the Hungarian taxpayers who paid for this volume. But it must have sold well, because a couple of months later, a second printing came out “by popular demand.”

Tibor Fischer, a British novelist and short story writer best known as the author of Under the Frog, has been known to be an admirer of Viktor Orbán, whom he publicly defended in The Guardian. There he declared that “the western media’s portrait of the Hungarian leader as an enemy of democracy and an anti-Semite isn’t just puzzling, it’s disgusting.” Earlier, in 2013, Fischer wrote a book on Orbán called A magyar tigris. Here is a passage to get a feel for Fischer’s style. “On April 6, 2014, there were elections in Hungary … Viktor Orbán was elected prime minister for the third time, with a huge two-thirds majority, a majority that is virtually unattainable in a democracy. Politics at this point is a world of fantasy. Orbán has become the most important Hungarian politician since 1848, the most important the world has seen since Liszt’s fingers tickled the ivory keys.” Or later: “It is not the tiger’s fault that he was born to live on meat and not on green leaves. Viktor Orbán’s tiger nature. Soft footsteps. He walks around his victim. He plays with it. He knocks it down mercilessly. Some people don’t like ruthlessness. They don’t like tigers. It’s a matter of taste.”

Well, Viktor Orbán must have loved it because today Tibor Fischer is the head of the Literary Workshop of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Good work must be properly rewarded.

(To be continued)

April 19, 2021

Will Hungary stand by the Czech Republic against Russia?

An international bombshell exploded yesterday in Prague when Prime Minister Andrej Babiš announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats from the country “on well-founded suspicions that Russian intelligence agents were involved in explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbětice in October and December 2014.” He claimed to have “clear evidence,” collected by the Czech intelligence and security services, that the Russian group, known as Unit 29155, had been involved in the explosions.

It was this group that was implicated in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia. British authorities eventually identified the two Russian agents as Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who also appear to be responsible for the two explosions in the Czech Republic.

Within minutes of the announcement, a chill reminiscent of the Cold War years settled on the already frosty relations between the West and Russia. For good measure, the Czech minister of industry announced that “it is very unlikely that Russia’s Rosatom will take part in building a new nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic as concerns of Russian intelligence activities are growing.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview that“Western partners sought to override the importance and topicality of information released by both Russia and Belarus about not simply a plot but an actual plan of a constitutional coup,” referring to recent news of the Russian arrest of two men who were allegedly preparing to overthrow the Belarus government and kill President Alexander Lukashenko. The Russians accused the Czech government of total subservience to American interests. It was further stated that “this hostile move was the continuation of a series of anti-Russian actions undertaken by the Czech Republic in recent years. It’s hard not to see the American influence in the country.”

Babiš immediately got in touch with Charles Michel, president of the European Council, and Jan Hamáček, acting foreign minister, tweeted that the issue will be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers tomorrow. Babiš asked for the solidarity of his allies. The United States, Great Britain, and Poland have already assured Prague of their support. A NATO official told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that “we support our NATO ally, the Czech Republic, as it tackles and investigates Russia’s malign activities on its territory.”

The Czech weekly Respekt published a long article on the Russian agents allegedly responsible for the explosions and claimed that the attack was carried out “to stop a shipment of weapons to Ukraine.” The Czech police are certain that, although the two men entered the territory of the Czech Republic under aliases, they were actually the same Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin who wanted to kill Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England on March 4, 2018.

Arms dealers can visit the depot in Vrbětice as long as they state their purpose ahead of time in an e-mail. The e-mail the two Russians submitted, however, was “stripped of all metadata,” so it was impossible to determine where it was sent from. They entered the Czech Republic under one set of aliases and introduced themselves under another.

The way the Czech police have reconstructed the story, the Russian aim, with the explosions, was to prevent Czech ammunition from being delivered to a Bulgarian arms dealer, who was supplying arms to the Ukrainian army fighting Russian forces. To completely stop the flow of weapons from Bulgaria to Ukraine, the arms dealer was supposed to be killed by a third Russian agent operating under the alias of Sergey Fedotov. As Bell¿ngcat, a British investigative journalism website that specializes in fact-checking and open-sourced intelligence, uncovered, Fedotov arrived in Bulgaria on April 24, 2015, with a return flight to Moscow scheduled for April 30th. However, he showed up at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport on April 28th, where he bought a last-minute ticket back to Moscow. Earlier that day, Emilian Gebrev, an arms dealer, was hospitalized after collapsing at a reception. Eventually, he recovered, but a month later “Fedotov” was back in Bulgaria and Gebrev fell ill again. The Ukrainian internet site Unian agrees with the hypothesis of the Czech police that the attempts on Gebrev’s life were related to his supplying defense-related equipment to Ukraine.

