If only it was that simple! You have to take some relevant circumstances into account: A Hungarian civil society without…
Arrogance of Power
The regime and its accomplices in the media are state funded and have almost unlimited funds to indoctrinate the people. Only public TV got an enlargement of budget of 12 and 24 billion the last 2 years. Public is a great title, in fact it is a spokes organ of the government only, infamous for falsifying news as for example showing a green MEP in a press conference getting an inconvenient question and leaving without answer, while in the reality of the uncut material he answered questions for full 20 minutes before the scene of leaving was recorded. Or abusing a murderous incident that happened the day before the elections of 2018 in Germany as being a Muslim terror attack and praising Orbán’s xenophobe ideology, although it was clear from the beginning that the murderer was an autochthonous German without Muslim connections, while the free Hungarian media reported the truth.
The perhaps most infamous GONGO in Hungary is the CÖF (Civil Összefogás Fórum, Civil Co-operation Forum) with its foundation CÖKA, whose founder / spokesman / chair László Csizmadia is employed by the government as chairman of the Council of the National Co-operation Fund, a public agency responsible for distribution of state aid for civil organisations. Of course he very generously sends money to the GONGO he chairs. No wonder they can transport masses of Hungarians and Poles for free to Budapest in busses to make huge events from their peace marches.
This very well financed propaganda GONGO has produced cheap billboards and spots showing the heads of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Péter Márki-Zay titled “the boss has a new clone” using a scene of the movie Austin Powers in Goldmember with Gyurcsány as Dr. Evil and MZP as Mini-Me. The legal owner of the copyright is Warner Bros. Entertainment and the spot has already been taken from Youtoube for violation of copyright ►HU. Momentum has solved the problem another way and changed the billboards – they glued the heads of Putin and Orbán over the others and changed the latter’s name into Mini Putin ►HU.
Apropos Putin. Putin has confused Hungary with Belarus azzonali found out ►HU. That is the country paying only 1/5 of the Western price. We pay, as I have shown yesterday, just 2/3 of the spot market price, the difference to long lasting contracts might result in a way smaller difference, older contracts are pretty sure cheaper than our new contract. So the regime propaganda machine was given wrong data, but to make this true we will have to give up the sovereignty in the same way as Belarus did.
FIDESZ has held in Józsefváros (Budapest VIII) a resident forum. This is part of the electoral district Budapest 6, where FIDESZ MP Maté Kocsis doesn’t want to defend his seat, but Botond Sára will run for FIDESZ and most likely will loose. Kocsis was mayor of the district from 2009 – 2018 and resigned to become MP (one mustn’t have both functions.) Sára followed him for a year as mayor of Józsefváros and was voted out in 2019 – and the regime made him head of administration for the central government in Budapest instead. On facebook everybody was invited to join the forum, just the press has to remain out 444 found out ►HU. As reason RTL was told: Limitations for gatherings in the pandemic didn’t allow the free press to join ►HU.
But nobody should claim that the extreme right gathering in Madrid last weekend wouldn’t have been successful. At least for Marine Le Pen it became a real success. Her party Rassemblement National (still better known under its original name Front National) is suffering from severe financial problems since long and didn’t find anyone financing her campaign for the presidential elections this spring. Now 10.6 million Euro will come from Hungary, here she got a loan ►FR. Orbán is trying to buy an ally the election. Saying this one should be aware that Macron has according to the polls a good lead over all other candidates, while Le Pen is running with conservative Valérie Pécresse for getting into the 2nd round on a significant lower level than 5 years ago, while Macron is polled exactly on the same level as 2017. For the 2nd round Macron is polled to be clearly ahead of both the possible candidates getting there, while compared to Macron the conservative is polled to better results than the extremist. Another time Orbán is throwing money away. The 1st round of French presidential elections will take place a week after the Hungarian elections, the 2nd another 2 weeks later.
The Fővárosi Törvényszék (Capital’s High Court) decided in a final verdict that the ministry of human resources EMMI acted illegally when the press with the only exception of state TV MTVA and state press agency MTI has been forbidden to report from hospitals. Press requests the hospitals have to decide about, not the ministry. Telex reports that they have to made more than 50 requests to dozens of institutions and none was granted, they were either forwarded to EMMI and denied or directly refused because of the EMMI ban. In future the decision to grant access has to be made by the hospitals themselves ►HU.
