Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó:Daily Caller Obtained
WASHINGTON, DC – The foreign minister of Hungary, Péter Szijjártó, in part, blamed the current war between Ukraine and Russia on President Joe Biden in an exclusive interview Wednesday with the Daily Caller. He argued that if the 2020 election had played out differently, there would be no war.
Szijjártó sat down for an interview with the Caller after speaking at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) International Ministerial Conference and discussed a variety of different issues affecting the U.S. and Europe, including the war in Ukraine. Throughout the interview, Szijjártó made it clear he believes that if former President Donald Trump and former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel were still in power, the war would not have started.
“The European economy is suffering. Europe is suffering. That is why the only solution for Europe is peace. But definitely, peace will not come with this behavior. What the U.S. administration has been showing. Why? Because in order to create peace, you would need to talk. You would need to communicate,” Szijjártó said during the interview. “And you know, I am usually under very heavy pressure and criticism of why I still talk to the Russians. But, you know, I mean, you cannot afford not to talk to them when you are almost hundred percent dependent on their energy sources and Russia is a reality in Europe, and Russia will remain a reality in Europe regardless of the outcome of this war.”
He continued:
“So, you know, what we are definitely sure about is that if your presidential election had played out differently in 2020, this war would not have broken out. As much as I can be sure about things that didn’t happen, I am pretty sure that this would have been the case because we are currently, globally speaking, we are currently lacking leaders. President Trump was a real leader. Chancellor Merkel was a real leader. So what I know is that if Chancellor Merkel. And if President Trump had stayed in power, this war, I’m pretty sure, would not have been broken out. So that’s why what we hope is that there will be some American-Russian talks in this regard because don’t be misled. Don’t be misled. This is necessary to create peace. Russian-American talks.
(Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó: Daily Caller Obtained)
Szijjártó echoed their concerns, however, mentioning the upcoming November G-20 summit in Indonesia, which Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend, as an opportunity for the two leaders to talk. The Hungarian minister’s suggestion comes despite claims that U.S. officials are making sure Biden does talk with Putin, per Politico. Biden himself previously told CNN’s Jake Tapper said he will not meet the Russian president except maybe to discuss American Britney Griner, who is serving a 9-year sentence in Russian prison. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Here’s Why Hungary Is Incentivizing Children, Marriage)
“I do hope that those discussions, which are necessary to finish the war, will take place soon. And I don’t want to degrade anyone, but I am pretty certain that these negotiations must take place between the American and the Russian administration,” Szijjártó said. “And, you know, I hope that both of them will behave responsibly because I understand that there will be a G20 meeting. I understand that there is a chance that both of the presidents might be there. And to be honest, I think it would be very, very complicated to explain to the world from both perspectives, why they have not met, if they. If they are on the same place. So, you know, we in Hungary cannot do anything more than just wish, hope, and pray.”
“I want to underline that I really do believe and think that if he had stayed in power, this wouldn’t have broken out,” he added.
Entrenched leftists within the U.S. State Department are supporting the effort to demote Viktor Orban from prime minister of Hungary, if a report in Financial Times is correct. The Biden administration also left Hungary off its invitation list for a forthcoming international virtual Democracy Summit on Dec. 9 and 10 to which some 100 countries were invited.
“Trump and his enablers and those who invaded and attacked our Capitol, they don’t like the world we’re living in and they have that in common with autocratic leaders from Russia to Turkey, from Hungary to Brazil, and so many other places,” Hillary Clinton explained to MSNBC.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó retorted that Clinton’s remarks about the Democracy Summit proved that “the event has a domestic political character, with invitations withheld from countries whose leaders had good ties with former President Donald Trump . . . We need nobody to judge the state of Hungarian democracy as if in a school exam.”
A superficial reading of this would conclude it’s the big bad Central Euro authoritarians complaining about another American-backed regime change, but there’s more to it and this is just the latest connection to a broader ideological war unfolding across the Euro-Atlantic.
The European Culture War
Hungary has been an important point of discussion among U.S. conservatives. Orban’s party, Fidesz, leads a family-friendly conservative government, where women are tax free if they have more than three kids. Orban’s government has also crushed gender studies and other disciplines, defunded universities, closed Hungarian borders to illegal mass migration, stopped LGBT programs targeted towards children as propaganda, and cut down on abortion.
