Ezra Levant examines Hungary’s defiance of globalist narratives, where Viktor Orbán’s four-term government restores Habsburg-era monuments and counters communist-era erasure while boosting birth rates to 1.7 with tax exemptions for large families. Contrasting Orbán’s resistance to mass immigration and LGBT ideology—like the 2020 child protection law—with George Soros’ alleged ties to oppressive regimes, Levant frames Hungary’s NATO-backed, low-carbon-tax stance as a bulwark against Western cultural shifts. Orbán’s leadership, rooted in 1956 revolution solidarity, may hold conservative policies in place even amid potential future instability. [Automatically generated summary]
I am over in Budapest, Hungary, doing a series of videos called theTruthaboutHungary.com.
I'd encourage you to check out that website for all of them.
Today's podcast is an interview I did with the executive director of the Danube Institute.
By the way, if you want to see the video version of this podcast, go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
You get the daily video version of my show.
And of course, we need that money to survive.
Unlike the CBC, we don't get money from Trudeau.
Never will.
So we rely on your $8 a month.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, I'm in Budapest to ask, what's the truth about Hungary?
It's July 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I've heard a lot of things about Hungary, but never firsthand.
It's partly because the Hungarian language is so unusual.
It has really no connection to English, whereas French, Spanish, Italian are all cousins of English, even German.
And if you know English, you can pick up those other languages rather quickly.
I find Hungarian to be impenetrable.
It's just not related.
And it's a small country, only 10 million people.
So it's not a dominant force in the world.
So what we hear about Hungary, we often hear through the filter of the media, which of course has its own agenda.
I find that the media, and I think you'll probably agree with me, is globalist, is environmentalist, is critical Marxist on cultural issues like sexuality and gender identity.
So a lot of the things that Hungary is doing as domestic and even foreign policy are at odds with the groupthink of the United Nations, the European Union, and the world press.
For example, their approach to immigration and refugee status is very different from the open borders approach of other European countries like France and Germany.
Also, Hungary believes in its Hungarian ethnic identity.
In fact, rather than tearing down statues, they're rebuilding them, including ones that were destroyed in the Second World War and never rebuilt since.
So there's a lot of interesting things about Hungary that we can't find out by reading the New York Times or the Globe and Mail or CNN.
And I'm here for about a week.
I'm in Hungary, and then I'm going down to Transylvania, a region in Romania that used to be part of Hungary, where there's a gathering of ethnic Hungarians.
I'm going to try and learn a little bit more.
And if possible, I'll see if I can get a one-on-one with Viktor Orban, the prime minister himself, who's been re-elected four times, if I'm not mistaken.
He's unpopular everywhere except in Hungary, and there's a reason for that.
We'll try and find out.
If you want to see all of our reports from Hungary, they're at a special website we put together called the TruthaboutHungary.com.
We crowdfunded our journey here, of course, as we always do.
I'm here and Lincoln J, our videographer.
And if you want to chip in, feel free to do so at thetruthabouthungary.com.
We're going to put all our stories from Hungary on that website.
And here is a one-hour interview I did.
So that's a lot of TV viewing.
It's with the executive director of the Danube Institute, which is an English language focused think tank that is designed to promote Hungary's interests and frankly the views of the government of the day, conservative national identity, things like that.
So he's coming from a point of view and so am I.
I thought it was an interesting discussion.
Take a look and let me know what you think.
Ezra Levant here from Rebel News.
I'm in Budapest, Hungary for a few days.
We're working on a special project called theTruth AboutHungary.com.
Why is Hungary important?
Why would anyone in Canada, the United States, care about it?
I mean, mathematically, it's a fairly small country, just 10 million people.
It's hard to understand because the Hungarian language is very different from the bundle of languages that we're used to in the West.
English, Spanish, French, Italian, all very similar.
It's impenetrable to follow things in Hungarian.
There's not a large Hungarian expat community in the West.
In Canada, in the United States, there's a lot of Italian Americans, Irish Americans who still have an affection for the home country.
There are some Hungarians in the West, but there's very few.
So why is Hungary important?
And why should people in the West study it and maybe learn from it?
And why are there forces in the West that seem to hate Hungary almost irrationally?
Well, that's one of the things we're going to look into during our visit here to Hungary.
And one of the stops that we made, and I'm so glad we did, is the Danube Institute, which is a think tank designed to promote Hungary in the debate I've just discussed.
And I'm delighted to spend some time right now with Ishvan Kiss, the executive director of the Danube Institute.
Thanks very much for your hospitality.
Well, thank you for having us.
Well, it's a pleasure.
And first of all, your office is incredible.
You're in the palace district, which has been completely rebuilt and renovated.
Tell us a little bit about where we are in Budapest and what's going on, because I've really never seen anything like it.
The scale of the renovation and the refurbishment of the national monuments, I think we're tearing down monuments in the West.
You're rebuilding them here in Hungary.
Yes, well, I think it's a difference in attitudes towards our history.
And I'm actually quite saddened about some of the things going on in the West where you're, I think, trying to destroy or at least ignore, sometimes even rewrite your history.
Well, this is luckily much less the case here.
So we're in the castle district, which historically has been the seat of kings and the executive.
And sadly, as most of Budapest, the castle district was very heavily hit during the Second World War.
So a lot of the original palaces, offices have been basically completely destroyed.
And these never have been restored during the communist times, partly because of two reasons.
One was they never really had enough resources, but the second one was actually ideological, because the communist leaders of the country wanted to show the Horty regime and even the Austro-Hungarian Empire as this very reactionary, backwards power.
So they actually kind of tried to show the castle district as a medieval palace.
So they never completely rebuilt the palace, which was the seat of the Habsburgs when they were in Hungary.
