Hungarian Jobbik Party Versus the World Jewish Congress

By Richard Edmondson

Something is happening in Hungary and it has the mainstream media and powerful figures in world Jewry in a tizzy. As I reported previously, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) decided to hold its plenary convention this year in Budapest, Hungary, and a Hungarian nationalist political party, the Jobbik Party, called for a protest by way of response.

Well the protest took place Saturday, on the eve of the convention…while the convention itself opened on Sunday.

I’ll get to the protest and the Zionist media’s response to it in a moment, but first off, let me just say that Jobbik (the Movement for a Better Hungary) is the third largest political party in Hungary. In the most recent national elections it took 16.7 percent of the vote, and as a result it now holds 47 seats in the Hungarian Parliament. So this is not a tiny, insignificant organization we’re talking about. And given the fact that in its Party Manifesto, Jobbik openly calls for an independent Palestinian state and a widening of diplomatic relations with Arab nations, not to mention an alliance with Russia as well, you can kind of understand why some western Jews might be a little concerned. I mean, this could get a little out of hand—ya know?—especially if it spreads to other countries.

But it isn’t only Jobbik. The top political party in Hungary is Fidesz, and its leader, Viktor Orban, currently holds the office of prime minister. Since Orban came to power in 2010, Hungary has halted its payments to the Claims Conference, the international Jewish organization that presides over holocaust reparations monies paid out by various countries, and last year the nation even demanded the return of some $8 million it said had been improperly accounted for. The news of Hungary’s recalcitrance was even reported on the WJC’s website, in an article that also referenced what it referred to as “rising anti-Semitism in Hungary.”

The dispute has erupted at a time when Jewish organizations say bias against Hungarian Jews is at alarming heights, surging dramatically in recent years.

Nearly two-thirds of Hungarians surveyed this year said Jews “still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust,” the Anti-Defamation League found, the highest rate among European countries it polled. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel handed back a Hungarian award this summer, saying Hungary was whitewashing its past crimes.

Jewish organizations also complained that Hungary had dragged its feet in finding and arresting an alleged Nazi-era torturer, detaining him only after a British tabloid had confronted him at his Budapest apartment days earlier. The news emerged last month while President Janos Adler was in Israel, facing uncomfortable questions about the apparent rise in Hungarian animus toward Jews.

All of which perhaps, taken together, led the WJC, who are of course one of the principle players in what is often referred to as the “Holocaust industry,” to decide it might be a great idea to hold its convention in Budapest this year. And that convention opened Sunday and is expected to run through tomorrow.

As I said above, since Orban came to power, Hungary has had rocky relations with the Claims Conference, and some observers have even gone so far as to call the prime minister the Hugo Chavez of Central Europe. Yet with regard to Jewish power and Europe’s central bankers, Orban seems mostly to be playing a game of go-along-to-get-along. While Jobbik, as I said, called for a demonstration against the WJC, Orban, using his executive powers, did everything possible to try and clamp a lid on the protest. The rally was allowed to proceed only as a result of a last-minute court ruling.

Moreover, Orban is actually scheduled to be one of the speakers at the conference, no less—and on Friday his office issued a press release in which he stated “there is no place in Hungary for events of an obviously anti-Semitic nature.” The comment was a reference to the court decision allowing the Jobbik protest to go ahead, a ruling which the prime minister found “unacceptable.”

So with all that said, let’s look at the protest itself, or more precisely how the media covered it.

Here’s an excerpt from the BBC’s report, which was accompanied by the above photo:

Hungary's far-right Jobbik party has staged a rally in central Budapest in protest at the capital's hosting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on Sunday.

Several hundred supporters took part, despite attempts by the government to prevent it going ahead.

Jobbik said the rally was a protest against what it said was a Jewish attempt to buy up Hungary.

The party, which says it aims to protect Hungarian values and interests, is the third largest in parliament.

It regularly issues anti-Semitic statements.

The event in Budapest on Saturday was billed as a tribute to what organisers called the victims of Bolshevism and Zionism.