How did the Fidesz propaganda machine handle this rather delicate matter? MTI sent four reports from Prague and Warsaw, which were incoherent, perhaps because of the editing that is routinely done in Budapest. Origo so far has published three articles on the topic, two of which were about the Russian response. Demokrata was surprisingly candid, admitting that Babiš asked for solidarity among the allies of the Czech Republic, which naturally includes Hungary. It also reported on Warsaw’s support for Prague. Pesti Srácok even went so far as to talk about the likelihood of Rosatom’s exclusion from the tender for the Dukovany Power Plant. The article, bypassing MTI, went to the original source and quoted Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček, who called attention to “the risks of inviting Russian and Chinese companies, which have been highlighted by Czech intelligence services. Any such act, if proven, must clearly have consequences.” Magyar Nemzet simply stated that 18 Russian diplomats had been expelled because, “according to the Czech authorities, they worked for the Russian secret service.”

I can imagine the anxiety that must have gripped the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office in the face of a situation that cannot end in a truly satisfactory manner from the Hungarian point of view. What  would satisfy both the Czechs and the Poles (as well as the Americans), on the one hand, and Russia on the other? Perhaps Viktor Orbán, who looks upon himself as an exceptionally talented diplomat, will find some miraculous way of getting out of this mess. Or perhaps the time has arrived when Orbán will have to show his cards. He either declares his allegiance and support of his allies or he sides with Russia’s 80,000 soldiers amassed at the eastern border with Ukraine and in Crimea.

April 18, 2021

Under the cloak of secrecy: facts about the ravages of COVID-19

Medián’s latest opinion poll on Hungarians’ satisfaction with the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic surprised many. Two findings in particular, published in the April 14 issue of HVG, were unexpected. One was the sharp contrast of views about the government’s performance, which fell solidly along party lines. The other, more stunning item was the widespread ignorance about the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in Hungary, which, as of today, is just shy of 25,000.

How is it possible that only 36% of the population was able to come up with an approximately accurate figure when Hungary currently has the third highest number of deaths per one million population (2,591) in the world and is quickly closing in on the top spot? (It has only to surpass the Czech Republic at 2,648 and Gibraltar at 2,791.)

Endre Hann, the owner of Medián, bemoaned the lack of dissemination of information. In fact, although Hann didn’t make this claim, the government intentionally hides certain vital statistics, like the number of deaths, while stressing the success of the vaccination program.

After listening to a couple of joint daily performances given by one or two policemen and Cecília Müller, the chief medical officer, I’m actually surprised that the number of people who  knew about the number of fatalities is as high as 36%. In the first place, these daily information sessions are half-an-hour long, sometimes even longer. The routine is always the same. First comes an absolutely useless and exceedingly boring list of police actions against people who have violated the pandemic laws. I would guess that by the time the policeman finishes his 6-10-minute laundry list, 90% of the audience would have turned off their TVs. If, on the other hand, one is, like me, forced to listen to Cecília Müller’s repetitious 20-minute monologue, she will hear, almost exclusively, only positive news, even if there is mighty little to be upbeat about.

During these sessions there is no mention of the overall death toll. That data point is taboo. It is never mentioned in these “press conferences” or in government papers. That means that those 36% of the population who answered correctly learned about the figure from independent newspapers, the few which still exist, or internet news sites. They were the ones who made a special effort in an otherwise arid wasteland that the Hungarian media landscape has become during Viktor Orbán’s eleven years in power. They should be congratulated. Perhaps there is still hope that the general dumbing-down efforts of the government will be reversed in the near future. On the other hand, 37% of the population couldn’t come up with any figure whatsoever and an additional 15% were totally off base.

