Orban Threatens Opponents With Jail Over Foreign Influences
Zoltan Simon

https://news.yahoo.com/orban-threatens-opponents-jail-citing-222934053.html

Bloomberg) -- Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking sweeping new powers to detect and punish what he sees as foreign influences in the European Union nation, the latest in a series of increasingly autocratic moves under his more than decade-long rule.

The new Sovereignty Protection Agency will have ample budgetary and institutional support, including from the intelligence services, to identify purported foreign efforts to influence politics, according to a bill filed by Orban's ruling party late Tuesday. The prime minister will pick the agency's chief.

The bill, which is all but certain to be approved as Orban's lawmakers wield a supermajority in the legislature, will impose a prison term of up to three years on politicians that accept foreign funds in elections. It will also allow authorities to shutter civil groups deemed to run afoul of the new regulations.

The legislation steps up Orban's unprecedented consolidation of power since 2010, which has seen the nationalist firebrand extend his sway over all walks of life in Hungary, from politics, business, the courts and even education and culture.

The moves, along with Orban's cozy relationships with authoritarian leaders from Moscow to Beijing, have made Hungary the black sheep of Europe. It also sparked tensions with Western allies in the EU and and NATO military alliance, particularly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The EU last year suspended more than $30 billion of Hungary's funding on rule of law and graft concerns, money Orban is negotiating to unlock after a prolonged recession and budget crunch.

A staunch supporter of former US President Donald Trump, Orban told supporters last week that stricter rules would be needed to keep what he called "liberal hegemony" in check, which he blamed for a searing 2002 election defeat that forced him into opposition for eight years.

"Hungary isn't the black sheep" of Europe, Orban said on Wednesday in Zurich at an event organized by Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. He blamed the EU for giving "strong leaders a negative connotation in Brussels."
Since his political return, Orban has taken no chances, changing the Constitution over opposition objections, appointing loyalists to key formerly independent institutions, overhauling election rules and marshaling government resources for elections and political campaigns. He has won four straight landslide general elections that international monitors have concluded to be free, but not fair.

Orban Targets EU in New Campaign With Key Funds Still Suspended

Perhaps most importantly, Orban set up what's considered Europe's most powerful propaganda machine. It includes a politically-domesticated public media apparatus and a juggernaut of over 500 outlets spanning print to television and digital outlets which are under the sway of a ruling party-led foundation.

While officials from Orban's ruling party earlier said the so-called sovereignty bill would also
seek to target foreign funding of media, the bill doesn't explicitly mention it. Some of Hungary's dwindling number of independent outlets rely on funding from abroad to operate, while Orban's cabinet and state companies channel vast funds to a pro-government media.

The legislation's effect is set to be chilling nonetheless. Civil groups and those not explicitly named in the law begin to assess just how broadly the new agency charged with keeping tabs on foreign influence will interpret its remit.

Hungary summons American (*Biden)ambassador (but we of course would never turn our backs on an ally in Europe, most especially one in Nato):

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Hungary summoned its ambassador from the United States on Tuesday over what Budapest termed as "lies" from President Biden about Prime Minister Viktor Orbn supposedly seeking to become a dictator.
A diplomatic rift broke out between Budapest and Washington this week following comments from President Joe Biden, who claimed during a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Friday that Prime Minister Orbn "stated flatly he doesn't think democracy works and is looking for dictatorship".

Responding to the incendiary rhetoric, Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister Pter Szijjrt said on Tuesday that the Orbn government has summoned the U.S. ambassador for an explanation for Biden's comments.
"We are not obliged to take lies from anyone, even if that person is the President of the United States," Minister Szijjrt said on Tuesday afternoon. "Since such a lie has been said in connection with the Hungarian prime minister, we summoned the ambassador of the United States to the ministry, who was here today."

Szijjrt went on to say that Biden's comments made it more difficult to build Hungarian-U.S. relations, as it was "an offence not to the government, but to the country".

When pressed by Fox News reporter Jacqui Rogers during a White House briefing on Tuesday as to whether it was the official stance of the United States that Hungary, a NATO ally, was a dictatorship, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan refused to confirm whether or not the president's comments reflect the government's official stance, referring the question to the Biden re-election campaign.

"Our position is that Hungary has engaged in an assault on Democratic institutions and that remains a source of grave concern to us," Sullivan said.

