Ungern: "Vi måste förbereda oss för krig mot judarna"

Orbán is invoking the myth of the Hungarian nation as eternal victim.

Orbán is invoking the myth of the Hungarian nation as eternal victim.

As far as I could ascertain, the first article about Bayer's article appeared in Tagesanzeiger, a Swiss paper with this title: "Viktor Orbans Freund diffamiert die Juden." It's bad enough that such an article appears at all in a democratic country, but that the author is one of the founders of Fidesz and a good friend of Orbán is really too much.

A few days later Die Welt, a conservative German paper, widened the scope. It wrote about the populist-nationalist campaign in Hungary with "more and more anti-Semitic undertones." The article mentioned the attack on the pianist András Schiff, writer György Konrád, conductor Ádám Fischer, philosopher Ágnes Heller, and actor Róbert Alföldi.

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Therefore it is not at all surprising that Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, announced yesterday that "he will warn European leaders that 'extremist forces' are once again emerging from Europe." He spoke about the problem today on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Earlier in the day Kantor met Viktor Orbán. Kantor is obviously a diplomat. Here is a quotation from him: "We know how devoted Hungary and Prime Minister Orban are to democracy and we will call on him to quell any anti-Semitism in his nation and to press for a reinforcement of existing legislation to fight anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia at the European level."

Three Austrian writers–the Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Turrini and Michael Scharang–rose to defend András Schiff, who announced earlier that he had received so many threatening letters from his homeland that he feared for his life. In any case, he has no intention of going to Hungary to give a concert and or visit his friends for a while.

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Then there is a manifesto in defense of the Hungarian philosophers by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas and Julian Nida-Rümelin, president of the German Philosophical Society. They call the witch hunt of the Hungarian philosophers "the scandal of scandals." Again, this particular attack by Magyar Nemzet and Gyula Budai, who is supposed to be in charge of "political retribution" leveled against those who are not considered to be friends of Fidesz, has anti-Semitic overtones. Although over thirty grants were made during the period in question (between 2004 and 2007) only six people were singled out, all of whom happened to be Jews or were suspected of being Jewish.

Adding to Orbán's woes, a Swedish Christian Democratic member of the Council of Europe requested an urgent debate on "the functioning of democracy in Hungary." The Council of Europe is different from the European Union. It represents all forty-seven states of Europe. It doesn't deal with economic matters but concentrates on questions of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Member states choose delegates to the Council of Europe for four years; the Council convenes four times a year for a week each time. We will see what will happen on that front.