Introduction: The broadcast begins by highlighting the change in attitude experienced by young “Euro-Nazis” toward their political belief system. Viewed as losers a few years ago, they are now gaining acceptance by their peers. Successfully using Nazi rock outlets, the internet and other “new media,” the current generation of Nazi youth are successfully marketing their ideology to contemporaries in the current socio-economic climate.
Facilitating this skillful use of “new media” by Euro-fascists is a court decision that will allow the NPD–Germany’s largest “neo-” Nazi party to distribute CD’s to school children.
In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik Party has established itself as a fixture on the Hungarian electoral landscape, recapitulating that nation’s fascist past under the Arrow Cross organization (allied with the Third Reich). [Jobbik members are pictured at right. The party’s logo is displayed at lower right.] Severe economic downturn and resultant, commensurate social dislocation are driving Hungarian political sentiment in a disturbingly familiar direction. The Hungarian Jobbik Party successfully recapitulates much of the ideology, symbology and para-political street methodology of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, masters of Hungary for part of World War II. Jobbik gained significantly in the Hungarian elections. Arrow cross veterans played an important role in the synthesis of the Nazi/fascist Republican ethnic outreach mechanism.
Program Highlights Include: The Nazi past of Carl Lundstrom, the Swedish patron of a popular music download site; the reopening of the investigation of the apparent murder of a young Briton by elements associated with the LaRouche organization in Germany (that was originally covered up by the German authorities); revival of Nazi ideology in Bosnia; review of the elevation of Nazi and SS collaborator Stephan Bandera to the status of “Hero” of the Ukraine; review of the German government’s initial decision to withhold release of its intelligence file on Adolph Eichmann.
1. The first story highlights the change in attitude experienced by young “Euro-Nazis” toward their political belief system. Viewed as losers a few years ago, they are now gaining acceptance by their peers. Successfully using Nazi rock outlets, the internet and other “new media,” the current generation of Nazi youth are successfully marketing their ideology to contemporaries in the current socio-economic climate.
They sell CDs of little girls who sing softly about white pride to a public of pre-adolescents, video games where it is essential to shoot all those who are dark-skinned, and t‑shirts with cryptic slogans. They are British, Romanians, French and Swedes. They mistrust the various media and, instead, create their own press agencies to produce and broadcast their information. Gabriele Adinolfi, the co-founder of terza posizione (‘third position’, Italy) confirms that: ‘Today, the only way of being fascist is by being pragmatic.’
The ‘right to centre right’ parties are in the process of change having been unrespectable for a long time. The EU has been looking to fight against acts of racism and xenophobes, and to bring legislation into line in member states on the matter of strengthening police co-operation. The extreme right has had a resurgence over the years in France, Austria and Italy and has had to face up to reactions from public opinion. The extreme right has therefore moved with the times.
They are now made up of a myriad of small groups, and when the dots are all joined up they form a ‘showcase’ political party. The extreme right have placed themselves into the mass media (via music, clothing and merchandising), and are now imposing themselves on the media-related networks across the EU. This strategy is paying off; the extreme right is the leading political party amongst 15–30 year olds in Holland, Austria and Czech Republic. Their influence is growing everywhere.
His strategy is called ‘metapolitics’; it’s the art of doing politics without it having the look of politics. In line with those who think like Guillaume Faye (nouvelle droite or ‘new right’ party in France), the extreme right is ‘surfing’ on being anti-politically correct, the loss of impetus by government parties in putting forward new venues on the outside of official circuits. Métapédia was created in 2007 by young Swedes based on the model of a well-known mass encyclopaedia; the Wikipedia moderators then gathered up the pages and excluded them.
The extreme right is now in nine countries in the EU and their ambition is to ‘have an influence on political and philosophical debates and they way in which art and culture are presented’. Altermedia offers a platform for 17 different EU countries to different circles of influence with a right wing identity (from radical christians to anti-capitalist pagans), who want to challenge the challenge the traditional left wing supremacy in the domains of ideas and culture. It’s Denis Diderot who welcomes the visitor to Metapedia France, and the author and poet Mihai Eminescu who wrote Emperor and Proletarian, on Metapedia Romania.
