News News from Hungary Togeth­er we will suc­ceed again

Togeth­er we will suc­ceed again

Pre­lude to the autumn polit­i­cal season

There is no Tus­nád­fürdő [sum­mer uni­ver­si­ty]. There is no Kötcse [par­ty con­gress]. There is no Tranz­it [con­fer­ence]. There is a pan­dem­ic. The virus has also dec­i­mat­ed the sum­mer gath­er­ings of the work­shops of polit­i­cal thought. Yet there would be plen­ty to pon­der and debate: mat­ters that would be dif­fi­cult to dis­cuss amidst the usu­al par­lia­men­tary hurly-burly, and with­in the con­fines of mod­ern-day sound­bite-dri­ven com­mu­ni­ca­tion. So instead of speech we have text; instead of an address an essay.

Illib­er­al, Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic, con­ser­v­a­tive, liberal

The strug­gle for spir­i­tu­al sov­er­eign­ty and intel­lec­tu­al free­dom that we launched years ago in Tus­nád­fürdő is grad­u­al­ly bear­ing fruit. Rebel­lion against polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, against the dic­tates of loopy lib­er­al doc­trine, modes of expres­sion and style is flow­ing in an ever broad­er chan­nel. Ever more peo­ple are show­ing increas­ing courage in free­ing them­selves from the shack­les of the suf­fo­cat­ing­ly restric­tive, sin­gle approved mode of speech, the only approved con­cept of democ­ra­cy, and the only approved inter­pre­ta­tion of Europe and the West. The escape attempt itself is not sim­ple, and the risk of pun­ish­ment is high: expul­sion from aca­d­e­m­ic life, loss of employ­ment, stig­ma­ti­sa­tion, run­ning the gaunt­let at uni­ver­si­ties. Exam­ples of this are becom­ing almost dai­ly occur­rences. But even if we man­age to escape the sys­tem­at­ic patrols of well-paid loopy lib­er­al bor­der guards, we must still strug­gle against the deeply embed­ded reflex­es of ever so well-mean­ing pub­lic opin­ion. Sophis­ti­cat­ed argu­ments get one nowhere: if one prais­es nation­al­ism, Ger­mans will suf­fer stom­ach cramps – a reac­tion sim­i­lar to that pro­duced in them by the writ­ings of Pro­fes­sor Hazony from Jerusalem. And how­ev­er silk­i­ly we speak about illib­er­al democ­ra­cy, the term is appalling­ly harsh to Ger­man and Anglo-Sax­on ears. This is still the case today.

The rebel­lion against lib­er­al intel­lec­tu­al oppres­sion is not only widen­ing, but also deep­en­ing. There is an increas­ing num­ber of per­sua­sive essays, thor­ough stud­ies and indis­pens­able mono­graphs. We can already see that the Emper­or has no clothes – despite the refusal to admit this in the Brus­sels bub­ble. The doc­trine that “democ­ra­cy can only be lib­er­al” – that gold­en calf, that mon­u­men­tal fetish – has been top­pled. Now we only need to wait for the dust to set­tle and we will not only know it, but also see it. It seems that con­ser­v­a­tive and Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties and polit­i­cal move­ments can final­ly escape from the dead­ly embrace of the lib­er­als. From what­ev­er heights they are declared, state­ments such as “there is no such thing as illib­er­al democ­ra­cy” are now being record­ed in the book of polit­i­cal stu­pid­i­ty. Con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal thinkers have final­ly sum­moned up courage, and are using a clar­i­ty of thought which even sur­pass­es the ele­gance of math­e­mat­i­cal rea­son­ing to prove that lib­er­al­ism and con­ser­vatism rep­re­sent two irrec­on­cil­able posi­tions in polit­i­cal the­o­ry. They have shown the flaws in the argu­ments of those who want to drag con­ser­vatism into the big tent of lib­er­al­ism. To put it kind­ly, errors are com­mit­ted by those who claim that the sep­a­ra­tion of the branch­es of pow­er, civ­il and polit­i­cal free­doms, the pro­tec­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty and gov­er­nance with­in bound­aries – mean­ing the rule of law – can only be con­ceived with­in the intel­lec­tu­al con­fines of lib­er­al­ism, and can only be imple­ment­ed through lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Of course we also know Hun­gar­i­ans who have solved this puz­zle, but have realised how much more pleas­ant it is to gath­er pats on the back in Brus­sels and friend­ly smiles of acknowl­edge­ment in luke­warm lib­er­al salons than to hud­dle like black sheep at home in Budapest. A slight­ly sick­en­ing sen­sa­tion in one’s stom­ach does not seem such a high price to pay. But today the cli­mate con­trol and fur­nish­ings in Cen­tral Euro­pean salons and the ele­gance of their guests – not to men­tion their cui­sine – increas­ing­ly rival those in the West. The slink­ing back will start soon – just as it once did from Moscow.

