Comment: 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.
“Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power” by Walter Mayr; Spiegel Online; 4/9/2010.
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.” . . .
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