Note that the party is immediately branded as “far-right” and “anti-Semitic” and that the article also takes a somewhat scoffing view of the notion that there could be any such thing as victims of “Bolshevism and Zionism.” One of the speakers at the rally was Jobbik Party leader Gabor Vona, and the BBC does actually give us a quote from him—“The Israeli conquerors, these investors, should look for another country in the world for themselves because Hungary is not for sale”—but of course the report supplies absolutely no context or word of explanation as to why Vona might make such a statement. In the BBC’s view, all you really need to know is that Vona is an “anti-Semite.” That should be sufficient.

Would it perhaps have been pertinent to BBC readers to know that Israeli President Shimon Peres commented back in 2007 that Israelis are “buying up Manhattan, Hungary, Romania and Poland”, or that Israeli companies have moved into the Budapest real estate market in a rather dramatic fashion, buying up land, office buildings, hotels, and residential properties? In fact, if you go to Jobbik’s English website, you can see 20 such Israeli companies listed by name, companies which, according to the party, “dominate the Budapest property market, and own the vast majority of our capital’s shopping centres, office blocks, and prestige hotels; in addition to most of the recently constructed residential blocks in the city.” The site also informs us that “extensive levels of fraud, bribery, underselling and corruption has taken place in order to make all this possible.”

With all of this information, does not Vona’s comment—“The Israeli conquerors, these investors, should look for another country in the world for themselves because Hungary is not for sale”— make a little more sense?

The BBC report also gives us a quote from another speaker at the event, Marton Gyongyosi, who reportedly said Hungary has “become subjugated to Zionism, it has become a target of colonisation while we, the indigenous people, can play only the role of extras." The article goes on to add:

Last year, Mr Gyongyosi had sparked outrage by saying all government officials of Jewish origin should be officially listed, as they might be a "national security risk".

Gyongyosi’s comment, made in November of last year, created quite an uproar. The mainstream media’s coverage of it was about what you would expect (see here, and here, for example), and Gyongyosi went on to clarify that he had only been referring to Hungarian-Israeli dual nationals, and that he did not mean to say all Jews. Significantly missing from the coverage, however, was any consideration of the possibility that Gyongyosi may have had a point, and that government positions filled by Jews with possible loyalties to the state of Israel, and particularly those holding dual citizenship or carrying Israeli-issued passports, might pose a legitimate security concern. It was as if the media had a blind spot in that regard.

Again from our BBC report:

Some of those taking part in the rally were wearing the black uniform of Jobbik's banned paramilitary wing, the Hungary Guard, which has been accused of vigilante action against Roma (Gypsy) communities.

This is another common thread running through just about all the mainstream media coverage of Jobbik: they are almost invariably painted as racist haters of Hungary’s Roma population. Also keep in mind the mention of Jobbik’s “paramilitary wing.” I’ll have more on them below.

The BBC also supplies us, quite naturally, with a quote from a spokesperson for the WJC. He warns ominously that it is a "worrying sign that these people express their anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli ideology in such a public way.” Presumably free speech should not be allowed if it contains criticisms of Jewish power or Israel.

It’s certainly worth noting that pro-Israel advocates have recently taken top jobs at the BBC, and that that, to some extent, might explain the nature of the BBC article on Jobbik, but when we look at other media reports on the same protest, we don’t find too many significant differences.

The Wall Street Journal labels the protest “anti-Semitic” in its lead paragraph, while describing Jobbik as “extreme” in the second paragraph down—this in a story which also mentions a protest banner reading, “Out with you peddlers. This is our homeland.”

We get a couple of quotes from Vona as well, but again no background information to clarify or explain his comments, while the WJC spokesperson (the same one quoted by the BBC) is also given space in the article—although the quote we get from him seems a tad bit contradictory. On the one hand he opines that it is a “very upsetting experience to see so many people there and to hear the speeches,” but then goes on to say that “these people are fanatics and do not represent mainstream Hungary.” In other words, large numbers of people, but it’s impossible that any of them could represent the “mainstream.” Just large numbers.

The WSJ story also mentions a physical attack at a football game—presumably in Hungary, though the story doesn’t specify—upon the head of a Jewish organization, the Raoul Wallenberg Association, and reports also that fans in the crowd were shouting “Sieg heil” and “Mussolini.”

The New York Times offers no comments from Vona, but does supply the quote from Gyongyosi about Hungarians being reduced to playing “the role of extras,” taking care also to mention that “more than half a million Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.”

