Racist Hungarians -Discrimination in the EU in 2015 report

Thanks to the media abroad Hungary seems to have acquired quite fame as a nation of the worst racists you can imagine. Articles, comments, reddit posts, google searches- all point to this notoriety, and none of them seem to be bothered by things like facts.

Rising antisemitism threatening all Jews in Hungary? Check. And check. And check. And check. And check. And check. (Again, which country are Jews fleeing from, and asking for special permits to carry weapons? I forgot. Perhaps someone could remind me.) It's so bad, we even need to lie about it to make it look bad.

They hate Muslims, too, of course. Who said they did not?

Racism everywhere? Check. And check.

Bigotry? Of course!

Second most nationalistic country? Check. (Even though the answers made no sense whatsoever: they asked if being born in Hungary was very important to be Hungarian in a country which is surrounded by areas where one third of Hungarians still live. There is something seriously fishy with these results when the most nationalistic Hungarians are the ones who are the most aware of -and most care about- the Hungarian minorities living outside of the country.)

Is the Far Right taking over everything? Do I hear goosestepping blackshirts every day? Check. And check.

Fascists? Of course! Are they downright Nazis? Check. Even their football fans are Nazis? Of course they are!

The question is: how deserved all this? Are Hungarians really just Nazis, waiting to fire up the ovens to destroy anyone who is not like them? (As if in such a mixed nation it makes sense talking about racial purity.)

Well, according to this survey, not very. I might point out that this was done in 2015, at the height of the migrant/refugee crisis.

Here's an imperfect map representation of the results.

As we see Hungarians are not special in any way; they fall into the middle of the pack when it comes to tolerance/intolerance; hardly the country in the brink of a Nazi takeover.


The question rather is: why so many articles pushing distorted half-facts or straight-out lies to support this agenda? Why do they spend so much time and effort to demonise a small, inconsequential country?


I have to say I have no idea. If you know the answer, please let me know.

Migrants, refugees and terrorists - and the short memory of everyone involved

During the height of the migrant/refugee crisis in 2015 many -admittedly right-wing- media outlets and politicians asked the question about how many terrorists are entering Europe with the unchecked flow of people.

Remember the rat cartoon? That is sooo Nazi! (Except it isn't, but don't let a deliberate misinterpretation stand in the way of a good controversy.)

Remember when Hungary tried to enforce the Schengen rules as a border country, and got a shit-ton of flak for that? Just remember the name "Keleti Railway station".

For this they were called Nazis. Yes, I know we don't like Fox News and the Daily Mail; however the whole point of being a rational and liberal person is to actually use, you know, reason instead of labels. Unlike those stupid right wingers who are just putting everything you say into the category of "tree hugging pinko commie", and hence ignore it. No, liberals never would do that.
Ever.

Except they did. Or many of the people who pride themselves as liberals did so. Which is a shame; a shame we would like to quickly forget. They ridiculed, they accused, and they used red herrings so that the actual issue -how many terrorists enter Europe unchecked- was never asked. In fact if you search 2015 articles, you will be reassured, how unlikely it is for terrorists to go through all that suffering just to walk into Europe; after all they can fly, right? (A BBC article talks about Schengen issues pretty eloquently, although appears to avoid some tough questions involving events a couple of months prior...)

After the wave of attacks, of course, the narrative changed; now we can read about how these pesky terrorists used the crowd to mask their presence (just like the rat cartoon suggested), how they abused Europe's naivety to enter and do their shenanigans; but no one in the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, etc. stopped and said: you know, guys? We were wrong. No; what you get is a report on terrorists using the Balkan route to enter Europe, and then an attack on the one politician who dared to mention that it is a very real danger. The terrorist in question came through the Keleti Railway station into the EU I would like to stress. He was helped by well-meaning people (or, being somewhat cynical, people who sought to get political capital out of the situation), who then marched to the Austrian border to demonstrate how evil it is to enforce the law. In other words: terrorist (well, several, as we know) did what those Nazis were warning us they would. Now what? Do we apologise? Or do we keep going on with the offensive?


In fact, they still seem to be very much attacking the one guy who was right in this case. Don't get me wrong; Orban is no saint. He needs to go; this post is not about him. It's just in this one case he was right, and he was right when it mattered- during the height of the crisis, and not in hindsight. Since then his 2015 suggestions of refugee camps outside of Europe (oh, are they hellish? YOU NAZIS!), the protection of borders (I wonder how you do that without fences to force people use the border checkpoints?) -even by the Guardian, and so on have been adopted quickly by the people who called him (and the whole nation of Hungary) a Nazi; and refugees are now called migrants. (It's interesting that even the Guardian changed its tone, and nobody seems to care.)


Yet nobody had the guts to say: you know what? We fucked up. These other guys were right. They just pretend the past did not happen, and by the magic of the media, indeed it has been erased from the history books. And we're not talking about an ancient kingdom's past, or if the Black Prince was indeed such a blood-thirsty tyrant. We're talking about changing what happened two years ago. We're talking about decisions made that cost lives. Could have been some of these events avoided? Who knows? But that does not absolve people who made them, who called others trying to argue for a different approach Nazis, and then now pretend the whole thing did not happen.

