Derek Turner

On 14 April, Hungarian electors rejected the Socialist government which had been in office since 2002, voting instead overwhelmingly for the conservative Fidesz party led by Viktor Orban (who was prime minister 1998-2002) and the nationalist Jobbik, led by Gabor Vona. The final allocation of seats will only be made after the second round on 25 April, but these results indicate that Fidesz will have 206 seats in the 386 seat parliament and Jobbik 26 (the Socialists will probably have just 28).

The result was greeted with much international panic because Jobbik (short for Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom, which translates as "Movement for a Better Hungary") with around 17 percent of the vote, will be represented for the first time in the handsome 1902 Parliament building on the Pest bank of the Danube. The reason this is a problem for some is that Jobbik is often accused of espousing "far right," "anti-Semitic" and "anti-gypsy" sentiments. 

In 1999, Hungary joined NATO; in 2004, it joined the EU, since which, it has been run by a duopoly of Communists-turned-free-traders and technocratic "conservatives."

Jobbik was founded in 2003, growing out of a congeries of Catholic and Protestant student groups inspired by Christianity and a strong sense of national exceptionalism.

At the general election of 2006, they campaigned on an anti-EU, anti-globalism, anti-crime ticket in conjunction with two other parties, the Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) and the vestigial Independent Smallholders' Party (FKgP), but scored only 2.2 percent. Jobbik members were involved in the mass anti-government protests of 2006 in which 800 people were injured and large-scale disturbances the following year, and received an undue percentage of the blame, with the demonstrators being dubbed "a fascist rabble" by some media.

Jobbik's breakthrough came in last year's European elections, when they attracted just under 15 percent of the vote and had three MEPs elected, despite having their "Hungary for the Hungarians" slogan declared "unconstitutional" on the eve of polling day. They have since scored similar percentages in regional and municipal contests.

The party's leaders are respectable figures -- teachers, businessmen, 1956 veterans and lawyers, including Dr. Krisztina Morvai, one of the party's MEPs, who is a Fulbright scholar and probably Hungary's leading advocate of human rights. Jobbik's manifesto is moderate in tone (an English language version can be downloaded from www.jobbik.com/, and much of its content would not look out of place in a Christian Democrat manifesto. And since Vona took over as party leader, the party has sought cooperation with Fidesz where possible.

Where Jobbik begins to diverge from the mainstream is in its belief in a "Europe of the nations," its distrust of free trade, its insistence that it would forbid civil partnerships, abolish the "Liberal-cultural dictatorship" and seek to reunify the "Hungarian nation unjustly torn apart." It has also become famous for its opposition to crime by gypsies (gypsies constitute 5-7 percent of the Hungarian population, but commit a disproportionate number of crimes), and it seeks to set up a special police unit to deal with what is a severe problem in some areas. They take pains to point out that not all gypsies are to blame and that many victims of gypsy crime are other gypsies. But Vona's pledge on 12 April that the party would "eradicate" gypsy crime, and his pledge that Jobbik would not be carrying out "peaceful" politics, have fed the Left's deepest fears.

The widespread allegations of anti-Semitism seem to stem mostly from a scatological internet comment posted just before last year's Euro-elections, purporting to emanate from Krisztina Morvai (who has been a vociferous defender of Palestinian rights since working there with the UN), but which she strongly denies having made. Given her social class, and the fact that she had three children by a Jewish man, it seems reasonable to give her the benefit of the doubt. Other anti-Semitic quotes ascribed to Jobbik members sound equally improbable -- although obviously vicious anti-Semitism does exist in eastern Europe.

Jobbik has a working relationship with other European nationalist groups, such as the BNP, the Front National, the Belgian Front National, the Swedish National Democrats and the Italian Fiamma Tricolore -- but is unwilling to ally itself with comparable Romanian, Czech and Slovak groups, who lay claim to some of the same territories desired by Jobbik's ideologues, and often on equally good historical grounds. This is the perennial dilemma of the "Europe of nations" concept so beloved of many European right-wingers and conservatives. Sooner or later, Europeans who wish to preserve European civilization will have to learn to live down their history.