And also governor Admiral Horty during the two world, between the two world wars period, was also based in the palace.
It was much more grandiose.
And they never wanted to rebuild this and never wanted to rebuild some of these grand palaces and offices because they wanted to show an image to the average populace that the castle was actually a medieval place, kind of hinting that these regimes were medieval and backwards.
So actually they even dug up kind of mock ruins at some of the former palaces.
They added some mock medieval bastions as well.
So there's this very strong ideological concept showing how backward that system was.
While the current government is actually trying to restore some of the grandeur of the city coming from the Habsburg empire, but also from kind of this golden period of Hungary, which was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
So they're actually rebuilding a lot of these former offices, palaces.
And the building we're here now was actually a very nice home for one of the barons of Hungary, who was also a prime minister of Hungary for a time.
And this building also got a direct bomb here during the Second World War, so it was completely destroyed.
Actually, 10 years ago, there was a ruin here, nothing here.
And actually, the Central Bank of Hungary rebuilt this building.
They wanted to use it, but in the end, they gave it to the government.
And then the government actually gave it to a foundation which we are part of, the Botien Laj Foundation, which is named after the first prime minister of Hungary.
I think that when you only have 10 million Hungarians in the country, and a few million overseas, but it's a small group.
And one of the things I hear from Hungary is that they want to keep the ethnic nature of the country because there's no other place that's Hungarian.
And I think there's other small countries like that, that if they don't fight to keep their flavor, they'll be lost in the world.
I mean, I think that's what happens to small countries.
I mean, in my country, Canada, the province of Ontario is larger than Hungary, both in terms of population and geography.
How has the Viktor Orban administration addressed the issues that would come with dissipating, like, I think reviving the history and reminding people of the history is one way, but how about the future?
Demographically, what is happening in Hungary and how is the government trying to get more Hungarians?
Yes.
Well, if you want to understand the Hungarian psyche, what you were saying is very important.
So Hungary was always, well, during its history, sometimes was much bigger than it is today, but it always was relatively small compared to the Slavic countries in the neighborhood or the German countries in the neighborhood.
So if you look at some of the earliest examples of Hungarian literature, they were already very afraid of getting, you know, destroyed or basically assimilated by the Slavic or the German people of the region.
So there's this constant fear of Hungarians that are unique language in the middle of Europe without any real language relatives in the region will just slowly disappear.
And I think the government understood this Hungarian mentality and that's one of the reasons why they are successful in elections as well.
And what they have been trying to do is kind of an interesting alternative to some of the ideologically driven ideas of the progressive left in Western Europe because they said no to immigration.
I think in Western Europe there's this concept that it's two things basically.
One is that you cannot really do anything about the demographic situation, so because of several reasons, but people will not have more kids.
And partly because of this, but also because it's good for your economy and all the other usual theories, immigration is a better way to basically increase your population and maintain your society's welfare system.
And I think our government choose a completely different path.
They said no to this, and they said that you can actually help your own people to have more kids.
Because if you look at the literature, then actually a lot of, even in Western Europe, even in very progressive countries like Sweden, most of them actually want to have more kids.
They just, because of economic reasons, mostly they just think that they cannot have more kids.
And FIDES, because of this, introduced several introduced several policies which would try to help people who are working to have more kids and kind of give economic benefits or at least cut back some of the disincentives to not to have kids.
So give me an example of how are they encouraging Hungarians to have more babies?
There are several policies.
There's tax breaks.
So one interesting policy is that actually if you have four kids as a woman, you will never have to pay personal income tax.
But even as a man or even if you have one kid, two kids, three kids, there are several tax breaks.
So for example, I have two kids.
I pay less taxes as a person who has no kids.
But I think what is really unique is what I mentioned, that actually women don't have to pay personal income tax if they have four kids.
That's incredible.
Is it working?
It seems to be working.
I mean, Hungary had a very disparative birth rate.
So we had 1.3, which was one of the lowest in- 1.3 for chili rates.
So the average family would have maybe one kid.
The odd woman would have two.
That's a good idea.
So 10 years ago, that was the starting point.
And now, even with COVID, it's 1.6, 1.7.
So there is an increase, which is not, you know, still not good.
But compared to 1.3, it's a significant growth.
And it happened, as I said, in the past five, six, seven years.
So we're hoping that on the long run, it's going to be much more successful.
And as I said, some of these policies have been regularly introduced.
So for example, the personal income tax has only been introduced a couple of years ago.
So we're hoping that this will improve even more.
And also, it's not just the birth rate.
So actually, marriage is doubled, which I think is very important because if you look at a lot of the statistics, a lot of the research, I mean, babies born in normal families, marriages have a much better life, are much happier, and also have really better expectations in life.
So I think...
So how is, has the government done anything to encourage marriages?
Yeah.
Yes.
What have they done?
Actually, you get, if you're married, you also get a tax break for two years.
It's called first marriage allowance or something like that, literally in English.
And also, it's easier to get some of the family support programs if you're married.
If you already have kids, then you can get it even if you're in a civil union.
But for example, if you just promise to have two, three kids to get some of these benefits, because you can do that and you have 10 years to deliver on that promise, you have to be married, for example.
So there are effective policies in trying to encourage people to be married instead of being in civil unions.
Isn't that interesting?
A pro-babies approach.
I'm just thinking the exact opposite was China's one-child policy for the longest time, which was devastating in so many ways.
Pushback Against LGBT Focus00:15:08
You make a good point about the economics of it, because I think that a lot of women go into the workplace because they feel they need that extra dough.
And by the time they do the math of childcare, it just doesn't work.
So the idea of being tax-free for life is incredible.
So I think money is part of it, but I think having an idea...