Alongside Poland, Hungary has formed a semi-alliance of Christian conservative central European powers, and has been an example of sorts for Western conservatives. Hungary offers what Sweden does to leftists: an functioning example of what a social-conservative government might look like in practice.
This is drawing attention from liberals and conservatives alike. Rod Dreher of the American Conservative lived in Hungary on a fellowship often writing about it, and Tucker Carlson of Fox News shot a whole documentary for a week from Budapest.
It’s also invited transnational opposition. Germany’s new center-left coalition of red and green parties insisted they will start a full-on culture war with Poland and Hungary while making the European Union a stronger transnational government.
“Countries which do not live up to the EU’s standards should not expect to receive EU money—a clear message to Poland and Hungary. This general approach applies to the United Kingdom as well,” a recent analysis stated, adding that the German coalition wants to make it legal for “trans people to self-identify.”
Meanwhile, Belgium and Netherlands are planning to fund abortion across Poland and Hungary, which limit the practice. “The Dutch parliament adopted a resolution approving the use of state funds to help Polish women obtain abortions, reports Deutsche Welle… The decision follows a similar move in September by Belgium, whose government agreed to provide funding for women in Poland to obtain terminations abroad, as a growing number have done since the near-total abortion ban was introduced,”according to a report.
Just to take one example, consider the implications of Germany allowing self-identification of transgenders, a process that fundamentally goes against biological reality. Given the Schengen borderless mandates within the EU, German transgender individuals could travel everywhere and use their EU special protections to undermine individual national policies about transgenderism, as well as the religious traditions of Hungary and Poland, which are stricter (and, one can say, more democratic) about such rules.
That likely sequence further indicates these countries are not “liberal democracies” (the key word here being liberal), opening them up for further charges of growing authoritarianism, and further clashes in EU courts, the rulings of which are increasingly considered superior to national democracies and lawmaking. In the past that has resulted in the EU clashing with Poland over fossil fuels and with Hungary over LGBT legal preferences and national courts.
Intellectual Compatibility Across Borders
The Polish conservative government, as well as Orban, bear similarities to the socially conservative section within the Republican Party, which consolidated under Donald Trump with increasing exchanges of intellectuals and conferences. The left’s reaction to that ascendence of social conservatives across the globe was therefore somewhat expected, given the new Biden administration staffed with Hillary-era culture warriors. The culture war is transnational, and the battle lines being drawn are naturally ideological as well. On one hand, there’s evangelical internationalist liberalism, which is imperial in nature and is therefore clashing with localist reactions from Virginia schools to villages in Hungary.
“Hungarian-American relations were at their peak during the Trump presidency,” Szijjarto of Hungary also noted when the FT reporter asked why Hungary was the only EU country left out of the planned Democracy summit by Joe Biden. “We have a great deal of respect for the former president, a respect that is mutual. We give the same respect to every elected U.S. president — regardless of what we get in return — but it is clear that those who were on friendly terms with Donald Trump were not invited.”
Hungary was the only country in the EU to be snubbed even when the U.S. State Department coyly added that that was not the case. “As an important part of our bilateral agenda, we continue to press our Hungarian counterparts when we have concerns about developments that erode space for independent media and civil society, curtailed LGBTQI+ rights, and undermined judicial independence,” the State dept said, according to FT. Within hours of its report, someone leaked an old speech of one of Orban’s closest allies that heightened political tensions in the nation.
Democracy Isn’t the Issue; Sexual Chaos Is
Ultimately, however, there are two emerging questions to ponder. One, the complete hypocrisy of the Biden administration is visible. New Zealand, which is growing rapidly authoritarian with vaccine passports, second-grade citizenships, and lockdowns, is invited, but not Hungary, where people can move freely. The undertone of this decision is not lost on conservatives across Europe and possibly the United States: it is not about democracy at all, but about liberalism and sexual rights.
Are Republicans astute enough to see through this, and understand the potential long-term damage the left’s culture war is causing to America’s reputation as the ruling Democratic Party turns increasingly woke, revolutionary, and ideological? Democrats are actively building ideological solidarity and fellowship with other leftist parties across the world, but there’s no such equivalent among conservatives. If it is coming down to a battle of ideas across national boundaries, perhaps cultivating that is something to think about.
