Where is there more democracy and the rule of law? In Budapest or in Brussels and the surrounding area? “What a question!” both the mainstream media and the majority of EU parliamentarians would respond. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been demonized by them as a kind of dictator for years . Of course, the facts speak for the opposite, as the comparison shows.
Nevertheless, in some places the hatred of Hungary goes so far that the Dutch head of government even publicly recommends the small, central European country to leave the EU. One can only say: The Netherlands, of all places ! After all, the flat country is behind the high dikes as a European hub of drug-han-dels of and a particularly dangerous department organized crime-na-formality .
Shouldn’t the Netherlands be recommended to leave?
In any case, it is the Netherlands, not Hungary, where a journalist was gunned down in the street just a few days ago after his research got too close to a criminal gang. Where a right-wing politician was murdered. Where a filmmaker critical of Islam was killed. Each with ideological motives. Political criminal murders (both with socialist involvement) have also become known from Malta and Slovakia , but nothing even remotely comparable from Hungary.
Also Spanish politicians are diligently with the Hungary-bashing. It has in their country a few weeks ago political prisoners’ nerds- given, have been imprisoned for years for conduct that otherwise is nowhere a crime: they have organized as regional politicians an undesirable by the central government referendum. So all you have tried is too much democracy.
Perhaps the Austrian politicians should also think about whether their own country, unlike Hungary, is still a constitutional state . The massive ideological activity of part of the public prosecutor’s office raises doubts about this. Likewise, the massive increase in migrant crime has clearly reduced the right to security of the citizens of this country, even 13-year-old girls. And it is a clear failure of politics and the judicial system that among all EU countries in Austria the proportion of migrants has become the fourth highest without any justification (behind three small states).
While the Western European agitators are continuously attacking Hungary and denying it its democratic status, there are at least the beginnings of a direct democracy that are greater than ours:
The Budapest government regularly asks the population for their opinion in “political dialogues” that resemble a referendum.
Certainly this is still very far from a real direct democracy, in which the citizens themselves, as in Switzerland, can force a referendum on whatever law by bringing in a sufficient number of signatures. But the Hungarian model of dialogue goes much further than all Western European models of democracy , where a political media bureaucratic leadership elite never surrenders a millimeter of power but, on the contrary, always wants more of it.
The indignation of a number of Western European politicians and media over a new Hungarian law that forbids the public representation of homosexuality only makes people shake their heads . They claim this is a “shame” and a violation of “European values”.
It is becoming more and more disgusting what has recently been pulled out of the drawer as alleged “European values”. Homosexual representations were banned in most other countries, at least in the founding decades of the EU. And yet there was never a formal decision that such representations would now have even become a “European value”.
Beyond the human rights convention, which was adopted before the EEC / EC / EU was founded and has never been changed in this regard, there has never been anything at all that could be described as a list of these ominous “values”. Rather is
the word “values” has become a completely undefined word in political struggle propaganda that is arbitrarily used to discredit and defame political opponents.
For many Europeans, however – unfortunately, less and less for politicians and the media – is what Orbán has been doing for years , a commitment to exactly what they themselves understood as European values: number-lose from it by matched laws encourage (with proven impact on the Hungarian birth rate ) Families, i.e. couples with several children. Other Hungarian laws have given the country the lowest tax rates in Europe .
Hungary is the only EU country that specifically helps persecuted Christians on other continents.
However, it was an unclean undercut by Orbán to legally move the paragraphs on the prohibition of homosexual representations in line with other paragraphs that combat pedophilia. There are also many heterosexuals who directly or indirectly attack children. However, it is a fact that 70 percent of Hungarians think this law is correct . Therefore, the grossly exaggerated reaction of the EU authorities to the new law will prove to be a great election aid for Orbán.
He knows: A successful politician in a democracy always needs an opponent whom he can rub himself against, who through his actions is suitable for the role of the enemy. For this reason, George Soros had long appeared as such an enemy , sponsoring many pro-migration and anti-Orbán associations. And now, the EU Commis-si-ons pre-si-dentin has made to another.
The further accusation that the Hungarian government is an “enemy of freedom of the press” is downright delicious . Because the fact is that it is
There is plenty of Orbán-critical media in Hungary, electronic and old-fashioned paper. Their critical comments are also regularly quoted in Western newspapers
– From the same newspapers that the next day adopted the claim of the radical left-wing association “Reporters Without Borders” that freedom of the press would disappear in Hungary.
Certainly , the opposition newspapers receive fewer advertisements from companies that support Orbán. But it is really just disgusting hypocrisy when this accusation is also made from Austria without at the same time saying that things are going to be much worse in this country. This is particularly evident in the behavior of the Vienna City Hall, which has financed by far the largest number of corruption advertisements in recent years (of course, politicians from all other parties later also took part in bribery, albeit at a somewhat more moderate level).
