Hungary

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see orban</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-viktor-orban-degraded-hungarys-weak-democracy-109046">https://theconversation.com/how-viktor-orban-degraded-hungarys-weak-democracy-109046</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">anti-gay law portray on TV where kids could see? 621</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1120 theconv</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Somewhere in his journey to power in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had a radical religious conversion.</b>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An atheist when he started in politics in the late 1980s, Orbán now calls himself a defender of Christianity.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;In an August&nbsp;</span><a href="https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-christianity-europe-persecuted/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">speech commemorating the 1920 Treaty of Trianon</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;– a traumatic event in which Hungary lost much of its territory – Orbán argued that Western Europe had given up on “a Christian Europe" and was choosing instead to experiment with “a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies."</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As experts in&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-climate-change-immigration-and-threats-to-democracy-europes-fractious-new-parliament-will-have-to-work-together-117717" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">European politics</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politicalresearch.org/2019/05/24/aberration-or-reflection-how-understand-changes-political-right" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">religious right</a>, we argue that Orbán's embrace of religion has served to consolidate his power, “other" his opponents and shield Hungary from EU criticism of its attacks on the rule of law.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is also, we believe, a dangerous model for how religion can be used to fuel democratic backsliding.</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consolidating power</font></h2><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2014, during an address to the nation, Orbán spoke of building “an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/viktor-orbans-far-right-vision-for-europe" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">illiberal state, a non-liberal state," in Hungary</a>. While an illiberal state is an ambiguous concept, Orbán praised it as better able to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boell.de/en/2014/08/21/announicing-illiberal-state" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">protect Hungary's national interests and preserve its cohesion</a>. Four years later, his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/14/viktor-orban-budapest-hungary-christianity-with-a-twist" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tone had shifted</a>: Hungary was now a “Christian democracy."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such a shift is emblematic of Orbán's career, with its many&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-viktor-orbans-victory-means-for-hungary-and-the-west/2014/04/07/a4ab440c-bb87-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_9How%20Orban%20changes%20his%20view" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ideological twists and turns</a>. He has changed his tune on many major issues, from being a firm supporter of European integration to becoming a strong defender of national sovereignty.&nbsp;<b>He has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/29/eastern-bromance-hungary-s-orban-and-russia-s-putin-set-to-meet-again" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">befriended Russian President Vladimir Putin</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/vladimir-putin-and-viktor-orbans-special-relationship/a-45512712" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">since his return to power in 2010</a>, despite his past anti-Russian stance.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary-ivanyi.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">renounced his past atheism during the 1990s</a>&nbsp;– a decision that went hand in hand with his courting of religious and conservative voters. According to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-viktor-orbans-victory-means-for-hungary-and-the-west/2014/04/07/a4ab440c-bb87-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_9How%20Orban%20changes%20his%20views" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">European politics scholar Charles Gati</a>, “no European leader since Napoleon may have changed his spots more."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far from consistently adhering to clear principles, Orbán,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/04/02/how-hungarys-leader-viktor-orban-gets-away-with-it" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">according to The Economist</a>, over the years has instead been “dedicated to the accumulation and maintenance of power."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That ruthlessness grew after Orbán was voted out as prime minister in 2002. Deeply shocked by this turn of events,&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-viktor-orban-degraded-hungarys-weak-democracy-109046" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">he vowed not to lose power again&nbsp;</a>if he ever returned to office.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the 2010 election campaign, Orbán&nbsp;<a href="https://balkaninsight.com/2019/06/20/the-generation-that-betrayed-hungarian-democracy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">declared</a>&nbsp;that “we need to win only once, but need to win big" – an apparent warning that he would use any large electoral victory to strengthen his position, so not to have to relinquish power. Cynically claiming the mantle of Christian Democracy,&nbsp;<a href="https://balkaninsight.com/2020/02/03/false-advertising-christian-democracy-or-illiberal-democracy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">according to Princeton scholar Jan-Werner Mueller</a>, became a key tool of his strategy in the following decade to consolidate his grip on Hungarian politics.</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wedge issues at home</font></h2><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like much of Europe, Hungary is somewhat secular. In the 2011 census,&nbsp;<a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/religion-in-hungary" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">45% of the population</a>&nbsp;did not list any religious affiliation. Hungary's communist regime&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/05/world/hungarian-cardinal-is-reburied-in-homeland-as-red-star-is-extinguished.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">had certainly scorned and discouraged religion</a>&nbsp;for many decades. After the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain dividing Europe between the communist Eastern bloc and free market West,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2017/05/10/religious-belief-and-national-belonging-in-central-and-eastern-europe/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">people did not flock to churches</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Nonetheless, when Orbán returned to power in 2010, he began to rely on religion to mobilize voters. For instance, he framed his harsh&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/orban-migrants-threaten-christian-europe-identity-refugees-asylum-crisis/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">anti-immigration policies as a defense of Christianity</a>.