AFP
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NOS News•today, 21:36
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A close adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has resigned over a speech in which Orbán made racist remarks. According to Zsuzsa Hegedüs, there was talk of a “pure Nazi speech” that “even Joseph Goebbels” would have liked. Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.
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Hegedüs and Orbán have known each other since 2002. In her letter of resignation, she writes that Orbán’s “illiberal turn” – the increasingly authoritarian approach of his government with ultra-conservative homophobic and xenophobic thought – already made her doubt her position, but that Orbán’s statements last Saturday are the last straw: “This goes against all my values.”
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Orbán spoke on Saturday at a meeting in Băile Tuşnad, Romania, a municipality whose inhabitants are largely Hungarian-speaking. At that place, where he speaks every year, he has delivered several large ideologically charged speeches over the years.
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‘No longer nations’
This time he made a diatribe against the mixing of European and non-European ‘races’. Orban does not see Europeans who have mutual relationships and have children as a problem. “People within Europe mix with each other. In Central Europe, for example, we are a mix of peoples living in their own European homeland. This is what we fought for: we are willing to mix, but we don’t want peoples of become a mixed race.” Countries in which that is accepted are “no longer nations,” Orbán claimed.
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Orbán’s statements fit in a pattern of rhetoric directed against migrants. Earlier he also spoke of “ethnic homogeneity” as a precondition for economic prosperity. He also accused Hungarian-American-Jewish businessman George Soros of financing illegal migration to Europe. Soros is the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
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Statements like Orbán’s are commonplace among radical and far-right allies in the West. FVD leader Thierry Baudet made similar statements a few years ago by warning of a “homeopathic dilution” of the Dutch population “with all the nations of the world, so that there will never be a Dutchman again”. He also advocated a “dominant white Europe”.
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Jewish community concerned
In far right circles, there is a conspiracy theory that a globalist elite wants to replace the white population of Europe with a non-white population. In his speech, Orbán also referred to this by saying that it is an “ideological trick of the international left to say that the European population is already a mixed race” and does not see that as a problem.
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Commenting on Hegedüs’ letter of resignation, Orbán denies using racist ideas: “You can’t really accuse me of racism after 20 years of working together. You know better than anyone that my government in Hungary has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to anti-Semitism and racism.”
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The Hungarian Jewish community is nevertheless outraged by Orbán’s statements, which have “caused serious concerns within the community”. Hungary’s chief rabbi responded on Facebook: “I think there is only one human race on this planet: Homo sapiens sapiens.”
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