Jacques Vassieux is the Rhône-Alpes regional advisor to the French FN Party (‘national front’). He has taken charge of the national association observatoire et riposte internet (‘internet observatory and riposte’) from French far-right politician Jean Marie Le Pen, and created Nations Presse in 2008. The site gets 350, 000 hits a month and has 25 contributors; two of which are professional journalists. ‘It is more than evident that we are treated badly on the internet, and on a daily basis too,‘explains Vassieux. ‘This is one of the reasons, essentially, why proceeded to create our site and this association. We can administer the antidote on a daily basis too.’
Claudio Lazzaro is the author of the documentary Nazirock. ‘The extreme right has made itself more straightforward,’ he says. ‘It takes what it needs and changes it in order to communicate without making it subtle.’ Lazzaro advocates dialogue with the extreme right as long as this dialogue ‘does not seek to justify their fascist ideas.’ He also finds it alarming that ‘fascism and neo-fascism are developing in parallel on two fronts, as if it’s about choosing ‘a priori’ (without prior knowledge) more than rational thought and reflection.’
Noua Dreapta (‘new right’) is spearheading the Romanian extreme right; they’re not registered as a party but present themselves as a ‘movement’, having been in existence since 2000. It’s a way of declining electoral confrontation in order to better place their sympathisers into the training which is being readied for them. The British national party (BNP) have swapped their Doc Martens for suits and ties, they distribute guides amongst their followers on how to speak properly, made space for women (in the party) in order tone down their image and have established the birth rate as one of their ‘call to arms’.
This new generation of young educated leaders have a perfect command of 21st century communication, and know their public well. Rock concerts have replaced granddad meets. Project Schoolyard is a series of compilations produced by the neo-nazi music label Panzerfaust Records; their eloquent slogan is ‘we don’t just entertain racist kids, we create them’.
The EU is struggling to keep up with the declarations of ‘good intentions’ and a real lack of involvement from the member states; the majority are ‘continuing to escape from control of their individual policies and practises at EU level’. The 2009 report on the situation of fundamental rights in the EU was panned. It has to be said that the extreme right’s electoral platform greatly interests the right wing of the government. When the right fail to visibly woo their voters, they don’t hesitate in taking the extreme right’s campaign themes. A few ‘identity’ rock concerts have closed national front and casa delle libertà (CDl, ‘house of freeedom’) campaign meetings. As for the left, they seem hindered by their own contradictions. From now on they champion the upper and middle classes but haven’t been known to listen to their traditional voters when grappling economic difficulties, and the tensions stirring up amongst communities in working class areas.
The epicentre of this ‘renewal of nationality’ is now central and eastern Europe. ‘Ten years ago we were ‘losers’ to be nazis, now it’s ok to be a nazi. Who knows where we’ll be in ten years time?’ concludes Peter, a campaigner for the national democratic party (NPD) in Bavaria, Germany.
2. NPD–Germany’s largest “neo”- Nazi party has been given the OK to distribute CD’s to school children. The savvy media techniques for disseminating fascist ideology alluded to in the preceding article can be seen at work here.
The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party will be allowed to distribute CDs outside schools with interviews and music by party members because authorities have no legal grounds to stop them, a report said Saturday.
The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons said the disc merely contained political opinions, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.
The department therefore found no basis on which to ban the disc, the report quoted director Elke Monsen-Engberding as saying.
The NPD is Germany’s leading far-right party. It promotes an anti-immigrant agenda and is considered by the country’s domestic intelligence agency to be a threat to the constitution.
On its website, the NPD welcomed the decision. . . .
“Neo-Nazi Party Given Green Light to Target School Children”; thelocal.de; 2/6/2010.