But also, if you don't mind me chipping in here, it's also allowing women to stay at home with the kids for a longer period.
For example, well it depends on the salary you make, but for average people, for the first half year after the baby was born, you can stay at home on your gross, so not net, on your gross salary.
And even afterwards, after about one and a half year of the kid, you still get a pretty good salary for staying at home.
And does that come from the company or from the government?
Both.
So it's actually a nice policy and it allows a lot of women to stay at home.
And also they tried to introduce policies which would help women to work part-time.
So four hours a day, 20 hours a week, policies like that.
So companies are now actually encouraged to do that and they can get tax benefits if they employ women part-time who have babies.
So I think it's also coming into the economic side of the whole thing, it's allowing women to work a bit, have more money with having more children as well.
Moving from 1.3 to 1.6 kids per family in five or ten years, it's actually an enormous change.
It's not yet 2.1 or whatever for replacing people, but that's a huge change.
And I imagine it takes years for these things to kick in.
But I don't think it's just economics.
I think there has to be a feeling of meaning and purpose.
And that's why I was, when we were coming in here to see the refurbishment, and it's not just of the buildings, it's the meaning and the history of the buildings and the identity.
And if Hungarians can feel that they're part of a national project, and I sense this in some other countries too.
For example, Israel, which has a high birth rate.
I think that country, even though it's under tremendous stress, it has a mission and an identity and a team spirit.
Everyone's in it together.
They join the army together.
And I feel like the policies that you talked about, you know, strengthening the family, reviving history, controlling immigration, being wary of outside powers, I feel like that might give people an identity that gives them a confidence.
I think a culture that's lost its confidence has lost its will to go on.
I see that in the West.
A huge identity crisis.
Even on a personal level, kids not even knowing who they are, so they choose to be transgender for any flavor, for some meaning.
There's a narcissism there, but they don't have other things to believe in.
Is that part of it?
Do Hungarians feel part of a larger project?
Are they hopeful and confident?
Well, Hungarians are usually a kind of pessimistic people because of our history.
So if you would ask an average Hungarian, they like to complain.
But I do think that they have a sense of purpose, yes, and also believe that things are going a bit better than they did 10, 20 years ago.
I mean, I myself, I remember Hungary 15 years ago under a socialist government, it was pretty bleak.
So if you looked at Budapest during that time, looked at the buildings, at public transport, it was far worse than it is now.
So this kind of feeling that a lot of our history is being restored, that there's a lot of development coming into the country.
I think that gives us a new sense of pride.
But also what you said, I think it's interesting and very important to have a focus on education.
So here we have kind of national curriculums, which the government also has a say in, and best focus on history to understand.
It's not propaganda, so we do understand the importance of critical thinking towards your history, but it's also not what is happening in some places in America where basically you're saying that all your history was terrible.
So we still have this sense that Hungary was always a freedom-loving country.
We're very famous about our revolutions and freedom fights against the Russians, against the Habsburgs, fighting against the Turks.
And I think most Hungarians feel this.
And actually some of the, how should I say, hostility we feel towards the European Union nowadays is a bit about this.
So we don't like foreign powers to tell us how to do things.
So that resonates very badly with the Hungarians.
And again, I think that's partly a reason for the success of Warban, because he understands that.
He understands that Hungarians don't like the EU telling us how to run things because, I mean, we had the Soviets, we had the Habsburgs, we are kind of fed up with that.
And we are very happy that we are independent now and we would like to chart our own independent course.
Just quickly on the transgender thing, and I know that might sound like a very strange question to ask, but I was in London recently and I didn't see very many British flags, the Union Jack.
I saw a few of them, but I saw hundreds of pride flags and the new transgender flag.
And I've never seen so many flags in my life.
I mean, other than during the coronation when they had the Union Jack.
But it's like a coronation every day.
But in the days I've been in Budapest, I haven't seen any of that.
And in flags and even in people, I haven't seen that sort of they them gender activism in the West.
I just haven't seen any of it.
And I understand Budapest would be the most liberal city in the country.
Has that just not come here yet?
Are your intellectual elites not part of that project?
Has there been some official pushback in some way?
I just, you know, I mean, I live in Toronto, which is a very transgender-oriented city too.
And to come here and to see men who are masculine and women who are feminine, it's sort of a shocking change from where I'm from.
I don't know if this is even a thing people talk about here.
Is it?
Sadly, it is.
So it's affecting us as well.
It's much less profound than it is in the West.
I'd been to London three weeks ago and I had the same experience you had.
I was really surprised.
Although it was Pride Month, so I guess that perhaps in an average month you wouldn't have that, but who knows?
And I was in New York, which was pretty much the same last week, actually.
So we do have it.
I mean, we have Netflix, we have HBO, and all these are spreading it.
But there has been pushback from the government.
One very important policy which we introduced and has been fighting against the European Union because they don't like it and it made us fairly infamous is the child protection law, which basically bans sexual propaganda in kindergartens and most of primary school.
And while we have said this is anti-trans, anti-homosexual, I mean, it does ban activism in homosexual, transgender extremism, but it would ban heterosexual activism if you would have that as well.
So you think that sexuality is not for kindergarten kids or small primary children.
So over, let's say, 13 years old, of course, you have to have sexual education classes.
That's fine.
But if you're a six-year-old or eight-year-old, I don't think you need that.
So there has been pushback.
And actually, because of this, some of the children books which show transgenderism, homosexuality, they now have to put those books at the adult section.
And there has been some uproar about that.
But there has been kind of a pushback.
And also, we've been trying to kind of, well, ban is perhaps a strong word, but now legally, it's very difficult to change your gender in Hungary.