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On Saturday, one of Hungary's national holidays, I went over to the National Museum, on the steps of which the 1848 revolutionaries declared independence from the Habsburg Empire, and listened to Prime Minister Viktor Orban speak. A Hungarian friend translated roughly, but it wasn't until this morning, when I read the English transcript, that I understood well what he said. Here's how it began:

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In March 1848, Europe was in flames: blood was flowing in the streets of its capitals, and in Vienna people were fighting on barricades. What were the Hungarians doing? We were writing a poem. We were compiling our Twelve Points. We were walking from Pest to Buda that was our first Peace March.
We freed political prisoners without firing a shot, we went to the theatre and watched a patriotic production, and in the interval we sang the "Nemzeti dal" ["National Song"]. And by evening we had won. Nine months later to the day Zoltn Petfi was born.
The Hungarian Revolution was not destructive but constructive, not negative but positive. It was true and beautiful. And in the end what sprang from it was not death, but life. This is what a revolution looks like when it is made by young Hungarians.
Today's Western world proclaims that the most important question in human life or at least in political life is what kind of world we leave to our children. What a colossal mistake! In fact it is the reverse: the question is not what kind of world we leave to our children, but what kind of children we leave to the world.
In truth, everything depends on this. Everything also depended on it in 1848. One hundred and seventy-six years ago the Hungarians were able to stand up for the freedom of their homeland because and only because Uncle Petrovics, Mama Jkai, Papa Vasvri and Mama Irnyi left to the world fine, free-spirited sons who loved their homeland.
The parents of the Youth of March knew that there is only a homeland for as long as there are people who love it. They knew that the Hungarian homeland lived in the shadow of eternal threat. Its size was not large enough, its people not numerous enough, and its wealth not high enough to guarantee its survival. The Hungarian homeland is sustained only by the love of its citizens and the strength of their hearts; this is what makes us special.
In the Western world today, millions of people think and live as if they have come from nowhere and are going nowhere. This is why they have no regard and are convinced that they should have no regard for anything or anyone: they start wars; they destroy worlds; they redraw the borders of countries; like locusts, they consume everything; they scorn the dead and deny the rights of those yet to be born.
We Hungarians live differently, and want to live differently. We come from somewhere, and we are going somewhere. All that we have, we received from our ancestors and together with it, the mission to maintain it and pass it on. This is the essence of Hungarian freedom.
For us, freedom is not a pleasure or a passion: Hungarians do not consider themselves free just because they are not hungry, or because in their minds they are not tormented by misery. We are not made free by everyone doing what they feel like doing. For us this is not enough. For us freedom is to be able to build a country where we are not answerable to any landlord. And the survival in the world of what is Hungarian is important for no one except us.
But we know that the Hungarian quality of existence is a special, singular, sublime form of human life. The greatest thing that can happen to us is to be born Hungarian. In the Western world it is imagined that people are just who they are unto themselves: only their free choice determines what states they become citizens of, they decide whether they will be boys or girls, family is whatever they invent for themselves, and the homeland is merely a field of operation. We Hungarians do not believe in all that; we know that if you stand alone in the world you are not free, but lonely.
The young people of 15 March battered at the gates and shouted to the world the news that we Hungarians are companions not only in friendship and family, but companions in the homeland too: compatriots. Indeed, my companions are also those who went before me and those who will come after me; because the life of the Hungarians is a continuous chain, from Saint Stephen, through King Matthias, Sndor Petfi and the Hungarians of 1956, right down to us and beyond. Glory to our ancestors!

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Read the whole thing. What Orban is getting at is a defense of national sovereignty and cultural particularity. He is standing up to the Washington-Brussels-Davos axis. The US Ambassador last week delivered a stunningly harsh speech denouncing Hungary , faulting it in part for not living up to its NATO responsibilities. By this he means Budapest's opposition to NATO's pro-Ukraine strategy. The Hungarians, as you know, pointedly objected to NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and not because the Hungarians love the Russians (as Washington and the Empire media say). It's in part because they don't understand why this defensive alliance (NATO) has to be activated to support a war between Russia and a non-NATO country.
Why should Hungary put itself at risk of being devastated by war because Washington deems it important to its own plans, and because so many western European governments do anything Washington says? Did they sign up for this when they joined NATO? Did any European?
The loss of cheap Russian gas as a result of the war was a massive blow to Germany, which is now de-industrializing. Can you imagine that? Germany, de-industrializing! This is not only NATO's fault; the Germans stupidly de-nuclearized of their own volition, and Mama Merkel infamously opened up the borders to a million Third Worlders. Germany is at the forefront of a self-dissolution taking place all across Europe. Read this story about the AfD, or Alliance For Germany, the rise of which is freaking out the EU establishment:

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If an election were held today, the AfD would be the second largest party, according to polls.
But national polls camouflage an important division: the AfD has disproportionate support in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states of Germany.
After the fall of communism in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany a year later, many people in the five eastern states lost not only their jobs but their collective past, leaving them disoriented and helpless in the capitalist system.
The AfD's rise has been propelled by anger over inflation and, above all, rising immigration. The EU received 1.1 million asylum requests in 2023, the highest number since 2015. Germany got by far the largest number of claims more than 300,000 mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. The country has also taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees displaced by Russia's invasion.
Voters in Germany and across Europe are increasingly empowering far-right nationalist parties who promise to restrict immigration and, in some cases, constrain democratic freedoms of religion, of expression, of the right to protest. These forces have bubbled up in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

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It's important to read the piece, because you see clearly that the regime, in whatever national or transnational form, treats any resistance to its goals as semi-Nazi, as "far right," as "domestic terrorism," and so forth. This just happened in Germany:

Sam Lowry said:

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TexasScientist said:

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The bill, which is all but certain to be approved as Orban's lawmakers wield a supermajority in the legislature, will impose a prison term of up to three years on politicians that accept foreign funds in elections.