3a. The patron of Pirate Bay–a popular music download site–has Nazi affiliations.
But as Andrew Brown, author of the autobiographical Fishing in Utopia, points out, no English language coverage of the trial has mentioned this. Thanks to Brown’s blog, we know a little more about Lundström.
For example, Lundström was linked to a gang of skinheads that attacked Latin American tourists in Stockholm in the mid-1980s. [Expo.se report (Swe) — 2005]. Over the years, Lundström has switched his support from Keep Sweden Swedish to the far-right headbangers party New Democracy — but was thrown out for being too right wing. He’s currently bankrolling 100 candidates for the Swedish equivalent of the BNP.
Lundström is alleged to own 40 per cent of The Pirate Bay — the largest share — and gave it servers and bandwidth to get going. As one of the four defendants, been a regular attendee in court. But the presence of this significant national political player hasn’t been worthy of a WiReD mention since the trial kicked off. Or a mention anywhere else. Why would that be?
For me, there are two interesting aspects to this peculiar, and very selective silence. . . .
One is that anti-copyright activists like to think of themselves as thoroughly decent, forward-thinking progressive people — because the internet is a new democracy, they’re reflecting a fairer world. They like to contrast the hygenic efficiency of the technology with the old (and implicitly corrupt) copyright businesses. It’s almost a badge of moral superiority.
But like the Futurists a hundred years ago — the original Freetards — they don’t mind jumping into bed with neo-Nazis when it suits them. In this case, that’s so long as the free music and movies keep flowing. . . .
“Pirate Bay’s neo-Nazi Sugar Daddy” by Andrew Orlowski; The Register [UK]; 2/26/2009.
3b. Of interest, also, is the assertion by “Wikipedia” that Lundstrom made a fortune selling his family business to the pharmaceutical company Sandoz–one of the companies in the I.G. Farben cartel complex. As we have seen in Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, the various tentacles of the I.G. Farben octopus continue to operate on behalf of the Underground Reich and the Bormann capital network.
NB: Although “Wikipedia” is massive and can be useful, it must be cross-checked, as it has been demonstrated to contain errors, sometimes deliberately inserted by people interested in obscuring, not revealing, the truth.
. . . Carl Lundström is the son of Ulf Lundström and the grandson of Karl Edvard Lundström, founder of the world’s largest crisp bread producer Wasabröd. When his father Ulf Lundström died in 1973, Carl Lundström was one of five heirs to Wasabröd and its subsidiary OLW. In 1982 Wasabröd was sold to the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, making Lundström a fortune. . . .
4. In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik Party has established itself as a fixture on the Hungarian electoral landscape, recapitulating that nation’s fascist past under the Arrow Cross organization (allied with the Third Reich).
The rally in a school hall in the normally sleepy town of Dunakeszi was packed with hundreds of supporters. They cheered as Mr Vona promised to rid Hungary of corruption and crack down on foreign interests.
He spoke about stopping Roma, the country’s biggest ethnic minority, from sponging off the state — forcing anyone claiming benefits to perform public service in return. He promised to “give back Hungary’s national pride and identity”.
The enthusiasm showed that Mr Vona has come a long way since Jobbik launched seven years ago. Its fierce nationalistic agenda and far-right rhetoric were soundly rejected by the electorate then. In national elections in 2006 it polled a miserable 2.2 per cent, failing to get a single member of parliament elected.
But now as Hungary prepares for crucial new elections the tide has turned, and it is flowing strongly Jobbik’s way. To the horror of democrats who thought Hungary had shaken itself free of political extremism in 1989 with the fall of communism, Jobbik is on course to become the second biggest party in parliament.
With one week to go before the country goes to the polls for the first of two rounds of voting, Jobbik has reaped the benefit of the spectacular demise of Hungary’s left-wing MSZP government. Accused of rampant corruption and castigated from all sides for mismanagement of the worst recession since 1989, the government faces a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Right.