The mod­ern-day con­fla­tion of con­ser­vatism and lib­er­al­ism can be traced back to con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als putting aside their fun­da­men­tal – and then still obvi­ous – dif­fer­ences in their great bat­tle against total­i­tar­i­an­ism. They put them aside and forged an alliance against a com­mon ene­my: an alliance against Nazism and com­mu­nism, against the Nazis and the com­mu­nists. This was a long strug­gle over a hun­dred years. The extent to which the thoughts, argu­ments and basic prin­ci­ples of the allies had become entan­gled only emerged when their alliance lost its mean­ing with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the West and the with­draw­al of Sovi­et troops in the East.

Politi­cians, jour­nal­ists and even schol­ars are cav­a­lier in their inter­change­able use of con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al notions and con­cepts. For too long – for far too long, for around two decades – it seemed that there was noth­ing wrong with being intel­lec­tu­al­ly inac­cu­rate, and even slop­py; it seemed that no seri­ous harm could come from it. This was the atti­tude of Anglo-Sax­on con­ser­v­a­tives and Euro­pean Chris­t­ian democ­rats alike. Now, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion has changed, and mat­ters have tak­en a seri­ous turn. What ear­li­er seemed like a minor intel­lec­tu­al error, a bad posi­tion, a tol­er­a­ble defor­mi­ty, now pre­vents clar­i­ty of vision on impor­tant issues. It con­ceals the fact that today lib­er­al­ism and lib­er­als once more pose the great­est chal­lenge and oppo­si­tion to con­ser­v­a­tives and Chris­t­ian democ­rats. The basic tenets of Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic and lib­er­al think­ing are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to each oth­er. In their attacks lib­er­als take aim at the very things that are most impor­tant to us, the cor­ner­stones of the polit­i­cal order we wish for, the val­ues at the core of con­ser­v­a­tive-Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic her­itage – such as the nation, the fam­i­ly and reli­gious tradition.

There is a recog­ni­tion that if things con­tin­ue like this then Chris­t­ian-con­ser­v­a­tive forces will be assist­ing in the weak­en­ing of nations, the elim­i­na­tion of reli­gious tra­di­tions, and the debase­ment and mock­ery of the fam­i­ly. Here in Cen­tral Europe this recog­ni­tion has risen to the lev­el of pub­lic and state pol­i­cy. Here the red warn­ing light has lit up, we have acti­vat­ed the emer­gency brake, and – pri­mar­i­ly in Poland and Hun­gary – we have rung the alarm bells. Here there has been enough strength to pull the Euro­pean People’s Par­ty (EPP) – the Euro­pean polit­i­cal home of Chris­t­ian democ­rats and con­ser­v­a­tives – back from the edge of the abyss. Here there has been a sur­vival instinct strong enough and a voice loud enough to declare that we must not put the future of Euro­pean Chris­t­ian democ­ra­cy at risk – not even for the sake of such an under­stand­able Ger­man demand for the Brus­sels coali­tion par­ty struc­ture to con­form to that in Berlin, because that would be the eas­i­est way to har­monise the two cen­tres of power.

Accord­ing to this line of argu­ment, if in Berlin Chris­t­ian democ­rats enter into a coali­tion with the Left, then the EPP should fol­low suit in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. If we adopt this approach, fol­low­ing the Ger­man elec­tion we will be able to appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of a coali­tion between the EPP and the Greens – one which is cur­rent­ly being sam­pled in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of Vienna.

