Tag Archives: Zsolt Bayer

Pope Francis “prayed, prayed, reflected a lot” and decided against meeting Áder and Orbán

The latest hot topic in Hungary is Pope Francis’s planned visit to Budapest on September 12 for the last day of the week-long program of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress and Theological Symposium. I wrote in 2019 and 2020 about the history of the congress, whose purpose is to bear witness to “the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.” Each of these congresses, held biennially, is given a theme around which the program is organized. The Hungarian organizers chose “Eucharist, the Bond of Love.”

I’m almost certain that the Hungarian government eagerly embraced the idea of holding the event in Budapest for at least two reasons. One is that a eucharistic congress was held in Budapest only once, in 1938, and, after all, Hungary is an avowedly “Christian” country. The other reason is more hard-nosed. The government and the Orbán family discovered the financial benefits of tourism in general and tourism related to pilgrimages and religious events in particular.

Whoever lobbied in the Vatican for the event to be held in Budapest could be proud of his achievement because he managed to convince Pope Francis to attend the event. Popes only rarely visit these congresses. In 1938, Pope Pius XI didn’t take part in the event; he was represented by his secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, who a few months later was elected to succeed him as Pope Pius XII. So, István Kuzmányi, editor-in-chief of Magyar Kurír, is correct when today, amid a huge controversy over the papal visit to Budapest, pointed out that the pope’s decision to attend the congress, even if for a short three hours, should be “gratefully welcomed.”

In a remarkable press conference held during his flight back to Rome from Iraq, Pope Frances explained his decision-making process before accepting an invitation. “About the journeys: to make a decision about the journeys.… I listen to the recommendations of the advisers and in the end, I pray, I pray, I reflect a lot; … And then the decision comes from within: do it! Almost spontaneously, but like a fruit that has ripened. It is a long process. Some journeys are more difficult, others are easier.” As for the scheduled plans for the rest of the year, “Next I will go to Hungary for the final Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress. It is not a visit to the country, but for that Mass. But Budapest is a two-hour drive from Bratislava: why not pay a visit to the Slovaks? I don’t know…. And so, things begin.…”

So, ever since March 3, it has been clear that Pope Francis’s trip will not be the kind of state visit Hungarians are now talking about. And although the general public learned about the details only on June 3 from the American publication National Catholic Register, it is evident from the article that both the Hungarian Catholic Church and the Orbán government have been trying to convince the Vatican to have Pope Francis stay longer in Hungary and to shorten his trip to Slovakia, where, according to present plans, he will spend three and a half days. According to the article, the Pope “is intentionally skipping courtesy visits to the country’s president, János Áder, and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, as well as customary addresses to civic and political leaders.” As the article continues, “for a pope to visit a capital city and not meet the country’s leaders is unprecedented.”

Quoting unnamed Budapest and Vatican sources, Zsolt Semjén, the deputy prime minister who unofficially represents the Catholic Church in the Hungarian government, and Cardinal Péter Erdő, Primate of Hungary, visited the Vatican sometime at the end of May, but the result is still unknown, although the Pope’s program was supposed to be announced on May 26.

There can be no question that Viktor Orbán and the country he created stand in stark contrast to Pope Francis’s view of the world. Only a few months ago, in a speech delivered to the United Nations, Francis talked about the two possible paths mankind can follow. One is “solidarity grounded in justice and the attainment of peace and unity within the human family, which is God’s plan for our world,” while the other path “emphasizes self-sufficiency, nationalism, protectionism, individualism and isolation.” And in a recent speech to refugees, he called on Catholics to end “aggressive nationalism” and welcome migrants without prejudice for “natives and foreigners, residents and guests.” According to the Polish press, the Pope is also worried that if his visit were to include meetings with politicians, it could have an undue influence on the forthcoming election, which he wants to avoid.

The Fidesz media is up in arms. In an editorial in Magyar Nemzet, Tamás Fricz, a political propagandist, doesn’t accept the Pope’s “unprecedented impudence” and considers “the fact that he wants to spend three days (!) in Slovakia after this short stay in Budapest an outrage.” But Fricz can never outdo Zsolt Bayer, who on Hír TV’s Press Club in the company of András Bencsik, Ottó Gajdics, and Gábor Bencsik, said the following about the pope’s “unacceptable behavior.” If the pope either as head of state of the Vatican and or as head of the Catholic Church doesn’t want to meet Hungarian officials, “he is failing in his duty,” which is to meet his secular counterparts. If he refuses to fulfill his duty, “the Hungarian government ought to tell him to stay away.”