Even if you would do it, my knowledge is, I'm not sure now how that's going on with the European Union because they tried to find us about that, but I think it's still in effect.
So even if you would change your gender, we have identity cards and it will still show your original gender assigned in birth.
So you cannot really be a proper transsexual in this sense in Hungary currently because your ID card will still show your assigned gender from birth.
So there has been actually significant pushback from the government, especially on the trans issue, less on the homosexual issue.
But there has been, and actually, I mean, I like what you said, but if you arrived a bit earlier, Saturday we had the gay pride protests or I'm not sure how to call it, but the kind of the festival in Budapest.
So on Saturday we'd have seen a lot of homosexuals and transsexuals because each year you have that and it's not banned by the government.
We see it as a normal protest.
Although I think there's sometimes a bit excessive sexual content on these parades, but I mean, what can you do?
And I'm not necessarily criticizing a particular orientation.
I'm just saying that the ideological total institutional capture by a political movement aimed at transitioning kids, I think that's very different from a regular pride parade.
I think in the West, you're starting to see people pulling back from the LGBT because of this new focus on kids and focus on changing your gender, including through medication and through surgery.
I just think that there's a qualitative difference between adult gay pride parade and I think that's why the government introduced this child protection law because we kind of tried to draw a line.
And I think that's and I'm hoping that that is going to be the downfall of these movements because I think if you look at for example how homosexuality has become accepted in the past 60 years it was a quite different process than how the trans movement is acting now.
So they never went after the kids.
They never said that if you don't want to have sex with the homosexual you're homophobic.
So they kind of left out I think the private.
We have this very proud tradition I think in the West that you separate the public and the private and you know in your private sphere as long as it's between two consenting adults we don't care what you do really.
But I think the trans movement is now actually going to the bedroom.
So they're actually looking at your own sexual preferences.
They're looking at your kids, which, I mean, the communists tried to do that.
And the Nazis tried to do that.
But luckily, they tried to break the kids away from the family.
In Hungary during the Soviet times, did they have a version of the young pioneers?
Of course.
Where they turned kids against their families?
They were trying to do that and it was more before the 56th Revolution.
I mean they had a very hard dictatorship and afterwards of course there was a blowback after the revolution itself but the regime became a bit softer.
So I think one of the deals actually the leader made during that time was we will leave out the communist things from your private life.
So even the communists after a while realized that they cannot go after your private life because people will just rebel.
But they did try to do that and it was very very hardcore.
So especially the Soviet Union if you look at it you had kind of movements about trying to turn the kids against parents.
You know if your parents said something reactionary or religious then you should report it.
So you had that, but even I think in the communist societies, after a while they realized that, I mean, people will not, I mean, it's just, I think in our Western mind, it's just so deeply in the separation of private and public.
And I'm hoping that this will be the downfall of this, because I think it's very dangerous when you go into the private and try to tell people what to do privately.
I was a libertarian for a time, so especially because of that, but even as a conservative, I think that's very dangerous.
So please leave my private life and my kids out of this.
The 1956 uprising was remarkable.
I mean, it was just barely a decade after the end of the Second World War.
It was really the first major rebellion against Soviet domination.
In the end, it didn't succeed.
A great number of Hungarians came to the West, including to Canada.
And what you're saying is that that at least caused the communists to temper themselves somewhat, as opposed to maybe Romania, where I think they were very harsh.
It's been 70 years since that.
Is that still an important part of the Hungarian political psychology is standing up and long on?
That was sort of the Tiananmen Square moment of Hungary.
Is that part of the discourse today?
Are there communist parties running in elections today?
Or have they been denormalized?
Is it socially acceptable to be a communist in Hungary in 2023?
It's much less acceptable than I think in the West.
So I think most people will not say that they're a communist.
There is a communist party and they run on the election, but they usually get 1% or even less.
And even the former communist party members, they actually evolved into the today.
I mean, today basically we have a socialist party and that is kind of the successor of the communist party.
But also the Socialist Party kind of break down after the 2010 election.
So there's now several parties which were actually part of the Socialist Party and some of them have still former communists in their leadership.
But they would never say they're communists.
Actually, most of the communists are now very pro-European, which is funny and strange, and also very neoliberal in their economics.
Again, very strange.
But they still have that dream of a global government.
Yes, but it's now not the Soviet Union and not the communist international.
Now it's the European Union and kind of the progressive international, which is, I think, quite strange and perhaps telling.
But we never say they're communist.
Well, when I was, for example, studying in Edinburgh, I would say 20, 30% of the students were very proudly communist, which is a Hungarian never understood, because here it would be very negative.
So 56 is still very important.
Why 56 Remains Taboo00:03:35
Most people remember it.
And especially because, you know, under communism, that was taboo.
So before you mentioned, we talked before about our prime minister's Viktor Orban speech during the fall of communism.
He was one of the first speeches where he referenced 56 and also said, you know, Russians go home.
But before that, for more than 30 years, you couldn't talk about the revolution.
If you talked about it, it was this reactionary, not a proper revolution, but something which was a fascist coup.
If you talked about it in other terms, you could get it to jail or get fined.
So I think because it was a taboo for so long, it's now still actually much more powerful than it would be if it wouldn't have been a taboo for 30 years under communism.
So you made reference to that.
Let's show a clip of that, because if I understand it correctly, this was the moment, the speech, that made Viktor Orban a political figure.
If I understand, he was a young student leader.
Yes.
And this was when the Berlin Wall was falling, when the Soviet Empire was crumbling, but they were still running things here in Hungary.
And there's still never Russian troops in Hungary.
So, set up this clip a little bit and we'll play a little bit just to show our viewers when Viktor Orban became a political figure.
Give us a one-minute intro to the clip.