But perhaps the grand prize for demonizing Jobbik would go to The Telegraph, in a story headlined, “Inside the far-Right stronghold where Hungarian Jews fear for the future.” And just below the headline, a subhead reading, somewhat intriguingly:

As the World Jewish Congress opens in Budapest amid a rise in anti-Semitism in Hungary, Colin Freeman visits the town of Tiszavasvári, twinned with Iran and the stronghold of the far-Right Jobbik party.

The story is really more about the reporter’s visit to Tiszavasvári, located in eastern Hungary, than the protest in Budapest, but is accompanied with the same deprecatory depiction of Jobbik, both in terms of the writer’s comments as well as photos accompanying the story—including one of a man, identified as a “Jobbik supporter,” who has a shaved head and a swastika tattooed on his neck. Another photo shows members of the Jobbik security force, who though unarmed, nonetheless wear uniforms, and who the mainstream media seem unable to resist comparing to Hitler’s brownshirts. Again, the Jobbik article below, entitled “Frequently Refuted Lies,” contains more about them.

The Telegraph also relates the interesting news that Tiszavasvári has formed a sister city relationship with the Iranian town of Ardabil…and it is in discussing this relationship that the writer’s prejudices become most apparent:

On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why a drab rustbelt town in Hungary's former mining area should seek links to a city in a hardline Islamic Republic 2,000 miles away. But this is no ordinary cultural exchange programme, and friendship has very little to do with it. Instead, the real purpose of Jobbik's links to Iran is to show their mutual loathing of the Jewish state of Israel, which the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, notoriously declared should be "wiped from the pages of history".

We then are treated to a quote from Gyongyosi, whose observation on the sister city partnership is on the whole quite interesting:

“The Persian people and their leaders are considered pariahs in the eyes of the West, which serves Israeli interests,” he said. “This is why we have solidarity with the peaceful nation of Iran and turn to her with an open heart.”

But of course, for Telegraph writer Colin Freeman, that pretty much cinches it, and in his next comment he seems to be letting us know that he views Jobbik as little more than a bunch of anti-Semitic kooks:

In many other countries in Europe, such a scheme might be dismissed as just petty town hall posturing, a Far right version of the "Loony Left" gesture politics practised in British town halls in the 1980s. But it is particularly sensitive in Hungarian towns like Tiszavasvári, where anti-semitism has seen Jews wiped from the pages of history once before.

So that pretty much sums up the Western media’s view of Jobbik—and of course nowhere in any of this coverage do you find any acknowledgement that certain aspects of Jewish behavior might be the cause of this rising “anti-Semitism” that everyone is so concerned about. And by that I’m speaking of Israel’s violations of international law—its ongoing 65-year occupation of the Palestinians, its blockade of Gaza, and attacks upon neighboring countries—as well as the power of Jewish lobbies like AIPAC to corrupt democratically-elected governments and to subvert the national interest of seemingly one country after another to that of Israel. I mean is it possible—ya think?—that this might be causing some of the anger toward Jews we are seeing expressed these days? The mainstream media don’t seem to think so.

Will historians one day look back and identify Hungary as the starting point, as the catalyst, of a massive cultural tsunami that resulted in the overthrow of global Jewish power? Will they one day view Jobbik as a political party that triggered radical change—change that began in Hungary, but that ended up sweeping the entire world? I don’t know. The chances of that may be slim. But at the same time, I can’t help viewing events in Hungary now as being extremely interesting and worth following.

One other thing about Jobbik that is crucial to keep in mind and which I have yet to mention but will do so here, is that they are openly and overtly Christian—that is to say, they identify themselves as a Christian political party. And this too, I can’t help feeling, may end up becoming a crucial factor in events as they play out in the futue; it also probably accounts for a lot of the Jewish animosity towards Jobbik we are seeing in the media. Moreover, it serves to show as well, I think, what Christians in America might conceivably accomplish were they to likewise form a political party to challenge AIPAC’s control of our government. Or to put it another way, Jobbik is an example of what Christians can accomplish once they wake up from their slumber, recognize the danger of the pro-Israel lobby, and organize themselves to do something about it.