In Cen­tral Europe, how­ev­er, there is rebel­lion against the idea of such per­ver­sion – not only on grounds of good taste, but also of com­mon sense. The dif­fer­ences between lib­er­al and Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal the­o­ry are impor­tant not only in the realm of acad­e­mia. They also have seri­ous prac­ti­cal polit­i­cal consequences.

With­out detail­ing philo­soph­i­cal argu­ments stretch­ing back to Kant, here we can say that lib­er­als believe that every coun­try – includ­ing those which are not cur­rent­ly being gov­erned as lib­er­al democ­ra­cies – must be forced to accept that form of gov­er­nance. By con­trast, Chris­t­ian democ­rats reject that form of for­eign pol­i­cy, because in their view soci­eties are held togeth­er and main­tain peace in a vari­ety of ways; and, as has recent­ly been proved by the Arab Spring, lib­er­al democ­ra­cy can bring chaos and col­lapse, and do more harm than good. This is one rea­son we are root­ing for anoth­er vic­to­ry for Don­ald Trump, because we are very famil­iar with the for­eign pol­i­cy of US Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions, built as it is on moral impe­ri­al­ism. We have tast­ed it – albeit under duress. We didn’t like it, and we don’t want a sec­ond helping.

Our poli­cies also diverge on the issue that in Brus­sels is ele­gant­ly referred to as sub­sidiar­i­ty. Accord­ing to the lib­er­als, it is best to cede our nation­al gov­ern­ments’ pow­ers to inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions – and as many of those pow­ers as pos­si­ble. In this they see uni­ver­sal ideals, Euro­pean val­ues and uni­ver­sal human rights being giv­en fur­ther encour­age­ment and recog­ni­tion. This is why, when­ev­er any inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tion is giv­en new pow­ers and remits, and of course resources and ret­ribu­tive capa­bil­i­ties, they polite­ly applaud, their eyes glaze and their hearts beat faster.

Enthu­si­asm for this among Chris­t­ian democ­rats, how­ev­er, is lim­it­ed: they can see that such organ­i­sa­tions are inevitably prone to a despo­tism which they tend to call “the rule of law” but which is sim­ply “the rule of black­mail”; they are vul­ner­a­ble to infil­tra­tion by Soros-style net­works, and if they are forced to choose between the cit­i­zens of indi­vid­ual nation­al com­mu­ni­ties and the big guns of glob­al cap­i­tal, in the end they will always opt for the lat­ter. The cit­i­zens of Euro­pean nations soon realised that today’s Euro­pean insti­tu­tions do not serve them, but the inter­ests of George Soros and his ilk. They are not pre­pared to swal­low the Brus­sels fab­ri­ca­tion that the rea­son a finan­cial spec­u­la­tor enrich­ing him­self through the ruin of oth­ers is roam­ing the cor­ri­dors of Brus­sels is that he is self­less­ly offer­ing help to Europe.

Lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics also clash – and even engage in a life-or-death strug­gle – on the issue of migra­tion. Accord­ing to loopy lib­er­als, there is no rea­son to fear mass immi­gra­tion, or even a flood of immi­gra­tion; and there is no rea­son to fear it even if the nation­al and reli­gious tra­di­tions of the unin­vit­ed guests are stark­ly dif­fer­ent from ours – or indeed opposed to ours. We are told that ter­ror­ism, crime, anti-Semi­tism and the emer­gence of par­al­lel soci­eties are only tem­po­rary irreg­u­lar­i­ties, or per­haps the birth pangs of a radi­ant new world about to come into being. But the con­ser­v­a­tive-Chris­t­ian demo­c­ra­t­ic camp rejects such an unpre­dictable exper­i­ment on soci­eties and indi­vid­u­als, because they believe that the risks of chron­ic inter­cul­tur­al ten­sions and vio­lence are unac­cept­ably high. Unless we ignore the laws of math­e­mat­ics, it is not dif­fi­cult to see the real­i­ty of sure, slow, but accel­er­at­ing pop­u­la­tion replacement.