András Bencsik, editor-in-chief of the far-right Demokrata, was even more forthright. In his opinion, “Pope Francis wants to humiliate Hungary by planning to stay only three hours” in the country. The Pope should be warned that “Jesus Christ gave unmistakable guidance in this regard when he said if the Holy Father wishes to be forgiven by the Almighty when the time comes, it will be on the condition that he is able to forgive.” Pope Francis is behaving “in an anti-Christian way, which is doing the Christian world a very serious disservice.” He added that he prays that Benedict XVI, whom he referred to as the “original pope,” will try to enlighten him about his “responsibilities and duties as a leader of the Christian world.”

The editor-in-chief of Magyar Kurír called this program a “watershed” because “indeed, several people and organizations accuse the Holy Father of being anti-Christian, once again targeting the person of Pope Francis.” Unfortunately, a great number of the Hungarian Catholic Church’s bishops basically agree with the members of the Press Club. Some of them don’t even try to hide their disapproval of the Pontiff.

June 8, 2021

The Lenin Boys, the Red Emigration, and the West against Hungarian democracy

Of course, the top news of the day is that Fidesz made the early decision to leave the European People’s Party, which would seem to indicate that Viktor Orbán’s negotiations with other far-right parties regarding the future place of Fidesz in the European Parliament have come to some kind of resolution. However, I don’t like to write about a topic a few minutes after it has become public knowledge. In this case, I’m even more hesitant than usual because I learned from István Szent-Iványi, who is thoroughly familiar with the complicated rules and regulations of the European Parliament, that it is unlikely that a new EP party family can be created before 2022 because committee assignments, based on the parliamentary strength of the EP parties, are fixed until the end of the year. Therefore, unless Fidesz is ready to upset the applecart and demand reapportionment, the 12 Fidesz members will have to sit with the independent MEPs this year.

So, instead of writing a final piece on the Fidesz-EPP saga, I will turn to a series of six articles by Zsolt Bayer that appeared in Magyar Nemzet titled “Törpe Károlyi Mihályocskák” (Diminutive dwarf-like Mihály Károlyis). As readers of Hungarian Spectrum are aware, Bayer is known for his obscenities, but this time the usual smut was replaced with gross historical falsifications. It’s difficult to decide which is the greater crime against the readers.

Bayer’s aim is to equate the non-Fidesz members of the European Parliament with the “Lenin boys” in emigration after August 1919. The “Lenin boys,” according to his interpretation, turned against their country and its legitimately elected government from abroad by unjustly talking about “the stinking stench of the mount of manure, called the Christian course in Hungary,” which is “a burning problem for European moral and political purity.” This same kind of criticism is heard from the Lenin boys of today in the European Parliament, claims Bayer.

The new Lenin Boys

I trust that Bayer and Co. know that they are talking rubbish when they claim that the Lenin boys were in Austrian exile. After the Soviet Republic failed, the Hungarian authorities managed to identify 34 members of this murderous gang, none of whom had escaped from Hungary. By November 1919, they were arrested and stood trial, and a month later 14 of them were executed.  For Bayer’s audience, however, there is no difference between liberals, moderate social democrats, communists, and Lenin Boys.

The core of these six articles comes from a book published in the early 1930s titled A vörös emigráció (The Red Emigration) by Elemér Mályusz, an extremely talented medieval historian. Reading parts of the book, I simply can’t understand how a serious scholar could lose his senses and write this tripe, which, by the way, was translated into several languages. It is an emotional tirade, half of which is vitriolic fiction. Between 1945 and 1954 he paid dearly for his venture into contemporary history. He was forced into early retirement, and it was only in 1954 that he was allowed to become a member of the Historical Research Institute.

Mályusz, among other false claims, insists that István Tisza’s murder by returning vengeful soldiers was actually the work of Károlyi and obscure journalists. To this false claim Bayer adds his hope that the present red emigration will not get to the point of attempting to kill today’s István Tisza — that is, Viktor Orbán.

In addition to Mályusz, Bayer’s other source is the first chapter of Dezső Kosztolányi’s classic novel Anna Édes (1926), translated into English by George Szirtes, in which he paints a damning portrait of Béla Kun. Kosztolányi may have been a great writer, but after the fall of the Soviet Republic he became active as a political journalist for the far-right, anti-Semitic, and supremacist paper called Új Nemzedék. Between 1919 and 1921 he wrote an anonymous column called “Pardon.” A couple of years ago these articles were republished in a separate volume, and people became aware of Kosztolányi’s ideology during this period.

Both Kosztolányi and Mályusz wrote about the Austrian sojourn of the Soviet commissars as if they had been eyewitnesses to their circumstances in Karlstein, Drosendorf, and Heidemühle where they were detained. A scholarly article published in 2013 titled “Kun Béla Ausztriában és Németországban (1919-1921)” could have helped Bayer learn that, instead of living in the lap of luxury, the commissars were placed in a cold, austere castle built in the thirteenth century. No fancy reception there. But a lot better than the treatment that was in store for them from members of the “national army,” such as the infamous Pál Prónay, who wanted to kidnap them. When Miklós Horthy, the leader of the army, informed them that he didn’t have the necessary number of automobiles to achieve their goal, they settled for poisoning Kun and company by smuggling sweets containing atropine into their quarters. (The Austrians saved them from certain death in the nick of time.)