One other thing before we hear from Jobbik themselves. As I said, the WJC conference got underway Sunday. Speaking at the opening dinner was WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. During his speech, Lauder served up some friendly comments directed at Orban, who evidently was present, but also used the occasion to launch an outright attack upon Jobbik—which he singled out by name:

Mr. Prime Minister, we are especially concerned about one particular party.

I am talking about Jobbik, a party that won almost 17 percent of the vote in the 2010 elections.  Through its anti-Semitism, its hostility to the Roma, and its paranoid rantings at the outside world, Jobbik is dragging the good name of Hungary through the mud.

That same party held a demonstration just yesterday against our gathering here in Budapest. You have made many pronouncements. And your words are very important.

Hungarian Jews need you to take a firm and decisive lead. They need you to take on these dark forces. They need you to be pro-active.They need your leadership in this fight.

The speech also includes the following somewhat amusing though rather tired bromide:

We see that a growing number of people actually believe the old canard that Jews control world finance, or the media, or everything.

Jews don’t really control the media, of course, and the fact that the media are uniformly pro-Israel and make a habit of demonizing all of Israel’s enemies, including Iran, including Jobbik, and just about anyone else that Israel and Zionist Jews take a disliking to—that would just be a coincidence, right?

If there is indeed a “canard” at play here, might it not in reality be the one about Gentiles making up “canards” about Jews? One can only wonder.

The following article is by and about Jobbik and can be accessed here on the party’s website. Basically, it’s an effort to refute misrepresentations by the media, but it contains a lot of interesting information on things like the party’s uniformed security services, known as the Hungarian Guard, as well as relations between Magyar Hungarians and Roma. Terms like “gypsy crime” may seem racist, at least on the face of it, but I encourage you to read the entire article before passing judgment. You might also want to check out the PDF document here. The article below makes mention of a Party Manifesto, but unfortunately the links it supplies to the English translation do not seem to work. Yet after doing a search I was able to find this 24-page PDF document, entitled “A Guide to Jobbik’s Parliamentary Electoral Manifesto for National Self-Determination and Social Justice,” which seems basically to give a very detailed summary of the manifesto. Some of it you will find surprising, such as this:

Animal welfare: We will establish an independent animal welfare directorate within the Ministry for the Environment, and will introduce a “produced according to animal welfare sympathetic methods” form of food certification; we will also promote traditional [as opposed to intensive] forms of livestock rearing. We would approve of the finding of alternative substitutes to animal experimentation. Also, we would make the creation of sufficient numbers of animal refuges a duty of government.

Or this:

Employment policy: People are not units of profit-creation, or objects; they are individuals who possess intrinsic dignity; in such individuals’ lives, in their vocations, work plays a vital role. This is why we must strive to ensure that a person’s occupation doesn’t merely serve the function of providing the foundations for financial survival; in addition it should ideally be a source of dignity, gratification and feelings of self-satisfaction. During the course of the dissolution and privatization of the domestic manufacturing and processing industries one million places of work were terminated; while at the same time a large portion of union assets were wiped out. Our objective is increasing employment levels as much as possible, and as a result we deem it necessary that: European Union employment directives come under critical scrutiny, the influence and independence of unions be increased, illicit employment arrangements be abolished, and employee’s legal protection be reinforced.

A “far-right” political party that wants to increase the power of unions? It might strike you as an anomaly, but as I commented to a friend recently, we are living in strange times, and the juggernaut of global Jewish power has brought us to a point at which traditional views of “right” and “left” no longer seem to apply.

Again, the following article is available here. And if, after reading it, you are curious to find out more about Jobbik, you can go here and download the Manifesto guide.

“Frequently Refuted Lies”

Since when are Hungarian nationalists, morons who have German words tattooed on their heads?

On the day of the 2010 Hungarian parliamentary elections, if you made a Google News search using the term "Jobbik" you found approximately 200 articles that mentioned the Movement for a Better Hungary, internationally. It took some time to read them all, but when you did, you discovered that they each had a common feature; and it might not be the one you think.

Not a single article, without exception, quoted even a solitary sentence of the Jobbik manifesto. Either the English language version which the press had two months to scrutinize, available here, or the Hungarian original published three months prior to the polls. Not a sentence, not a phrase, not a word. Not one.

