Are you a Jew, a Gypsy or attracted to your own sex? Members of Hungarian opposition party Fidesz, widely expected to win power in spring 2010, may have a word or two for you.
“I love Hungary, I love Hungarian people, and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially, Hungary,” said Fidesz Member of Parliament Oszkar Molnar, who is also mayor of Edeleny, a town of 10,300 inhabitants in Eastern Hungary. Molnar made his remarks at the end of 2008 on a local TV channel, but they’ve just burst into national prominence. (Video in Hungarian here.)
The same official in the summer claimed as fact that pregnant Roma women take medication to give birth to “fools to receive higher family subsidies. I have checked this and it’s true; they hit their bellies with a rubber hammer so that they’ll give birth to handicapped kids.”
In reaction to Molnar’s words, Fidesz President Viktor Orban said only that such remarks are “embarrassing.”
Such remarkable views aren’t unique in the party. Fidesz parliamentarian Ilona Ekes wrote a letter to the police and held a press conference in an attempt to ban a gay pride event in Budapest in August, saying that homosexuality was a mental illness and demonstrators would frighten people.
And Ekes is a member of a member of the parliament’s human rights, minority and religion committee.
In reaction to Ekes’s words, a Fidesz spokesman said it was her personal opinion.
Once Fidesz would have taken action against anyone espousing extreme views. But it’s more careful now after the success of the far-right Jobbik party.
According to pollster Szonda Ipsos’s October polls, 6% of the voters support Jobbik, which has gained three seats in the European Parliament in the June 2009 elections, while governing MSZP only has 10% and Fidesz has 36%.
Hungarian weekly HVG cited Peter Kreko, political analyst at think-tank Political Capital, saying that Fidesz doesn’t want to confront members who make provocative statements because it fears they’ll move over to Jobbik and take voters with them.
Fidesz has already changed policies and names a couple of times. It started as a libertarian, anti-communist party before the fall of the Berlin Wall that had an upper age limit of 35. It was in effect a youth movement. Fidesz is an acronym for “Alliance of Young Democrats”.
But it did badly in elections in 1994 so changed from liberal to conservative, leading to a slew of high-profile defections but eventually to winning the 1998 elections and being in power for four years.
Now it’s a heterogenic party with a center-right focus, open to the masses with different ideological wings. If Fidesz cracks down on extreme views then it’ll keep centre-ground voters. If it tolerates them then it risks losing centre votes, but may hold its own better against Jobbik. A difficult calculation.
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oh my , what has the world come too !! :oops:
I would also like to say that White Nationalists aka Nazi scum SUCK- BIGTIME.
Hilarious, MOLNAR is a Jewish name. He might have a few skeletons in his closet.