Most polls suggest that the centre-right Fidesz party, headed by former prime minister Viktor Orban, will wipe out the MSZP, and perhaps even scoop up more than half the vote. The beleaguered socialists are also in dire danger of being pushed into third place by Jobbik. Polls predict Mr Vona’s party could win as many as one vote in five.
Yet while the failings of the Left have helped, Jobbik has also gained from disillusionment with the economy. Hungarians expected more growth, and better government, after the fall of communism.
Heavy industry has collapsed, the privatisation bonanza that brought both revenue and foreign investors has run its course, and the global recession has hit hard. Unemployment has soared to a 16-year high of 11.2 per cent, and in late 2008 the country was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for $25 billion in emergency funding.
The old political class is blamed for economic failures, and for endemic corruption. Jobbik’s messages of opposing corruption and standing up for the little man have struck a chord.
“The other parties serve foreign interests and foster corruption. They are anti-Hungarian,” said Laszlo Soos, who runs a small home-security business. Last time he voted Fidesz but on April 11 he will back Jobbik. “This is the only party that is prepared to stand up for Hungarian interests and not for foreign ones.”
But Jobbik’s growing support has revived disturbing memories of the bloody wartime past, when Hungarian fascists grabbed power and enthusiastically shipped off Jews and gypsies — as Roma are commonly known — to Hitler’s death camps.
The new party is eager to solve what it calls the “Roma problem”, though it emphasises that this should be through social measures and it does not espouse violence. Some members have made comments portrayed as anti-Jewish, despite the party leadership’s efforts to look modern and European as well as tough.
Its acceptable face is Krisztina Morvai, a blonde working mother of three and former lawyer who was last year elected as an Member of the European Parliament. She has complained bitterly that the rest of Europe sees her as a Nazi.
That is in part because of the Hungarian Guard who are allies of the party, and also Jobbik’s red and white-striped banner. This bears an unnerving similarity to the emblem of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, which seized power for a brutal few months in 1944.
For those old enough to remember the suffering of the war, the rise of Jobbik feels like a frightening case of deja vu. “Though I was only six years old in 1944 when the Arrow Cross came to power, I remember the reign of terror that followed,” said Maria Juhasz, a Budapest pensioner. “I remember when they took away the Jews, including our village doctor, and the young men they hanged at the side of the road with placards round their necks saying ‘This is the fate of deserters’. The Hungarian Guard and Jobbik, the uniforms, the language and rhetoric all remind me of the Arrow Cross and that era.”
Accusations of racism or anti-Semitism are dismissed by Jobbik’s leaders, who argue that radical policies are needed to lift Hungary’s 500,000 Roma out of poverty.
Mr Vona, a surprisingly bland and modest-looking leader for such an extreme party, was a founding member of Jobbik in 2003. His youth appeals to Hungarian voters who are sick of the old political class. His quietly spoken personality seems to reassure voters, although in July last year he was arrested at a demonstration in central Budapest. . . .
5. Relatively successful in the recent Hungarian elections, Jobbik has elicited more than one comparison with the fascist movements of the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Severe economic downturn and resultant, commensurate social dislocation are driving Hungarian political sentiment in a disturbingly familiar direction. The Hungarian Jobbik Party successfully recapitulates much of the ideology, symbology and para-political street methodology of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, allies of Nazi Germany and masters of Hungary for part of that conflict. Jobbik gained significantly in the Hungarian elections. Arrow cross veterans played an important role in the synthesis of the Nazi/fascist Republican ethnic outreach mechanism.
Opposition leader Viktor Orban, who spurred the populist politics that have led to the rise of the far-right in Hungary, believes his party is set to win a two-thirds majority after Sunday’s parliamentary elections. But it is the right-wing extremist Jobbik party that is setting the hateful tone of the campaign.
The state authorities have their backs up against the wall in front of St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest. Three police officers, positioned in the shadow of an Art Nouveau palace, watch motionlessly as Hungary’s National Front marches before their eyes.
