Hungary’s hardline nationalist leader Viktor Orbán is facing international condemnation after making remarks about race and multiculturalism that a former adviser called a “pure Nazi text”.
Zsuzsa Hegedus, who served as Orbán’s adviser for two decades, resigned on Tuesday for what she called Orbán’s “illiberal turn,” describing her comments in Romania on Saturday as a “pure Nazi text worthy of the [propagandista nazista] Goebbels,” according to his resignation letter published by the Hungarian magazine HVG.
He was also denounced by the International Auschwitz Committee after comments in the same speech that were interpreted as a joke about the use of gas chambers against Jews in Nazi Germany.
Orbán told a crowd that Europeans did not want to mix with people from outside the continent.
“That’s why we always fight: we’re willing to blend in, but we don’t want to become mixed-race people,” he said.
He warned that “Islamic civilization” is “constantly moving towards Europe” and that, in the future, “those we do not want to let in will have to be stopped at the western borders”. [da Hungria]”, regardless of the country’s participation having open borders with 26 other European countries.
Hegedus, one of Orbán’s closest advisers, said the speech contradicted his values and made his position untenable. She added that Orbán’s shift toward authoritarianism during his 12-year stint as Hungary’s prime minister had already eroded his support.
“You can’t be serious about accusing me of racism after 20 years of working together. You know better than anyone that in Hungary my government follows a zero-tolerance policy towards both anti-Semitism and racism,” Orbán said in response, according to a statement posted on Twitter by his political director, Balazs Orban.
But the leader’s speech sparked an angry reaction across Europe, with critics of his regime demanding that European Union (EU) leaders openly condemn the right-wing prime minister.
“Orbán continues to have a seat at the European Council table and veto rights to undermine Europe’s sovereignty…Unsustainable, unacceptable, non-European,” Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and senior member of the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter. .
“Orbán carefully cultivates a more palatable image in Brussels/abroad. Many conservatives posing happily with him would never publicly endorse such far-right speeches,” Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian MEP, added in a Twitter post.
Elsewhere in the speech, Orbán was accused by Cseh and others of making light of the Nazi regime’s use of gas chambers during the Holocaust.
Discussing the target agreed by the European Commission for its 27 member states to reduce their gas demand by 15% between August and March next year, Orban said: show us the German know-how on this.”
THE CNN contacted the Hungarian government for comment.
In a statement on Tuesday, the International Auschwitz Committee condemned Orbán’s remarks as “stupid and dangerous”. They said Auschwitz survivors and others were “alarmed and horrified” by his speech.
Throughout his tenure, Orbán has overseen a process of democratic backsliding and has made comments on migrants and multiculturalism that have been condemned by fellow Europeans.
Last year, he criticized the anti-racism kneeling gesture made by football teams in many countries, saying he agreed with Hungarian fans who booed the act. He criticized EU immigrant quotas, leading the issue to a referendum in 2016, which was dismissed by international watchdogs as a stunt.
But Orbán has received a wave of support among some American conservatives and is yet to speak at next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Texas, despite his comments on Saturday.
Source: CNN Brasil
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