Attila Demkó: Should we consider cottage cheese as an example in Germany, or in Western Europe in general?

"So, should we consider cottage cheese as an example in Germany, or in Western Europe in general? What? My stomach turns from the smelly, rotting streets of Brussels, the German bigotry, their entire disintegrating society, their aimless life in which planning the next vacation is the biggest thing (this is Urlaub Land, not Deutschland). They are destroying Europe, economically, intellectually, socially. I can't laugh at them, because the road Germany is on is a disaster, a disaster for all of Europe.

And what is our problem with this beautiful liberal Europe beyond the above? They don't say a stinking word about the oppression and humiliation of the 2 million Hungarians that have remained to this day, thrown to our neighbors by the great Western progress, not a word about the fact that they are still taking serious wealth from the Hungarians in the highlands, about the disgraceful Ukrainian laws, the Romanian concept lawsuits, but at least Klaus Johannis receives a tolerance award in Germany. To put it mildly: a disgrace. This is our problem.”

Amin Attila Demkó freaked out - Orbán's Hungary is laughed at as a corrupt, hypocritical, deplorable banana republic on German public television

The German public service ZDF's satirical evening show Magazin Royale, hosted by Jan Böhmermann, covered Sunday's Hungarian elections in a long 20-minute program, reports 444.hu.

The topicality of the current program was given by Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Russia and, of course, the Hungarian elections on Sunday. In the show, Viktor Orbán and his government were presented as Putin's staunchest European ally, for whom, like several European extreme right-wing populists, it causes a serious headache that the Russians who started the war are completely isolated in world politics.

Throughout, the show remains faithful to the traditions of legendary German humor (444 writes this enthusiastically, as if legendary German humor had always existed - ed.)

First, they laugh at Orbán's hairstyle,

then they continue with the inevitable "we don't even know where Hungary is" joke, and that the country looks like a slice of Vienna.

But there is a part where the editor laughs at the sound of the Hungarian language, because it is like throwing mixed letters into an urn and randomly drawing from them.

This mostly serves the purpose - writes 444 - to somehow maintain interest in Hungary, and Böhmermann admits in the transition text that Germans generally know little about Hungarians. Maybe that's why the whole show feels like it's about some exotic banana republic where owls have copper dicks and

where the biggest international star we managed to produce is András Arató "Hide the pain Harold".

Unfortunately, it is also part of the reality that, viewed from a few hundred kilometers away, Hungarian politics has in some places produced quite obscene things in the last 10-12 years, adds 444. The pro-Russian Hungarian government was forced into a decision-making situation just before the parliamentary elections, according to Böhmermann, then they also recall the exchange of words between Orbán and Volodymyr Zelenskyi about Hungary's involvement, and that the prime minister decided that he would rather not take a position in the war between the dictatorial Russian superpower and the defensive Ukrainian democrats. But the opposition, united from the far right to the center left, also gets its due from the editor, he compares them to a German boy band, and before the show ends, the unmissable Budapest-Bucharest joke arrives.

The reporter visits Dorottya Rédai in a bookstore, the author of the fairy tale book Meseorzág is for everyone, who talks about how she can't show her book on the shelves, only with foils, otherwise she would be propagating homosexuality, and anyway

it is a well-known fact that anyone who sees a homosexual couple, even in a children's book, can become infected themselves. Then comes the scene in which one of the shop assistants brings everyone from Fairyland out of a dark corner, while a book about the Waffen SS can be seen on a nearby shelf.

Fidesz, by the way, went from being a loose, liberal, sequined-shoes, Roxette-loving party to the stale, right-wing, nationalist movement that systematically dismantled the Hungarian rule of law after 2010, rewrote the constitution, the election law, the media law, and so on. is heard during cutscenes.

Today, the summary continues, Hungary looks to Russia, China, Turkey and Singapore as examples, rather than Western countries. Orbán, who was described by Helmut Kohl as the great hope of Europe back in the nineties, became this...

And so, no matter how far away Hungary is, it is said that what goes on there is undoubtedly ridiculous in some places:

for example, they pass laws against homosexual and transsexual propaganda, while the founder of Fidesz, who also drafted the constitution, is having 25-person homosexual parties in Brussels.

The last block deals with the operation of the system: how Orbán captured a significant section of the independent media, how he decimated the judiciary and turned the electoral system to his advantage. And of course where he got the money to run the regime. For example, for your new study.

Like the study room, the Hungarian Prime Minister, who would not have been able to operate his system without the resources from Brussels, also owes the Felcsút light train, which consumes 2 million euros of EU public money, to the Union, the broadcast says. And of course there is someone else who is good at this, Orbán's childhood friend, the former mayor of Felcsút,

Lőrinc "Lölő" Mészáros, who, along with the prime minister's father and son-in-law, also lives very well from the money that the government shovels in from EU sources.

Part of the money accumulated in this way is then returned to the media, and these channels promote the prime minister, thus helping the system to survive.

In the last few minutes, Böhmermann only talks about the fact that if the leaders of the union had taken Hungarian developments more seriously than Jean-Claude Juncker handing out taslits to Orbán accompanied by dictatorship, Hungary would probably not be where it is today, and the upcoming elections would also be freer they could keep it in spirit.