NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED: …What is happening in Hungary is not just about the global refugee crisis and its consequences for Europe. It is also the beginning of the 2018 Hungarian election campaign. And it provides a cautionary tale about what could happen in Europe, and not only in Europe, when radical, nationalist populists take over the state…
Raising the refugee issue provided Mr. Orban’s beleaguered government with a unique opportunity to mount a nationalist, racist, xenophobic campaign of its own — while of course taking care to distinguish itself from the neo-Nazis by refusing to spout hatred about either the Jews or the Roma…
The country’s top Catholic clergy is doing its part to arouse enmity, too. Cardinal Peter Erdo, who is also president of the Council of European Bishops, said that if the church provided asylum to the refugees, it would amount to becoming people-smugglers. The bishop of Szeged, Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, responded to Pope Francis’ plea to show mercy to the refugees by asserting: “The pope does not know what he says.” The church and government seem to have forgotten the hospitality Hungarian refugees experienced in the West when they fled after the Soviets crushed the 1956 revolution… (more)
EDITOR: Sound familiar? Like the Budapest Beacon, the Open Society Institute has its Easter European headquarters in Budapest.