What really gives credence to some of the dark rumours about Jobbik is the Magyar Guard, a uniformed organization set up by the party in 2007 for the purpose of "strengthening national self-defense and maintain public order" -- a move that divided even the party, with three senior members walking out. Widely suspected of being a militia, and implicated (who knows with what justification?) in street violence, it was banned in July 2009. It has since tried to reconstitute itself as a cultural organization, the Magyar Guard Foundation, but will probably be banned again.

Gabor Vona has promised to wear the banned uniform at the opening of the new session of parliament. Such activities merely revive unhappy memories and reinforce unfortunate stereotypes. Jobbik would be well-advised to disband the group altogether and save themselves a lot of trouble.

If they do this, if they can work out a modus vivendi with neighboring nationalists, and if they can work tactically with Fidesz without compromising their principles, then the future could hold great things for Jobbik.

One of the saddest stories I have ever read about the cultural effects of mass migration came from the Daily Mail of 25 March 2010. Written by Andrew Malone, "Slaughter of the Swans" related the plight of recession-struck Polish and Lithuanian migrant workers stranded in England without work, money or even shelter. Some of these have been compelled to camp out in makeshift shanties along the banks of the River Nene in the city of Peterborough, about 70 miles north of London. (There are similar camps elsewhere.)

I admire Poles and Lithuanians, and am sorry to see some of them reduced to this Third World mode of existence, at the tail end of one of Britain's coldest winters in decades. Secondly, I know this stretch of the River Nene well, and often walk my Jack Russells along the Nene's wide and lazy winding course, drawn by the splendour of Peterborough's cathedral past medieval church spires and thatched Barnack-stone cottages, along shaded, solitary paths below huge and ancient willows and between deep beds of sedge filled with the plashing of grebes and water voles - with swans processing magnificently midstream, the grandest of geese, their crisp wings curled to catch the breezes that propel them gently along to Peterborough -- but now often also to perdition.

On 21 March at a demonstration in Bolton, Greater Manchester Police arrested 74 protestors from the rival English Defence League (EDL) and Unite Against Fascism (UAF). Most of the arrested were UAF supporters. According to the police:

"We have seen groups of people, predominantly associated with the UAF, engaging in violent confrontation...It is clear to me that a large number have attended with the sole intention of committing disorder and their actions have been wholly unacceptable...they acted with, at times, extreme violence."

A UAF spokesman responded with that organization's by now characteristic combination of aggressive assurance and petulant whimpering: "As soon as we arrived at the square we received hostility from police officers. We were certainly not the violent ones, we had come with the intention to protest peacefully against racism and fascism. However, the police stormed into our side of the square and started picking out UAF leaders and arresting them before anything had even happened."

I have never been to Bolton, don't like the look of the EDL and am not defending fascism. I also acknowledge freely that there are many on the left who are agreeable and fair-minded. But anyone who has ever seen self-described 'antifa' activists being, well, active will guess that UAF is being economical with the actualité.

Connoisseurs of cliché will find much to relish in the works of Guardian journalist Joseph Harker.

It is fair to say that our Joseph is interested in race. Of the last 50 or so articles that he has written for the Guardian, around 48 (I fell asleep counting) are about race. And I would not be at all surprised to find fleeting references to race within the texts of the other articles.

His countless contributions to 'debate' include classics like "A voice for minorities" (bet no-one's thought of that before), "Labour has not eliminated racism" (just as well really, or Joe would need to find another topic), "What an all-black Cabinet could look like" (to be fair, it couldn't be worse that the one we have), and "The ordinary brilliance of black youths" (maybe they should be fast-tracked into the Cabinet).

He is also in a pother about the "whitewashing" of Mothers' Day, the non-diverse media, Trevor Phillips's problems, the "n-word," and even anti-racists (he is offended seeing white people arguing about "how offended they are by a bigot with hardly a black or Asian voice to be heard").

An article on the BBC website on 9 March proved me to have been right in some precocious predictions, but it is not false modesty to say that I would much rather have been proved wrong.