Another trial at the Fővárosi Törvényszék ended with a conviction of Orbán’s most loved political paper Magyar Nemzet. Péter Szikszai, “journalist” and Tamás Toót-Holló, “editor-in-chief” were convicted for defamation of Tímea Szabó (P.) She claimed: “The only purpose of the article was to bring me down to the level of an animal species to be exterminated” and the court followed her view and convicted both to 1-year imprisonment on probation ►HU.
A few days ago I mentioned that a FIDESZ council representative Kornél Géza Szalay found LGBT propaganda in a “salt shaker” singing about home cooking. The result was a request of another member of the council, Mrs. Zoltán Mihály, the district should rename Csokonai Culture Centre into Conchita Wurst Cultural Centre ►HU. The Budapest XV council refused the application ►HU.
https://hungarytoday.hu/conservatives-meet-in-brussels-amid-drama-and-intimidation/ Populist Fidesz media are whining about Brussels, the rules and laws so I have one simple question: Why don't…
The Brussels story is all pver the media, everybody is laughing at Farage, Orbán etc. The big questions for me…
Impressing pictures of the Hungarian Holocaust. Not for weak nerves. "Dad saw the huge smoke, the station's inscription: Auschwitz, and…
The police in Brussels, stopped Viktors' right wing conference due to "the possibility of public disorder" Brussels police move to…
Re. state propaganda: apart from the madness that is MTV, which most people probably don’t bother to watch in any case, most radio stations have so-called “társadalmi célú hirdetés” every hour just before the news. In most countries this would mean information that is useful to the whole population, for example on availability of vaccinations or the importance of regular medical checks for certain age groups or if you have certain symptoms.
But of course in Hungary this is just another budget with millions of Forints worth of free money for political campaigning. The latest “public information campaign” reminds us of how bad things were under Gyurcsány (14 years ago)
A sack of potatoes but only with selfie. How free election works – it is still widely claimed in Hungary there are free elections but not fair. Where are the free elections?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGOX5LjrH90
„The Orbán Regime Intimidates Roma Community to Win the Elections“
https://visegradinsight.eu/the-orban-regime-intimidates-roma-community-to-win-the-elections/
I agree with you, Istvan, that, in supporting Marine Le Pen’s campaign with millions from the Hungarian coffers, that it will very likely be a waste.
Because of her attempts to seem less ‘Far Right’, Marine’s stock has gone down.
Ironically, Zemmour, a Morrocan Colonial Jewish candidate has become the darling of French Nazis!
That so, I see Macron winning, then being knocked over a year or two down the road by a massive French revolt.
Still, I understand why Orban Viktor did this. The strategy makes sense, it’s just that Marine is not the right bet.
If I had been Orban, I would have used that money to support Fidesz-preferred candidates in the Visegrad Alliance, or save it, until such time as a good bet came along in The West – like Giorgia Melone.
Nobody needs your “opinion” and predictions here, get back in your black hole.
MTV is now beginning to explain to the Hungarian population the significant increase in NATO forces being prepositioned close to the Russian border in both Poland and Romania. There was an article in Magyar Nemzet today admitting the Russians have sent in the past several days an additional 30,000 troops into Belarus.
The US Department of Defense is now sending out regular information on troop deployments to Europe, see https://www.armytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/02/02/biden-sending-more-troops-to-europe-amid-ukraine-tension/ My daughter who is a reserve LT Col at Ft Carson Colorado has now been been notified to prepare for possible deployment to Europe in response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her civil affairs unit is now on a prep plan to be ready in five days for deployment along with other units at the base. She is right now on leave from her University position at Colorado State University and working with command staff at Ft Carson preparing for potential deployment. It appears that much of the US Army 4th Infantry Division is on alert. It is composed of a division headquarters battalion, three brigade combat teams (two Stryker and one armor), a combat aviation brigade, a division sustainment brigade, and a division artillery. This is what is called in the US Army a heavy division designed to be employed where battles are fought over wide areas against a threat with similar capabilities, i.e. the Russian Army.
From the discussions I have seen on retired US Army officer blogs over the last two weeks, there was a significant push back by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Biden administration’s hesitancy to ready many more troops for NATO assignment than they had discussed back then, which was initially a small number. The US Department of State was reluctant to do this because of escalation concerns and interference with US/Russian negotiations.
There is a lot of speculation about what sort of intelligence may have prompted this dramatic increase in preparation of US forces for deployment. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby would only say yesterday: “The current situation demands that we reinforce the deterrent and defensive posture on NATO’s eastern flank.”
