Quoting the words of our colleague and colleague Irén Rab: "it rarely happens that someone gives a speech in defense of Hungarians fighting for their rights. This is what Elmar Forster, who calls himself "Auslands-Österreich" and lives in Hungary, did in his newly published book.
The Austrian author considers himself a freelance journalist who graduated in Bregenz, went to college in Innbruck and then Berlin, took part in countless international projects and fell in love with Hungary during his travels. Since 2018, he has been teaching German at the Kossuth Lajos high school in Mosonmagyaróvár, and today he lives in Dunaszentpál.
The reason for writing the book was the 2015 refugee crisis. As we can remember, former Austrian chancellor Faymann compared Hungary's refugee policy to the Holocaust in an interview with Spiegel. Forster protested against the scandalous statement in an e-mail sent to the Hungarian ambassador in Vienna. This gesture was also praised by Hungarian public television at the time.
In the first chapter, Forster deals with the clash of cultures, which the Western elite explains as the "latent racism" of the Easterners. This is based on the "political correctness" fashionable in the West, which at the same time stifles all democratic dialogue in Western Europe. (We would add that also between Western and Central-Eastern Europe - ed.)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reacted to this with the state theory of illiberal democracy - the author continues - because the Western attitude is completely foreign to the countries of the former Eastern Bloc due to their painful experiences with dictatorships. Following this realization, "Urbanization" is now unstoppable and spreading in Western Europe as well. Perhaps a little hastily, but according to the author, this is precisely why "multipluralist tolerance-totalitarianism is collapsing in the West."
In the book, he states that the West has no historical knowledge in this regard. For decades, they have been vegetating in irresponsible prosperity, while confusing freedom with material security. He quotes Sándor Márai who wrote in his poem "The Angel from Heaven":
"But now many people are asking: what happened?
Who made the law here out of flesh and blood?
And they ask, more and more people ask,
Fluttering because they don't understand at all.
Those who inherited it-:
Is Freedom such a big deal?”
The West lacks historical determination, Forster wrote. According to him, Oswald Spengler's theory about the decadence of history can be repeated: "The virtue of conquered peoples is patience, not resignation." The consequence of all of this is the lying media campaign against Hungary - it can be read in Chapter 3 of the book, which since Viktor Orbán took office in 2010 has been producing more and more fake news about Hungary, such as the refugee crisis, the coronavirus measures, and regarding Orbán as "Europe's most dangerous politician" (Paul Lendvai, ORF journalist).
The author also tries to answer the question: is there a "Soros NGO syndicate" in the media to destabilize Hungary?
According to Forster, all this leads to a "break of an era" of world-historical proportions. According to the author of the book, the question is whether the Western Union states are breaking with moral relativism, the refugee crisis and their lack of national identity?
Or does the future of Christian Europe lie in the four states of Visegrád? Does the "East" have an "afterglow" phase, like when the Roman Empire fell, because Hungary considers itself the defender of Christian civilization.
the original article in German here