Based on my experience of watching the daily “information sessions” orchestrated by the government, I can fairly confidently state that these exercises are good only for keeping up the population’s spirit and touting the government’s successful handling of the pandemic. The truth about the number of casualties and Hungary’s disastrous statistics, relatively speaking, is kept under a cloak of silence. This type of one-sided reporting is only too familiar to people who lived under one-party dictatorships. News, especially during the Rákosi regime and the earlier phases of the Kádár regime, was based on the same principle. For a while it worked reasonably well, until, in the case of Rákosi, it blew up in a spectacular way in 1956 and, in the case of Kádár, hung on for a few years.

The official messenger of this propaganda is Cecília Müller, who although she is called the chief medical officer of the land, it better suited to what she was before the pandemic hit: a kindly general practitioner in Nagyvenyim, population 4,000. Her monologues, which last about 20 minutes, are, as mentioned earlier, excruciatingly repetitious. In my estimate, the long-winded story could be delivered in 10 minutes, if I’m being generous. A report on the number of people who died in the last 24 hours comes only 15 minutes into the presentation and is quickly followed up with reassuring information and helpful hints. In this case, she gave a long lecture about the safety of opening schools, even though she admitted that 31,000 teachers haven’t even received their first shots yet. And, she said, young kindergarten kids can be taught to use a handkerchief and children should take water bottles along.

Since these “press conferences” have no audience, only written questions can be addressed to the chief medical officer, who decides whether or not to answer them. I assume that “difficult” questions are never answered. Yesterday’s only question came from RTL Klub, about the necessity of a third shot. I highly doubt that a straightforward question about the enormous loss of life would ever be answered.

And, in case one thinks that only Cecília Müller is glossing over uncomfortable facts, written government sources actually cover up the mortality rate. Two days ago, Magyar Nemzet proudly announced that “Hungary ranks only in the middle when it comes to the death rate of the coronavirus due to the difficulties encountered in comparing statistics.” And, instead of focusing on the home country, Magyar Nemzet reported on “the tragic mortality rate in Portugal and the Czech Republic.” In January, we were told that “despite the increase in the number of deaths from coronavirus in Hungary during the second wave of the epidemic, there was no significant spike in the number of deaths over the pandemic period as a whole. In contrast, Spain, the UK, and Belgium show a moderate increase in mortality, while Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Portugal, Sweden, and even Austria show a slight increase.”

Can anyone be surprised that only 36% of the population could quantify the horrendous mortality rate in Hungary? The references I have cited here are all from Magyar Nemzet. Multiply them by the number of government propaganda outlets, estimated to be close to 500. To my mind, misinforming the public or withholding information from them during a serious pandemic is morally unacceptable. It may even border on criminal negligence.

April 17, 2021

Fudan Hungary University: an independent academy?

The Orbán government, which is negotiating the establishment of a Hungarian campus of Fudan University, is a great friend of China. Only yesterday, Hungary blocked a statement by the European Union criticizing China because of its treatment of Hong Kong, which will likely undermine efforts to confront Beijing’s curbing of freedoms in the former British colony. According to Reuters, Hungary didn’t have any weighty argument for its position, and the country’s diplomats residing in Brussels “were not available for comments.”

Last month, Hungary reluctantly agreed to the sanction of China over its treatment of the Uighur minority, but Szijjártó made it clear right on the spot that “his government finds these sanctions meaningless, flaunting, and harmful.” He considered the decision “particularly pointless at a time when international co-operation is becoming increasingly important,” referring I assume to the doses of Chinese vaccine that Hungary had negotiated to buy.

In addition, it was only fairly recently that the world learned about the Hungarian government’s agreement with Fudan University to establish a large campus in Budapest with 5,000 post-graduate students and 500 faculty members. So far, we know little about what fields Fudan Hungary University will cover, but the Shanghai campus has an impressive list of offerings. Thirty-four thousand students are enrolled in 17 different schools, including law and medicine. The university offers 67 undergraduate programs, 148 master’s programs, and 103 doctoral programs.

No one questions the academic excellence of Fudan, but there have been serious doubts about the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on the academic freedom of the university. This became especially evident after 2019, when Fudan University deleted a sentence about “the commitment to freedom of thought” from its charter and demoted “academic independence” to a place lower than patriotism, triggering alarm among faculty and students alike.

