24.hu had the right idea. They spliced together a few “highlights” of Viktor Orbán’s annual performance, which I have dubbed his “state of the union” address. It is only five minutes long, but this short video encapsulates everything Viktor Orbán said that was worth listening to. I will return to a couple of these points later.
But before I embark on that task, I should report that Gergely Kálló (Jobbik), supported by DK, LMP, MSZP, Momentum, and Párbeszéd, easily won the interim parliamentary election in District #4 of Fejér County, in and around Dunaújváros. Fidesz’s chances were so slim in the district that the party eventually gave up the idea of having a candidate of its own and settled for an “independent” candidate, Tibor Molnár, the mayor of Iváncsa, a nearby village. The snap election took place today, and Kálló, as predicted, easily won against Molnár 56.3% to 37.7%. It was, as ATV put it, a “brutal opposition victory in Dunaújváros.” I always enjoy the use of the word “brutális” as the equivalent of “large” or “significant,” a relatively new addition to the language. This victory, although admittedly very local, may indicate that those who worry about the potentially devastating ramifications of having a common list with such unlikely partners as Jobbik and DK in the 2022 national election are wrong.
We also shouldn’t forget about the neo-Nazi groups led by László Toroczkai, who, as promised, appeared today in Miskolc, from where about 200 skinheads moved on to Sály. According to the news reports, their demonstration wasn’t exactly a roaring success. First of all, a counter-demonstration in Miskolc attracted more participants than the demonstration organized by Mi Hazánk Mozgalom. And second, the large number of policemen dispatched to Sály restricted the movement of the demonstrators after they arrived in the village. They were unable to go farther than the murdered woman’s house, which was only about 500 meters from the edge of the village.
Now, let’s get back to Orbán’s speech, delivered behind a lectern with the not very original slogan “For Us Hungary Comes First.” According to all the independent news sites, the most memorable sentence Viktor Orbán uttered was: “There is no such thing as a liberal. A liberal is a commie with a college education.” The audience was delighted, but journalists and critical listeners were almost certain that the line did not originate with Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian prime minister is not in the habit of naming his sources. And indeed, a few minutes after Orbán had finished his speech, Gábor Balogh of Alfahír, Jobbik’s news site, traced the quotation to the 2011 American film The Rum Diary, based on an early novel with the same title by Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005), the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. He came to prominence with his book about the lives and experiences of the members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.
Source: MTI
In the film, this sentence is uttered by Art Zimburger, a criminal who claims to be a true patriot, a good Christian, and a faithful conservative. How appropriate. I’ll bet Orbán knew nothing about the character of the speaker. The quotation, by the way, most likely found its way into Orbán’s speech not directly from the movie but from a blog post by András Lánczi, the rector of Corvinus University and a political philosopher. Although I am not acquainted with his academic output, his short blog post gives us an inkling about the depth of Lánczi’s thinking.
On May 14, 2018, his topic was the difference between the old and the new liberals. In his opinion, the old ones didn’t preach the omnipotence of equality, whereas the current liberals look for equality everywhere: the economy, society, culture, genders, lifestyle—everywhere that there are differences among people. “And if reality refutes it, then as a final refuge, they recommend that you ‘always be yourself’, that is, no matter who or what you have achieved, you are, in one sense, just like everyone: you are an individual. It is no coincidence that you are not Einstein, although you could be Einstein, because he was just an individual.” In his opinion, that was also the “essence of the communist concept.” That’s why the utterance in the film, The Rum Diary, about liberals being educated commies, is not far-fetched. Modern liberals are communists, Lánczi concluded.
Time for a deep breath. A very deep breath.
Is it any surprise that analysts for a number of years have been pointing out the poverty of serious intellectual support for the ideology of the Orbán government? Some of them became so disillusioned that in the last few years they openly criticized the Orbán regime, and in their criticism they were practically indistinguishable from those “liberal communists” who are the enemies of the nation. The new recruits and the older loyalists who decided to follow Orbán to his final destination, a far-right, fascistoid regime, are fifth rates.
Now that I have vented, let me move on to the other “highlight” of Orbán’s speech: his attack on George Soros. One could say that there is nothing new in this because the prime minister never misses an opportunity to accuse Soros of all sorts of crimes, mostly because of his support for the regulated immigration of refugees from the Middle East and Africa to Europe. But this time he was much more specific. He accused Soros of trying plunder Hungary at least three times in the last 30 years. First, when Soros suggested to Prime Minister József Antall that he could gather a number of investors who would buy up the enormous debt the Kádár regime had left behind. In turn, they would receive, according to Antall and others in the government, a substantial portion of the nation’s remaining wealth. The second time Soros allegedly wanted to rob Hungary was during the Horn administration, when he offered to buy OTP, Hungary’s largest bank. The third time his duplicity was demonstrated was when he wanted to bring one million immigrants a year to Europe and for that purpose wanted the EU countries to become indebted.
We know quite a bit about the immigration issue, but we know much less about Soros’s offer to buy the national debt or OTP. I found a few paragraphs on the subject of Soros’s interest in the purchase of the national debt after 1990, but they all came from members of the Antall government. Soros, as far as I know, never said anything about it publicly. Admittedly, I know very little about the details, but the national debt was a terrible burden on a country whose economy collapsed practically overnight. The incredibly high unemployment rate and the precipitous drop in living standards soured people’s enthusiasm for democracy. Therefore, perhaps such a deal wouldn’t have favored Soros and his fellow investors exclusively but would have made the Antall government’s position less desperate. In any case, the offer was not accepted.
A few more tidbits will probably present themselves when the full text of the speech is available, most likely tomorrow. If that is the case, I will spend another day on the subject.