What I can also confirm myself – I will forgive a brief personal comment: In Vienna City Hall , the two newspapers for which I was editor-in-chief had almost identical words to the respective advertisers : “ As long as the Unterberger editor-in-chief is, you won’t get anything . ” (Of course, both papers was only when Mr Horst Pirker and Werner Faymann in the respective owners functions were each pad excessively so well on the way that this could be put away. Came, I was asked from recognizable ideological motives of the chair in front of the door. Proven to massive economic damage to both sheets.)
Back to Hungary. Viktor Orbán’s accusation of being an enemy of freedom of the press has become particularly bizarre in recent days: Orbán has summarized his proposals for the once again announced EU reform in seven points , which he wanted to communicate as an advertisement in several European newspapers .
However, no fewer than 20 European newspapers simply refused to accept the Orbán ad!
It is absolutely outrageous. Not only because the rejection of a paid ad is a grotesque contradiction to the fact that almost all of these newspapers are economically distressed and are constantly demanding more tax money from their state. But also because it contradicts the essence of any correct information if you don’t give someone you attack almost every day, even as a paying advertiser, the opportunity to present your own view at least once unhindered. Without anything being criminal about the content.
The ad wasn’t about homosexuality, which is so fiercely championed by the left-wing liberal mainstream. But just about the EU reform . It was of course correct that other European newspapers, such as the “Presse” in Austria, accepted the advertisement . Admittedly, the leadership of this once bourgeois newspaper was then once again put under so much pressure by the internal political commissars that they
the next day a three-way anti-Hungarian hatred and agitation section put at the top of the newspaper.
It is also lying and sick that the ORF and two EU MPs of the ÖVP did not deal with Orban’s proposals in terms of content, but with the fact that these advertisements were “at the expense of the Hungarian taxpayers” .
How infamous is this accusation! All the governments of Europe give – and the EU itself a lot more !! – constantly spending a lot of money on self-expression in one form or another.
Such an accusation by Austrian MPs is doubly infamous. The federal government has recently spent a lot of tax money on large-scale advertisements, the content of which has undoubtedly not always met an urgent need for information, for example when it only consisted of the word “thank you”.
In terms of content, Hungary’s advertisement was an appeal for further joint economic successes and for Serbia to join the EU . At the same time it was a clear rejection of migration, of the development of the EU into a European superstate and of the previously valid objective of “an ever closer” Union. Orbán wants to give the parliaments of the individual states more rights and, in return, to disempower the EU Parliament a little. Even if one or the other detail is certainly worth discussing, there can be no doubt:
Many Europeans will be very sympathetic to Orbán’s intentions.
However, it is noticeable that this only calls for the admission of Serbia and not also that of the other “Western Balkan countries” Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro (as Hungary and Austria have actually called for in the same way up to now). Possibly this is a hidden indication that these others (with the exception of Montenegro) have a large proportion of the population of Muslims who would become EU citizens upon accession. As soon as this becomes common knowledge, it will undoubtedly further reduce the enthusiasm of current EU citizens for EU enlargement, which is not great anyway.
The most aggressive criticism of Orbán clearly comes from the MEPs (with the exception of the blue ones and some of the black ones). The Greens there, for example, rant about an “anti-democratic mood” and are once again trying the ominous “basic values” that the Hungarian would violate. In order to
we get to know another European value:
the accumulation of power of the EU Parliament.
The fact that it is these MEPs who yelp the loudest by far confirms Orbán’s accusation that this Parliament only represents its own “institutional interests”. It is actually trying to get hold of more and more power, which is taken away from the member states, the regions and also the citizens. Which is totally in contrast to the “subsidiarity” that is invoked again and again in Sunday speeches. But: Which body likes to hear the accusation of obsession with power and the proposal to be disempowered?
The only accusation that Orbán has to accept is that he is illiberal. He uses this expression again and again to describe his politics. This is totally confusing.
Because Hungary, with its low level of regulation, its low income tax rates and a corporate tax of 9 percent, is an absolute dream country for every real liberal in Europe.
The greatest liberal thinkers of the 20th century, from Hayek to Friedman, Hungarians would light a candle every day if they could still see it happen.
Then why for God’s sake does Orbán describe his policy as “illiberal”, which gives it a negative connotation? Quite simply because he knows and uses the word “liberal” in the American sense of the word, where it is a synonym for “socialist” and the opposite of the European word “liberal”. And because nobody teaches the Hungarian head of government to avoid this word, which causes so much utter confusion in the rest of Europe …
From Dr. Andreas Unterberger
This article first appeared in ANDREAS UNTERBERGER’S DIARY
… and then at HUNGARY REAL , our partner in the EUROPEAN MEDIA COOPERATION.
UNG