Well, I think it was basically shocked people that somebody would say these words, especially Russians go home, because as I said, there was still a big Russian force in Hungary.
What was the year of this?
This is 89.
Yeah, so.
But the first half of that, 89.
So the Berlin world was still in the world.
It was still there.
Wow.
So this was before the end was.
Yeah, so it was still not clear what will happen.
And if you look at actually how the kind of deals between the opposition and the government party, nobody knew the real power structure.
So most of the opposition leaders thought that it will still take years, perhaps a decade, before there's going to be a full transition.
And then you have this young guy saying Russians go home.
And that really shocked people and it really made him.
He could have been disappeared for that.
Yes.
He could have been, he could have, under the law, he could have been arrested as a counter-revolutionary.
Yeah, he could have been beaten by the police, detained, perhaps even thrown into jail.
What was the reaction of others?
So this was at an event.
The regime was trying to increase its Hungarian bona fides by reburying a Hungarian hero.
They were trying to say, no, we're actually with you, the people.
Is that what it was?
Yeah, they were trying to kind of show 56 in a different light and kind of acknowledge some of the past, some of the sins of the past.
But I mean, there was a huge support towards Orban and towards, I mean, I think most of the communists see this realized that there's this sentiment in the Hungarian population that we have to chart our own way and the Russians really have to go home.
And that's why there was no real backlash in the end because they realized that people might not be with them.
Watch a little bit of that clip.
Why They Backed Down00:03:49
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Mind OMOI Notig EVER Tilantas utter hot vote Namzin Utosho Ashea for your new Cottipaludes Utterallitre Gonzashagioli at Peremchen or Mobile Head Church to make a nest Muenia on, not for a Domuncot.
Is VISA Kinsarita TECH branding Cat Oboz and Joe Ijakum Stabo OME DE MUST URA Macro Balun Kiutatalani VALO Yabon OKOR EVER Kilantas Uttra Hotbon VETA Turun MOI Fiatoroko Yevunket or Modior Socialista Munkashpar.
Eze pavoto di kopo shoban Eze Ebieta hoto de copo shoban, name chupane lediu koatiato, kanemi, aku watkazandu hus, but kitu johan evun kisho traxi.
Baratoy, mi fiatoro, shokbindent namir tung, omitalan terminates, of idiosha generatio samara.
Mi airtatlanu alum kodalut, koja fora damot, is onok ministerial case, namrig me kuruz bonjolahu, mavara nanuray breadneck, for the noding the refuge politicayana poetoe.
It doesn't mean that the party and party leaders, who have made them a lot of hard work in the past, they will be able to make them a lot of fun.
We don't want to do it because we don't want to do it for 31 years of time.
Nemiyar shank in a cussenetazir, nat mamar muka tatnek politica if Modior political events, the democratic artists of the world, and the people who are not able to do it.
Bekes Erdekut?00:02:33
Polgártársak, ma 33 évvel a magyar forradalom és 31 évvel az utolsó felelős magyar miniszterelnök kivégzése után esélyünk van arra, hogy békés úton érjük el mindazt, amit az 56-os forradalmárok véres harcokban, ha csak néhány napra is, de megszereztek a nemzet számára.
Ha hiszünk, a magunk erejében képesek vagyunk véget vetni a kommunista diktatúrának, ha elég eltökéltek vagyunk, rászoríthatjuk az uralkodó pártot, hogy alávesse magát a szabad választásoknak, ha nem tévesztük szemelől 56 eszméjét, olyan kormányt választhatunk magunknak, amely azonnali tárgyalásukat kezd az orosz szapatok kivonásának haladéktalan megkezdéséről.
Ha van bennünk elég mert, hogy mindezt akarjuk, akkor, de csak akkor beteljesíthetjük forradalmunk akaratát.
Senki sem hiheti, hogy a pártállam magától fog megváltozni.
Emlékezzetek!
1956. október 6-án Rajk László Temetésének napján a párt napi lapja a Szabadnép Öles Betükkel hirdette címlapján soha többé.
Csak három év telt el, és a kommunista párt AVH-s legényeivel békés, fegyvertelen szüntetők közé lövetett.
Két év sem telt el a soha többé óta, és az MSZMT rajkéhoz hasonló koncepciós perekben ítélte halára ártatlanok százait, közöttük saját elszársait.
Ezért nem érhetjük be a kommunista politikusok semmire sem kötelező ígéreteivel.
Nekünk azt kell elérnünk, hogy az uralkodó párt, ha akar, se tudjon erőszakot alkalmazni ellenünk.
Nincs más mód, hogy elkerüljük az újabb koporsókat, a maihoz hasonló megkésett szemetéseket.
Nagy Imre, Gimes Miklós, Losonci Géza, Maléter Pál, Szilágyi József és a néptelen százak a magyar tüggetlenségért és szabadságért áldozták életüket.
A magyar fiatalok, akik előtt ezek az eszmék még ma is értetetlenek, meghajtják fejüket emléketek előtt.
George Soros' Teenage Betrayal00:05:05
Nyugodjatok békében.
That took courage.
I mean, it's one thing to be a secret rebel, writing Sam and circulating it, but to be in the center of political life and saying Russian go home when they were there in their tanks.
That really is courage.
And I think of another Hungarian who is politically powerful, and I think of George Soros.
And everything you've described to me today tells me why George Soros hates Victor Orban.
Orban is for limited, regulated immigration, not mass immigration.
He's for an ethnic national identity.
He's not a globalist like Soros.
He's opposed to cultural Marxism in the form of transgenderism.
He is skeptical of global governments like the European Union.
Of course, Soros hates him.
But that final comparison is that when it came to resisting tyranny, Orban stood up in a country where there were still Soviet tanks and said, Russians go home.