There are so many false claims in this tirade against the opposition MEPs that a long article would be needed to set things straight. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go through the text with a fine-tooth comb, but I cannot pass up the opportunity to say something about a baffling section on the “moral insanities who can say anything and their opposite.” So, it seems that “moral insanities” are human beings. Moreover, it looks as if a person “who is a moral insanity is a priori mentally ill.” I know it sounds like total nonsense. Yes, it is. It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that “moral insanity referred to a type of mental disorder consisting of abnormal emotions and behaviors in the apparent absence of intellectual impairments, delusions, or hallucinations,” a term discarded after its wide use in the nineteenth century. Bayer is presumably resurrecting and redefining it, using the phrase to refer to members of the opposition in the European Parliament.

By Part 6, he is so carried away that he accuses the West of effectively helping these modern Lenin boys to ruin Orbán’s democratic Hungary. Moreover, he claims that “we can be 100% certain that the German! Secret Service was responsible for the fall of Szájer” at the sex orgy held in the apartment of a Pole, whom Belgium refuses to hand over to Poland.

I noted earlier that government propaganda is rife with anti-German sentiment lately. Now I’m waiting for the moment when we learn that Manfred Weber and Donald Tusk were behind the Szájer affair in order to weaken Fidesz’s position in the European People’s Party. Anything is possible in the crazy world of Viktor Orbán with its many “moral insanities.”

March 18, 2021

After 21 years, a bad marriage between EPP and Fidesz ends in divorce

Two weeks ago, I stuck my neck out in my post titled “EPP and Fidesz: A Parting of the Ways,”  with no question mark at the end, and predicted that “we are finally in the end game, which will result in the probable expulsion or the voluntary departure of Fidesz from the European People’s Party.” Among Hungary-watchers, few people shared my optimism because they were thoroughly disgusted by the years of indecision over Fidesz membership in EPP. If, after the suspension of Fidesz two years ago, EPP members were unable to come to a decision about the fate of the party, these people argued, why should the situation be different this time?

I perfectly understand the general skepticism that surrounded the EPP-Fidesz “soap opera,” as Florian Eder of Politico called it, but, beginning in mid-December 2020, I saw signs of serious trouble awaiting Fidesz in EPP. For me, perhaps one of the clearest indications was the rumor that László Trócsányi, former minister of justice and now a Fidesz MEP, threatened to take the EPP group to the European Court of Justice. If true, I said to myself, and, given Trócsányi’s modus operandi I believed the story to be true, EPP means business this time.

Before the final break this morning, István Szent-Iványi, a former member of parliament, political undersecretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, and later a member of the European Parliament, who is a foreign policy analyst nowadays, was one of the few who shared my view about the forthcoming departure of Fidesz from EPP, a judgment based on “the deteriorating external factors for the Hungarian government and Viktor Orbán.”

Katalin Novák announced Viktor Orbán’s decision to take Fidesz out of the EPP delegation. She explained that Fidesz cannot allow their democratically elected representatives to be constrained and declared that Fidesz’s departure would be EPP’s loss. “All this happened in the bubble of Brussels where it was not the leaders of the individual parties who made the decision but their representatives to the European Parliament.” According to Novák, the greatest loss for EPP will be the absence of “critical voices” that Fidesz representatives provided. Surely, Novák in her more honest moments cannot seriously think that EPP members will be heartbroken over their cantankerous Fidesz colleagues’ departure. More typical was the Twitter comment by Roza Tun, a Polish MEP, who wrote, “Adieu, Fidesz! I will not cry.”

It seems that Orbán sent his female contingent, all two of them, onto the battlefield because, after Novák’s announcement, Judit Varga offered her two cents’ worth of wisdom on the pages of Magyar Nemzet. She explained to “Herr Weber” that this was all his fault because, instead of keeping the EPP delegation tight and united, under his tenure he weakened it. Well, perhaps, but the EPP delegation was united in its decision to ease the Fidesz members out of its parliamentary delegation. Of the 160 members present, 148 voted for the resolution, knowing full well its consequences.

The party and the government are trying to spin this latest development as a success story. Zsolt Bayer was naturally on hand with an opinion piece titled “So, at last it’s over!” He is thrilled because “at last this is the end of bloodcurdling waffling that has never made any sense other than to satisfy those who cannot and should not be satisfied. We came to the end of unprincipled bargains and compromises that led nowhere. We came to the end of the humiliating petty work to gratify that miserable Weber.”