The earlier version included the line “the educational philosophy of the university is academic independence and freedom of thought as extolled in the university anthem.” This was changed to “the university upholds the motto of ‘Rich in Knowledge and Tenacious of Purpose; Inquiring with Earnestness and Reflecting with Self-practice.’ We promote the spirit of ‘unity, service, and sacrifice,’ practice earnestly patriotic dedication, academic independence, pursuit of excellence.” These changes were followed by a small student protest.

An article in The New York Times reported at the time that it had been only in the last couple of decades that professors and students could debate such ideas as constitutional law. But recently, a course called “Xi Jinping Thought” was introduced at some 37 universities, including Fudan. A Fudan graduate called his alma mater “groveling, flattering, ingratiating,” adding his hope that the university will reverse its course.

Another part of the university’s charter is devoted to allegiance to the party. It states that “the university adheres to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and will fully implement the party’s educational policy.” According to The Washington Post, a sociology professor at Fudan admitted that “if you really want to do real research and have independent thoughts, it’s tough,” adding that 2019, when the new rules were introduced, “might not be the toughest time. In five years, we might look back on 2019 and say that this was just the start.”

The importance of the party in the life of the university is amply demonstrated by an event organized by Levente Horváth, a Fudan graduate, employed at that time by the Hungarian National Bank. He arranged a trip to Hungary for the university’s party secretary, whom he described as “the university’s number one leader.” It was she and György Matolcsy who signed the first agreement on Fudan’s establishment of a Hungarian campus.

Levente Horváth deserves a separate article because it seems that, without him, many of the Chinese-Hungarian projects wouldn’t have materialized, including the establishment of Chinese banks in Hungary, direct Beijing-Budapest flights, and likely many other projects. For now, it is sufficient to say that in 2005 he spent a year in China as a high school student, where he became captivated by the country and its culture. After matriculation in Hungary, he was accepted to the Péter Pázmány Law School, but his heart was in China. Thanks to the good offices of the Chinese ambassador to Budapest, he became the sole Hungarian student at Fudan University on a full Chinese government scholarship. While in China, he married a Chinese woman, Niu Shan, whom he met at Fudan and who has since become managing director of Fudan Magyarország Kft., established by Fudan University to handle the whole Fudan project in Budapest.

In Hungary, opinions differ over the possible dangers of Chinese propaganda and ideological influence on the future students of Fudan in Budapest. Those who consider academic freedom already a thing of the past in Hungary are certain that the Hungarian government is unconcerned about possible Chinese communist influence coming along with Fudan. On the other hand, a former Hungarian ambassador to Beijing believes that what is written in the charter means little in China. During the cultural revolution, Fudan’s charter was full of references to academic freedom even though “Fudan was the reddest university in the country.” Right now, the tendency is to emphasize the party’s role at every turn, but he doesn’t think that teaching at Fudan will be tainted by communist ideology.

The overarching question remains: Will Fudan in Budapest be a genuinely academic undertaking or merely another way for China to assert soft power in Europe as part of its global ambition?

April 16, 2021

Sebastian Gorka is back in the news, both here and in Hungary

Considering that Hungarian Spectrum played a role in the effort to remove Sebastian Gorka from Donald Trump’s White House, I think we should keep up with his activities. This is especially appropriate since, although with the departure of Trump, Gorka no longer has much influence in the U.S., the Hungarian propaganda media continues to turn to him for the “proper” interpretation of political events in Washington.

Those readers who would like to learn more about Sebastian Gorka and his family should consult several posts I wrote on the subject in 2017 and 2018. In fact, Hungarian Spectrum was the very first publication in the United States to describe Sebastian Gorka’s road from Budapest to the White House. After Gorka paraded in a “bocskai” at the White House reception after Trump’s inauguration, I identified the emblem he wore as the Order of Heroes (vitézi rend). And, with that, I became involved in an international investigative journalism project. I even wrote a separate piece on Gorka’s controversial medal and the history of the “vitézi rend.” Nonetheless, I’m convinced that, despite our best efforts, many important details of Gorka’s life between 1992 and 2008, the years he and his American wife spent in Hungary, remain undiscovered.

What has Gorka been doing since he left the White House and fell off our radar? He was a contributor to Fox News from late 2017 until March 2019, when he was eased out. On New Year’s Day 2019 he launched his podcast “America First,” which a couple of days ago received a setback when it was banned by YouTube because “it repeatedly violated [YouTube’s] presidential election integrity policy.” Three warnings in the period of 90 days means removal from YouTube for good. This, by the way, was not his first run-in with You Tube. In 2019, he violated YouTube’s policy by using rock band Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” as an intro for his show.