How on earth did the journalists who wrote such material intend telling their readership the reasons why twice as many Hungarians voted for Jobbik in 2010, than they did, less than a year before that? (855,436 votes in 2010 versus the 427,773 we took at the European elections in June 2009) The truth is, that they had no intention of doing anything of the kind.

The best illustration of why the international press behaves how it does with respect to Jobbik, is in an article from that day in the Scotsman newspaper. It began, “The scenario is classic. Hungary's economy is in crisis, its large Roma minority is an easy scapegoat, and a far-right party blaming ‘Gypsy crooks’ and ‘welfare spongers’ is set to be the big winner.” Of note is not the plain rubbish written in the second sentence, but rather, what was written in the first.

What is this “classic scenario”? Quite simple really. Central Europeans + Economic Downturn = (or rather, must and can only equal) Hateful Extremists and persecution of minorities.

People don't behave like this anywhere else mind you, only around here. Take a few pennies out of a Hungarian's pocket, and he turns almost immediately into a slavering ultra-nationalist who on the way back from clubbing a local Gypsy, will pause only to hurl yet another brick through the windows of his nearest synagogue.

This scenario is too tempting to avoid, and too easy to question, writing anything else that might actually address the problems and concerns of Hungary and the facts about Jobbik, is of course, much too much like hard work.

It can’t possibly be that Jobbik is the only party dedicated to tackling the endemic corruption that costs Hungarians 3 billion Forints every single day. No! We must be extremists.

It can’t be, at all, that Jobbik is popular because it was the only Hungarian party to raise such taboo subjects as renegotiating the national debt, extending our arable-land sale moratorium, or questioning the role that unrestricted cowboy-capitalism has played here. No! We must be anti-Semitic.

Jobbik’s success in rural Hungary can’t have anything to do with how we suggested both tackling the crime that exists there, through a Gendarmerie, and tackling the causes of that crime through educational and social-security reforms. Not to mention how we promote the restructuring of the agricultural sector to be the rural economy's backbone.  No! We must be anti-Roma racists.

And as for our opposition to how Hungary’s parliament signed the Lisbon treaty a day after it was issued, and before it was even translated into Hungarian; or the fact that we stress the interests of the persecuted Hungarians living in the countries which surround us; or how Hungary’s once great cultural output has disappeared, and our television screens are now filled with the cheapest possible remakes of the tawdriest examples of foreign programs imaginable. No! We must be xenophobes.

Business as usual it seems. Regular readers of jobbik.com will of course be familiar with the realities, but perhaps it would wise, considering the huge surge in traffic and press attention that has happened since the elections; to recap.

THE LIE: Jobbik are at best, far-Right extremists, and at worst, anti-Democratic Fascistic Nazi ultra-nationalists.

THE FACTS: You might as well, with the same level of plausibility, say that we are Neo-Pagans, Communists, funded by Mossad, controlled by Tehran, Third-Positionists, directed from Moscow, influenced by Al-Quaeda, or, really,  a money laundering operation  for  an international cartel of bank robbers. Yes. All of this patent nonsense has been reported, quite seriously, in the Hungarian press. The reason why you will not have read it from international media, is of course that this brand of nonsense would not fit, the aforementioned “scenario.”

Jobbik in fact, has the best democratic credentials of any party in Hungarian politics. As a grass roots political organization, founded by Hungarians, it is unique in post-War and post-"regime change" national politics. Jobbik introduced its 2010 parliamentary manifesto to the public, over a month before any other party. Which was produced as a result of a six month nationwide consultative exercise with the Hungarian electorate, allowing the public to directly influence, and question, the content of our national political program. In addition, in the interests of international transparency our manifesto has been translated into English. No political party, in the entire history of Hungarian democracy, has ever done any of this.

Jobbik is a bottom-up political party, funded entirely by Hungarian people, in which it is the membership of, and sympathizers with, our 257 local party organizations that define and decide the party’s direction and purpose. Of the three other parties now voted into parliament, the winners Fidesz are a product of the largesse of the Soros Foundation, our direct opponents the MSZP were originally an import from Soviet Russia, while LMP is almost exclusively funded by an American national and multi-millionaire. To say nothing of the fact that both Fidesz and the MSZP are now under criminal investigation for concerted abuses of Hungarian electoral law.