Tamás Pilhál of Pesti Srácok is also thrilled and wishes EPP “further success in sinking into imbecility.” According to him, EPP is a latrine in which “Manfred Weber and the other invertebrate crawlers may continue to hiss in the dark, but the door of the outhouse was slammed shut on them. Hungarian MEPs and Hungary can finally breathe fresh air.”

Independent commentators view the Fidesz departure quite differently. Péter Balázs, foreign minister in the Bajnai government, sees these latest developments as the clear failure of Orbán’s goals, which were far too ambitious and were therefore doomed to failure. He wanted to reshape EPP to resemble his own right-wing ideology, but he couldn’t find willing partners. Balázs points out something that Orbán may not have included in his calculus. EPP needed the Fidesz contingent when there was a grand coalition between the socialists and the Christian democrats. But after these two parties failed to get a majority in the European Parliament in 2019, the size of the EPP delegation was no longer of critical importance. EPP even without Fidesz is the largest caucus, and the Fidesz 13 would not enable them to wield even more power.

Given the complicated structure of the organizations of the European Union, initially there was quite a bit of confusion in the media about the exact nature of Orbán’s unilateral withdrawal of the 13 Fidesz MEPs from EPP. It took a couple of hours before people began to understand that Fidesz is not at this stage quitting EPP but is only removing its representatives from the EPP delegation. The next move, however, will have to be either the expulsion or the voluntary withdrawal of Fidesz from EPP because otherwise the Fidesz MEPs cannot join another parliamentary delegation. And surely, they don’t want to function for too long as independent MEPs. Moreover, it looks as if the European People’s Party, quite independently from Fidesz, has already started a procedure to remove Fidesz from the party. EPP released a statement today saying that “Fidesz is now facing an exclusion procedure from the party, under Article 3 of the EPP Statutes. This must be decided by the EPP Political Assembly, which will meet when it is safe to do so given the current pandemic situation.” Looking at Article 3, I assume that Fidesz’s removal would be based on the passage in Article 3 which claims that the purpose of the association is to “encourage and organize unanimous action by its members at a European level.” If Fidesz members are no longer part of the parliamentary delegation, they can’t contribute to unanimous action by EPP members.

In this post I have barely scratched the surface of the breakup of the 21-year “marriage” between Fidesz and EPP. In 2000, EPP made a concerted effort to woo Fidesz, although one could already detect serious differences between the views of Fidesz and those of the Christian Democratic parties on politics, economics, and culture. Over the years the gap between them only widened, until it finally had to be obvious to everyone concerned that Fidesz is a far-right party, which shouldn’t have a place in EPP. In the next couple of days, I hope to delve deeper into past EPP-Fidesz relations as well as Fidesz’s prospects outside of the “Christian Democratic family” and what kinds of effects Orbán’s decision will have on Hungary’s standing within the European Union.

March 3, 2021

The mad world of Orbán’s Hungary

Magyar Nemzet’s attack on Gerald Knaus, the director of European Stability Initiative, is part of a larger campaign being waged by Viktor Orbán and his closest advisers ahead of this fall’s likely clash between the European Commission and the Hungarian government over the conditionality of financial support and the rule of law. At least this is what an e-mail from the prime minister’s office to Cathrin Kahlweit, correspondent of Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, indicates.

According to the prime minister’s press office, the Orbán government has spent a decade trying “to expose the people who have carried out an international smear campaign against Hungary and Prime Minister Orbán,” but there are still people out there who work undercover for George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. Gerald Knaus is one of them. He poses a “national security risk,” if for nothing else than his support of illegal migration. As for Knaus’s criticism of Viktor Orbán, the government maintains that he disseminates lies.

Yesterday I focused on a single speech, the prime minister’s 2015 address at Fidesz’s traditional picnic in Kötcse, which, I believe, showed that truth is on Knaus’s side. Orbán spoke there about the demise of liberal democracy which emphasizes human rights and also about a foreign policy orientation which must be adjusted accordingly. But, thanks to Miklós Haraszti’s research, here are a few more examples showcasing Orbán’s stance on issues of human rights. The first is from an Orbán speech at the Hungarian Diaspora Council (December 2, 2015): “There is a political discourse that treats the world on the basis of the philosophy of human rights, and we are obliged to account for anything and everything within the framework of this kind of thinking. And whoever steps outside of this canon commits treason against the wonderful values of the world. This era is coming to an end…. We are in the endgame of the period that is based on the export of democracy and human rights.” Viktor Orbán’s speech at the congress of Fidesz on December 13, 2015 is also revealing. “Today, Europe’s mainstream and its key people pursue superficial and secondary values such as human rights, progress, openness, new family types, and tolerance. These are nice and cute things, but in reality, they are secondary, because they are derivative values.” According to him, the “primary values” that are missing in Europe today are “Christianity, common sense, military virtues, and national pride.”