It is truly Orwell's worst nightmare coming to life.

Austria and Nazi references

So Christian Kern joined the (short) line of Austrian Chancellors who compared to Hungary's policies to Nazi Germany's, or made references to Nazi Germany in relation to Hungary. He, in this case, mentioned D-Day with relation to infraction procedures about the migrant quotas.

So, let me recap. This is the same country that confesses "European Values" yet builds fences between Schengen countries (OK, they called in a "gate with wings", so that's totally not the same thing), and that uses actual tanks (yes, tanks), on the border of another Schengen country to stop migrants entering. I guess the European Values are fine, when they are pulling shit like this; only the smelly Eastern Europeans aren't allowed to act on their own interests.

Oh well. I guess some are more equal in this wonderful Europe than others.

So what ties together Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other repressive Arab states?

Well, it's their mutual dislike to Al Jazeera. Somehow Arab despots don't like independent journalism, and since Al Jazeera has angered them constantly, they put Qatar in a blockade -the whole "supporting terrorism" reason is a fig leaf. (And kind of a bold one coming from Saudi Arabia, but there you go. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.)

So what does the "only democracy in the Middle East" announce? Well, they are about to "remove it", of course.

It's always nice to see how democratic principles, such as freedom of speech matter to both repressive kingdoms and so-called democracies. The question remains, though. How democratic can you be when you are afraid of a news agency so much you violate press freedom? What does it say about you that you have something in common with a horrible repressive regime lead by fundamentalist nuts?  And most telling of all: why isn't the whole "Western World" up in arms about it?

Don't let good bigotry to go waste

When is it OK to be bigoted, xenophobic (or racist, although this is a bit of a murky distinction)?

Why, when you're talking about those smelly Eastern (well, Central) Europeans! Just do a quick search on the comment section of any so-called progressive, liberal newspapers, and you will find extremely bigoted views expressed against Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, all in the name of liberalism, equality, anti-xenophobia and European Values.

Seriously. Just check it out. (Yes, it's only one. You can look for the rest. It's not very difficult.)

Anyhow, enter Mr Frenchman. (If you wanted to know his name, you can find out. He DID say he does not hide behind an anonymity, he DID post his comments under his own name, he IS a journalist, and he DID try to erase all his misdeeds. I find especially the last part repugnant.)

Anyhow. Do a quick read of this reddit post from a black girl asking about Hungary.

Mr High Horse, a self-confessed journalist and teacher assesses that "most of Hungarians ARE racist", and then brings up two unsubstantiated little stories, and a lot of (probably intentionally) misinterpreted things (like a candy called Negro) to support his claim. Let's stop here for a second. Someone, claiming to have journalistic integrity and whatnot, talking from a liberal point of view simply makes a bigoted statement that essentially puts him into the same camp as the people he decries (racists, not Hungarians). Then proceeds to make a couple of off-hand comments, and when he realizes he really, really put his foot in his mouth, he proceeds to erase his comments and delete his account.

I decided to immortalize this little performance as it is very much a representative sample of the treatment of these smelly Eastern Europeans all over the Continent, with the exception that most journalists and politicians are not forced to face a reality check. Well, here's an indication for you what would happen in a larger scale if that was the case.

So Trump said something remarkable: ‘states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote’


Interesting. When the shoe was on the other foot, things went a bit differently, even though in that case the above sentiment would have been a little bit more than justified. 


Some tact and empathy would have been useful, but then again: what can you expect of the Orange Baboon? In a way he is a great representation what the US foreign policy is about.

Elections and foreign influences

We are all up in arms about how those dastardly Russians dared to -allegedly- influence the US elections directly and indirectly. 

After all... Freedom! Democracy! Whatever! True, western, democratic countries do not do such a thing as we all know. Not at all.

So how dare the Russians?

Anyhow. This is not what we're here to discuss... This is. And this, and this, and this. A shameless exploitation of terrorism to achieve political goals. Whose goals, though, I would ask.

So, where's the outrage now? Who exactly owns The Sun and the other filth? Could it be a foreign billionaire? Is it possible that his paper is breaking UK electoral laws, and exerting an enormous influence on British politics, and yet nobody is upset about it? That he's been doing this for decades now, contributing to the clusterfuck that is Brexit, and all the shitty things that are happening in these beautiful, rainy isles?
Oh, my.

It's quite predictable what will happen: a bunch of the uninformed masses will read this before they turn to the boobs on page 3, and will not even think of voting anyone else, but May, paragon of competence and morality. The Sun might be fined a hefty fine, but the damage will be done, and the goal will be reached; the fine will be looked at as a campaign contribution.

Perhaps we really should take a look at what interests are influencing our country's politics and policies; it would probably help making sense of why things happen the way they do- why the NHS is being privatised behind the scenes, why the UK intervenes where it should not really be doing interventions, and why the political elite clings to austerity like a bunch of priests to religious dogma, even though it has proven to be counterproductive, and even the IMF does not recommend it any more. (Which in itself is a miracle.)

So yeah.

Perhaps it's not just Putin who is the problem here.