As for Right-Wing political extremism, all the fundamental constitutional changes that Jobbik proposes are marked out by the desire to give less power to a centralised political elite, by giving more power to the people.  Almost every major measure we propose, has an established contemporary precedent in one or more other European countries. We always have, and always will, be nothing more than a Christian conservative nationalist party. And the nationalism we promote is directly comparable to that accepted as the norm, by all parties in countries like France or Ireland. In terms of political policy we use nationalism not as an ideology, but as a tool for testing the usefulness of particular policy alternatives. (Feel free to read our manifesto and find out for a change what it is that we do actually stand for!)

One such policy deemed to have failed this "test of the national interest" is political correctness. The way we reason, is that Hungary has no hope of dealing with the problems it faces, in the crisis it is in: if it may not even name what these problems are. Of the crime that is the second most pressing issue in Hungary today (after the economy), the three most significant elements are, in descending order of importance: political criminality, corruption and gypsy crime.

THE LIE: Statements like “gypsy crime” are indications of Jobbik's hate-filled rhetoric, and point to how it is a racist anti-Roma party.

THE FACTS: Firstly, no one in Hungary, with the possible exception of the politically ambitious and cosmopolitanly self-conscious news presenters, refers to Hungary’s Roma population by any other way, than with the word “Cigány.” Which translates into English as “Gypsy.” This includes of course the Gypsy population themselves. Second, have you noticed how all the news reports that refer to, and condemn, Jobbik’s supposed “rhetoric” never actually quote any of it, to let you judge it for yourself?

Predominantly resident in the North and East of Hungary, the Gypsy population was primarily employed in the manufacturing industry in 1989. The complete destruction of this industry, that came hand in hand with the change, has produced a situation in which significant communities of individuals have not seen work, for some two decades. It is this, the socio-cultural economic circumstances of such people, that has led to the predominant commission of certain types of crimes; and it has nothing at all to do with their ethnic origin.

But it is strange that all those who express outrage at Jobbik’s use of the term “gypsy crime” to describe this truism, never mention that when such Roma populations emigrate in significant numbers to countries like Canada, Italy or Northern Ireland; the communities they come to, suddenly find themselves victims of precisely these forms of criminality. Or is it supposed that their shameful racist Hungarian neighbours somehow move country with them?

Mirroring its approach to tackling political wrongdoing, and corruption (which both take up significantly more space in our manifesto) Jobbik has suggested an approach to tackling gypsy crime that deals with both its cause and its effects. The combination of a dedicated rural police service, or Gendarmerie, on the one hand; and social security and educational reforms on the other.

All such changes would be totally colour-blind and would apply to all.

Again, the mention of the term "Gendarmerie" has created consternation in some circles. But the fact is, that the policy of all parties in Hungary now mirrors that of Jobbik’s in this matter; except, that they do not include our social security and educational provisions. All parties now recognize the need to create a dedicated rural policing service, they simply omit to calling it by the name it has in every other country in the world.

This is what Jobbik does, bringing into the public eye the problems that the Hungarian political establishment would much rather sweep under the carpet, and compelling them into taking action. The Hungarian Guard has been a significant help in highlighting the problem of Gypsy / Magyar coexistence in Hungary, and prompting the political sea-change that has taken place.

THE LIE: The Hungarian Guard, who wear fascist paraphernalia and symbolism, are paramilitary blackshirts complicit in the deliberate assassination of Hungarian Roma.

THE FACTS: A paramilitary who is armed with nothing more fearful than a handkerchief is not worthy of the name, indeed any person who tells you such a person is a "paramilitary" or a member of a "militia" is telling you a deliberate lie. The carrying of any form of weapon whatsoever results in immediate summary expulsion from the Hungarian Guard.

We would also urge you to be suspicious of any press piece which in its hurry to lambast Jobbik, for its closeness to the Guard, conveniently forgets to mention that Fidesz, forecast to win today's elections by a landslide, have discussed at length the wisdom of establishing a practically identical “National Guard.”