Not that we can convince the Hungarian government about Viktor Orbán’s profound rejection of democracy and human rights, but I hope it will be clear at least to the readers of Hungarian Spectrum that criticism of Orbán on this front is perfectly justified.

Gerald Knaus soon discovered that his name was all over the pro-government television as well as the print media. I picked out two such instances, both of which could be heard on Hír TV. The first was a political roundtable discussion of journalists that was aired on September 7, the day the first article on the European Stability Initiative appeared in Magyar Nemzet. Interestingly, the four participants — Zsolt Bayer, András Bencsik, Ottó Gajdics, and László Néző –were all familiar with the articles that were yet to be published. The weekly program, “Sajtóklub” (Press Club), is led by Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders of Fidesz and a crude anti-Semitic journalist whose writings are notorious for their foul language. During the Kádár period András Bencsik and Ottó Gajdics were quite ready to cooperate with the regime but subsequently became rabid anti-communists. The last participant, László Néző, is new and I know little about him, but since he replaced Árpád Szakács, the culture warrior, as editor-in-chief of Mediaworks, I can imagine where he stands ideologically.

The group described Knaus as a “Soros agent” whose defense in the face of Magyar Nemzet’s revelations will undoubtedly be to accuse Hungarians of having a predisposition for conspiracy theories. But what the Hungarian investigators found is “no theory but practice.” The participants were especially concerned about Knaus’s role as an adviser to Angela Merkel because in this capacity he can be harmful to Hungary. Will there be any serious consequences of these disclosures about Knaus? The verdict was that, because of his activities, Knaus deserves to be banned from ever setting foot in Hungary.

The Bedlam Insane Asylum, from an 18th-century engraving by William Hogarth

The second example was an interview with József Horváth, a national security expert, on “Magyarország élőben” (Hungary Alive). What one should know about Horváth is that he was a lieutenant in the ministry of interior’s domestic spy network. He was recalled to duty during the first Orbán government. According to this former secret service employee, Knaus is not only a threat to the Hungarian government but is also a danger to the European Union, whose secret service apparatus should be immediately activated, because he is an agent of an organization that operates outside the territory of the European Union. Representatives of the countries in which he has resided in the past few years should sit down for an immediate “crisis consultation.” The reporter, Andrea Földi Kovács, the wife of another mad national security expert, was especially disturbed by Knaus’s reaction to Magyar Nemzet’s revelations. He struck her as agitated and nervous. Horváth explained the reason for the man’s odd behavior. Knaus “has been exposed, he was uncovered.” What we see is a “panic reaction.” Right now, Knaus is expecting “his handler to save him,” and therefore his agitation is perfectly understandable.

After readings these lines, some people might think that we are reporting from inside the walls of a lunatic asylum. In some ways we are. Viktor Orbán’s world is becoming increasingly surreal.

September 15, 2020

The Orbán government’s strange zero tolerance of anti-Semitism

I must say that I welcome the downsizing of the two national holidays, March 15 and August 20, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been spared all the historical nonsense that politicians spout on such occasions. We didn’t have to listen to Viktor Orbán speak on March 15 in front of the National Museum. Tomorrow he will, it seems, be the sole speaker at a small ceremony at the new Trianon memorial.

Unfortunately, the awarding of scholarships, prizes, and decorations that customarily takes place at these two national holidays wasn’t scrapped. Handing out prizes for all sorts of artistic and scientific endeavors, just like so many other things, was an imitation of the Soviet practice. I have long argued that its discontinuation in 1990 would have been appropriate because government involvement in the selection of recipients inevitably leads to political bias. The socialist-liberal governments here and there gave prizes to people whose political attitudes were openly antagonistic, but in the last ten years no such mistake has ever been made. Given the nature of the Orbán regime, this would be expected. Only Fidesz loyalists or those who very carefully conceal their political views can be among the happy recipients of these often financially lucrative prizes.

But what is particularly disturbing is that more and more of these prizes go to people who espouse openly far-right political views, including publicly declared anti-Semitism. It’s enough to note that in 2016 Zsolt Bayer received the high decoration of the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

In 2018, Miklós Kásler, the minister of human resources, established a new prize named after Ferenc Herczeg (1863-1954), the most popular writer of the Horthy period. Who made up the panel that decided who should be the first recipient of the Ferenc Herczeg Prize? Three well-known anti-Semites. First, Mihály Takaró, a literary historian who claims that Ady’s Jewish friends at Nyugat, a legendary literary magazine, led the poet in a wrong political orientation, meaning a non-nationalistic, democratic, and critical direction. Second, György Dörner, a theater director with MIÉP and Jobbik ties who described himself as a national radical, who, despite loud and extended opposition, in 2010 was named to head Újszinház (New Theater) in Budapest. And third, Ernő Raffay, a historian known for his crude anti-Semitism.