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-shuts-dws-moscow-bureau-withdraws-staff-credentials/a-60646973 this is not a good development coming just prior to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meeting with the Russians.
The reaction of Russia is typical, just as the reason is. Russian state TV started broadcasting their German “RT deutsch” program without license of the authorities, they not even applied for a permission. So the authorities in Germany had no alternative to forbid broadcasting. What I read was that the RT has a license in Serbia, but it seems only TV stations working in other EU member states legally don’t need a separate permission in Germany. This doesn’t limit production of German language content for example on internet, only broadcasting in Germany without license. Of course Putin now punishes a broadcaster operating legally up to now with valid Russian license, Deutsche Welle of course had applied for. Quod licet iovi non licet bovi. BTW, the journey of Scholz originally was planned to be to Washington only, but seen the crisis Putin created Scholz wants to try to calm the situation and to go to Russia thereafter. Not the only one, today Erdogan offered to negotiate with Putin during his visit to Ukraine as well.
So many interesting details/facts in your short post. The “loan” to Le Pen is especially outrageous, given that Hungary is such a poor country, let alone the obvious and odious support for Le Pen. And the “LGBT propaganda” in a “salt shaker” report would be downright comical if not so dangerous.
Of course, this site can not replace “Hungarian Spectrum”, but many of us, who are former readers are grateful to you, Istvan for this new blog. And I am sure that Professor Balogh would appreciate your fine efforts, especially as you live in Hungary.
Agreed, thanks again to István for giving us a place to continue discussions and providing interesting news for us to comment on.
I don’t have any ideas for an article at the moment but would be happy to write something if I get the inspiration and would invite all readers to think about whether they can contribute any materials/ articles to the site…
I agree, Eva would be very proud of István! Although I have nothing to contribute, I love to read István’s posts and the comments!
Never heard of the acronym GONGO before, I had to look it up and found “government-organized non-governmental organization”. How more fucked up can this be? NGOs by definition are not related to governments but then again this is Hungary.
Sorry for using an acronym without spelling in full, I thought this would be such a typical and well-known way to direct public “opinion” at least here in Hungary that I didn’t. And besides the show that the people would be for the regime it is another great way to distribute public money to those “who deserve it.” The participants of the peace marches are BTW not only transported by free bus transfer (many village busses were seen in Budapest the last time,) but they are often also forced to go. Students were promised better notes, the mayors pressed their employees, especially from közmunka, CBA has in the past told that employees have to go if they want to keep their jobs….
Sorry if you understood I was ranting at the lack of explanation. Just to clarify, I meant GONGO is a fucked up concept, an oxymoron in the pure sense: NGO are supposed to be non-governmental by definition.
No problem at all, I understood well what you wanted to express, already the 1st time. I appreciate feedback, as you know I am new to all this and I will use this input to improve. I am living in this system for 12 years now, many things are so much every day’s normality that I forget in some cases that it is not for the observer who doesn’t share this experience. Hard to change an old man’s thinking or way of communication, but to go back a step to look onto something like an outsider would do is just another intellectual challenge – and this is definitely not bad.
I wonder how the government will react to this news? OSCE is to send a full-scale observing mission to Hungary for the election (218 observers). Apparently this has only happened once before in an EU country (Bulgaria)…
https://telex.hu/belfold/2022/02/04/ebesz-valasztasok-teljes-koru-valasztasi-megfigyelo-misszio-magyarorszag
The OSCE has recommended full-scale monitoring of Hungary’s elections in April – https://hvg.hu/eurologus/20220204_218_valasztasi_megfigyelo_erkezik__teljes_koru_ellenorzest_javasol_az_EBESZ
A full team of 218 election observers will be sent to monitor: previously within the EU, only Bulgaria has been subjected to full monitoring…
not sure if this has already been covered on here?
Revealed: Warning by medical experts over ventilators sold to Hungary by Malaysian businessmanAuthorities in UK had withdrawn hundreds of units while those in Colombia instructed the removal of others after a number of patient deaths.
https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2022/02/04/revealed-warning-by-medical-experts-over-ventilators-sold-to-hungary-by-malaysian-businessman/
EDIT: Facebook ID removed from link
The UK part of the report I had here, together with Hungarian experience of smoking machines, never working, and others: https://hungarian.news/wordpress/index.php/2021/12/27/procurement-in-times-of-corona-part-1/ The part about Columbia is new.