Whereas Soros, and he was only a teenager at the time, but he secretly collaborated, like he went around with the Nazis.
And I'm not blaming a teenager for pretending he was a Gentile and hanging out with a Nazi officer who was expropriating.
I'm just saying there were two paths.
One was a path of cowardice and opportunity that George Soros took, and the other was a path of I'm going to speak truth to power that Victor Orban took.
It is no surprise to me that Soros hates Orban so viscerally.
How did Orban win that battle?
Because Hungary was sort of Soros' home turf.
He's Hungarian.
He's got so much money, it can really sway things here in Hungary.
How on earth did Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party possibly beat George Soros and his billions?
How did that happen?
Well, it was a long process, but also it's funny what you said because, I mean, in the 80s, Shorosh played a much more positive role in Hungary.
At least we still think that.
So he did support some of the opposition movement.
Orban actually attended Oxford on a scholarship from Shorosh.
A lot of the opposition leaders got fellowships from him.
So I didn't know this story about him collaborating.
I mean, he was a teenager, but he, I mean, here, let's play a clip from 60 Minutes.
He, on his bicycle, he delivered notices to the Jews to report to the train stations.
And then his father basically seconded him.
He pretended he was a nephew or something of a Nazi officer who was expropriating Jewish property.
His father told him to do that to survive.
And I'm not blaming a teenager for doing what his dad was.
Well, surviving, yeah.
Yeah, here, I want to show our viewers who may not have seen this.
Here's the clip of when Steve Croft of 60 Minutes asked Soros about his role during the Nazi occupation.
Take a quick look.
You're a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian.
Right.
And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
That was 14 years old.
And I would say that that's when my character was made.
My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Yes.
Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
That's right.
Yes.
I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years.
Was it difficult?
Not at all.
Not at all.
Maybe as a child, you don't see the connection, but it created no problem at all.
No feeling of guilt.
No.
That if I weren't there, of course I wasn't doing it.
But somebody else would be taking it away anyhow.
Whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator.
The property was being taken away.
So I had no role in taking away that property.
So I had no sense of guilt.
Are you religious?
No.
Do you believe in God?
No.
I don't feel guilty because I'm engaged in an amoral activity which is not meant to have anything to do with guilt.
Thanks.
I just wanted to play that clip again to remind people.
So you're saying Soros was actually helping the good guys in the 80s.
That's interesting to hear.
Yeah, but we have this feeling that he played a more, how should I say, beneficial role, which later turned to what you're saying, too.
I think there was this difference.
Ukraine's Diplomatic Hangover00:15:09
So I think Shorosz feels personally betrayed a bit by Orban because he saw him as a protégé, but Orban said no to some of these progressive policies.
So when it turned to being in government and adapting some of the policies Shorosh would have liked, Orban definitely charted a different path.
So I think it's a very complex relation they have.
But the first Orban government, which was a coalition government in power from 1989 to 2002, so four years, and they lost the 2002 elections.
It was a very close election, but in the end they lost.
And I think that was crucial to understand how FIDES thinks now.
Because they started, they realized that without proper media support, without proper support in the countryside and people, party organizations in the countryside, they will not be able to win elections.
And they started to build this up.
They started their own media organizations.
They started kind of a building of local offices in the countryside.
And of course, the economic crisis and also the kind of the gross mismanagement of the Socialist Party, which they were doing in the 2000s, helped because FIDES managed to get a two-thirds majority in the parliament in 2010, which was very extraordinary support from the people.
But since then, they have managed to reproduce that in each direction.
And it shows people like what he's doing.
But especially after 2010, they really focused on even more support of kind of conservative civil society, even more support of conservative media.
So they really built up kind of an opposition or kind of a counterbalance to some of these progressive policies.
So unlike in America, or I guess it's the same in Canada, it's not like 90% of the media is globalist progressive.
Here it's 60-40, 50-50.
I'm not sure about the code.
Yeah, so we have actually a significant counterbalance to some of the progressive medias.
And that's why they hate him.
So if you would look at some of the New York Times or other narratives about Hungary, they would say that Hungary, you know, they would say it's actually the reverse.
So Orban has all the media and it's controlling everything, which is not true.
I mean, actually, that's true in America or Canada, but the progressives are ruling all the media and there's hardly any outside voice.
Here it's basically, I would say, almost 50-50.
But they hate that because, you know, there's people can see the other narratives quite easily.
So I think they needed this eight years in opposition to kind of build themselves up.
They needed some luck with the Socialist Party being so terrible.
But afterwards, after they came into power the second time in 2010, they really cleverly built on this support and kind of organized effective civil society and media opposition counterbalance to some of these policies.
And that's why you have a flourishing think tank seen in Hungary.
That's why you have flourishing right-wing media in Hungary now.
I heard that the US just approved $25 million to set up independent media in Hungary, which I mean it's pretty obvious what that means.
That means anti-Orban media.
I was shocked to hear this.
I just heard it and I haven't had a chance to delve into it.
Did that happen?
And is that Joe Biden's administration really saying we're going to dig up your backyard?
I mean, that's shocking to me.
They would never do that in, say, Ukraine.
They would never do that in Germany or the UK.
It's astounding to me.
Did that happen?
Absolutely it did.
And what's the reaction?
I mean, imagine if the reverse was true.
Imagine if Orban sent 25 million.
But actually, for a country of 10 million people, $25 million is an astonishing amount.
You would have to be 30 times more money. to have the same impact in the United States, because the United States is 30 times bigger.
But imagine what if, let's say, Russia would do that with any country or Iran or China.
I mean, that would be huge uproar.
Well, I mean, just a math on that, that would be like almost a billion dollars in America to have anti-Biden media.