There are also irrec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences in edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy. Accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tives we must focus on char­ac­ter­is­tic nation­al tra­di­tions, and the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion is for our chil­dren to be capa­ble of becom­ing patri­ots who can car­ry for­ward our tried and test­ed tra­di­tions. At the same time, Chris­t­ian democ­rats also expect schools to rein­force the sex iden­ti­ty that the Cre­ator has con­ferred on each child at birth: to help girls become fine and admirable women; and to help boys become men who are able to pro­vide secu­ri­ty and sup­port for their fam­i­lies. Schools should pro­tect the ide­al and val­ues of the fam­i­ly, and should keep minors away from gen­der ide­ol­o­gy and rain­bow pro­pa­gan­da. Lib­er­als see this as medieval back­ward­ness at best, and as cler­i­cal fas­cism at worst. In their view the pur­pose of school edu­ca­tion can only be to lead chil­dren towards their inner selves, mak­ing them capa­ble of self-real­i­sa­tion, intro­duc­ing them to the beau­ties of the uni­ver­sal polit­i­cal order, and there­fore peel­ing away from them the envelop­ing lay­ers of tra­di­tion inher­it­ed from the lives of their great-grand­par­ents, grand­par­ents and parents.

Lib­er­als also believe – and for some mys­te­ri­ous rea­son this is what they defend most ardent­ly – that the suf­fi­cient con­di­tion for just and moral­ly ground­ed gov­er­nance is gen­er­al, uni­ver­sal rea­son, and there is no need what­so­ev­er for absolute val­ues revealed by God, and the reli­gious and bib­li­cal tra­di­tions that have grown out of these. In fact, they say, a divid­ing wall must be built between church and gov­ern­ment, and the influ­ence of reli­gion must be ban­ished from the pub­lic sphere. Hun­gar­i­an read­ers know lit­tle of the breadth, depth and bit­ter strug­gles of this debate which extends across the whole of West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. They believe that this is mere­ly the sed­i­men­ta­ry deposit of our Hun­gar­i­an exis­tence, or per­haps our exis­tence as a “mis­er­able small Cen­tral Euro­pean state”. There­fore they can­not see – and per­haps can­not even appre­ci­ate – the unyield­ing and insight­ful basic prin­ci­ple in our nation­al-Chris­t­ian Con­sti­tu­tion, accord­ing to which the state and church func­tion on dis­tinct par­al­lel paths. Whilst pre­serv­ing the auton­o­my of church and state, this seeks to replace sep­a­ra­tion with the inte­gra­tion of reli­gion into the life of soci­ety, main­tain­ing a spir­it of tol­er­ance for reli­gious views. Indeed Chris­t­ian democ­rats also believe that, in order to strength­en jus­tice, pub­lic morals and the com­mon good, the need for reli­gion, bib­li­cal tra­di­tions and our church­es is greater today than it has been for centuries.

The polit­i­cal strat­e­gy of lib­er­als is based on divid­ing the world of pol­i­tics into two parts. On one side are lib­er­als, who are hon­est, good peo­ple and who accept that all hon­est, good peo­ple must come to the same polit­i­cal beliefs and con­clu­sions on the basis of the rules of rea­son; and on the oth­er side are those who have strayed from the field of lib­er­al­ism because their igno­rance or pri­mor­dial instinc­tive hatred pre­vents them from mov­ing for­ward with the times and with his­to­ry – the self-evi­dent goal of which is to lead us to the hap­pi­ness pro­vid­ed by lib­er­al world val­ues, world peace and world gov­er­nance. There­fore, from the view­point of loopy lib­er­als, a sin­gle group is formed by the fol­low­ing: Trump and John­son; Chris­tians stand­ing on the foun­da­tions of the New Tes­ta­ment and Jews stand­ing on the foun­da­tions of the Old Tes­ta­ment; all kinds of aya­tol­lahs; dic­ta­tors of every rank and order, com­mu­nists and Nazis; and, with­out any doubt, we Cen­tral Euro­pean Chris­t­ian democ­rats. This is par­rot­ed by 90 per cent of the West­ern media.

We Chris­t­ian democ­rats, how­ev­er, use our own intel­lec­tu­al sys­tem to describe the uni­verse of pol­i­tics. With due mod­esty one can say that this is more intel­li­gent than the cur­rent­ly dom­i­nant but nar­row-mind­ed lib­er­al depic­tion of the world which gov­erns inter­na­tion­al organisations.