Members of citizens’ militias and neo-Nazi groups have taken over patrolling the streets on this day. In combat boots, camouflage or black military uniforms, they form human chains and divide the crowd.
Fifty thousand people have gathered in front of a speaker’s platform. An easterly wind rattles the flags — red and white striped, much like the armbands worn by members of Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross Party during World War II. The sound of speakers preaching nationalist beliefs reverberates from the loudspeakers.
“Hungary belongs to the Hungarians,” the crowd hears. One speaker claims that Israeli investors and their local agents are in the process of buying up the country with its 10 million inhabitants. The speaker argues that the government doesn’t care where the money comes from and that they’re letting these people “buy Hungary up.” The currently governing Socialists, another speaker warns, will be “obliterated from the face of the Earth” and Roma will be encouraged to emigrate.
“They should leave,” the crowd chants in unison. “They should leave.” . . .
“Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power” by Walter Mayr; Spiegel Online; 4/9/2010.
6. Next, the program updates the re-opening of an investigation into the apparent murder of a young British man, covered-up with the collaboration of the German authorities. Of significance here is the fact that Jeremiah Duggan had traveled to Germany to work with the LaRouche organization, a fascist network based in Germany that has made significant inroads into the so-called progressive community in the United States.
It was the kind of phone call every mother dreads. At 4.24am on 27 March 2003, Erica Duggan was woken by her son Jeremiah, a normally ebullient 22-year-old. “Mum, I’m in trouble,” he said. In hushed tones, he told her he was in Germany and began spelling the letters of the place he was staying, “W, i, e, s ...”. Then the line went dead.
The next call came from the police. German officers had found Jerry’s body three hours later on the side of the B455, a busy dual carriageway running south-east out of the city of Wiesbaden towards the Rhine. Witnesses said a man had scrambled into the centre of the road and was hit by a brown Peugeot 406, and then a blue Volkswagen. By the time paramedics and police arrived, Jerry was dead of head injuries.
The subsequent police investigation was perfunctory, classifying his death as a suicide. Witnesses were allowed to leave the scene, cars were moved before being photographed and an external post-mortem was conducted at a nearby mortuary without any detailed forensic checks.
Few parents would find it easy to accept that their child has committed suicide but for Mrs Duggan, a retired teacher from north London whose Jewish family fled the Nazis in the late 1930s, the idea that her son took his life did not make sense.
“He had so many plans for the future and never showed even the slightest inkling of depression,” she told The Independent, in her mother’s home in Golders Green. “But it’s more than just that. The call I got from him just before he died, that was from someone who desperately wanted to live, who was trying to survive. It wasn’t from someone intent on killing himself.”
Mrs Duggan, in deep doubt of the German police belief that her son’s death was suicide, hired private investigators and forensic experts to look at the evidence again, eventually selling her house to pay the costs and moving in with her ageing mother. Their reports have cast serious question marks over the official portrayal of Jerry as suicidal, suggesting instead a man who was either desperately trying to escape unknown assailants when he stumbled out on the dual carriageway, or who had been attacked before he got there.
Yesterday, armed with this new evidence, the Duggan family’s lawyers went to the High Court after the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, took the highly unusual step of granting them permission to seek a second inquest into Jerry’s death.
The first inquest, in 2004, rejected the German police suicide suggestion, and returned an open verdict, finding instead that he had died in a “state of terror”. But investigators failed to look wider. Supporters hope a fresh inquest will finally force German police to reinvestigate why a British Jew died in mysterious circumstances after spending five days with a far-right political cult led by a convicted fraudster who is known for his virulent anti-Semitic views.
Jerry had been a student at the British Institute in Paris but he had travelled to Wiesbaden to attend what he thought would be an anti-Iraq war conference. “He was an idealistic boy who wanted to change the world,” his mother said. “He was angry about the upcoming war and wanted to do something about it. But he was also excited because he was beginning to learn about politics.”