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Syrian civil war reached a crescendo in 2015, hundreds of thousands of migrants fled the violence. Although most migrants to Europe were trying only to transit through Hungary, Orbán declared that Syrian migrants were trying to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/04/hungarys-orban-invokes-ottoman-invasion-to-justify-keeping-refugees-out/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">invade the country and change its culture and religion</a>. Officials of Orbán's party, Fidesz,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/anti-muslim-populism-in-hungary-from-the-margins-to-the-mainstream/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">have echoed these claims over the years</a>, suggesting Muslim refugees are trying to impose their culture and establish a caliphate on the continent.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a country with a history of invasion that stretches from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ancient.eu/article/1453/the-mongol-invasion-of-europe/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sacking of cities by Mongols</a>&nbsp;through the&nbsp;<a href="https://codenames.info/operation/margarethe-i/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Nazi invasion in 1944</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-put-brutal-end-to-hungarian-revolution" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Soviet occupation</a>, the terminology raised fear and unease.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Orbán has also resurrected older anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews and leftists to consolidate his Christian credentials, such as sponsoring exhibits&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-anti-semitism-problem-hungary-jews/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">implicitly associating communists with Jews</a>.&nbsp;</b>It has also helped to cement an “us or them" narrative in&nbsp;<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1493051" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">which opponents of Orbán are “othered</a>." To do this, Orbán chose billionaire philanthropist George Soros as his major foil.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soros, who is Jewish, was born in Hungary. He went into hiding during the Holocaust and fled the country once communists took control. After the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Soros&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/viktor-orbans-campaign-against-george-soros-mercenaries/a-44954661" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">donated millions of dollars to Hungary's fledgling civil society</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet he was easy to demonize for some Hungarians, not only because he was Jewish, but because he had spent most of his adult life outside the country. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, a government tax-funded campaign&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-launches-campaign-targeting-jean-claude-juncker-george-soros/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">attacked Soros and then European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker</a>, accusing them of using migration plans to undermine Hungary's security.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year before, during the 2018 Hungarian elections, Orbán used even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">more explicit anti-Semitic undertones to attack Soros</a>: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward, but crafty; not honest, but base; not national, but international; does not believe in working, but speculates with money."</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deflecting criticisms, seeking allies</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Orbán's use of Christianity also serves wider foreign policy goals.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The continued erosion of the rule of law in Hungary, including attacks against the free media and the independence of the judiciary, is a&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2020/05/08/how-the-eu-can-better-protect-the-rule-of-law-in-its-member-states/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">long-standing concern for the European Union</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Orbán has, up to now,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/how-viktor-orban-broke-the-eu-and-got-away-with-it-hungary-rule-of-law/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">skillfully taken advantage of the EU's divisions and weaknesses</a>&nbsp;to avoid any major consequences for his country's democratic backsliding. He has conveniently used Christianity as a shield to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/14/viktor-orban-budapest-hungary-christianity-with-a-twist" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">deflect and delegitimize the criticisms from Brussels</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Orbán also invokes Christianity to court allies, close and far. This has been the case with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-general-election-viktor-orban-latest-christianity-nationalism-muslims-migrants-europe-racism-populism-a8293836.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">solidifying the alliance with Hungary's conservative neighbor Poland</a>. Orbán, after all, understands the importance of close friends in the EU. Not only can they help to counter policies he objects to, but major rule of law sanctions in the EU require unanimity. Poland and Hungary can thus&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c888d73b-e6d0-496d-ba7b-37992427afc7" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">provide cover for each other</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Finally, Orbán has also made use of Christianity, highlighting Hungary's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/14/viktor-orban-budapest-hungary-christianity-with-a-twist" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">policies to help persecuted Christians</a>, to build ties with key players beyond Europe. It is noteworthy that Orbán was the only EU leader to attend&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/14/viktor-orban-budapest-hungary-christianity-with-a-twist" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the inauguration of the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro</a>&nbsp;in Brazil in 2019. And the Hungarian government has gone out of its way to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/viktor-orban-among-the-christians/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">court religious conservatives and conservative nationalists in the United States</a>.</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Religious embrace</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In many respects, Viktor Orbán's use of religion is no different from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/us/religion-politics-evangelicals.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Ronald Reagan's embrace of Christian evangelicals</a>&nbsp;in the late 1970s. Both leaders relied on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1057/9780230616196_9" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">religious imagery</a>&nbsp;to build bigger voting coalitions.