The only chance for Chris­t­ian democ­ra­cy is if it engages in an open intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal fight. If it stops pre­var­i­cat­ing, and stops act­ing like a numb­skull who fails to see or under­stand what is going on. If it stands up for itself and artic­u­lates the four state­ments that can change the whole of Euro­pean pol­i­tics: our basic nation­al and Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples are not lib­er­al; they came into being before lib­er­al­ism; they stand in oppo­si­tion to lib­er­al­ism; today lib­er­al­ism is destroy­ing them.

Europe and its place in the world

In the mid­dle of the first decade of the new mil­len­ni­um, 81 per cent of all invest­ment in the world econ­o­my came from the West and 18 per cent from the East. Today, just over a decade lat­er, 58 per cent of all invest­ment comes from the East and 40 per cent from the West. The pace of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment is hard to grasp. Europe, which envis­ages tech­no­log­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion based in the econ­o­my of the civil­ian sphere, is so far behind that it has lost sight of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na, which are com­pet­ing on the basis of the econ­o­my of the mil­i­tary sphere. And since all epoch-mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion has arrived in civil­ian eco­nom­ic sys­tems from research for armed forces, Europe can­not even enter this com­pe­ti­tion until it has an army of a size which can be tak­en seri­ous­ly – in oth­er words, a com­mon army.

Bare­ly twen­ty years ago the Euro­pean Union announced that with­in ten years the euro would be com­pet­ing with the dol­lar in the world econ­o­my, we would cre­ate a sin­gle mar­ket from Lis­bon to Vladi­vos­tok, and Europe would storm to the fore­front in the glob­al race that is tech­no­log­i­cal progress. These were the goals. What has hap­pened has hap­pened: the dol­lar has knocked out the euro; we are using sanc­tions to cut our­selves off from the Russ­ian mar­ket; and we are buy­ing impor­tant tech­nolo­gies from our competitors.

The EU sensed that things were not mov­ing in the man­ner and direc­tion it had envi­sioned. In 2012 the Euro­pean Commission’s Direc­torate-Gen­er­al for Research and Inno­va­tion not­ed that in 2010 the EU had con­tributed 29 per cent to total world pro­duc­tion, and pre­dict­ed that by 2050 this would fall to 15 – 17 per cent. Today in 2020 this has already hap­pened – so thir­ty years ear­li­er than pre­dict­ed. This fine Direc­torate-Gen­er­al also pre­dict­ed that demo­graph­ic prob­lems would lead the Euro­pean Union to sup­port increased migra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly from North Africa and the Mid­dle East. All this was writ­ten in 2012!

Anoth­er esti­mate was that by 2050, 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Europe – exclud­ing Rus­sia – would be Mus­lim. Today it seems like­ly that by 2050 we can expect major­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions in major West­ern cities.

It is not sur­pris­ing that Cen­tral Euro­pean coun­tries have cho­sen a dif­fer­ent future, free of immi­gra­tion and migra­tion. Nor is it sur­pris­ing that the focus of V4 pol­i­cy is on improv­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, even if Brus­sels wants to move in pre­cise­ly the oppo­site direc­tion: cli­mate goals pur­sued to the point of absur­di­ty, a social Europe, a com­mon tax sys­tem, a mul­ti­cul­tur­al society.

It is no sur­prise that what was fore­see­able with a lit­tle com­mon sense has indeed hap­pened. The West has lost its attrac­tive­ness in the eyes of Cen­tral Europe, and the way we arrange our lives does not seem very desir­able to the West. In the com­ing years we need to keep Europe togeth­er whilst acknowl­edg­ing that there seems to be no chance of a change in this his­tor­i­cal trend. They can­not force their will upon us, and we are unable to shift them from their cur­rent intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal track. Even in this impasse we need to find a way to coop­er­ate, until Europe’s future is decid­ed in Italy: to the right or the left. The with­draw­al of the Unit­ed King­dom may rep­re­sent a decline in the pow­er of those who sup­port nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, oppose migra­tion and believe in economies based on com­pe­ti­tion. But these forces have suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing Brus­sels inter­ven­ing to push the Pol­ish Chris­t­ian democ­rats out of pow­er, for years they have been sta­bil­is­ing their posi­tions in Croa­t­ia and Ser­bia, the Slove­ni­ans are also on the right track towards achiev­ing this, and the sur­vival chances of the Bul­gar­i­an gov­ern­ing par­ty and Prime Min­is­ter – who are under all-out attack – are not bad either. Babiš and Fidesz are hold­ing up, and the new Slo­va­kian gov­ern­ment has not left the V4 camp. The rule of black­mail sys­tem known as the rule of law sys­tem has not been intro­duced. Although the Nether­lands is con­spic­u­ous­ly dis­tanc­ing itself from the Euro­pean Union, and its posi­tion is increas­ing­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Unit­ed King­dom pre-Brex­it, we have suc­ceed­ed in keep­ing them in for the time being. We have also suc­ceed­ed in sus­tain­ing the sur­vival chances of the euro­zone, in pre­vent­ing the col­lapse of strick­en south­ern states, and in pre­serv­ing Cen­tral Euro­pean eco­nom­ic dynamism. And we have not yet been trapped between the grind­stones of the glob­al strug­gle between Chi­na and the Unit­ed States.

