For years, the Hungarian leader promoted the idea that shadowy global forces were conspiring to meddle in Hungary’s politics, prompting criticism that he was using antisemitic narratives to distract from the country’s challenges.
Now, Orbán appears to be returning to the theme.
Honest question: Is the Hungarian leadership’s hate against Soros actually (more nakedly) antisemitic in its messaging or does it rather stem from Soros probably being the only billionaire invested in Hungarian politics who’s not an Orban crony?
Granted, it can be extremely hard to discern, and I do know the concept of dog-whistling. There’s also definitely an overlap in the groups of people vilifiying Gates (not Jewish but influential), vilifiying Soros (Jewish and influential), and believing in Zionist Space Lasers (antisemitic conspiracy theory).
The short answer is that it’s complicated, yes there is some dog whistling because it appeals to a certain voter base, and fidesz’s biggest competition are far right parties. But this is a common issue all over Europe, a general shift to the right.
On the other hand, Orban and Netanjahu are close allies, the government supports Israel, the government is using Israel’s Pegasus spy software against Hungarians, so there’s a close, supportive relationship.
The main theme here, in my opinion, is this continuous campaign strategy of inventing villains that Orban can fight and win against. The more imaginary the better, as it leaves more room for controlling the narrative.
Here’s a reddit link (there’s not significant Hungarian present here yet…) of an excellent side by side how they rinse and repeat the same rhetoric
Edit:a direct link to the photo automatically loaded and generated reddit traffic. Replaced it with a post link, to prevent that.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A newly announced billboard campaign is raising concerns that the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is once again using antisemitic tropes to further his political goals at home.
For years, the Hungarian leader promoted the idea that shadowy global forces were conspiring to meddle in Hungary’s politics, prompting criticism that he was using antisemitic narratives to distract from the country’s challenges.
The billboards are part of a so-called national consultation “on the defence of our sovereignty”, which includes a questionnaire that the Hungarian government will mail to each citizen on issues such as EU support for Ukraine.
For months, Orbán’s government has negotiated with the European Commission with the aim of unfreezing billions of euros earmarked for Hungary that the EU had suspended overrule of law concerns.
“To the extent that this bill may seek to criminalise and or intimidate independent civil society and media organisations, that is very dangerous, and I hope that’s not the path that Hungary chooses to go down,” the US ambassador in Budapest, David Pressman, said earlier this week.
“Soros has long been a lightning rod for antisemitic conspiracies,” said Ali Bricman, the director of EU affairs at B’nai B’rith International, in a social media post.
The original article contains 519 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