After Gorka lost his White House job and was let go from Fox News, he became a pitch man for Relief Factor, a health and wellness company that sells an over-the-counter pain reliever whose main ingredient is fish oil. Here’s the testimonial ad, in which Gorka is identified as a doctor. “Sebastian Gorka here for Relief Factor. First of all, let me say I have never before endorsed a pain reliever, but when Pete and Seth Talbott, the father and son owners of Relief Factor, asked me to endorse their 100 percent drug free product, I absolutely couldn’t say no. Of course, I only said yes because after years of my personal lower back pain, I am now pain free.”

Trump didn’t abandon Gorka altogether. In 2020 he appointed Gorka to a four-year term as a member of the National Security Education Board, whose 14 members oversee a government program that awards scholarships and fellowships to students and offers grants to colleges and universities to address “the national need for experts in critical languages and regions.” His qualifications even to be on that body are questionable. His dissertation, written in English under the direction of András Lánczi, today the rector of Corvinus University who knows next to nothing about the Middle East, Islam, or terrorism, the areas of Gorka’s research, was scrutinized by experts and found to be sorely wanting.

Although Trump is gone, Gorka is still hanging on to his job at the National Security Education Board, a fact that was noted by Salon, a politically progressive/liberal news and opinion website. They found it “difficult to explain why, after 60 days in power, the Joe Biden White House hasn’t gotten rid of ‘the deputy assistant for strategy turned right-wing talk radio host who now hawks fish-oil pills.’”

And Gorka now has a new TV talk show program, The Gorka Reality Check, which airs on the infamous Newsmax. As for the show. according to an article by Politico’s senior media writer Jack Shafer, “Sebastian Gorka’s new ‘Reality Check’ proves that propaganda makes lousy TV.” His hour-long show could be titled “routinized songs of praise for President Donald Trump.” How many times can you extol Trump and Trumpism “in the grandest and blandest terms possible?”

Although Gorka’s opportunities at present are limited, he is still someone whose opinion matters in Fidesz circles. On January 7, Magyar Nemzet, after quoting The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Fox News on the storming of the United States Capitol, turned to “America First with Sebastian Gorka.” While the paper summarized the response of the mainstream U.S. media in a couple of sentences, it quoted a podcast of “America First with Sebastian Gorka” at length, which emphasized the alleged election fraud that deprived Trump of victory.

On the same occasion, Gorka also gave an interview to HírTV, which was informative for me in more than one way. First of all, I found out that “HírTV is the partner television station of Newsmax.” Second, Gorka dated his appointment as adviser to Donald Trump to “the summer of 2020.” So, his modest position as a member of the National Security Education Board became a prestigious advisory job by the time the news arrived in Hungary. In this interview, he described the mob that attacked the Capitol as “peaceful right-wing demonstrators.” Otherwise, he repeated the false stories about “Antifa scumbags” vandalizing Senator John Hawley’s home

A few days later, Magyar Nemzet reported on an interview Gorka gave to Newsmax in which he  complained that “The violence [resulting from the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police shootings of black men and women] lasted for ten months across America, causing $3 billion in damage, killing thirty Americans, half of whom were black. Why was the National Guard not called out then?” He called the Biden inauguration “political theater.” Moreover, “the expert” (Magyar Nemzet’s moniker) complained that a much larger number of soldiers were deployed to the capital than the total number of U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria combined.” He accused the Biden administration of “raising a Berlin Wall in the United States,” although he was not clear about the nature or aim of that wall. He predicted that racial tensions would increase across the country in the coming years, for which it won’t be the right that is responsible but “the party that has made violence acceptable.”

These are messages the Orbán regime wants to hear. Readers of Magyar Nemzet or any of the other Fidesz propaganda papers know nothing about Gorka’s place on the American political spectrum. Gorka’s message reinforces the solidly anti-Biden rhetoric of the Fidesz media, which I suspect will not be abandoned. In fact, it may get even more vicious as the United States takes a firmer position on Russia and China, two of Viktor Orbán’s friends.

April 15, 2021

Viktor Orbán’s latest business venture: Fudan University in Budapest

In September 2020 I wrote a detailed post on the negotiations between China and the Hungarian government over establishing a campus of Fudan University, one of the best Chinese universities, in Budapest.