The second, and far more crucial, question is: what next for Poland and Hungary and how long can they survive within an openly hostile EU? The combined GDP and manpower of the four conservative central V4-Euro powers led by Poland and Hungary can compete with Germany and France. But at translating that into power, hard and soft, there’s no visible effort of unity.
France and Greece, for example, recently made a bilateral treaty that consolidated their foreign policy into one. There’s no such treaty between Poland and Hungary, or one alongside the UK, for example. Nor is there any visible effort of promoting a socially conservative order across Europe even when the situation is ripe with right-wing voters opposed to a leftist social revolution feeling increasingly voiceless, especially across Northern Europe.
Glimpses of that ideological movement building were once seen in an Orban speech asking Christian refugees from Europe to head to Hungary: “Of course we can give shelter to the real refugees: Germans, Dutch, French, Italians; scared politicians and journalists; Christians who had to flee their own country; those people who want to find here the Europe that they lost at their home,” he said.
If Orban wins re-election this time, against the odds, will we see the consolidation of a conservative bloc right at the heart of Europe? Because the days of hedging might soon be over. When the world turns binary, fence-sitting is usually no longer an option.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a national-security fellow at The Center for the National Interest; a non-resident fellow at the James G Martin Center; and an elected early career historian member at the Royal Historical Society. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, and can be reached on Twitter @MrMaitra.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech in front of the National Museum during Hungary’s National Day celebrations on March 15, 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. Hungary’s National Day celebrations commemorate the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburg monarchy. | Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images
The eastern European nation of Hungary has passed a constitutional amendment that will preserve the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
The Ninth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, the country’s equivalent of a constitution, was passed in Parliament last week by a margin of 134-45. The amendment, which was backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will amend Section L paragraph (1) of the Fundamental Law to read: “Hungary protects the institution of marriage as the association between a man and a woman and the family as the basis for the survival of a nation. The foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
“The main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and woman who are married,” said Justice Minister Judit Varga, Reuters reported.
Varga, who sent the amendment to Parliament last month, said it will also work to provide “all children with an education based on the values of the Christian culture of Hungary and guarantees the undisturbed development of the child according to their gender at birth,” Hungary Today noted.
“The Fundamental Law of Hungary is a living framework that expresses the will of the nation, the form in which we want to live,” Varga wrote in the justification section of the bill. “However, the ‘modern’ set of ideas that make all traditional values, including the two sexes, relative is a growing concern.”
“The constant threat to the natural laws of the forms and content of human communities, to the concepts arising from the order of Creation that harmonize with them and ensure the survival of communities, and, in some cases, the attempt to formulate them with a content contrary to the original raises doubts as to whether the interests, rights and well-being of future generations can be protected along the lines of the values of the Fundamental Law,” she added.
The passage of the Ninth Amendment comes less than a year after Parliament voted in favor of a measure that defines gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.” Like the measure preserving the traditional definition of sex, the Ninth Amendment faced strong pushback from LGBT advocacy groups.
“This is a dark day for Hungary’s LGBTQ community and a dark day for human rights,”said David Vig, director of Amnesty Hungary. “These discriminatory, homophobic and transphobic new laws — rushed through under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic — are just the latest attack on LGBTQ people by Hungarian authorities.”
The government of Hungary, led by Orban, has worked to uphold the influence of Christianity on its laws and culture as much of the rest of Europe continues to become more secular. Orban previously described Christianity as “Europe’s last hope.”
Hungary was one of the 31 other countries that joined the U.S. in signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which asserts that “there is no international right to abortion.” Rather than rely on immigration to counteract the country’s declining birth rates, the Hungarian government implemented pro-family policies designed to incentivize people to have children.
The United States tried and failed to pass the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have enshrined the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman into the U.S. Constitution, in 2006. At the time, several states had passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in response to a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Less than a decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the constitutional amendments, declaring that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Of the 29 countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, more than half of them are in Europe.
Austrians are arming themselves at record rates in an effort to defend their households against feared attacks from Muslim invaders. Tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees” have poured into Austria from Hungary and Slovenia in recent months on their way to Germany and Sweden, two wealthy European countries that have laid out the welcome mat for migrants. More than a million will end up in Germany alone by the end of this year, according to estimates from the German government.
