By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
BUDAPEST, Hungary – Jobbik, a far-right party which has openly expressed anti-Semitic and anti-Roma rhetoric, achieved a breakthrough in Hungarian elections, entering Parliament for the first time and finishing third in national polls. The center-right party, Fidesz, won fifty-two-percent of the vote, and the incumbent Socialist party only received nineteen percent of votes. Jobbik, with seventeen percent of the vote, acquired twenty six seats in the Hungarian Parliament
Hungary’s largest Jewish organization, the Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities, warned that the political gains by Jobbik mark “the first occasion that a movement pursuing openly anti-Semitic policies” has taken steps to power since the Nazi era.
A recent copy of the Jobbik party’s weekly newspaper shows a statue of the Hungarian saint, Saint Gellert, holding a menorah instead of a cross. The picture’s caption reads: “Is this what you want?”
The rise of Jobbik, which is allied with the right-wing British National Party, coincides with a surge of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Hungary, and parallels the rise of far-right parties across Europe.
Jobbik has close links with a banned paramilitary wing organization, Magyar Garda. Magyar Garda, which has an insignia modelled on the Arrow Cross used by Hungarian Nazis during the Second World War, have staged a series of marches against “gypsy crime” in towns and villages throughout Hungary where the largest Roma communities are located. The rise of the Magyar Garda has coincided with a series of attacks on Roma villages in 2008 and 2009 which claimed six lives.
Laszlo Molnar, a member of the Magyar Garda, said: “Actually, I am a racist . . . So what? Why do I have to like those who are in fact my enemies?”
Gabor Vona, the thirty-one year old leader of Jobbik, has vowed to be sworn in as an MP while wearing the banned uniform of the Magyar Garda. He said: “I will keep my promise to go into parliament on the first day in a Garda vest.”
According to analysts, the Socialist Party, which has dominated Hungarian politics for the past eight years, allowed large parts of eastern Hungary to become an economic wasteland, and allowed the situation of the Roma to further deteriorate, which has inflamed social tensions. Hungary was only able to avoid financial meltdown at the end of 2008 through a twenty billion euro bailout from the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions.
Gergely Böszörményi NagyGergely Borszomeny-Nagy of the the Perspective Institute, a think tank, said: “This is a supposedly leftist Government but over the past eight years the gap between rich and poor has drastically widened.”
Unemployment in Hungary is currently at eleven percent and inflation is at six percent.
As the economic crisis in Hungary deepens, the Roma people have increasingly been targeted as scapegoats. George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist said: “There is no question that the crisis that hits people unexpectedly . . . gets them angry and they want to take it out on someone.”
Jobbik has drawn much of its support from young Hungarians, and is especially strong in the nation’s universities. Many young people who have been unable to find work have taken refuge in nationalist politics, which blame outsiders for the nation’s economic problems.
Tamas Vardai, a university student in Budapest said: “Jobbik is the only party that can put this country in order.”
For more information, please see:
euronews – Hungary’s far right secures seats in parliament – 12 April 2010
Times Online – Far-right party Jobbik makes breakthrough in Hungarian elections – 12 April 2010
Telegraph – Hungary elections: first step to power for far-Right since Nazi era – 11 April 2010