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[ pix RR Orbán is far from the first leader to use religion to increase his base.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-ronald-reagan-gestures-as-he-speaks-to-the-news-photo/515564272?adppopup=true" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Bettmann/Getty Images</a>]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every Republican candidate for president since has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politicalresearch.org/2019/05/24/aberration-or-reflection-how-understand-changes-political-right" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tried to appeal to evangelicals and invoked Christian values</a>. And even&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-religion-follows-playbook-of-authoritarian-leaning-leaders-the-world-over-140050" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ham-handed attempts such as those by President Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;have done little to undermine such unions.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such an embrace of religious groups is not in itself a problem. But calculated uses of religion to attack domestic and foreign opponents, or to weaken democratic checks and balances, is, we believe, a major concern. Orbán's Hungary provides a clear warning of how easily Christianity can be distorted and used to erode democracy.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/garret-martin-365081" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Garret Martin</a>, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center,&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/american-university-school-of-international-service-2886" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">American University School of International Service</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/carolyn-gallaher-712850" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Carolyn Gallaher</a>, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs,&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/american-university-school-of-international-service-2886" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">American University School of International Service</a></font></p></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b>Here are some other top donor-ambassadors in TrumpWorld whose qualifications, biographies, and connections illustrate the new (ab)normal.</b></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Joe Cella, ambassador to Fiji, an archipelago of more than 300 islands northeast of New Zealand, as well as the republics of Kiribati and Nauru, and the kingdom of Tonga and Tuvalu, founded the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 2004. He also cofounded the Catholic political action committee Catholic Vote, also known as Fidelis, and since 2010 has served as principal of a Catholic consulting firm the Pontifex Group. While he once signed a letter declaring Trump “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States,” Cella led the Trump campaign’s Catholic advisory council during the 2016 election.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">David B. Cornstein, ambassador to Hungary, </span>is a businessman and frequent GOP donor who has much in common with his friend Donald Trump:</b>&nbsp;As AllGov reported last year, they are “both New Yorkers who have winter homes in Palm Beach, they’re both very rich and they’ve both led money-losing gambling operations.” A former member of Trump’s Florida golf club, Cornstein served as chairman of New York City’s Off-Track Betting Corporation before its financial demise. In recent years, he was chairman of Circa, a company that buys high-end used jewelry, and president of Pinnacle Advisors Limited, a private wealth management company.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His ambassadorship has been overshadowed by questions about his vocal support for the right-wing government of Hungarian President Viktor Orban</span>, in contradiction of State Department policy. At a lavish Independence Day bash at the embassy in Budapest this summer, Paul Anka—flown in by the ambassador for the occasion—serenaded Orban with a personalized rendition of “My Way,” reported the New York Times.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">In 1999, he was named chairman of TeleHubLink, a telemarketing company that produced wireless encryption products. In 2001, TeleHubLink was sued by New York’s top prosecutor for scamming consumers across the country. “Using the name Triple Gold Benefits,” New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer argued in 2001, Cornstein’s company had “promised thousands of consumers across the nation that, for an advance fee of over $200, the consumers would receive a low rate, general purpose Visa or MasterCard credit card. In fact, consumers who paid the advance fee did not receive a credit card. Instead, Telehublink sent them a ‘discount benefits package’ consisting of generally worthless items such as an application for a credit card.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">A 2001 decision by a State Supreme Court awarded restitution to victimized consumers, and, after an appeal by the company, a 2003 judgement reaffirmed the original ruling. That didn’t diminish Cornstein’s political capital: in 2001, shortly after being appointed to the board of the Battery Park City Authority, New York’s then-governor George Pataki gave Cornstein the chairmanship of the New York State Olympic Games Commission as it prepared a bid for the 2012 games. (London eventually won.)</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Telehublink appeared to have profited handsomely during that time. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cornstein’s company reported a surge in revenues, from $1 million in 1999 to over $9.2 million in 2000, in large part due to Triple Gold Benefits sales. Cornstein later donated to former nemesis Spitzer’s successful campaign for governor.</div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">320</font></p><div class="yiv4066338250en-editable yiv4066338250en-editable--editor" style="position: relative;"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Hungary's President Orban used the COVID-19 pandemic to seize unlimited power. The UK put the Coronavirus Act into law, with serious implications for people with disabilities and older people. Thailand and Cambodia cracked down on free speech as the virus spreads.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But in more positive news, a Pakistani official pledged support for Pakistan's transgender community in the government's response.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Human Rights Watch has reported on the impacts of COVID-19 on human rights in 32 countries and counting. And we are documenting how government responses to the crisis affect some of the most marginalized groups.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Read more on the coronavirus and human rights below and follow us for daily breaking news and updates.