“The world is a dangerous place to live in; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
(Albert Einstein – refugee from Nazi Germany)

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Understanding nationalist ideology in Hungary


"Victory in April’s elections is assured for the populist opposition party (Fidesz) and right-wing extremists (Jobbik).
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The shift to the right in Hungarian politics is alarming. Despite a ban imposed in 2009, the paramilitary Hungarian Guard of the right-wing Jobbik party presses on through the country, stirring up hatred both against jews and the crimes of the Roma community in the name of the Great Nation of Hungary.
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Jobbik openly says what everyone is thinking, and what the majority of the press have been stirring up for years. Fidesz politicians stir these things up too, but they don’t act upon it. And now there is a new, revolutionary generation saying, We want to finally put into practice what our fathers motivated us to do. The journalist Attila Bujak once propounded the theory that Jobbik was invented by Fidesz. Following the election defeat in 2002, Bujak wrote that the former minister of the chancellory, István Stumpf, contended that Fidesz need a small party that is prepared to say to people that which the party can’t say out loud — after all, he claimed, Fidesz wants to remain a ‘serious party’. After the election defeat, the Fidesz opposition leader and election favourite Viktor Orbán created so-called ‘citizens’ circles’, to which the Jobbik chairman Gábor Vona was also invited. Orbán is, so to speak, Vona’s foster father. At that time, Vona was still a student and belonged to the university’s christian student union. Also, up until that point, no one yet considered Jobbik a far-right party. In the last local elections, it was very common for candidates to form coalitions with Jobbik. Only now, in the run-up to the election, are people distancing themselves."
(1)
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Source:
(1) Understanding nationalist ideology in Hungary: ‘enormous potential for violence’, 23/03/10, http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/32974/magdalena-marsovszky-national-ideology-hungary.html

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