Takaró received the Attila József Prize last year, and this year Dörner received the Kossuth Prize, the highest accolade that can be bestowed on anyone and Raffay the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. Of these two, Raffay is the far more viciously and openly anti-Semitic. Raffay frequently shares his views with the paying public. Like some other far-right “scholars,” he appears as a much-sought-after speaker at “conferences” organized by far-right groups, where for a few thousand forints the audience can listen to the favorite historical or literary theories of these characters.

In June 2018, Hungarian Free Press reported that “Raffay is an anti-Semite through and through” after the author of the article listened to an almost one-and-a-half-hour speech by Raffay on YouTube, titled “When and why did the Jews flood into Hungary? The wool is yanked off their plans!” The video has since disappeared from the internet.

Bence Rétvári, Miklós Kásler, and Ernő Raffay

Raffay’s recent so-called historical work has an ideologically targeted audience. His books are sold in bookstores specializing in works that appeal to the far right. Although in the 1980s he wrote a couple of worthwhile books, lately he has been absolutely fixated on the Hungarian and Romanian Freemasons who were, he alleges, responsible for Hungary’s collapse in 1918 and the Treaty of Trianon that followed. Since 2010 he has been prolific, publishing the following books on the Freemasons: Militant Freemasonry, Freemasons before Trianon, Freemasons and Politics: Subversive Activities of Oszkár Jászi and the Martinovics Lodge, In the Shackles of Freemasonry—Endre Ady and Freemasonry I, In the Pay of the Freemasons—Endre Ady and Freemasonry II. One should keep in mind that, to Raffay, “Freemasons” and “Jews” are interchangeable.

After 2015, Raffay justified the Hungarian government’s harsh measures against refugees in the following way. He compared the newcomers to the Jews who came to Hungary in larger numbers in the nineteenth century: “a group of migrants arrived, multiplied, and subsequently supplanted us from our positions in science, in the schools, in the Academy, at the university, in the banking world, in the estates, and in the professions. All this should be a lesson for the people.”

Every Wednesday Gergely Gulyás holds his press conference. Today Sándor Czinkóczi of 444 asked Gulyás whether anyone had checked into Raffay’s anti-Semitic statements over the years and “to what extent these views can be reconciled with the government’s alleged zero tolerance of anti-Semitism.” Gulyás’s answer was classic. “We don’t want to imitate movements, incidentally borrowed from America, which topple statues of Churchill because one could quote much rougher anti-Semitic texts from Churchill.” According to Gulyás, it is wrong to pick out a few sentences from someone’s entire oeuvre. As far as he is concerned, “Ernő Raffay is a respectable and honorable historian whose historical knowledge no one has questioned in the last three decades.”

By now, Raffay is considered to be not only a has-been historian but also a mad extremist. For instance, in 2018, in an interview he gave to Magyar Idők, he outlined the possibilities of a territorial revision in Hungary’s favor. He brought up the example of territorial revisions “between 1938 and 1941, when the borders were changed in our favor four times with the assistance of contemporary great powers,” meaning, I guess, Germany and Italy. According to Raffay, with “clever Hungarian diplomacy and a strong army” such a revision is possible once again. “We are not in a hopeless situation.” What kind of an honorable and respected historian are we talking about?

August 19, 2020

Unfounded myths from the early years of Hungarian democracy

Among the many alternative “research institutes” the Orbán government established is one with the long title of Research Institute and Archives of the Regime Change (Retörki). Its director-general is the first chairman of Magyar Demokrata Fórum (MDF), which immediately raises the question of the possible lack of impartiality of the research that is being conducted there. The institute so far has published about 50 volumes, most of which are oral histories by people who were active in the early years of MDF, whose founders describe themselves as members of the “democratic opposition of nation builders” (nemzetépítő demokratikus ellenzék) to distinguish themselves from the group that called itself simply the “democratic opposition,” whose members later formed the liberal SZDSZ.

Retörki also has a monthly periodical called “Archivum,” which covers not only events related to the 1987-1990 period but often politically timely topics as well. For example, the last issue concentrated on Trianon, to which Hungary’s minister of human resources, Miklós Kásler, M.D., contributed, trying to find “answers to Trianon” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

My first encounter with Retörki’s Archivum was its September 2017 commemorative volume, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the gathering of the close to 200 men and women on September 27, 1987 in the backyard of a minor poet in Lakitelek, a village about 30 km from Kecskemét. That’s where the “democratic opposition of nation builders” was formally established.