</font></p></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td style="padding-top: 15px; width: 624px;"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td><div class="yiv4066338250en-editable yiv4066338250en-editable--editor" style="position: relative;"><p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://e-activist.com/ea-action/enclick?ea.url.id=4639206&clid=1908&ea.campaigner.email=LR5X34BBe%2FXBM8blHkDEMcQaztlvuLM%2B&ea.campaigner.id=wNHmqGi8fWmZkArzVWMSmA&ea_broadcast_target_id=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">READ MO</font></a></p></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><h2 class="node-title" style="margin: 0px; width: 164px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/world/181-nations-just-voted-help-refugees-except-far-right-united-states-and-hungary" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: normal;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" color="#000000">181 nations just voted to help refugees — except the far-right United States and Hungary</font></a></h2><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">neo fascist bellweather:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/2018/10/13/anti-semitic-conspiracy-theories-from-hungary-have-now-arrived-in-the-us/">http://hungarianfreepress.com/2018/10/13/anti-semitic-conspiracy-theories-from-hungary-have-now-arrived-in-the-us/</a>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">soros open soc inst shut down in hungary? kpfa 11/30/18 noon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/key-trump-adviser-has-disturbing-ties-anti-semitic-groups">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/key-trump-adviser-has-disturbing-ties-anti-semitic-groups</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A<a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/2018/10/13/anti-semitic-conspiracy-theories-from-hungary-have-now-arrived-in-the-us/" title="Permalink to Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories from Hungary have now arrived in the US" rel="bookmark" style="text-decoration-line: none;">nti-Semitic conspiracy theories from Hungary have now arrived in the US</a></font><div class="post-meta" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(240, 240, 240); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="date">October 13, 2018 1:15 pm</span><span class="separator" style="margin: 0px 8px;">·</span></font></div><div id="post-6214" class="clearfix post-6214 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-antisemitism tag-california tag-george-soros tag-united-states" style="zoom: 1; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="entry"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US media was somewhat puzzled when the Orbán government chose George Soros as their favorite enemy and thousands of anti-Soros posters covered Budapest. Many in the US didn’t know much about the Hungarian-born New York billionaire and Holocaust survivor. Surreal pictures of Budapest streets and metro stations plastered with Soros posters, some scribbled with “Dirty Jew,” spread in the US media. Many wondered: What does this mean? Is this anti-Semitic?</font></p><div id="attachment_6215" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="clear: both; margin: 0px auto 15px; width: 509px; text-align: center; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-b%C3%BCd%C3%B6s-zsid%C3%B3.jpg" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img class="wp-image-6215" src="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-b%C3%BCd%C3%B6s-zsid%C3%B3-768x1024.jpg" alt="" width="499" height="665" srcset="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-büdös-zsidó-768x1024.jpg 768w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-büdös-zsidó-225x300.jpg 225w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-büdös-zsidó-41x55.jpg 41w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-büdös-zsidó-310x413.jpg 310w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-büdös-zsidó.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px" style="border: 0px none; vertical-align: middle; background: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; width: auto; height: auto;" /></font></a></div><p class="wp-caption-text" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soros poster in Budapest with graffiti “Dirty Jew”.</font></p></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conspiracy theorists claimed that the anti-Soros campaign was NOT anti-Semitic, and produced “evidence” that Soros has collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary during World War II. Roseanne Barr, a Jewish TV actress spread this rumor and Hollywood immediately cancelled her contract. (<a href="https://people.com/tv/roseanne-barr-apologizes-george-soros-nazi/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Read Barr’s apologies to Soros here</a>.)</font></p><div id="attachment_6216" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="clear: both; margin: 0px auto 15px; width: 310px; text-align: center; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2.jpg" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6216" src="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2-300x254.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="254" srcset="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2-300x254.jpg 300w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2-65x55.jpg 65w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2-310x263.jpg 310w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros..Nazi-2.jpg 480w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" style="border: 0px none; vertical-align: middle; background: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; width: auto; height: auto;" /></font></a></div><p class="wp-caption-text" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Poster claiming that Holocaust survivor Soros was a Nazi collaborator during WWII.</font></p></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During his presidential campaign Trump singled out “those who control the levers of power in Washington” and “global special interests.” Many thought that the cryptic language referred to then-Federal Reserve chief, Janet Yellen or to George Soros, both Jewish. Then on October 5, 2018 Trump tweeted that anti-Kavanaugh protests at the Capitol were “paid by Soros.” This was the first time he publicly mentioned Soros by name. More recently Trump has claimed that the paid protesters were angry “because they haven’t gotten their checks.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a friend of US Ambassador to Budapest David Cornstein, increased the rhetoric. The Catholic former New York City mayor and Trump confidant retweeted a message calling Soros the “anti-Christ.” He also suggested that Soros’s assets should be frozen.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several universities have reported that anti-Semitic posters were distributed on their campuses showing pictures of Soros and US politicians who opposed the Kavanaugh nomination. Senior Democratic Senators Feinstein and Schumer, both Jewish, along with others appeared on the posters.</font></p><div id="attachment_6217" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="clear: both; margin: 0px auto 15px; width: 728px; text-align: center; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1.jpg" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img class="size-full wp-image-6217" src="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1.jpg" alt="" width="718" height="960" srcset="http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1.jpg 718w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1-224x300.jpg 224w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1-41x55.jpg 41w, http://hungarianfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Soros-neonazi-1-310x414.jpg 310w" sizes="(max-width: 718px) 100vw, 718px" style="border: 0px none; vertical-align: middle; background: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; width: auto; height: auto;" /></font></a></div><p class="wp-caption-text" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neo-Nazi poster from a California University campus with Soros and Jewish American politicians opposing the Kavanaugh nomination.