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I guess the author doesn't know it's up to five years under US law.

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The US law is enforced like the laws that say you can't tie you horse up on Main Street.

No issue with this. Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

If you were looking for an NGO/CIA connection to the recent uprisings in Hungary, look no further. https://t.co/ypO11fTUbf

— Ronald Dodson (@RonDodson) April 10, 2024

Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

Redbrickbear said:

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If you were looking for an NGO/CIA connection to the recent uprisings in Hungary, look no further. https://t.co/ypO11fTUbf

— Ronald Dodson (@RonDodson) April 10, 2024

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Surprise, surprise.

Sam Lowry said:

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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It is pretty clear at this point that England's war guarantee to the Poles sparked WW2 putting them in a position where they didn't think they needed to negotiate with the Germans regarding Danzig/Gdansk. Now it might have happened anyway given that third Reich was every bit as expansionist as the fourth, albeit for different reasons.

Sam Lowry said:

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Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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Yeah it was so worth having over 500,000 American servicemen killed with additional hundreds of thousands horribly wounded just to have China, North Korea, and Manchuria become communist with almost all of Eastern Europe under the murderous domination of Joseph Stalin.

KaiBear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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Yeah it was so worth having over 500,000 American servicemen killed with additional hundreds of thousands horribly wounded just to have China, North Korea, and Manchuria become communist with almost all of Eastern Europe under the murderous domination of Joseph Stalin.

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Pearl Harbor? Nazi domination would have been better?

Not sure I catch your full analogy here.

And I do believe Hungarians should choose their own government. Not outside influencers.

But your example choice is a head scratcher.

Sam Lowry said:

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TexasScientist said:

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The bill, which is all but certain to be approved as Orban's lawmakers wield a supermajority in the legislature, will impose a prison term of up to three years on politicians that accept foreign funds in elections.

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I guess the author doesn't know it's up to five years under US law.

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Eric Swallwell and Joe Biden say hi.

For the record and for the room, the isolationist comment was sarcastic. Sounds like that one didn't quite land, but yeah…I agree that Hungary should make its own decisions.

EatMoreSalmon said:

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KaiBear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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Yeah it was so worth having over 500,000 American servicemen killed with additional hundreds of thousands horribly wounded just to have China, North Korea, and Manchuria become communist with almost all of Eastern Europe under the murderous domination of Joseph Stalin.

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Pearl Harbor? Nazi domination would have been better?

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It's an interesting hypothetical to discuss in terms of what would have happened if the Axis never attack/declared war on the USA

Especially if the USA had still developed the atomic bomb it might well have still been the most powerful nation on earth and probably have absorbed Latin America and the British Empire and created a powerful bloc in opposition to the Japanese Empire in Asia and the German lead system/empire in continental Europe.

Had the axis not attacked the US, there would be no Soviet Union and India would have likely come under Japanese control with a puppet ruler - which they had chosen already.
If the US had stood pat, they could have also lost the tech boost from collaborating with UK scientists.
WW2 was not a time to wait and see. The US was fortunate to be immune by distance from direct lattack at the time. By the war's end, highly destructive attacks on the US homeland would have been possible.

EatMoreSalmon said:

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Had the axis not attacked the US, there would be no Soviet Union and India would have likely come under Japanese control with a puppet ruler - which they had chosen already.
If the US had stood pat, they could have also lost the tech boost from collaborating with UK scientists.
WW2 was not a time to wait and see. The US was fortunate to be immune by distance from direct lattack at the time. By the war's end, highly destructive attacks on the US homeland would have been possible.

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Super hard to say.

China might have been too big of a fish for Japan to completely swallow.

The British Empire and the USA (the Anglo-sphere) might have merged into some kind of NATO or NAFTA relationship.

The USSR might have survived in some form beyond the Ural Mountains.

It's all hypothetical

Sam Lowry said:

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Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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I'll pay for you to take a basic history course at a junior college.

Harrison Bergeron said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Realitybites said:

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Hungarians should decide how Hungary is ruled.

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That kind of isolationist talk is exactly what caused WW2.

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I'll pay for you to take a basic history course at a junior college.

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It's a long thread, but you'll get through it.

The world order based on liberal ideology has failed and must be destroyed, and it must be replaced by a system of international relations based on state sovereignty and national interests.

This opinion was expressed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, speaking at the… pic.twitter.com/iiNN4MPcS6

— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 25, 2024

Hungary-like fertility policies flatly don't work.

Hungary has dedicated major resources to this - no taxes for 3+ kids, debt forgiveness, major subsidies for homes. It's actually equivalent to ~5% of their GDP. The US military is 3.2%, so big spending.

Nothing happened. https://t.co/ICmu43cieu pic.twitter.com/VNWRctggwc

— Hunter📈🌈 (@StatisticUrban) April 29, 2024