The conference was organised by the Schiller Institute, an extremist political think-tank linked to a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche. He is an 87-year-old convicted fraudster who has made eight unsuccessful attempts to run as an independent candidate in the US presidential elections. Some of LaRouche’s more unusual claims include that the British monarchy and MI6 are behind the global drugs trade.
In the States, he is largely regarded as an amusing sideshow whose apocalyptic writings attract vulnerable people looking for answers. But underlying much of his work is a deep anti-Semitism that describes the world as being controlled by a mass Zionist conspiracy of bankers, lobbyists and politicians.
The Schiller Institute, run by his German-born wife, spreads that message around Europe; on the night Jerry died, LaRouche addressed the conference in Wiesbaden. In Jerry’s notes on the five days he spent there, Mrs Duggan discovered that her son had become aware of the anti-Semitic agenda of many LaRouche followers and had spoken out against them. “There were a lot of comments blaming the Jews for Iraq and he got up to say that he was Jewish and he didn’t support the war,” she said. “Whatever happened it’s clear he fell out with these people very quickly.”
La Rouche blames the CIA, MI6 and the KGB for any political or media criticism aimed in his direction. He described the Duggan case as a hoax contrived by “admirers of [former US Vice-President] Dick Cheney and Tony Blair”. Mrs Duggan’s efforts to investigate her son’s death is, he says, a “smear”.
Paul Canning, a former Scotland Yard forensic officer, has studied the 79 photographs taken by German investigators of the crash site and Jerry’s body. German police said he was hit by the Peugeot, then run over by the Volkswagen. But Mr Canning could not find evidence of tyre marks on the body. Nor was there any blood, flesh or hair on either car.
Mr Canning, who has investigated hundreds of road fatalities, believes this is “inconceivable”, reporting that he had never come across a high-speed collision of a car and pedestrian where no traces of blood are found. “I do not believe the images depict how Jerry came to meet his premature death,” he added. “It is possible that Jerry lost his life elsewhere, prior to being placed at the scene.”
Terence Merston, another former Met Police investigator who has studied the photographs, backs Mr Canning. “Based on my years of experience in attending thousands of crime scenes as a forensic scene examiner, it is my opinion that the evidence at the scene points towards Jeremiah’s death being extremely suspicious and not a road traffic accident,” he said. “It is also my view that the damage to the Peugeot car has been deliberately caused.”
But how did Jerry sustain the head injuries that killed him? A post-mortem by a British pathologist, Dr David Shove, discovered defence wounds on Jerry’s arms as well as blood in his lungs and stomach. At the speed that witnesses say he was struck, he would have been killed instantly, but the blood in his lungs and stomach (caused by breathing in and swallowing after a major haemorrhage) suggest he was alive for some time, after intense trauma.
Mrs Duggan said: “What we really need is for Germany to look again at my son’s death.” But the German authorities are reluctant to act. A bid by German lawyers claiming police breached human rights laws by failing to investigate properly has floundered for four years in the country’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court. Police in Wiesbaden have refused to reinvestigate, or reopen their files.
Now, a British inquest is the best opportunity the Duggan family has for finding out what really happened to Jerry. “It’s been a long and difficult journey but I’m beginning to think we may be nearing the end,” a visibly exhausted Mrs Duggan added. “From the moment I got that call it’s been a seven-year fight for justice. I can’t stop now.”
7. The rest of the program recapitulated stories presented in the second half of FTR #707.
With the 2nd round of the French election approaching, the courting of Le Pen’s National Front voting block has begun. Sarkozy looks likely to lose on the May 6 second round of voting BUT he could win if he can secure 80% of the far-right vote. With two-thirds of Sarkozy’s voters appearing to support such an alliance, that’s not an inconceivable outcome. But with only 60% of Le Pen’s voters indicating that they plan on voting for Sarkozy it looks like some fascist pandering is on the menu. Le Pen, herself, seems open to backing Sarkozy but with the condition that Sarkozy publicly say he would support a far-right candidate over the Socialists in the second round of legislative elections where Sarkozy’ party isn’t fielding a candidate. His party has ruled out a deal with the National Front for cabinet positions, but they have yet to answer Le Pen’s question about backing the National Front in legislative races. This should be a revealing couple of weeks coming up in France:
http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/04/hungary-no-longer-democracy
Hungary is no longer a democracy
Europe has been slow to act, but it is not too late.