Seven militant Muslims, originally 'asylum-seekers' from Yemen and Morocco (the Irish Times says differently) but now living legally in Ireland have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist called Lars Vilks, who in 2007 depicted Mohammed (I'll skip the now almost-obligatory "Prophet" prefix) with the body of a dog. According to the Gardaí, several of the suspects were in contact with Colleen Renee LaRose, America's "Jihad Jane". Five of these excitable, unintelligent types were arrested in Waterford and two in Cork, two places I once knew well.

Algiers has protested formally to Paris about a Front National election poster which shows France draped in the Algerian flag, with the menacing silhouettes of minarets and the slogan Non à l'Islamisme. Three 'anti-racism' groups have issued legal complaints, while one Kahled Lasbeur, lawyer for the Movement against Racism, blustered that there would be "riots, demonstrations and blood-letting" if the posters were not banned.

Less predictably, a Swiss advertising agency has stated that it will sue the FN because of similarities between the poster and the one they devised for the Swiss People's Party during that party's successful campaign to halt the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

There are things not to like about the BNP, but they do enliven British political life. Ever since they started to emerge from the fringes a few years ago, partly through their own efforts and partly because immigration has become so unignorable (yet is still being almost ignored by mainstream politicians), they have afforded vast amusement to journalists bored by the Punch-and-Judy pantomime of “Labour” versus “Conservative”, with the “Liberal Democrats” in the role of the little dog that tries to run away with the sausages.

As David Cameron admitted in his New Year Speech to a largely unimpressed crowd of constituency activists:

Whether you’re Conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat, you’re motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims.

Very true – and very boring. What joy then for jaded journos to find a new KK-kid on the block, a party which is a little rough around the edges and seems sometimes to delight in giving brand-new hostages to fortune to add to all the older ones – a party that can arouse gales of passionate (and sometimes snobbish) hatred and make “everyone” feel morally superior.

In what is being seen as a dry run for the national elections of 9 June, in the 3 March local elections Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) won control of its first municipality and came second in The Hague.

The town of Almere at the southern end of the Ijesselmeer is one of the newest towns in Holland, founded in 1975 on land reclaimed from the Zuider Zee only seven years previously. The town’s youthfulness and its mostly homogenous population may seem to be at odds with Wilders’ anti-Islamic and conservative message, but most of its residents commute to work in Amsterdam. The significance of coming second in The Hague is that it is the seat of the Dutch government and royal family, and the home to many institutions, such as the International Court of Justice. This was the party’s first outing in local elections, and it only contested these constituencies because of a lack of resources.

This is the first installment of what will be, I hope, a regular report from the Old Continent to her sons and daughters whose ancestors, for reasons of religion, politics, enterprise or expediency, departed from the westernmost end of the Eurasian landmass to hazard their luck in uncharted territories on the far side of turbulent waters.

It will be a kind of letter from the stay-at-homes to the descendants of adventurers - although I hope that many stay-at-homes will read it too.

 

On 12 January, the European Union’s incoming Commissioner for Enlargement, the aptly-named Stephan Fuele, spoke in favor of allowing Turkey to join the EU. The 47 year old Czech is an ex-communist who studied in Moscow, and might therefore be expected to advocate whatever policies are likely to be the most idiotic, the most expensive, and the most damaging. As you would also expect, the blank Czech’s views are shared by buffoons like Blair, Bush, Brown, and Obama. What you might not expect is that shed-loads of British Conservatives also want Turkey in the European club.

Conservative Friends of Turkey was founded in 2008 and presently has 19 MP and three MEP supporters. CFT’s leader is the otherwise courageous and cerebral MEP Daniel Hannan, although its best known figure is Boris Johnson. The latter is in favour of membership because he wants to revive the Roman Empire and one of his ancestors was a citizen of the Ottoman Empire and … err, that’s it.

Another supporter is Richard Spring MP, whose family motto is “Not for myself but for my country.” He lives up to this noble sentiment in his own special way -- for example, claiming £35 parliamentary expenses to get rid of a wasp’s nest, claiming £163 for retuning televisions, and in 1995, resigning as a parliamentary aide after reports of his trois-dans-un-lit gymnastics with another man and a lady Sunday school teacher.