What the Guard is, is an expression of the desire for public service, still latent for many Hungarians. It is a response to a society that has been produced in Hungary by the 20 years post-1989, in which our political leaders have promoted a selfish free-for-all and called it freedom. Also, it is a declaration that no Hungarian government has the right, to be so caught up in its own enrichment through corruption that it is thoroughly disinterested, in its effective abandonment of certain rural communities. The role of preserving Hungarian culture and heritage that the Guard plays; in addition to the fact that members are entirely self-funding, when they travel for example to areas of flooding to help relief efforts they do so at their own expense; are issues never considered noteworthy in the international press.

Anyone actually familiar with the activities of the Guard would immediately dismiss the idea of them being involved in violence, as preposterous. In three years of existing in Hungary not a single criminal act, violent or otherwise, has ever been committed by a member of the Hungarian Guard.

During the Spring and Summer of 2009 six Gypsies were murdered across Hungary in a spate of cold-blooded assassinations. The perpetrators of these terrible crimes were captured in September of that year; and in the eight months to date, those prosecuting and investigating them have found no link, either direct or incidental, between these men and the Hungarian Guard. Also, despite these tragic deaths, the fact remains that per capita, the number of racially motivated hate crimes in Hungary is positively microscopic when compared to those committed per head of population in countries like France, Sweden or the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, you will not encounter any of these easily verifiable facts in any recent news story about Jobbik, of course not, they would spoil the story. And the case of the Hungarian Guard is a perfect illustration of the desperate and persistent desire to bash the square peg, of today’s Hungarian nationalism, into its "allotted" round hole of extremism. Journalists for example who see a picture of a person in a white top and black waistcoat, and say, that what they in fact see is a blackshirt. When anyone will tell you that a white shirt and black waistcoat has been traditional peasant formal attire in Hungary for centuries and has never been the uniform of anybody. When dark comments are made about "fascist" paraphernalia or symbols "reminiscent" of the 1940s what is being referred to, and why are these references always so vague? Simply, because any clarification would rapidly dismiss such fear-mongering as drivel.

The Flag of the Royal House of Árpád (pictured) has been a symbol of the Hungarian nation, everywhere, for over 800 years. Precisely because it was, and has for centuries been – everywhere – it was also used briefly and in bastardized form, by a tyrannical four month long government in Hungary complicit in the holocaust. But neither Jobbik nor the Hungarian Guard “resurrected” this symbol, because it has continued to be used as the emblem of government departments, rural municipalities, and parliamentary banners, for decades in post-War Hungary, long before Jobbik or the Hungarian Guard even existed. It is no more a symbol of extremism than the Lion and the Unicorn, the Bald Eagle or the Maltese Cross. And when it is suggested that it is, in foreign reportage, Hungarians rightfully feel a sense of indignance in the defence of their heritage, and a flag which represents a Royal House which has more canonized saints amongst its number, than a great many entire countries do.

The Hungarian Guard has also been the subject of a prolonged civil case with the state, which may be best summarized by a word-for-word citation of a remark made by the chief prosecutor in the state’s initial indictment. Quote. “Nothing better exemplifies the danger posed by the Hungarian Guard, than the fact that when they parade through a particular rural community, the members of that community come out into the street to applaud them.” Unquote.

THE LIE: Jobbik are anti-Semitic, Jew-obsessed holocaust deniers, who engage in conspiracy theorizing over the level of Jewish influence in Hungary.

THE FACTS: First, Jobbik has never denied the holocaust, and persistently refutes as absurd the idea that it is anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, it was not a Jobbik party member that chose to fly to Tel Aviv’s Hilton Hotel on 10th October 2007, to disguise himself as Simon Peres, and then make a public statement pretending to be the head of Israel, to say that it was “buying up Hungary.” No. The Israeli President managed to do this all on his own. And the indignation that resulted from it in Hungary has been a product of what was said, not who said. As Hungarian nationalists we would consider it an unacceptable statement had it come from the President of Denmark, the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, or the Sultan of Oman.

Furthermore, the significant role played by Israeli companies in terms of receiving lucrative government contracts, and the Hungarian property market, is beyond denial. Some 70% of all property development in Budapest is conducted by Israeli owned firms. Twenty separate Israeli companies dominate the Budapest property market,* and own the vast majority of our capital’s shopping centres, office blocks, and prestige hotels; in addition to most of the recently constructed residential blocks in the city.