</font></p></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mainstream media outlets have started to denounce Trump’s anti-Soros outburst. (<a href="https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/Joe-Scarborough-Calls-Trump-Attack-on-George-13290135.php" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Read here</a>.) Comedians mocked anti-Soros statements. (Watch Jimmy Kimmel&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2018/10/jimmy-kimmel-donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh-protesters-paid-george-soros-1202479961/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.) Jewish media connected the anti-Soros sentiment to Orbán emphasizing that Soros has been his favorite bogeyman in recent years in his native Hungary. “There Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has pegged Soros and his organization Open Society Foundations as symbols of intruding globalist forces. Orbán’s unabashed anti-Soros message and anti-democratic goals have been widely criticized by the EU, Human Rights Watch and others.” (Read the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/national_news/rudy-giuliani-calls-george-soros-the-anti-christ/article_8ab6e470-9df3-5129-843f-22b883affc30.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Cleveland Jewish News here</a>.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(During WWII teenager George Soros was saved by Elza Brandeisz. Read more by&nbsp;<a href="http://hungarianfreepress.com/2017/07/11/george-soross-savior-elza-brandeisz-member-of-the-evangelical-lutheran-church/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">clicking here</a>.)</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">György Lázár</font></strong></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">*</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Letter from Chancellor Carol Christ</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To the Berkeley Campus Community,</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I am writing following the discovery by some of our students of a disturbing, disgusting anti-Semitic poster. The image in question, almost certainly disseminated by those who espouse neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology has, according to reports, appeared on campuses across the country. This toxic material demands a response, though I regret that by doing so we provide adherents of this vile ideology with more of the attention they seek.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The image on the poster alleges that Jewish Americans, including prominent, elected representatives, are involved in “anti-white, anti-American, anti-freedom” conspiracies, and portrays opposition to a recent Supreme Court nominee as the latest example. This, of course, is a common, classic refrain perpetrated by those who see our Jewish friends, colleagues and fellow citizens as the root of all evil. There is little, if any difference between this demonizing rhetoric and that used by the Nazis in the lead up to, and during the course of the Holocaust.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the wake of this incident I want to make clear that my administration and this campus community stand together in condemnation of this and all hateful ideologies. We abhor and condemn anti-Semitic words and deeds on this campus and beyond. UC Berkeley unequivocally supports the University of California Regents’ “Principles Against Intolerance,” which clearly condemn bias, hatred, prejudice and discrimination. We also adhere to and strongly support this specific statement in the Principles; “Anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination have no place in the University.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Staff from Student Affairs have reached out to students who expressed concern about this poster on social media, and we urge community members who need support to seek help. The campus has several resources, including counseling services. For students needing help navigating these resources, please contact: deanofstudents@berkeley.edu or visit deanofstudents.berkeley.edu/well-being.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We urge anyone with information about the incident to come forward. The UCPD phone number is (510) 642-6760. For information and support on reporting hate crimes or hate-motivated acts: stophate.berkeley.edu</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We cannot seal off our open campus from hatred and ignorance, but what we can and will do is come together and determine how we can best deter and confront not only this particular form of bias, but all manifestations of intolerance that violate our shared values and Principles of Community.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sincerely,</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Carol Christ</strong>
Chancellor</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">refugee "invaders"&nbsp; EU may suspend voting rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-hungary-doesnt-want-muslim-invaders/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-hungary-doesnt-want-muslim-invaders/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">" I<span style="background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);">can only speak for the Hungarian people, and they don’t want any migration,” said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images</span></font></div><div class="story-intro format-s" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.25em; margin-right: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><div class="summary" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.25em;"><header style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viktor Orbán: Hungary doesn’t want ‘Muslim invaders’</font></h1><p class="subhead" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hungarian prime minister speaks with German newspaper Bild after attending a meeting of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria last week.</font></p></header><footer class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By <span class="byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="author" class="url fn" href="https://www.politico.eu/author/emily-schultheis/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">EMILY SCHULTHEIS</a></span> </span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p class="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; display: inline;">1/8/18, 1:05 PM CET

