Inside Hungary's anti-Semitic right-wing

[pampango]

Source: Global Post

Hungary’s cosmopolitan capital boasts an array of academies like Karoli Gaspar, stocked with international faculties and polyglot student bodies from the globalized, internet-savvy generation that is expected to lead EU-member Hungary deep into the 21st century. This expectation was a certainty until European and national elections over the past year catapulted a neofascist party into Hungary's limelight. When Biro sits down with these students to talk with them about politics, the same issues inevitably crop up: Hungary’s political elite did nothing over the last 20 years, they tell him. "They say that these leaderships represented the interests of the western Europeans, of the EU, and not Hungarian interests," Biro said. "These kids, they are disillusioned with absolutely everything, including capitalism. That’s why they want radical change, but they're not going to the left."



"Jobbik is very modern party," said the Budapest-based, English writer Adam LeBor, whose most recent novel, "The Budapest Protocol," deals with the far right in Hungary. "It has a really professional PR strategy and highly sophisticated branding. Yet at the same time it is anti-modernist in that it rejects globalization and internationalism."

The fact that so many educated, young, urban Hungarians cast their votes for the far right was one of the election’s shockers. Yet surveys show that Hungary's student bodies are fertile soil for right-wing ideas. According to the university professor and constitutional lawyer Andras Pap, it is these racist and generally xenophobic ideas that the right wing and the far right play upon to win votes.

Importantly, Jobbik didn’t come to power — nor, most likely, will it ever. (Today it’s the second largest opposition party in the Hungarian parliament.) While Fidesz’s nationally minded populists regularly hurled anti-EU taunts at the ruling socialists when out of office, once victorious they paid homage to Brussels as anticipated, particularly in light of the fact that Hungary will take over the rotating EU Council presidency in 2011. Hungary won’t be exiting the EU anytime soon.

Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/100528/hungary-jobbik-far-right-party?page=0,0

[onehandle]

1. They sound kind of Libertarian to me. nt

[David__77]

4. No, they are actually fascists or "national conservatives."

They are not libertarian. They are racist and reactionary to the hilt, just as they have been for two decades and more now.

[Ian David]

2. Wow, they sound just like some of the DUers commenting on the flotilla. n/t

[azurnoir]

3. ah yeah criticizing Israel for killing civilians is antisemitism

some DUers should find a new song

[sasquuatch55]

5. +1,000,000,000

nt