Obtaining a working firearm and ammunition in Germany, Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands is practically impossible for the average citizen. Germany, for instance, requires a psychological evaluation, the purchase of liability insurance and verifiable compliance with strict firearms storage and safety rules. And self-defense is not even a valid reason to purchase a gun in these countries.
The laws in Austria, while still strict, are a bit less overbearing.
A Czech TV report confirms that long guns – shotguns and rifles – have been flying off the shelves in Austria, and Austrians who haven’t already purchased a gun may not have a chance to get one for some time. They’re all sold out.
And those arming themselves are primarily women. “If anyone wants to buy a long gun in Austria right now, too bad for them,”the Czech newscaster says. “All of them are currently sold out.”
He cites the Austrian news outlet Trioler Tageszeitung as the source of his report.
“We cannot complain about lack of demand,” Stephen Mayer, a gun merchant, told Trioler Tageszeitung.
He claims the stock has been sold out for the last three weeks and that demand is being fueled by fears generated by social changes. “People want to protect themselves,”Mayer said. “Nonetheless, the most common purchasers of arms are primarily Austrian women.”
They are also buying pepper sprays, which Mayer said are in big demand among those who can’t get a gun.
Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he recently returned from a gun rights event in Europe, where he sensed a change in attitude toward firearms. “I just returned from a gun rights meeting in Belgium, and I can attest that all over Europe people now want the means to defend themselves,”Gottlieb told WND. “Self-defense is no longer a dirty word. In countries like Austria, where it is still legal to own a firearm, gun sales are at record levels. I can tell you first-hand that people in Europe now wish they had a Second Amendment.”
More potential new customers are entering the market than ever before, according to the Czech report.
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Until the refugees started flooding Europe, it was mostly hunters and sport shooters who purchased firearms. Now, people are seeking weapons for self-defense because they are worried about their personal safety. Most have never used a gun before.
So-called “projectile weapons” are available in Austria under two classifications, C and D, which are rifles and shotguns. Every adult Austrian is legally able to apply for a weapons permit but must disclose to the government their reason for wanting to own a gun.
The Czech station cited an interview with a sociologist and an Austrian journalist, both of whom said the weapons purchases were based on unfounded fears about foreign migrants.
‘Something is very wrong here’
The Viennese sociologist, identified only as Mr. Gertler, said no such fears about migrants should ever be published by any Austrian news outlet.
A journalist named Wittinger said “something is very wrong here” if Austrians are buying guns to protect themselves against migrants. Shotguns will not, after all, solve any immediate problems, quite the contrary,”he said.
The Czech TV station then reported that Islamists are promising: “We will cut the heads off unbelieving dogs even in Europe.” “Look forward to it, it’s coming soon!” the Czech newscaster said.
ISIS-trained jihadists are now returning as European citizens or they are trying to infiltrate as migrants. In one propaganda video an ISIS operative informs his comrades back home in Germany to slit the throats of unbelievers in Germany, Czech TV reports. “Overall, the ministry of interior stated that Germany is in the cross-hairs of Islamic terrorists but that he does not have any indications of specific threats,”he said.
Bracing for another Islamic invasion
The Czech site reflects awareness of a major event in Western history, said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. “Polish King John Sobieski defeated the Muslim invaders at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Another Muslim invasion is underway and Austrians are alarmed, hence their run on gun stores,”Pratt told WND. “Women are right to be concerned in view of the Muslim view of women that they are good for raping and little else.”
The Czech TV report cited the Arab Spring as the root cause for the flood of Muslim migrants into Europe.
“More and more, the whole thing is turning into the situation that we will experience the much-touted Arab spring from very close up – right here at home,”the reporter said. “What’s more, many European are alienating large part of their own populace with unfortunate social and multicultural politics, merciless removal of children, unfair seizures and trading on traditional European values and with policies which are usually less friendly toward conservative and traditional native inhabitants and leans toward that portion of inhabitants who have little trouble with globalization and nonchalant liberalization, removal of traditions and Islamization. Yet we will not be able to rely on it, that portion of (population) once the Arab Spring comes here. And that will probably be, as they say, closing the barn after the cows are gone.”
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