The style of conservative media in Hungary

January 11th 2010, 8:31 pm,
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer

The next election for the National Assembly or Országgyülés will be held in April 2010. Opinion polls predict the victory of the rightwing Fidesz block led by Viktor Orbán. The journalist György Vámos writes for “Magyar Hirlap”, a daily owned by the conservative multimillionaire Gábor Széles, who owns also Echo TV. The daily is close to Fidesz and has published some anti-Semitic articles in the past.

Vámos on January 8th in Magyar Hirlap: “The day of judgement is nigh” an article exemplary of the aggressive style in Hungarian conservative media.

”In less than one hundred days we will vote. For life or death? That’s the question. Because we have to start with a fundamental overhaul of the system”.

According to Vámos no real change of system took place during the two periods when conservative parties ruled the country (1990-94 and 1998-2002). During both periods we could have called to account the oligarchs with communist past who are sitting on our necks” and the AVO, the political police.

A brazen remark as there are a lot of former communists and police informers active in Fidesz.

„But let’s not forget the media which lead an antinational campaign against all Hungarians since time immemorial” – and he demands to „punish” the leftwing „Népszava” and the Sunday paper „Vasárnapi Hirek”.

Vámos wants to force „those denationalised figures” to sing a song about „our father Árpád” (the pagan leader of the early Hungarians) while other public persons (like the catholic Tibor Bakács) whom he accuses of having a derogatory attitude towards Christianity are to perform the music.

Then Vámos goes on to accuse those Hungarian politicians responsible for taking credits. „Those who made the debts should pay them back!”

„My fellow countrymen, imagine what would happen if we would dangle the robbers of the country in front of the extravagant palaces of Andrássy Street from trees in baskets to shame them like in the middle ages.”

„But Andrássy Street has two sides. On the other side we should hang the many social-liberal Media workers, Avar, Dési, Vágo, Bolgár, Bánó, Péter Németh, Andrassew, [Peter] Esterházy, Bitó, Mátyás Vincze and first and foremost the blogwriter Zsolt Gréczy, because they are making fun of the Hungarian nation.”

Vámos is not satisfied with Hungarians only. „Of course we must reserve a place for Paul Lendvai as one of the loudest choirboys who is responsible for us turning into a deplorable small state, and of course there is a place for [sociologist] Mária Vásárhelyi one of the foremost intellectual traitors.”

He then names the media he wants to cut off from subventions and TV Stations he wants to have banned.

György Vámos is an opportunist who once wrote for the left and now writes unscrupulously for the right.

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Reference:
(1) The original artical: http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/01/11/the-style-of-conservative-media-in-hungary/
(2) More detailes with more references in the previous post entitled "Szélsőjobbos média: Magyar Hírlap" in Hungarian: http://antifa-hungary.blogspot.com/2010/01/szelsojobbos-media-magyar-hirlap.html