In a disturbing development which should set off alarm bells in Europe, nearly one million Hungarians voted for Jobbik, The Movement for a Better Hungary, in Hungary’s April 6 national election. Twenty percent of voters cast their ballots for Jobbik, making it the second largest bloc in parliament.
Responding to Jobbik’s electoral success, the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, called it a “dark day” for Hungary. He’s right, of course. Jobbik, which was established 11 years ago as a “radical and patriotic Christian” political party, is a disgusting fascist party masquerading as a bland right-wing populist party.
Of late, Jobbik has attempted to moderate its nasty image as a propagator of anti-Roma and antisemitic sentiment. Pandering to Hungarians fed up with the excesses of capitalism, Jobbik’s young leader, Gabor Vona, has promoted himself as an anti-capitalist and has focused on less controversial issues such as corruption in government and political correctness.
These public relations exercises may have fooled some Hungarians into believing that Jobbik has shed its extremist ethno-nationalist policies. But nothing could be further from the truth. Even Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party in France, holds her nose at the mention of Jobbik.
The founders of Jobbik may not admit it, but they are the children of the Arrow Cross, the pre-World War II fascist organization that demonized Jews, aligned itself with Nazi Germany and ruled Hungary during the waning months of the Holocaust, during which more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and murdered.
Let’s call a spade a spade. Since its founding, Jobbik has compiled a record as an ethnocentric and reactionary party.
Vona, its savvy leader, has pretty much kept his mouth shut and refrained from mouthing compromising comments that might tarnish his reputation as a cautious operator. But other Jobbik members have not been as careful.
Earlier this year, Tibor Agoston, a Jobbik organizer, referred to the Holocaust as a “holoscam.” Last year, Jobbik activists protested a World Jewish Congress meeting in Budapest, claiming it was “a Jewish attempt to buy up Hungary.”
In 2012, Jobbik’s deputy parliamentary leader, Marton Gyongyos, posted remarks on its website urging the Hungarian government “to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here … and pose a national security threat to Hungary.” In the same year, Zsolt Barath, a Jobbik parliamentarian, praised an outlandish 1882 blood libel trial.
Five years ago, Krisztina Moravi, one of its parliamentary representatives and a human rights lawyer, condemned herself as a racist by referring to the “circumcised dicks” of Jews. In further inflammatory comments, Moravi accused Israel of “mass murder” and “genocide” during its invasion of the Gaza Strip. Heaping yet more insults on Israel, she branded Israelis as “lice-infested, dirty murderers,” a line that could have been culled straight from the filth of Nazi propaganda.
As if these lies are not enough, Jobbik has tried to rehabilitate Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s supreme leader from 1920 to 1944. Last year, for example, Jobbik members unveiled a bronze bust of Horthy in Budapest. Under Horthy’s foul administration, lest it be forgotten, Jews were subjected to antisemitic restrictions, forced into slave labor battalions and deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
This is the obscene legacy that Jobbik glorifies mindfully.