We must remain on the path of agree­ments and com­pro­mis­es, and – no mat­ter what the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment says – we must imple­ment the sweep­ing finan­cial and bud­getary plans that we suc­cess­ful­ly finalised dur­ing the sum­mer. This is pos­si­ble, pro­vid­ing that the Ger­mans suc­ceed in man­ag­ing the process for installing Chan­cel­lor Merkel’s suc­ces­sor with­out exceed­ing Lev­el 4 on the Richter scale.

The virus, pro­tec­tion and prospects

The sec­ond wave of the virus is here. We’re already expe­ri­enc­ing it. It has arrived – as could be expect­ed, and as we did expect. Just like the first wave, it has come from abroad. It was brought into Hun­gary from abroad. This is a glob­al pan­dem­ic and we live in a glob­alised world, in which every­one receives their share of not only the ben­e­fits, but also major chal­lenges such as the virus. Hun­gary defend­ed itself well in the spring. We were among the world’s 25 most suc­cess­ful coun­tries. Oth­ers were unable to sup­press the spread of the virus as effec­tive­ly as we were, and there­by gave the virus the chance to flare up.

We need to defend our­selves again. There will be crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, but every­one who needs the appro­pri­ate care will receive it. We can and will pro­tect people’s lives and health. We con­sult­ed the peo­ple of Hun­gary in a time­ly man­ner: in the Nation­al Con­sul­ta­tion every­one had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their opin­ion. Almost two mil­lion peo­ple did so, and thus decid­ed how we should defend our­selves dur­ing the autumn. The will of the peo­ple was unan­i­mous: Hun­gary must con­tin­ue to func­tion! We can­not allow the virus to again paral­yse the coun­try, the econ­o­my, schools and every­day life. Accord­ing­ly we must defend our­selves against the virus, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing the lives of endan­gered elder­ly peo­ple, main­tain­ing the func­tion­ing of our schools and kinder­gartens, and pre­serv­ing jobs.

This tac­tic is dif­fer­ent from the one we used dur­ing the first wave. The sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent from that in the spring. Back then we had to close down com­plete­ly, because we were fac­ing an unknown ene­my. We had to gain time, so we could pre­pare the health­care sys­tem. And we suc­ceed­ed in doing that. We won the first bat­tle. In the spring we flat­tened the curve of the pan­dem­ic, and in doing so were able to pre­pare the coun­try. Today we no longer have to wor­ry about any­one not receiv­ing appro­pri­ate care, as the Hun­gar­i­an health­care sys­tem is now also pre­pared to deal with mass infec­tions. Now every­thing we need to pro­tect our­selves is avail­able: we are pro­duc­ing the required equip­ment our­selves, as much of every­thing as is nec­es­sary. Hos­pi­tals are in a state of pre­pared­ness for dis­ease con­trol. We know which hos­pi­tals are receiv­ing COVID patients and when, and we can also send doc­tors and nurs­es to where they are required. Thou­sands of qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als are look­ing after Hun­gar­i­ans’ lives. Any­one who falls ill will be in good hands in hospital.

The new wave of the pan­dem­ic will demand greater respon­si­bil­i­ty from all of us. The suc­cess of the defence oper­a­tion will depend on whether or not we all fol­low the rules. We must take spe­cial care of our elder­ly par­ents and rel­a­tives. The fam­i­ly is not com­plete with­out them: they are irreplaceable.