The Hungarian government’s announcement of the plans originally didn’t include financial details of the project, which we learned only later from Fudan University’s website, according to which “Hungary will provide land and teaching and research facilities for the new campus as well as legal and administrative support.” Fudan University will be responsible for the content of the course material tailored to the “local and European context.” From even this tidbit of information on the business angle of the cooperative project, it sounded like a losing proposition for the Hungarian partner.

For several months we heard nothing about the project until Direkt36 managed to get documentation on the present status of the project and a summary of the main points of the contract was published by Szabolcs Panyi in 444 on April 6. The university, with a faculty of 500 and a student body of 5,000, will be a very expensive undertaking. The government estimates that the building alone will cost 540 billion forints. To cover most of these projected expenses, the Hungarian government will take out a Chinese loan at an interest rate of 1.9%, to be repaid in 10-15 years. Hungary has apparently already set aside 800 million forints for the purchase of the grounds and will also have to come up with 100 billion forints on its own.

The campus will be built from Chinese material and by a partly Chinese labor force. The Chinese partner already chose the China State Construction Engineering Corporation Ltd (CSCEC) as the contractor. As is stated in one of the documents Direkt36 received, “construction can only be carried out as a Chinese project.” Moreover, Hungary agreed to the Chinese demand that, after a given point in the construction, the Hungarian partner cannot abrogate the agreement.

For context, I should add that the 540 billion forints the Hungarian government anticipates as the price of the construction is more than the amount of money spent on the entire Hungarian higher education system in 2019. We should also keep in mind that Hungary had already committed itself to an entirely superfluous railroad line between Budapest and Belgrade, another Chinese project financed with a Chinese loan of 700 billion forints.


Fudan University, Shanghai

So, now let’s introduce the firm to which Hungary entrusted the construction of the new campus. CSCEC is a notoriously corrupt company. In 2014, the firm was involved in the construction of a $3.5-billion Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas. Three years later, the U.S. arm of the company was sued for “massive fraud.” The company’s manager submitted “sham billings for hundreds of millions of dollars” and diverted money to “other projects throughout the Americas and Caribbean.” The CSCEC management in charge of a highway project in Pakistan was also caught mismanaging funds for the project, which the company hotly denied. Since 2009, the company has been blacklisted several times by the World Bank for corruption in several countries. In August 2020, the United States Department of Defense released the names of companies with ties to the People’s Liberation Army operating directly or indirectly in the United States, and CSCE was among them. I guess all that doesn’t bother Viktor Orbán, who is inviting China, with all its baggage, right into the heart of Europe.

Budapest Diákváros plans by Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta

Viktor Orbán, to accommodate a foreign power, is quite ready to abandon the construction of a Hungarian project that would benefit the Hungarian university community. Renting an apartment in Budapest is a very expensive undertaking, especially for students, and there is a shortage of student dormitories. Then came an attractive plan for a student quarters, called “Diákváros,” that would provide housing for 16,000 faculty members and students in District IX. The government decided, however, that instead of pursuing the Hungarian project for Hungarian students, the area will be used for the future Fudan Hungary University. When pressed, the government claimed that there would be enough space for both the university and the Diákváros. But there’s little doubt that Diákváros would be turned into dormitories for the students of Fudan University.

There are also national security concerns about having a Chinese university in Budapest. Szabolcs Panyi tells the story of the building which houses the African Union in Addis Ababa, where IT people noticed an incredible uptick in internet traffic between midnight and 2:00 in the morning. It turned out that every night during these two hours all African Union data were copied to a server in Shanghai.

The City of Budapest is up in arms about the planned location of Fudan Hungary University. Gergely Karácsony warned the government that if the original Diákváros project is abandoned or is squeezed out by the Chinese university, there will be consequences. “If there is no Diákváros, there is no 2023 World Athletics Championships either.” A letter to IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation) rescinding the invitation will be enough, Karácsony pointed out. Viktor Orbán’s chief-of-staff, Gergely Gulyás, tried to make light of the threat, but they must know that Karácsony is right. The host of the event, after all, is Budapest and not the Orbán government.

As for the establishment of Fudan University, according to Népszava, there are some doubts about the project even within Fidesz.

April 14, 2021