Updated&nbsp;<time datetime="2018-01-08T17:14:37+00:00" style="box-sizing: border-box;">1/8/18, 5:14 PM CET</time></p></footer></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BERLIN —<b> Hungary has refused to take in refugees because its population is not in favor of opening the borders,&nbsp;Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán</b> said in an interview published Monday.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I can only speak for the Hungarian people, and they don’t want any migration,” Orbán said. “In my understanding, it’s not possible for the people to have a will on a fundamental issue and for the government not to comply with it.”</font></p><div class="story-interrupt format-s pos-alpha predetermined" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: left; margin-bottom: 0px; width: auto; float: left; margin-right: 20.5625px; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Most refugees come to Europe not because they are fleeing dangerous conditions at home but because they want to take advantage of economic opportunities, Orbán, </b>one of the bloc’s most vocal anti-refugee leaders,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik/ausland/viktor-orban/orban-interview-54403736,view=conversionToLogin.bild.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">told German newspaper Bild</a>. As such, they shouldn’t be considered “refugees” so much as “Muslim invaders,” he said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In keeping refugees out of Hungary, Orbán asserted he is merely following the will of his people — an indirect dig at Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose open-door refugee policy has come under fire in Germany.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Orbán’s comments echo&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-refugees-europe-will-restore-the-will-of-the-people-on-migration-in-2018/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">those he made</a>&nbsp;last week at a meeting of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Merkel’s conservative allies.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"> The Hungarian prime minister predicted 2018 would see the “restoration of the will of the people” and criticized European leaders who “are not doing what the people want them to.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The difference between Germany and Hungary’s respective handling of the refugee crisis is that Germany “wanted migrants, and we didn’t,”&nbsp;Orbán told Bild. Hungary, he added, helped the EU manage the crisis by protecting its border with Serbia, an effort that he said has cost Budapest more than €1 billion since 2015.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To solve Europe’s migration crisis, leaders should focus on fixing conditions “where the problem lies” and prevent potential migrants from reaching the Continent, Orbán said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(247, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The solution to the problem is certainly not to divide people who are in the EU illegally across the entire EU region,” he said. “We think one has to help where the problem lies, and not bring immigrants here.”</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tomgram</font></div><div><blockquote style="padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 21px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opportunism Knocks</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stan Tyminski ran for president before unemployment in Poland&nbsp;<a href="https://www.indexmundi.com/poland/unemployment_rate.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">soared</a>&nbsp;from 6.5% in 1990 to 20% by 2002.<b>&nbsp;In Hungary, Viktor Orbán&nbsp;</b>had far better timing.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Orbán was a young lawyer in Budapest in 1988 when he helped found a liberal party that you had to be under 35 to join. Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats, won a commendable 21 seats in the 1990 elections, good enough for a sixth-place showing. Four years later, that country’s former Communist Party (renamed the Socialists) came out on top, while Fidesz dropped a couple spots. What disappointed Orbán far more, however, was the way the Alliance of Free Democrats -- the “adult” version of Fidesz -- opted to form a coalition government with the Socialists.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was the moment when, having second thoughts about liberalism as a vehicle for his own personal ambitions, he began to transform both Fidesz, which dropped its under-35 requirement, and himself. When economic “reform” shocked Hungary as it had Poland, Orbán recast himself as an increasingly illiberal Hungarian nationalist and his once-liberal party became a pillar of the new right. In 2010, he became prime minister for the second time, a position he’s held for the last seven years.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a remarkable number of ways Orbán anticipated Donald Trump. He reversed his country’s longstanding mistrust of Russia by&nbsp;<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/132778/vladimir-putins-little-helper" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">openly courting</a>&nbsp;its president, Vladimir Putin, and&nbsp;<a href="https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech-at-baile-tusnad-tusnadfurdo-of-26-july-2014/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pledging</a>&nbsp;to transform Hungarian politics along the lines of that country’s “illiberal state.” He railed against&nbsp;<a href="http://fpif.org/stop-the-presses/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mainstream journalism</a>, attempted to bend&nbsp;<a href="https://budapestbeacon.com/fidesz-politicians-continue-target-judges/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the judiciary</a>&nbsp;(and&nbsp;<a href="https://budapestbeacon.com/hungarys-post-communist-constitution-turns-five-years-old/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the constitution</a>) to his will, and rigged the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.johnfeffer.com/hungarys-u-turn/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">state apparatus</a>&nbsp;to benefit his supporters. In perhaps his most ominous twist, Orbán courted the Hungarian version of the alt-right with relentless&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/26/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-praises-donald-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">anti-immigrant</a>&nbsp;statements and the occasional&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9c16b174-62e5-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">anti-Semitic</a>&nbsp;gesture.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Polish right wing was so enamored of Orbán’s success that, in 2011, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0a3c7d44-b48e-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">announced</a>&nbsp;that “the day will come when we will succeed and we will have Budapest in Warsaw.” Four years later, his Law and Justice Party took power on a mixed platform of populism and conspiracy theories reminiscent of Stan Tyminski’s.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Donald Trump is constructing Budapest in Washington D.C., as he unwittingly follows Tyminski’s and Orbán’s trajectory. The reality TV star cultivated his status as an extreme outsider. During the Obama era, he identified a political opportunity on the right and, in September 2009,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/trump-a-republican-for-now-908431" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">switched</a>&nbsp;from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Seven years later, having combined outlandish conspiracy theories (think: birtherism) with an astute critique of liberal elites, he squeaked into power. He surely owes something to native (and nativist) traditions from Huey Long to Ross Perot, but he shares so much more with his compatriots<strong>&nbsp;</strong>across the Atlantic.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That transatlantic commonality begins with his canny exploitation of the gap between expectation and reality. The United States, like Eastern Europe, was going through its own “economic transition” in the 1990s. Millions of Americans expected the new economy -- the global economy, the digital economy, the service economy, the sharing economy -- to produce new jobs, better<em>&nbsp;</em>jobs.