It is now time for our experts. They are the ones who can once again tell us how to pro­tect our­selves well and suc­cess­ful­ly. A well pre­pared health­care sys­tem, con­sci­en­tious pro­fes­sion­als, broad coop­er­a­tion. We already suc­ceed­ed once in the spring; we will suc­ceed again togeth­er in the autumn.

An old joke from com­mu­nist times: “We know what’ll hap­pen, but what’ll hap­pen to us until then?” We know that there will be elec­tions in the spring of 2022. Until then, there will be the defence oper­a­tion. Accord­ing to the more opti­mistic virol­o­gists, a vac­cine that can be deployed against the coro­n­avirus could be devel­oped by the spring of 2021. Because of the secre­cy of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies pro­tect­ing their com­mer­cial inter­ests and a race between the great pow­ers, a sea of fake news is con­fus­ing hope­ful peo­ple, and encour­ag­ing tens or hun­dreds of thou­sands of would-be virol­o­gists to engage in spec­u­la­tion. Our sci­en­tists involved in the work of the Oper­a­tional Group also hope that good news could arrive at some point next year. And when the vac­cine is ready, we still need to acquire a few mil­lion dos­es, fol­low­ing which we can begin the planned vac­ci­na­tion of those who apply to receive it. In the mean­time we must con­tin­u­ous­ly strength­en our state of pre­pared­ness and our health­care sys­tem which will bear the main bur­den, upgrade the man­age­ment sys­tem, accel­er­ate dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, ratio­nalise admin­is­tra­tive bur­dens, and bring order to the tan­gled legal sit­u­a­tion. In addi­tion to the already ongo­ing 70 per cent pay increase for nurs­es, we need to pro­vide a break­through pay deal for doc­tors. And we must do all this while defend­ing the coun­try and con­tin­u­ing the var­i­ous forms of restruc­tur­ing that we began in the spring.

Sim­i­lar­ly we are expect­ing the Eco­nom­ic Oper­a­tional Group to devise eco­nom­ic mea­sures that are capa­ble of pro­tect­ing jobs, the stan­dard of liv­ing of fam­i­lies, and the secu­ri­ty of pen­sions. And in fact we are expect­ing even more from them. They are the ones who must swing the coun­try from defence mode to attack mode. We do not sim­ply want to pro­tect the lev­el and stan­dard that Hun­gary has achieved over the past ten years, but to also ensure that, even after the pan­dem­ic, every­one is able to take one step for­ward every year. Between 2015 and 2019, per capi­ta gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) increased by 39.65 per cent, while that of Ger­many increased by 13.3 per cent and that of France by 10.1 per cent. Fol­low­ing such suc­cess, we can­not be sat­is­fied with less; we have proven that we are capa­ble of it, and that we have the required tal­ent, strength, knowl­edge and willpow­er. Hun­gary must not with­draw into its shell like a snail, but must con­tin­ue to move for­ward, flow, increase and rise – like a Liszt rhap­sody, or sparkling wine. This is a huge task, and this is why [Min­is­ter of Finance] Mihá­ly Var­ga will be Hungary’s least envied per­son in 2021.

It is my hope that we can arrive at the 2022 elec­tions hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed our­selves against the virus, and with a strength­ened health­care sys­tem, eco­nom­ic growth that has been dri­ven to unprece­dent­ed heights, full employ­ment, a home cre­ation boom that eclipses even the pre­vi­ous one, and the thir­teenth month’s pen­sion, which is in the process of being reintroduced.

Mean­while we will have no peace from the Left, on whom we can­not depend – even now, amidst the great­est dif­fi­cul­ties and in a glob­al pan­dem­ic. All we can count on from them is back­stab­bing and back­bit­ing, the under­min­ing of nation­al strength and sol­i­dar­i­ty, snip­ing at polit­i­cal lead­ers and experts lead­ing the country’s defence oper­a­tion, snitch­ing and betray­al in Brus­sels, sab­o­tage and trick­ery. This is the Left we have end­ed up with. What’s more, they are now mixed in with Job­bik. Togeth­er this con­coc­tion is fer­ment­ing in a sealed jar. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

And although it may be an enter­tain­ing sight, the stakes are huge, as is usu­al­ly the case here in the Carpathi­an Basin. Again in 2022 the issue will be our freedom.