The first article that caught my eye was by Pál Szeredi, a historian specializing in the Hungarian intellectual movement we call “népi-nemzeti,” which was most interested in the conditions in the countryside, the Hungarian peasantry, and a unique Hungarian road to an ideal political system that would be suitable for an agrarian society. The title of Szeredi’s article was “Stereotypes on the autopsy table. About some of the legends of the antecedents of the meeting at Lakitelek,” which turned out to be contemporary accusations of MDF’s alleged anti-Semitism. Sándor Csoóri (1930-2016), a much-heralded poet and writer, was not at Lakitelek on that day because he happened to be in the United States, from where he allegedly phoned a day after the meeting, saying “Have you lost your minds? What have you done? Did you turn our grand idea into a nationalist and anti-Semitic recruiting center? That’s impossible.” Csoóri’s indignation was prompted by an article that allegedly appeared in The New York Times on September 28, 1987, which was “the initial piece of a press campaign which tried to characterize the first political gathering of the nation builders as an anti-Semitic and nationalistic assembly.” This insidious accusation came from, as Csoóri put it later, from the unnamed “most kinetic leader” of the rival democratic opposition.” Thus, the Lakitelek crowd claimed, Kamm only lent his, name to the article, which was actually written by liberal SZDSZ leaders to blacken the good names of the Lakitelek nation builders.

The only trouble with this story is that it is not true. As János Avar, former Washington correspondent of Magyar Nemzet and an expert on American history and politics, pointed out in 2007, on the twentieth anniversary of Lakitelek, no article on Hungary appeared in The New York Times on September 28. Interestingly enough, Pál Szeredi was familiar with Avar’s article but decided to ignore its information because “the authenticity of the telephone conversation can be established by the presence of a witness who stood by Csoóri’s side all through.” Szeredi’s logic boggles the mind. Nobody questions the authenticity of the telephone conversation; the question is whether such an article appeared in The New York Times on Sepember 28 or not.

Henry Kamm, correspondent of the paper, who arrived in Hungary only in late October 1987, did publish an article on October 25 titled “Budapest leaders look for support” in which he talks about the communist leadership which, worried about the unpopularity of its economic austerity program, was seeking to enlist the support of disaffected intellectuals. For the article he interviewed Imre Pozsgay, a member of the Central Committee, among his many roles, who was an ally of the Lakitelek leaders. Pozsgay, who was one of the speakers at the Lakitelek gathering, described it as “a good meeting of positive substance.” He is portrayed by the journalist of The New York Times as “the principal advocate of political liberalization in the leadership, and many liberals would like to see him succeed the 75-year-old János Kádár.” The article is full of praise of Pozsgay and his democratic ideas. There are only two sentences about Lakitelek: “The meeting addressed by Mr. Pozsgay was convened by writers and thinkers whose origins are rural and working-class and who go by the name of ‘populists.’ Their ambitions are considered to be more nationalistic than liberal.” Not a word about anti-Semitism.

Proudly announcing the beginning of a new era

A related item is István Stefka’s memorial series on the “media war,” published this past May in Pesti Srácok. The title of the piece is “’Soap-box to the Jew’—when MDF was beset by torrents of anti-Semitic slander.” In September 1990, during a plenary session of parliament, Péter Tölgyessy, the chairman and whip of SZDSZ, rose to speak about the government’s misguided agrarian policies when from the government side of the aisle one could hear someone yell “Soap-box for the Jew!” (Hordó a zsidónak!) According to Stefka, MTV recorded the session and it was ascertained that the heckler’s words were misheard. Whoever he was, he said only “soap-box for the orator” (hordó a szónoknak). It was Kurír, a paper considered to be critical of the government, which made up the whole story, Stefka claims.

But again, there seems to be something very wrong with this report. Tamás Szele, whose opinion pieces I respect, was a member of the editorial board of Kurír at the time. He has only praise for the paper, which became “the victim of a vile maneuver during the first Orbán government.” The story about the soapbox appeared in the paper’s editorial on September 24, written most likely by Zsolt Bayer — of a different era and with different political views. According to the editorial, whoever made this remark should step forward and resign. Bayer later wrote another article in which he re-quoted the damning words and expressed the paper’s strong suspicion that MTV’s evening news had manipulated the recording in order to hide the anti-Semitic message. Szele’s detailed story of one of the first anti-Semitic cases of the Antall period sounds convincing to me.

The mythmaking continues, and these repeated stories begin to have lives of their own. One thing is sure: no decent historical work can be expected from the staff of the Research Institute and Archives of the Regime Change since they seem to be concerned primarily with saving the reputation of the Lakitelek crowd. Unfortunately, this is a difficult task given the anti-Semitic reputation of such important leaders as Sándor Csoóri or István Csurka who revealed their anti-Semitic feelings in the following years quite openly. But, as studies prove, the repetition-induced truth effect is powerful. If you repeat falsehoods often enough, they come to be accepted as truths.

August 15, 2020

Hungarian government media on the upcoming U.S. election

Donald Trump has had a few rough days. Just when he was hoping that the conservative majority of the Supreme Court would support him and his decisions, he lost two cases close to his heart. On June 15, the Court ruled in a landmark case that LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination. Trump was unhappy but restrained and resigned. He wrote that “they’ve ruled, and we live with their decision. That’s what it’s all about. We live with the decision of the Supreme Court. Very powerful. A very powerful decision actually. But they have so ruled.”