That would be a diplomatic incident.
Yeah.
What is the reaction here?
Well, we feel that a huge betrayal.
I mean, this is an ally.
We are a NATO country.
America should be our friend.
And it's just, you know, doing something like that is a huge betrayal.
And I think it's a terrible move.
But to make matters even worse, it's, well, actually, we had kind of a coalition of opposition parties running against Fides.
And the leader of that is quite outspoken.
He's a bit like Trump in this sense, that he will say things which a lot of people will not, but he's not in a good way.
And actually, he went into one of the radios and he acknowledged that they got about $10 million from America for the election.
So he's the CIA man.
He's the CIA.
But I mean, imagine, I mean, if this would happen in America, that Hungary would be giving millions of dollars to parties.
I mean, you would never, never, I mean.
And how did Hungarians react?
But how did Hungarians react?
Well, they feel that this person is basically a spy or is betraying Hungary and should be And was this before the last election that this came out?
No, it was after the election.
And actually there's some talk about perhaps prosecuting this person because this technically is illegal.
And also, it now turns out that the opposition mayor in 2019 might have got, again, a bit more than a million dollars from American donors for his mayoral campaign.
It's one thing to get money from American donors, and that may be illegal and you've got to follow the law, but when the U.S. government itself is funding people to take down...
Sorry, so technically it was donors, so we don't know who gave the money.
Well, still.
But it's kind of, it seems that it was only one or two people, which again is quite a bit.
We can guess who the one or two people is that's giving millions of dollars in Hungary.
Well, how is the relationship between Hungary and America, UK, Canada is not really relevant, I don't think, here, even though I wish it were.
Hungary's been a NATO ally for almost 25 years.
Hungary has a free market, or at least close to a free market.
It feels Western walking around the city.
I feel more like Europe than Asia or Central Asia.
It feels modern, not ultra-modern, but modern.
Is Orban facing the West or the East more?
And is he being pushed away by the West?
Well, I think he's trying.
I mean, we are a Western country, and I think most Hungarians feel that, but with proud roots from the East.
So according to our history, Hungarians came from somewhere from Siberia or the steppes.
And a bit more than a thousand years ago, we settled in the Kapatiyam basin and built a state.
And St. Stephen embraced Kischnerty.
since a thousand years been being this proud Christian Western power.
Sometimes sadly cut off from Western development by the Ottomans, by the Soviets, but still there's this sense that we're a Western country.
But besides that, I think Orban has been trying as kind of a policy as a small state to have fairly good relations with other powers in the world.
And of course the most infamous was Russia and China.
But that's not just these countries.
I mean these got a lot of attention from Western media, but actually South Korea was one of the biggest investors for years in Hungary.
So it was kind of a general gobble opening that, of course, we are EU members, we're NATO members, we're a part of an alliance, but we should, you know, at least economically have fairly good relations with East Asia, with Africa, with Arabic countries and others.
So there is generally this concept that we should have good relations with them.
But of course, as I said, there's this strong sense that we're a NATO member and we should, you know, actually we will reach the 2% GDP for military next year.
So we're trying to be good NATO.
Canada's only 1.38, so you're far ahead of that.
Yeah, but also the Ukrainian war was kind of a make-up call.
Well, and let me ask you.
But going back to what you originally asked, we do feel that, I mean, I'm very much a transatlantist, and I think I think tank is bad.
But it is increasingly being difficult to be that here because of all the bad things we're getting from the current American government.
And Obama wasn't that much better.
So what we feel from America is that they only care about transgender rights, social issues.
Now, of course, there's a good excuse with the war that we're not doing enough in Ukraine.
How about global warming?
Is that a big deal here in Hungary?
In Canada, that's all you hear about.
In the UK, too, net zero, carbon capture, green energy.
Is any of that?
It's not as bad as it's there.
And actually, the government here tried to embrace some parts of it as a conservative government.
So they do say that as conservatives and Christians, we do have a responsibility towards the environment.
So they did try to do some, which I think was actually okay.
So I think as a conservative, you know, being against- Do they have a carbon tax?
Are they saying outlawed fossil fuel?
No, no, no, no.
We will never do that.
The net zero, do you talk about that?
The craziness is not happening.
It's more like we have to protect some of the environment.
Well, I mean, no one would disagree with that.
And, you know, besides fossil fuels, we're happy to support solar panels and some of the alternative energy sources.
So there is some form of that, but we should embrace some parts of it, but not go full crazy on the net zero things and others.
And I think it's been fairly, I mean, of course, you have some young people who are protesting sometimes about it, but it's usually like 100 people or something.
So it is happening and a lot of young people kind of sympathize with that, but it's for the time being hasn't been as it's a bit like the transsexual movement that you have already kind of elements of it.
But actually I think that was much more, much stronger than the climate change movement hit.
I interrupted you.
You said that there's this bundle of ideas from the West, transgenderism, open borders, etc.
And that's making it difficult for Hungary to have a warm transatlantic friendship.
How has the Russian interdiction, the invasion of Ukraine, changed things?
Because of course, Hungary is a NATO ally, but I see in English on Twitter, Viktor Orban tweeting calls for peace, which, I mean, who wouldn't be for peace?
Well, I see a lot of people in the West saying this is outrageous.
If you're for peace, you're for Putin.
So where is Hungary on the war in Ukraine?
On the side of peace.
And it hasn't been very popular, not even in the region, sadly.
Ukraine, sorry, has Hungary given any weapons or training to Ukraine or any money?
Money, yes, and a lot of support.
According to my knowledge, not actual weapons.
You might have sent some ammunition, but I'm not 100% money and a lot of humanitarian support.
