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Hungarian PM Orban Defends 'Cultural' Standpoint In Racist Remarks Row

By RFE/RL July 28, 2022

Hungary's right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has defended his recent comments against creating "peoples of mixed-race," saying they represented a "cultural, civilizational standpoint."

"It happens sometimes that I speak in a way that can be misunderstood...the position that I represent is a cultural, civilizational standpoint," Orban told a joint press conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer during a one-day visit to neighboring Austria.

Orban triggered a wave of scathing criticism after he warned on July 23 against mixing with "non-Europeans" in a speech in Romania's Transylvania region, home to a sizable ethnic Hungarian minority.

"We move, we work elsewhere, we mix within Europe," he said in a speech at the Baile Tusnad Summer University.

"But we don't want to be a mixed race," a "multi-ethnic" people who would mix with "non-Europeans," he said.

During the same speech, Orban also seemed to allude to the Nazi German gas chambers when criticizing a Brussels plan to reduce European gas demand by 15 percent following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"For example, there is the latest proposal from the EU Commission, which says that everyone should be obliged to reduce their gas consumption by 15 percent. I don't see how that should be enforced, although there is German know-how for this, from the past, I think," Orban told the thousands-strong audience.

Hungary was the only EU member to oppose the gas-reduction plan, which passed on a majority vote this week.

A longtime adviser to Orban, Zsuzsa Hegedus, resigned on July 26, slamming Orban's speech as "a pure Nazi text," while Jewish community representatives voiced alarm.

Referring to Orban's speech as "stupid and dangerous," the International Auschwitz Committee called on the EU to continue to distance itself from "Orban's racist undertones and to make it clear to the world that [he] has no future in Europe."

The speech reminds Holocaust survivors "of the dark times of their own exclusion and persecution," the organization's vice president, Christoph Heubner, said in a statement on July 26.

More than half a million Hungarian Jews were systematically exterminated during the Nazi Holocaust in World War II.

Heubner called on the EU and specifically on Austria's Nehammer to make a stand ahead of Orban's visit and distance themselves from "Orban's racist undertones."

Nehammer said on July 28 that the issue had been "resolved...amicably and in all clarity," adding that his country "strongly condemned...any form of racism or anti-Semitism."

Austria is the first EU country to host Orban for talks since he won a fourth straight mandate in an April landslide.

The Hungarian premier has in the past targeted migrants from Africa and the Middle East, as well as NGOs that support them, restricting the right to seek asylum and putting up barriers at borders.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-orban-defends-racist- remarks/31963969.html

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.