Holocaust survivors slam 'stupid, dangerous' remarks by Hungary's Orban
Jewish community representatives on Tuesday voiced alarm after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke out against creating "peoples of mixed race".
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In a speech in Romania's Transylvania region, which has a large Hungarian community, the 59-year-old ultra-conservative prime minister spoke against mixing with "non-Europeans".
Terming Orban's speech "stupid and dangerous", the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) called on the EU to continue to distance itself from "Orban's racist undertones and to make it clear to the world that a Mr. Orban has no future in Europe."
"It's not just Auschwitz survivors in Hungary who are alarmed and appalled by the recent statements by Hungarian Prime Minister Orban," according to IAC vice-president Christoph Heubner in a statement.
"The fact that Viktor Orban is now underlining his racist, right-wing populist and anti-European policies is further evidence . . . that he . . . wants to erase the values of the European Union, which is precisely why survivors of the Holocaust find Orban's sstatements dumb, stupid and dangerous."
Heubner called on Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer to confront the Hungarian leader when he hosts Orban in Vienna later this week.
'Pure Nazi text'
Orban's speech also led a member of the prime minister's inner circle, sociologist Zsuzsa Hegedus, to resign. Hegedus described the speech as a "pure Nazi text", and, according to the website of the newspaper Heti Világgazdaság, wrote an open letter to Orban saying that she has to "end a relationship due to such a shameful position, which ... contradicts all my basic values."
‼️PM Viktor Orbán's long-time adviser, Zsuzsa Hegedüs resigns, telling his boss in a letter that "I don't know how you didn't notice that you were turning your earlier anti-migrant and anti-Europeanism into a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels". @hvg_hu:https://t.co/lsUYhQW7nB pic.twitter.com/eCqZge4XDO
— Szabolcs Panyi (@panyiszabolcs) July 26, 2022
Orban gave the controversial speech on 23 July at the Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp in Transylvania, Romania.
The long exposé focused on what he called the "demise of Western culture" which tries to export its ideas of democracy "loathed by other countries."
But, says Orban, over the last century, the global balance of power gradually shifted with countries that control the energy resources from the US and Europe in 1900 to Russia and the Middle East today, with "50 per cent of Africa’s total raw material exports going to China."
French novel
The assets of the West - "military power and capital" - won't be enough to sustain superiority in the long term, he says. Moreover, anti-Russian sanctions over the Ukraine war are backfiring. "Now that we are not buying from the Russians, we have effectively shifted Russian energy towards China, and China has thus eliminated its energy dependence," dixit Orban.
In the most controverial part of the speech Orban says that "the most important challenge is population, or demography," in Hungary there are "more funerals than baptisms," the population of the original white, caucasian inhabitants is shrinking, and Europe is overrun by migrants, "splitting" the continent.
"Around 2050, the laws of mathematics will lead to the final demographic shift: cities in this part of the continent will see the proportion of residents of non-European origin rising to over 50 percent of the total," and he cites the 1973 novel Le Camp des Saints, by French writer Jean Raspail, a fictional account on the destruction of Western civilization through Third World mass immigration to France and the West.
'Misinterpreted'
Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said Orban's speech had been misinterpreted by those who "clearly don't understand the difference between the mixing of different ethnic groups that all originate in the Judeo-Christian cultural sphere, and the mixing of peoples from different civilisations".
In his speech, Orban also seemed to allude to the gas chambers of the German Nazi regime when criticising Brussels' plan to reduce European gas demand by 15 percent.
"I do not see how it will be enforced -- although, as I understand it, the past shows us German know-how on that," he said.
Hungary's Jewish community has also slammed the speech.
"There is only one race on this Planet: the Homo Sapiens Sapiens," chief rabbi Robert Frolich wrote on Facebook.
'Zero tolerance'
In response to the criticism, Orban stressed "his government's policy of zero tolerance when it comes to anti-Semitism and racism.
"You cannot seriously accuse me of racism after 20 years of collaboration," he argued.
Bogdan Aurescu, foreign minister of fellow EU member Romania, said Orban's "ideas" were "unacceptable".
A spokesman for the European Commission said it never commented on statements by European politicians.
"What's clear is that the EU has a certain number of values which are enshrined in the treaties and it implements policies in line with these values and these treaty articles," spokesman Eric Mamer told reporters.
(With agencies)
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