Three days later the Court rejected his administration’s attempt to dismantle the program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. The New York Times called the decisions stunning. This time, he was clearly upset since he wrote that “these horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!” The Hungarian government media failed to report on either decision.

The latest polls don’t look very good for the president either. According to FiveThirtyEight, the most reliable site for cumulative results of hundreds of polls, with the exception of Texas and Georgia, where Trump is leading by less than one percentage point, in all other so-called swing states Biden is ahead by a statistically significant margin. These data make not the slightest difference, however, as far as Orbán propaganda is concerned. The infamous V4NA telegraphic agency, for instance, focuses on national polls favorable to Trump: polls conducted by Zogby Analytic, which got only a C+ from FiveThirtyEight, and Remington Research Group, which received a C-. Moreover, Hungarian readers, who are by and large ignorant of the U.S. electoral system, don’t realize that these national polls mean nothing, even if they were accurate, since the final outcome depends on states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina.

Then there is John Bolton’s book. It will most likely be published next week, despite the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to stop its publication for national security reasons, but short excerpts and the most damning bullet points already appeared yesterday in major newspapers. The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir portrays Trump as “an erratic and ignorant leader” whose most important concern is his reelection, for which he is ready to sacrifice the interests of his country. The appearance of Bolton’s book elicited an editorial by the staff of Magyar Nemzet titled “Trump: Et tu, Bolton?” The editorial spends little time on the substance of the book but instead goes after Bolton himself. Most of us know that John Bolton is a hawk and not a pleasant companion, but the Magyar Nemzet editorial highlights Trump’s negative opinion of him in the narrative. For example, “Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly tedious’ book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!” For good measure, the editorial makes it clear that the Democrats don’t like Bolton either.

The Orbán administration stands firmly behind Trump, and therefore an anti-Biden campaign is emerging. László Szőcs, formerly the Washington correspondent of Népszabadság, has for a number of years been providing opinion pieces on foreign affairs for Magyar Nemzet. On June 16, he published an article titled “Joe Biden wouldn’t bring peace,” which is based on a Breitbart analysis of Trump’s chances. Breitbart apparently claims that, following George Floyd’s death, the president helped to alleviate the unrest by urging the deployment of the National Guard, convincing hesitant governors and mayors. On the other hand, if Biden is elected, “the present discord and unrest” will continue.

The same László Szőcs published an article earlier maintaining that “Biden is playing the anti-Semitic card in the campaign” as a result of Biden’s comment that “criticism of Israel’s policy is not anti-Semitism, but too often that criticism from the left morphs into anti-Semitism.” At the same time, Biden expressed his disappointment that Benjamin Netanyahu had moved “so, so far to the right” and called for Israel “to stop the threat of annexation of West Bank territories.” The excellent relations between Netanyahu and Orbán are grounds for praise of the present U.S. administration, which gave full support to the far-right Netanyahu regime, and condemnation of Biden, who would continue Barack Obama’s less than enthusiastic support of Netanyahu’s Israel.

And what is the Hungarian right’s reaction to the race riots and anti-racist demonstrations? Racism is part and parcel of Hungarian reality, and since Orbán and his friends are dead set against “political correctness,” there is no attempt to hide racist impulses. Zsolt Bayer, for instance, in addition to his opinion pieces in Magyar Nemzet, also has a blog in which he writes outright racist posts. Although they are revolting, I still recommend reading them in order to understand the depth of this man’s racism. But he is not alone. Péter Hoppál, former undersecretary of cultural matters in the third Orbán government, republished the same racist meme about “Martin Looter King” as Bayer did in his blog.

A very mixed crowd at a demonstration against police brutality

The job of covering the race riots and demonstrations was given to Levente Sitkei, another regular Magyar Nemzet columnist, most likely because he visited the “The Wild West” in 1994. Actually, he visited Arizona, where he found ingrained racist conditions. Americans of different ethnic backgrounds were standing in groups, refusing to speak to one another, while “white guys were driving around with flags decorated with swastikas.” He as a European had a blank check to move from group to group, but otherwise it was an entirely segregated society. Since then, he wrote, many years have gone by, but “there are still vandals and brutal policemen who are roaming the streets.” Moreover, he contends, “the western United States is still a colonial society, with its corresponding morals and laws. It is not a ghetto, but it is not as civilized as the Europe we know well.” Admittedly, Sitkei’s article is more polite than Bayer’s posts, for example the one about the dreadful “Future” awaiting us, but it paints a false picture of present attitudes toward African-Americans and Latinos. As the latest polls attest, the majority of Americans now support the Black Lives Matter movement. Sitkei’s picture of the situation here is thoroughly misleading and false.

June 18, 2020