Once upon a time, there was a far-right party whose provocations scared Europe.

Of course, they did not consider themselves extremists, they simply wanted to build a just society on a Christian, national basis. They were young, neither the Bolshevist legacy nor the burden of liberalism after the regime change oppressed them. The Jobbik Movement for Hungary was founded by the youth organization of university and college students, the Right-Wing Youth Association.

At that time - we wrote 2003 - in the world of Hungarian universities, it seems that the conservative, Christian and national outlook still prevailed.
(Or the eternal opposition behavior typical of youth, always wanting something different. Remember, after the 2002 elections, the MSZP-SZDSZ coalition was in government in Hungary!) The party calling itself a movement soon created a paramilitary organization for the spiritual and physical self-defense of Hungarians, the paratroopers paraded in their elegant uniforms, sometimes in front of the presidential palace of the Republic, sometimes in settlements inhabited by gypsies. Their party leader also wore the guard vest in the parliament, perhaps as a provocation, perhaps in order to attract media attention.

There was plenty of attention, the German press was always shouting about the advance of the Hungarian extreme right, at that time the local newspapers showed guardsmen reminiscent of brother Dunnyás on their front pages, and preached about anti-Jewish and anti-Gypsyism.

The existence of the extreme right-wing danger was proven by the Gypsy murders. The latter came in handy for the Germans, because at that time it became public knowledge that the neo-Nazi underground movement (NSU) had committed a series of crimes against foreigners. At the beginning of the 2000s, there were nine murders against migrants and another forty-three attempted murders with similar motives in Germany.

They weren't really afraid of us, but they wanted to divert attention from their own domestic political problem. So much so that they even gave money to make the film about the Roma murders, Only the Wind. The art film motivated by current politics was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival and the Peace Prize of Amnesty International. During the festival, the Hungarian embassy in Berlin organized public discussions with Roma politicians. Zoltán Balog, Lívia Járóka and other experts tried in vain to say in German and English, without an interpreter, that the Guard had been legally disbanded a long time ago.

Even though the Hungarian Roma strategy (which was also developed for the European Union) was presented, Berliners - just like Brussels - did not want to hear it. The topos of Hungary's exclusionary anti-Jewish and anti-Roma remains.

Returning to Jobbik, the party received one-fifth of the votes in the 2014 elections, and although this was exactly half of the mandate ratio, ten percent, it was still a big number in German circles. What will happen to Hungary and Europe if the extreme right becomes so strong there?

Then, later on, they stopped worrying about Jobbik, because they realized that they should not be afraid of them, but of Viktor Orbán, who was brave enough to go against the unreasonable and increasingly incomprehensible decisions of the European Union in the national interest.

First with his unorthodox economic policy, then during the migration crisis, now with epidemic management, and sooner or later it always proves that he is on the right track. In his person, they found the image of the common enemy they were looking for in the sophisticated, democratic Western world.

Jobbik came here to be cute, pro-people, "with a Hungarian heart, common sense, clean hands" and Lajos Simicska's money, with the support of the Ágnes Hellers, they waited for the big victory, the change of government on Jobbik's basis, but it certainly did not happen. The cute party chairman, Mr. Simicska, left his media empire and disappeared from the scene. The next day, the German press was already vocal about the fact that, with Orbán's victory, the freedom of the Hungarian press was further curtailed, and more important media outlets ceased to exist. Nobody cared that the owner left the media market in frustration, leaving Magyar Nemzet, Heti Válasz, Hír Tévé and Lánchíd radio to their fate, if we still remember it. We know the internal strife in Jobbik that followed and the division of the party.

It would be good to remember these things, because more recently Jobbik's strategist and parliamentary vice president, Brenner Koloman, is an increasingly frequent guest of the German press, raising awareness there. On his part, this is easy, in civilian life Brenner was a Germanist, habilitated associate professor at ELTE, where he had a reputation as a strict teacher.

He has no problem making connections or speaking German with journalists and politicians. He can also write a program, for example Jobbik's new program. Mutatis mutandis, the initially anti-EU party already voted for the Europe of Nations in 2009.

Later, it went beyond this, and today they are looking for common issues, a unified European strategy for global challenges, and the possibility of cooperation. In Hungary, Jobbik has a common cause with all left-wing parties, the defeat of Viktor Orbán at any cost. The answer to the domestic challenge is a unified strategy and cooperation.

At one time, Jobbik observed with disappointment the "rapid wear and tear of the parties, their worldviews, their changing of the mantle, their corruption, their emptying, and the fact that the political set regularly voted together against the Hungarian interest in matters of national strategy". Now, for the sake of a unified strategy, they also chose the varga letter in their worldview and teamed up with the communist successor parties, the extreme liberals who merged with them, everyone whom they wanted to remove from power before.

We here at home are scratching our heads at the moments of opposition unity, when, for example, party chairman Jakab assures the Socialist, DK, and LMP politicians of his support, while withdrawing the Jobbik candidates. Come on, Ági, Márta, etc.! – shouts the words of encouragement of the Hungarian Hajduks and fans in their Alpár way, forward, for the victory! Are you not asking if voters with a right-wing identity agree with this?

Because they chose this party because of their more right-wing national sentiment, and not to bring Ági, Márta and the other pseudo-democrats to power. Jakab believes that the Orwellian two minutes of hate a day, which he uses to incite his voting base against the thieving rich and the Orbán regime, is enough, that the addiction to hate will also pull the iksz with magnetic force.

While Jakab here at home exercises the rather old-fashioned role assigned to him by the rainbow common interest, his Europe-compatible party partner, Brenner Kolomán, performs the task of fortune-telling and convinces the West of the need for opposition unity. "We did not defeat the communist one-party system in order to fall prey to a corrupt, autocratic system. The Hungarian electoral system makes it impossible for the opposition parties to remove Fidesz from power," he says, and everyone in that region really likes that. They immediately believe Brenner that today's Jobbik is no longer the radical, anti-Semitic, racist party they once thought it was, they are today Hungary's only people's party. And it makes you believe that the six-party opposition - like the opposition round table during the regime change - is made necessary by the domestic political situation. In the democratic world, there is no moral doubt as to whether an alliance with Jobbik is acceptable from the left?

Where is the left, where is the right? There is no direction here anymore, sang the evergreen Tamás Cseh at the dawn of the regime change. There is really no direction here, there is a strategic goal, the defeat of Viktor Orbán and the acquisition of power at any cost. And in this, all means are allowed, the will of the voters can be ignored, the rules can be overridden, and one's own voters can be deceived. Of course, if they let it.

Source: Magyar Hírlap