&nbsp; And it did generate enormous wealth, but mostly, as in Eastern Europe, for a narrow, highly urbanized slice of the population. Income inequality has increased so dramatically that the American world now&nbsp;<a href="http://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/20-facts-about-us-inequality-everyone-should-know" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">resembles</a>&nbsp;the nineteenth-century Gilded Age.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the eras of Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, the liberal project meant government intervention in the economy on behalf of working Americans and the disadvantaged. By the time Bill Clinton took the White House in 1993, the focus of the “new” Democrats was already shifting to global&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-25/bill-clinton-stopped-at-nothing-in-fight-for-nafta" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">free-trade deals</a>&nbsp;that would only accelerate the country’s loss of manufacturing jobs and a harsh vision of social spending represented most starkly by Clinton’s grim version of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/time-to-revisit-bill-clintons-welfare-reform/2016/05/28/fe9ce506-2426-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html?utm_term=.5f2f333b2c27" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">welfare reform</a>. Meanwhile, the increasing coziness of the “new” Democratic Party and Wall Street would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lead to</a>&nbsp;significant financial deregulation that, in turn, would produce an economic meltdown in 2007-2008.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Barack Obama would prove progressive on some issues, he would also embrace Clintonesque positions on trade, social welfare, and Wall Street. As in Eastern Europe, such a liberal project would leave many people behind. So no one should have been surprised that these disappointed voters would eventually seek their revenge at the polls, as traditional Democrats in working-class neighborhoods began to vote Republican.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aided by “dark money” and his dark mutterings about migrants, Mexicans, and Muslims, Trump rode a wave of Eastern European-style disenchantment to the Oval Office. Now, he’s taking his revenge not just against the neoliberalism of the Clinton and Obama years, but the entire twentieth-century liberal understanding of the state.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/26/opinion/avlon-grover-norquist/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">once remarked</a>&nbsp;that his dream was not “to abolish government” but “to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The question today in both Eastern Europe and the U.S. is: Have Trump, Orbán, and others shrunk liberalism to such a degree that they can now drown it in that bathtub?<strong>&nbsp;</strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Future of Liberalism</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></strong></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></p></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see steven miller</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When TV news viewers saw Trump adviser Stephen Miller accuse Jim Acosta of harboring a “<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">cosmopolitan bias”&nbsp;</b>during Wednesday’s news conference, they might have wondered whether he was accusing the CNN White House reporter of an excessive fondness for the cocktail made famous on “Sex and the City.” It’s a term that’s seldom been heard in American political discourse. But to supporters of the Miller-Bannon worldview, it was a cause for celebration. Breitbart, where Steve Bannon reigned before becoming Trump’s chief political strategist, trumpeted Miller’s “evisceration” of Acosta and put the term in its headline. So did white nationalist Richard Spencer, who hailed Miller’s dust-up with Acosta as “a triumph.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Why does it matter? Because it reflects a central premise of one key element of President Donald Trump’s constituency—a premise with a dark past and an unsettling present.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.</span></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>One reason why “cosmopolitan” is an unnerving term is that it was the key to an attempt by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to purge the culture of dissident voices</b>. In a 1946 speech, he deplored works in which “the positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded.” It was part of a yearslong campaigned aimed at writers, theater critics, scientists and others who were connected with “bourgeois Western influences.” Not so incidentally, many of these “cosmopolitans” were Jewish, and official Soviet propaganda for a time devoted significant energy into “unmasking” the Jewish identities of writers who published under pseudonyms.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What makes this history relevant is that, all across Europe, nationalist political figures are still making the same kinds of arguments—usually but not always stripped of blatant anti-Semitism—to constrict the flow of ideas and the boundaries of free political expression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, has more and more embraced this idea that unpatriotic forces threaten the nation. As Foreign Policy put it in 2014:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The new theme of Russian politics [is] the conflation of loyalty to the Kremlin with patriotism. It says much that dissidents at home, from journalists failing to toe the official line to protesters on the streets, are castigated either as outright ‘foreign agents’ (every movement, charity, or organization accepting foreign money must register itself as such) or else as unknowing victims and vectors of external contamination — contamination, that is, from the West, whose cosmopolitanism and immorality Putin has come to see as an increasing threat to Russia’s identity.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">That same notion has characterized the politics of the former Soviet bloc. In&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Hungary, the president of its Parliament </b>has repeatedly denounced his political opponents as “people without a country,” loyal only to values like freedom, contemptuous of tradition and religion.<b> Its prime minister, Viktor Orban,</b> has openly advocated for “illiberal democracy” and launched a campaign against the <b>Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros</b>. In Poland, the reigning Law and Justice Party sees the nation besieged by dangerous influences.</span>&nbsp;An article last year in World Press succinctly summarized the situation:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“In the party’s propaganda the country is in ruins, its economy robbed blind by international capital, while the foreign ownership of some newspapers and other types of mass media outlets made Poland into a colony, infecting Poles’ minds with rootless cosmopolitanism. … What is at stake is Polish Christian national values that must be protected at all cost, namely the linguistic and religious homogeneity of the country. Only Poles should reside in Poland, and a proper Pole must be a Polish-speaking Catholic.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In one form or another, such sentiments have been at play in the politics of the Netherlands, Germany, France, and (in less blatant form) in the Brexit vote in Great Britain last year.