Courage, Hungarians!

 From The European Conservative:

A statement of interest is in order here: the writer is a Magyarophile. As a Portuguese and as a European, I have good reason to think fondly of the great people of the Carpathians who have given the world so much. It is to a son of Hungary, Mardell Károly, that much of the reconstruction of Lisbon, following the horror of the 1755 earthquake, is owed. Hungarian sacrifice at Mohi, in 1241, helped turn the tide of Mongol advance into the heart of Europe; disaster at Mohács, in 1526, made Hungary the suffering frontier of Christendom against the Ottoman onslaught. Yet, despite this tumultuous history, Hungarians have—in the field of battle and in the world of sciences and the arts, from music to literature and architecture—persistently been at the forefront of European achievement. Our civilisation would be much poorer, indeed, without Liszt, Kós, and Petőfi. Europe is also the daughter of King Saint Stephen and Corvinus.

Great little Hungary will be asked to make a momentous decision this coming April 12th. For Brussels, the next legislative election presents it with the hope that now, at last, the Hungarian nuisance might be taken out of the picture; that Hungarian determination in safeguarding its independence, its sovereignty, and its national interests will be silenced. For this purpose, the Brusselians have built a Trojan horse, Péter Magyar, and concocted an absurd coalition uniting everything from pro-EU liberals and centrists to reformed communists and former neo-Nazis. In several constituencies, candidates of the once vilified Jobbik party withdrew in support of Tisza, Magyar’s party. Magyar also enjoys the support of a good number of former Communists. Ágnes Forsthoffer, vice president of his party, comes from a wealthy family of Kádar-era communist nomenklatura; another Tisza vice president, Zoltán Tarr, is similarly alleged to have been an informer of the hated Communist political police, the Third Department of the Ministry of the Interior. 

This post-ideological mishmash is obviously unfit to govern, and ultimately it doesn’t care about governing. After all, it was not born from Hungarian soil, but from the machinations of Brussels bureaucrats who loathe Hungary. In Magyar, they found a man ambitious and gullible enough to sign their Faustian bargain. If he were to prevail, he would not be a Hungarian prime minister, but a European satrap in Budapest. It is unfortunate to notice the excitement with which Magyar himself yearns for that supremely undignified role.

Brussels dreams of a weak, compliant Hungary. They could never quite understand how a tiny country of nine million, landlocked, still recovering from decades of communist oppression, might have the audacity to resist them. It doesn’t help that, time and again, the Hungarians showed themselves to be the last bastion of European common sense. When Brussels and Berlin were merrily destroying Europe’s nuclear sector, Budapest was infuriating them by modernising and strengthening its own. When Merkel and the Brusselians were proclaiming “Wir schaffen das” and opening Europe’s borders to tens of millions of non-European immigrants who never were nor ever could be integrated, Prime Minister Orbán was a lonely voice of wisdom and realism in reminding Brussels that, in fact, hyper-immigration would lead to catastrophe. 

When the Establishment was busily demolishing the very foundations of European industrial prowess and economic prosperity by severing oil and gas imports from Russia, Hungary warned that doing so would lead to desindustrialisation and a loss—not an increase—of strategic autonomy. Now, with the Middle East on fire and oil prices on the way to 200 dollars per barrel, the profound wisdom of Orbán’s warnings is visible for all to see. In all those cases, the Hungarian prime minister stood alone, isolated, and maligned by a hopelessly foolish European establishment. He held his ground. And he was proven right. (Read more.)

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