By Benjamin Abtan Published 02 April 2013
It is now a fact: Hungary is no longer a democracy.
President János Áder has just signed the implementation decrees for new constitutional reforms that wipe out what was left of opposition forces against the government.
More particularly, the Constitutional Court is no longer allowed to give its opinion about the content of laws and to refer to its own case-law – which results in the loss of almost all monitoring power on the legislature and the executive.
This meticulous destruction of democracy and its values – whose starting point was the landslide election of Fidesz in 2010 – has taken place over months and months, under everybody’s eyes.
The attack was clear and continuous: crippling restriction of the freedom of the press, political direction of the Central Bank, inclusion in the Constitution of Christian religious references and of the “social utility” of individuals as a necessary condition for the enforcement of social rights, deletion of the word “Republic” in the same Constitution to define the country’s political system, condemnation of homosexuality, criminalisation of the homeless, attacks against women’s rights, impunity afforded to perpetrators of racist murders, the strengthening of a virulent anti-Semitism . . .
Only a few days ago, prime minister Viktor Orban officially decorated three extreme right-wing leading figures: journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo, known for his diatribes against the Jews and the Roma people, who he compares to “monkeys”; anti-Semitic archaeologist Kornel Bakav, who blames the Jews for having organized the slave trade in the Middle-Age; finally, “artist” Petras Janos, who proudly claims his proximity to the Jobbik and its paramilitary militia, responsible for several racist murders of Romani people and heiress of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, that organised the extermination of Jews and Gypsies during the Second World War.
This political degradation gives us a gruesome historical and political lesson. Throughout the twentieth century, representative democracy suffered the attacks of the two major totalitarian systems of the century – Nazism and Communism. Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, it is under the blows of an anti-European, nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic populism that democracy has fallen, at the heart of Europe, amidst the indifference of the European Union and of too many of its citizens and leaders.
Obsessed by economic and financial issues, too indifferent to its fundamental values of freedom, equality, peace and justice, the EU has abandoned the fight to promote or even maintain democracy as the political system of its member states.
Unlike Putin’s Russia, for example, Hungary is not a world power, and realpolitik cannot be invoked as a reason for this desertion. Since Hungary is strongly dependent on European subsidies and assistance, and since the EU has ominously shown in Greece how its financial support can be politicised to the extreme, its supposed lack of room for manoeuvre cannot be invoked either.
The fundamental reason is unfortunately as simple as it is worrying: it is a lack of commitment of the citizens and European leaders towards representative democracy as a political system.
This is why, since his re-election in 2010, Orban has received the unfailing support of many European leaders, notably from his own political family; this is also why the European Commission does not use any of the instruments available – though it does have many – to enforce the EU’s fundamental values.
For example, the Commission, the Parliament and the European Council, where the states are represented, can act in concert to pursue actions under Article 7 of the EU Treaty, introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 in order to avoid any backward step on democracy for any EU member state. Article 7 intends to suspend the voting rights of a country within the Council in case of a “potential violation of common values”.
In Hungary, however, the stage of risk was overstepped a long time ago. Actions under Article 7 should therefore be urgently taken, as a first step towards a strong EU commitment to defend democracy and its values.
Similarly, European civil society must continue to commit itself strongly to support Hungarian democrats who bravely fight within the country itself.
If the EU and civil society were not to commit themselves with the determination required by the gravity of the situation, we would be doomed to witness its rapid decay, in Hungary and soon elsewhere, if the European commitment turned out to be insufficient.
