Hungary / 15-05-2012
Fascists marching unhindered in Hungary
Budapest - Thousands of Neo-Fascists and their supporters demonstrated on Saturday in Budapest city center. The extreme right-wing Jobbik party, which is represented in Parliament, called for the demonstration against the austerity policy declared by the government. Tenor: only Jobbik represents the Hungarian people, all the others are traitors. One looks in vain for a civil or governmental anti-Fascist organization.
Between 4,000-5,000 supporters of the Neo-Fascist Jobbik party gathered on Saturday in front of the headquarters of Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and listened to speeches for more than an hour. The procession moved off along Andrassy Boulevard and central Budapest to the headquarters building of the Government party, Fidesz. In the course of the procession, passers-by who expressed criticism of the march as well as journalists, were attacked. No counter-demonstration took place.
Neo-Nazis cheating the law and the police by means of disguises
Some of the demonstrators were wearing uniforms of "the New Hungarian Guard" and of "the Hungarian National Guard", the successor to the "Hungarian Guard" whose activity has been banned. This organization organizes marches in villages in which it demonstrates against the gypsies and protests about the State's monopoly of power. There was a thin police presence at the site.
In the meantime, demonstrators bore many symbols of the Arrow Cross party (fascist flags, Arrow Cross and similar symbols) as well as Wehrmacht helmets and various other uniforms which purported to give the appearance that they were marching in civilian clothes, so that the police would have no cause to disperse the demonstration. The ineffectiveness of the laws enacted by the Government after the Gyongyospata incidents is proof, for the Government, that the mere enactment of legislation is not a threat to the extreme right.
Jobbik is threatening that it will come to power within a short period of time.
The speeches and the placards expressed condemnation of all the parties within the democratic spectrum in Hungary who were referred to in the speeches as enemies of the people. According to them, the solution is that MSZP belongs to the past, Fidesz to the present, and Jobbik to the future. Everywhere, the slogan "For a better future" was heard - the election slogan of the Fascist Arrow Cross movement of the 1940's - and the words of the song "White Pride".
The demonstrators presented themselves as "representatives of the people". They claimed that the austerity policy is aimed against the people, the former Prime Minister Gyurczany and the present Prime Minister Orban were described as dictators "perpetrating crimes against the Hungarian people". A demand was also made by the demonstrators to leave the European Union and to terminate the talks with the IWF. They wanted to give them the "international financial code" (antisemitic expressions). On the sidelines, there were also calls heard condemning "the escalation of gypsy crime" which they falsely compared to Fascist terror, as well as a demand for recognition of a "Great Hungary". Finally, the demonstrators demanded the setting-up of a "national guard all over the country".
A demand to set limits on the ruling party was only raised halfheartedly and for tactical reasons.
The Jobbik party and the group of heterogeneous supporters, which includes civilians and Neo-Fascists, again sought to raise, by means of the demonstration - as had already been done several days previously at the "May Day celebration" - the claim that Prime Minister Orban had compromised with the European Union in respect of the IWF talks. Fidesz is indeed succeeding in "looking out for" supporters due to its law and order policy, but it cannot neglect the conservative "center" and the Neo-Fascists are benefitting from this.
Notwithstanding the fact that politicians of the Fidesz party always come out against the extremist expressions of Jobbik, collaboration between the two parties exists in the rural areas. Jobbik and the "Garden" have grown further during the term of the MSZP Government, although Fidesz has used the split between them in order to strengthen its grip on power.
This is not a case of prohibitions, there are no signs of opposition
Jobbik represents subversive, inhuman, and unconstitutional objectives but a demand for a cessation of its activity on the part of the ruling government party is not on the agenda, either for tactical reasons or owing to the fact that their ideology, in so far as it is concerned with the "State", is not much different from that represented by the Government. Additionally, the incitement against the European Union and antisemitism finds a willing ear in both parties as could be seen recently in the pro-Government rallies in which one of the founders of Fidesz, a personal friend of Orban, made an antisemitic speech.
Fidesz makes more of a show of being concerned with an examination of "the Communist past" than with the present dangers of Neo-Fascism, inter alia, by the setting up of a Parliamentary Committee on the revival of the Stalinist and post Stalinist era, and has succeeded in obtaining exclusive access to the secret documents of the Stasi which were supposed "to expose those who were responsible". In addition, laws and acts such as "the socialist law" serves in building a hostile selective picture while praising the Horthy and Great Hungary period. There is no Commission currently in existence that is capable of bringing to light anti-State actions or actions that contravene human rights. The Courts are passive. For Fidesz and its supporters, the enemy is on the left. A merger between the parties is a civil obligation of the utmost importance, but not a word on the subject has been heard from the new President.
The apathy of the citizens, of Hungarian society, the parties and the positions of the anti-Fascists, is an embarrassment. One cannot imagine a march of thousands of Neo-Fascists taking place in other cities in Western Europe (Dresden or Berlin, for example) without any counter-action by all those who believe in democracy. In Budapest, only the "March of the Living" takes place on Holocaust Day, and nothing else.
It may well be possible for the anti-Fascist organizations in Germany and in other places to try and express their "internationalism" in a practical way, at least once instead of just breaking the windows of several branches of banks. Every year, buses appear that are full of tourist demonstrators coming to participate in a march against homophobia and in favor of homosexuals. Why is it so difficult to organize a general demonstration against Fascism ....?