The usu­al suspects

Free­dom is the abil­i­ty to decide for one­self. The cen­tral issue through­out more than 1,100 years of his­to­ry in the Carpathi­an Basin has always been the preser­va­tion or restora­tion of a free and inde­pen­dent Hun­gary. Every day we had to fight to acquire or retain the right to decide mat­ters for our­selves. This thought per­me­ates Hun­gar­i­an his­to­ry; it is this com­mu­ni­ty of free­dom that unites the peo­ple who live in the Carpathi­an Basin.

The great­est threat to nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion today is the net­work that pro­motes a glob­al open soci­ety, and seeks to abol­ish nation­al frame­works. The goals of a George Soros-style net­work, which has unlim­it­ed finan­cial and human resources, are clear: to cre­ate open soci­eties of mixed eth­nic­i­ty through the accel­er­a­tion of migra­tion, to dis­man­tle nation­al deci­sion-mak­ing and hand it over to the glob­al elite.

Against this, in order to strength­en the nation­al frame­work, Europe in the ear­ly 2010s saw the devel­op­ment of a nation­al resis­tance move­ment, in which Hun­gary has been a con­sid­er­able force from the very begin­ning. The 2010 change of gov­ern­ment in Hun­gary and con­sti­tu­tion­al rev­o­lu­tion offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­man­tle the frame­works and struc­tures that serve the inter­ests of the lib­er­al and colonis­ing glob­al elite. To this end, a new Fun­da­men­tal Law [Con­sti­tu­tion] was adopt­ed, and a raft of new leg­is­la­tion and unortho­dox mea­sures were enact­ed. Nation­al pol­i­tics has bro­ken away from nar­row elit­ist ide­o­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven gov­er­nance, and has con­struct­ed the new polit­i­cal order through actions in line with the desires of soci­ety. The foun­da­tion of this is free­dom, or the capac­i­ty for inde­pen­dent decision-making.

The bat­tle between the glob­al elite and the nation­al resis­tance is not over. It is clear that the glob­al elite is not resign­ing itself to allow­ing pol­i­tics that goes against its inter­ests to take root in Cen­tral Europe.

We saw what hap­pened in the Pol­ish pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. In the spring it seemed that the Pol­ish left was still in ruins, and that their eter­nal infight­ing would give their can­di­date no chance of win­ning. But this isn’t what hap­pened. In just a few weeks, the can­di­date of the Left – with the Soros net­work, the Brus­sels elite and the inter­na­tion­al media stand­ing behind him – forced the nation­al side into mak­ing a major effort. In the end Andrzej Duda was only just able to over­come his left-wing rival in a very close fight.

We should not deceive our­selves: the glob­al elite will apply the same strat­e­gy in Hun­gary in the 2022 elec­tion campaign.

Their instru­ment is the Left, which has already failed sev­er­al times. The leader of this is Fer­enc Gyurcsány, its youth organ­i­sa­tion is Momen­tum, and its bil­lion­aire spon­sor is George Soros. They are the forces from the past, who have already ruined the coun­try once.

Although var­i­ous par­ty logos still exist on the oppo­si­tion side, and we can some­times hear the sounds of quar­relling from with­in their ranks, there are in fact no longer any par­ties with their own free will. The work is com­plete: every­one from Job­bik to the LMP has been ground down and stuffed into the sausage skin. Com­mu­ni­ties that once had inde­pen­dent iden­ti­ties have been replaced by a left-wing people’s front that serves the Soros network.

They are prepar­ing for a deci­sive bat­tle in 2022. Behind them they will have the inter­na­tion­al media, the Brus­sels bureau­crats and the NGOs in the guise of civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions. We can have no doubt that they will do every­thing pos­si­ble for pow­er and mon­ey. The time has come for us, too, to mar­shal our forces. After dif­fi­cult years of gov­er­nance, we must now return to the elec­tion bat­tle­field. It is time to gath­er up our equip­ment, so that when the time comes we can ride out to bat­tle. A great bat­tle awaits us in 2022. Pre­pare for it.

Source: Mag­yar Nemzet / Orbán Viktor

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