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And they undergirded much of Trump’s campaign. One of its central premises was that “globalists,” regardless of ideology or party, were undermining American interests—by bringing low-skilled workers to our shores, by building factories in other lands, by letting international financial institutions grow rich while hollowing out American cities and towns.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be—always—America First.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">To be clear: Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller would angrily wave away any suggestion that they are echoing the sentiments of anti-democratic political movements, much less anti-Semitic dog whistles. But there is no evading the unhappy reality that to label someone a “cosmopolitan” carries with it a clear implication that there is something less patriotic, less loyal … someone who is not a “real American.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">So maybe the next time Miller wants to duel with an obstreperous reporter, he might consider going back to “elitist”—that’s a real homegrown insult.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454">http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454</a></font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ucsc grad st</font></font></div><div><div class="bookinfo_sectionwrap" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="margin: 0.2em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Zsuzsa+Gille%22" class="secondary" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span dir="ltr">Zsuzsa Gille</span></a></font></font></div><div style="margin: 0.2em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span dir="ltr">Indiana University Press</span>,&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">Apr 4, 2007</span>&nbsp;-&nbsp;<a class="secondary" href="https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=subject:%22Business+%26+Economics%22&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span dir="ltr">Business & Economics</span></a>&nbsp;-&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">264 pages</span></font></font></div><div class="reviewaggregate hreview-aggregate" style="margin: 0.2em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=B4T3P9qX5G4C&dq=mark+cioc+ucsc+cruz+history&sitesec=reviews" aria-label="Average user rating - Unrated" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="gb-star-off goog-inline-block rating" style="height: 13px; overflow: hidden; width: 13px; background: url(" googlebooks="googlebooks" images="images" stars="stars" gb-stars-sprite-1.png="gb-stars-sprite-1.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" position="position" relative="relative" display="display" inline-block="inline-block"><span class="value-title" title="0.0"><span class="gb-star-off goog-inline-block" style="height: 13px; overflow: hidden; width: 13px; background: url(" googlebooks="googlebooks" images="images" stars="stars" gb-stars-sprite-1.png="gb-stars-sprite-1.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" position="position" relative="relative" display="display" inline-block="inline-block"><span class="gb-star-off goog-inline-block" style="height: 13px; overflow: hidden; width: 13px; background: url(" googlebooks="googlebooks" images="images" stars="stars" gb-stars-sprite-1.png="gb-stars-sprite-1.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" position="position" relative="relative" display="display" inline-block="inline-block"><span class="gb-star-off goog-inline-block" style="height: 13px; overflow: hidden; width: 13px; background: url(" googlebooks="googlebooks" images="images" stars="stars" gb-stars-sprite-1.png="gb-stars-sprite-1.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" position="position" relative="relative" display="display" inline-block="inline-block"><span class="gb-star-off goog-inline-block" style="height: 13px; overflow: hidden; width: 13px; background: url(" googlebooks="googlebooks" images="images" stars="stars" gb-stars-sprite-1.png="gb-stars-sprite-1.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" position="position" relative="relative" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" /></span></span></span></span></span></a>
</font></font></div></div><div id="synopsis" style="padding-left: 141px; padding-right: 80px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="synopsis-window" style="height: 5.85em; overflow: hidden;"><div id="synopsistext" dir="ltr" class="sa"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.3em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zsuzsa Gille combines social history, cultural analysis, and environmental sociology to advance a long overdue social theory of waste in this study of waste management, Hungarian state socialism, and post--Cold War capitalism. From 1948 to the end of the Soviet period, Hungary developed a cult of waste that valued reuse and recycling. With privatization the old environmentally beneficial, though not flawless, waste regime was eliminated, and dumping and waste incineration were again promoted. Gille's analysis focuses on the struggle between a Budapest-based chemical company and the small rural village that became its toxic dump site.</font></font></p></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Trump administration recently refused to acknowledge how Jews were the primary and specific targets of the Holocaust, it was White House deputy assistant Gorka who called &nbsp;the controversy over that decision as “<a href="http://forward.com/fast-forward/362482/trump-aide-sebastian-gorka-calls-criticism-of-holocaust-statement-asinine/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">asinine</a>.” Perhaps it is no coincidence then that Gorka — who was born in London to Hungarian émigré parents — has repeatedly been photographed wearing a medal associated with the Order of Vitéz, an overtly anti-Semitic chivalric organization that collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://mic.com/articles/168371/one-of-trumps-top-white-house-aides-wears-the-same-medal-worn-by-nazi-collaborators#.8byE4iH5V" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">Writing for Policy Mic, Tom McKay offered</a>&nbsp;some additional context on the order’s founder, Miklós Horthy:</font></font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; quotes: none;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horthy, the Hungarian regent that [the order] supported, held a profound animus for the Jews of Hungary. “Concerning the Jewish question, for all my life, I have been an anti-Semite,”&nbsp;Horthy once&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005458" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">wrote</a>.&nbsp;His government allied with Adolf Hitler’s&nbsp;Nazi Germany, enacted anti-Semitic laws, brutally cleansed Hungarian Jews, enslaved others in work details and collaborated with German authorities to deport them to death camps.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Many supporters of the Horthy regime were enamored by the Nazis and Hitler, and the ‘knights’ were especially so,” Balogh&nbsp;told&nbsp;<a href="https://lobelog.com/why-is-trump-adviser-wearing-medal-of-nazi-collaborators/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">LobeLog.</a>&nbsp;“After 1948, one wouldn’t have bragged about his father being a ‘vitéz.’&nbsp;Lately, however, especially since 2010, it has become fashionable again to boast about such ‘illustrious’ ancestors.”</font></font></p></blockquote></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div>