Extensive levels of fraud, bribery, underselling and corruption has taken place in order to make all this possible; both at the local- and senior-government level. To say nothing of the fact that the face of the Hungarian capital, which used to be regarded worldwide for its classic architecture and the strict building regulations that it observed, has been changed completely by this construction boom of mostly modernist buildings of cheapest possible manufacture. The lowliest council functionary, up to the highest levels of government, have been implicated in this affair e.g. the troubling relationship between Israeli property magnate Joav Blum and both former Prime Ministers Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai. These are simply the facts.

Massive sums have changed hands. And perhaps the most sickening part of this whole saga is how so many Hungarian front bench politicians, have used their maintenance of dual Israeli – Hungarian nationality, as a cynical form of virtual immunity in regard of these types of scandals: being immediately able to condemn anyone with the temerity of drawing attention to their actions, as an anti-Semite.

As a matter of international policy, the Movement for a Better Hungary, has always been primarily sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in the long running Arab – Israeli conflict; in marked contrast to previous national administrations. Again, this is simply because as Hungarian nationalists, we can sympathise more readily with a people who have had their land taken away from them, in order to form a new country. Given that 75% of the Kingdom of Hungary was torn from our nation by the Trianon peace diktat in 1920.

This allegiance has been sufficient to classify Jobbik in the minds of several Israeli News Agencies, as anti-Semitic, and Jobbik is subject to this charge persistently and relentlessly as a result. Nevertheless, we maintain that the charge is a completely invalid one, because the religious adherence or not of any of the parties involved, has absolutely no bearing or relevance whatsoever to these matters, only the facts, and people's actions do.

*These companies are: the Ablon Group, the Arlon/Neocity Group, Autóker Holding Zrt., Brack Capital Real Estate, BSR Europe, CEE, Coral Holding, Cordia Magyarország, Elephant Holding, the Engel Group, GB Európa Ingatlan, Home Center, Minrav (Yozma), the Ofer Brothers Group, the Olimpia Group, Plaza Centers, Pro-Mot Hungária, Shiraz, the SL Group and Sybil Holdings.

Update:

Orban gave his speech to the WJC conference on Sunday night. The Jewish Daily Forward has posted a report on it containing the following:

Prime Minister Viktor Orban strongly denounced growing anti-Semitism in Hungary on Sunday but stopped short of censuring the far-right Jobbik party his audience of world Jewish leaders most wanted him to scold.

Orban told the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which is holding its four-yearly assembly in Hungary to highlight its concern about rising hostility to Jews here and elsewhere in Europe, that anti-Semitism was “unacceptable and intolerable”.

He recounted the steps his conservative government has taken to outlaw hate crimes and preserve the memory of the Holocaust, during which about half a million Hungarian Jews died.

But he did not respond to a call from WJC President Ronald Lauder, who in his opening remarks singled out Jobbik and told Orban “Hungarian Jews need you to take on these dark forces”.

The article also includes a quote from an official WJC response to Orban’s speech:

The prime minister did not confront the true nature of the problem: the threat posed by the anti-Semites in general and by the extreme-right Jobbik party in particular. “We regret that Mr. Orban did not address any recent anti-Semitic or racist incidents in the country, nor did he provide sufficient reassurance that a clear line has been drawn between his government and the far-right fringe.”

The same official response can also be accessed at the WJC website, where it appears underneath the headline, “WJC reaction: Orban speech did not confront the true nature of problem in Hungary.”

It’s interesting to note that despite his hosting of the WJC in his nation’s capital, despite his agreeing to be one of the speakers, despite his denunciations of anti-Semitism—both in his speech, as well as in press releases issued by his office prior to the convention—all this was deemed not good enough by the WJC. Apparently more groveling was required. WJC apparently desires nothing less than that Orban denounce his fellow countrymen, 16.7 percent of whom support Jobbik.

Also of particular interest in The Forward’s coverage is this:

Jobbik is also popular among young Hungarians, especially university students in the liberal arts, sociologist Peter Tibor Nagy told Reuters. “That means it is not just a temporary phenomenon, it will last,” he said.

Is Jobbik a national “phenomenon” that may grow within Hungary as it also spreads to other European countries? Clearly a number of powerful Jews are worried that it might be.

 
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