Are there any refugees from Ukraine who have come to Hungary?
They mostly use Hungary as a transit country, so most of them actually just go, but there are some of them here.
And when they were coming, we gave them all the support, so we set up all the centers.
We really welcomed them in very warm minds and hearts.
And actually, they were grateful for that.
So sometimes they would acknowledge that how the Hungarians were very gracious, accepting all the migrants, helping them, and also sending these things.
But of course, they always say that we're not sending any weapons and we're not giving enough support.
But as I said, that's not true.
I mean, I would say that we are doing 80-90% the same Poland is doing.
We're just not sending actual weapons.
And I mean, honestly, we don't really have anything to send because we actually now, as I said, we are reaching the 2% GDP criteria.
We are reshuffling our military.
So the socialist government basically destroyed our military.
They sent some of Nalas tanks to Iraq during the training of the Iraqi army after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
So we don't really have that much equipment.
So we got rid of the communists, but we are still getting the new American and German equipment to kind of reorganize and have a modern army and not the former Soviet army.
So we wouldn't really have anything to send, even if we wanted to.
But I think there's this idea that we should try to somehow make these two countries sit down and achieve some form of peace because it's for Hungary, because it's a neighboring country, it's very bad economically.
I mean, actually, ethnic Hungarians are living in Ukraine who are fighting in the war on the side of Ukraine, who are dying.
So actually, Hungarians are dying in this conflict, which a lot of people don't know.
So we really have our skin in the game.
And that's why we would like to have a peaceful resolution to this as soon as possible.
Other than calling for peace, has Ukraine been involved in any attempts to have peace talks?
I know that there were some meetings that Israel was involved in in Turkey.
Is Hungary involved with that or is it just not really in the action on that?
We try to do our best and we have very good relations with both Turkey and Israel actually as a country.
But I don't know about how these are going.
And my understanding is that, I mean, neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians are very cooperative in these talks.
Well, things are pretty dire.
Well, listen, you've been very generous with your time.
I guess I have one last question for you.
I think that the story of Hungary, there's a lot of stories about it, and there's a lot of great men.
We're in a room with an extraordinary-looking gentleman on the wall.
I mean, this country...
That's Lajos Botanyan, our first prime minister.
He was actually martyred by the Habsburgs.
So they shot him after the revolution we had against the Habsburgs.
And what year was that?
That was, well, I'm not sure when they executed the thing.
I think it's 1849, but the revolution was 1848, 49.
I mean, this place is rich in history.
We didn't even talk about the Turkish invasions and the battle.
I mean, there's so much here.
Things Hang on Orban00:04:27
This is a country of momentous people, indispensable men, you could say.
And that's my last question for you.
As an outsider, and I acknowledge that my knowledge is pretty shallow.
It seems to me a lot of things hang on Viktor Orban himself.
from that stirring speech he gave almost 40 years ago to his leadership of the party to the building of civil society, the NGOs, the think tanks, the media, the organization.
But he's not going to live forever.
He might lose an election one day.
What would Hungary look like?
when Orban is gone, whether that's in four years, eight years, or tomorrow.
Is there a group of people who could fill that leadership void, or would things fall to a globalist socialist who would undo the last dozen years?
Because you can smash things pretty quickly.
And I feel like Hungary has been rebuilt not just from the Soviet occupation, but from the socialist interregnum.
And I like how it looks and how it feels.
But is it dependent on that one man?
Well, that's a difficult question.
I'm hopeful at one hand because I think we did manage to build a quite strong conservative civil society and think tanks, which I think most of them would actually survive a government change and could be active under a socialist government, let's say.
I currently don't see a person who could feel Orbán's shoes.
We have good politicians, but I mean, as a statesman-like person like Orban, I just don't see a person like that currently, which doesn't mean there is not a person like that.
I'm hoping that somebody will turn up or is already there, just we don't see that person as much.
We would certainly be in a much more difficult situation because, as I said, I mean, the first Orban government was a coalition government, our conservative movement was much more fragmented before Orban came in.
And you needed this powerful personality to kind of bring together everyone from the Christian Democrats to the Liberal Conservative to the National Conservatives.
So it will be difficult, but I see this glimmer of hope that we did manage to build this very powerful civil society.
And, you know, it took 30 years, I mean, because at the fall of communism, there was no civil society.
I mean, there was some, you know, former communist things, but certainly no conservative or right-wing civil society.
So it's, I think, a huge accomplishment.
But on the other hand, if you look at countries like Ireland, which, you know, 30 years ago was very conservative, and now it's quite opposite.
I mean, countries can change very rapidly.
So because of that, I'm also a bit fearful of what will happen if we will not have Orban or we will have even four or eight years of progressive governments because they can change public thinking and things quite rapidly.
So yeah, I'm kind of mixed in this regard.
Well, listen, I wish you good luck, and I get the feeling that the Danube Institute is an important part of keeping Hungary on the right path.
Great to spend some time with you.
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure.
Right on.
Well, there you have it.
A feature interview with Ishvan Kiss, the executive director of the Danube Institute.
For all of our special reports during our visit to Hungary, go to thetruthabouthungary.com.
And if you like our work, feel free to chip in.
Of course, we take no government money from any government, and we rely on you, our viewers.
So if you feel compelled to support our citizen journalism, you can do that right there on the same webpage, thetruthabouthungary.com.
Well, what do you think of that?
Send me an email to Ezra at RebelNews.com.
And if you want more, go to thetruthabouthungary.com.
Our trip is going to take a turn for the interesting.
Tomorrow we're actually going to Romania, an ethnic Hungarian region called Transylvania.
We'll have more reports from there.
We'll try and have a one-on-one with the Prime Minister Victor Orban.