Let there be no mistake: what is at stake here is the nature of the European project and the ability of Europe to preserve our common and most precious commodity: democracy. For several decades, the choice between barbarism and democracy has never been so obvious.
Resolutely, we have to choose Europe and democracy.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21740743
11 March 2013
Hungary defies critics over change to constitution
Hungary’s parliament has adopted a package of constitutional changes proposed by the ruling Fidesz party which critics say undermine democracy.
The conservative party has two-thirds of the seats in parliament, but the measures were approved overwhelmingly as opposition MPs boycotted the vote.
The amendment tightens up the laws on higher education, homelessness, election campaigns and family rights.
The EU expressed concern about the bill, which defies some court rulings.
“These amendments raise concerns with respect to the principle of the rule of law, EU law and Council of Europe standards,” a statement by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland said.
Protesters gathered outside the building and were planning a march to the president’s palace.
Before the vote, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused the EU of interfering in Budapest’s domestic affairs.
The lengthy amendment overturns earlier constitutional court rulings and limits the court’s right to challenge laws passed by parliament in future. It also includes:
Restrictions on political advertisements in the publicly run media during election campaigns
A rule that university students can only get state grants if they pledge to work in Hungary after graduation
Fines or prison terms for homeless people who sleep on the streets.
It is the fourth amendment to Hungary’s new basic law since it came into force just 14 months ago — a fact which helps underpin criticism that the new constitution was both hurried and flawed, the BBC’s Nick Thorpe in Budapest reports.
Critics at home and abroad say the amendment dismantles the architecture of democracy established since the fall of communism, and allows Fidesz to cement its own ideology at the heart of the state.
‘Scandalous’ ruling
The measure was passed by 265 votes to 11, with 33 abstentions.
Fidesz and its allies the Christian Democrats voted for, along with three independents.
The opposition Socialists boycotted the vote, walking out of parliament and hanging black flags from their windows to symbolise a black day for Hungarian democracy.
Leader Attila Mesterhazy said Mr Orban’s aim was to “take revenge on the constitutional court, students, opposition parties, and all those who do not do as the government wishes”.
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=334699
Romanian state TV airs Christmas carol about burning Jews, celebrating Holocaust
By JTA
11/12/2013
Song includes lyric: “This is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”
A Romanian public broadcaster distanced itself from a Christmas carol celebrating the Holocaust that aired on the new channel.
TVR3 Verde, a television channel for rural communities, presented the carol on December 5 during its maiden transmission.
Sung by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, it featured the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth, only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”
In a statement Tuesday, TVR3 said it did not select the carol but only broadcast songs that were chosen and compiled by the Center for Preservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture, which belongs to the eastern county of Cluj.
TVR considers the selection “an uninspired choice and therefore notified the Cluj County Council of this,” the broadcaster’s statement read.
MCA Romania, a local watchdog on anti-Semitism, has written to Romanian President Traian Basecu and to Prime Minister Victor Viorel Ponta, to complain about the broadcast.
“We are shocked to see that the Romanian Public Television Channel 3 broadcast an anti-Semitic Christmas carol,” Maximillian Marco Katz and Marius Draghici of MCA Romania wrote in the letter. “It is outrageous that none in the audience took a stance against the anti-Semitic Christian carol that incites to burn the Jews.”
They added it was “absolutely unacceptable that TVR 3 tried to deny responsibility” by claiming it was the responsibility of Cluj County.
Here’s a useful tip for any European and American White Supremacists looking to engage in some cross-continental networking: Budapest will let you hold your pan-continental White Supremacists conference although some of you might be arrested:
Note that the statement that Jared Taylor’s ideas “obviously hold little sway with established political parties or institutions” is really only accurate if you assume the GOP isn’t an established political party.
Continuing...
“That’s a good question. I think it might be possible to run as a Republican under certain circumstances, but we are really very far behind our European comrades on this. They’ve been much more successful at expressing themselves politically.” Baby steps, Jared, baby steps.