Last month Jobbik rallied against the World Jewish Congress in Budapest, protesting "against what it said was a Jewish attempt to buy up Hungary".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22413301
They frame themselves as fascist and anti-semite.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22413301
They frame themselves as fascist and anti-semite.
Land ownership is being concentrated in the hands of a very few, very rich individuals - partly simply because the average salary here is about $500 a month, and partly because of policy explicitly crafted to this end. (For example, the government now requires agricultural certification for you to work your own land. The only option is often to sell.)
All this works to the benefit of the richer European countries, so they're cool with it. Jobbik is one of the very few voices in the Hungarian political scene that questions any of this at all - so it's not just out of the goodness of European media's hearts that they report on the most lurid details of their admittedly unfortunate rhetoric.
Do you really think Germany is worried about antisemitism? Did you realize that Angela Merkel actually "joked" (scare quotes intentional) that the Hungarian situation wasn't yet dire enough to require Germany to come in here with tanks? Because you can bet that Hungarians do, in fact, remember the last such incident - and some of my wife's own family died in the concentration camps.
And no, my wife's family never left Hungary, and yeah, they're Jewish. She didn't even know about it herself until about twenty years ago, but I will say that the synagogue downtown is still there. Nobody burns it down, and they still have services as far as I know. They certainly have lots of papers posted in Hebrew.
Fuck.
Now Jobbik is not against the Jews. They are against the fact that they (admitted by them) buying up our country!
If Barack Obama would say the same they would protest against the USA. Would that make them or me an antiUSAic? No!
Wether they are Jews, aliens, englishmen or bushmans or whatever, we don't like other people buying up our country! That's all. It's not a race issue.
The entire latter half of your "evidence" video is completely mistranslated. I would have to say deliberately.
Shimon Peres is talking about how amazing it is that Israel has achieved developed-country status.
Pashut ein lanu maspik shuk mekomi gadol. That doesn't mean anything about our talents or dynamism. It literally reads: "We simply don't have enough of a large local market." He's talking about Israeli exports.
The sentence "Anachnu konim et Manhattan, et ...." (literally: We are buying Manhattan, ....) does occur early in the video, but without a whole lot of additional context it's meaningless. He's using a simple, conversational mode of Hebrew there, in which it could mean "We're conspiring to purchase all the buildings in these countries with our Joo Moniez", but it much more likely means, "Israelis can now buy apartments in these locations."
So basically, your far-right is playing the Jooz Card to pacify your proper rage against the consequences of neoliberal economic policies in Hungary.
I'm descended from a once-somewhat-prominent Hungarian Jewish family, but if you actually believe this kind of crap, the chance I'm visiting Budapest where my great-grandparents lived any time soon is basically null.
I think Shimon Peres is not talking about "Israelis can now buy apartments in these locations" scenario, Jewish people can do that for like decades, that would have no frigging information content. So why should I believe that?
It was allowed for decades, yes, but it's only in the past decade or so that Israel has achieved the wealth of a First World country. It used to be that an Israeli would need a foreign, First World source of income to buy property outside Israel. Hell, it sometimes used to be (and still is, in the premier locations of Israel!) that an Israeli would need an exogenous income source (family savings or illicit money or something) to afford property in Israel!
But the thing is, given only 40 seconds of footage clipped out and mistranslated by a far-right nutter, I can't tell you for crap what Peres actually meant. I can, however, assure you that neither Jews nor Israelis own whole cities.
For a quick overview of the Hungarian history I recommend the film Sunshine (1999): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145503/
Just curious: how is the education level of computer science in Hungary now?
Hungary has perhaps the strongest mathematical tradition of any country, particularly in graph theory and other combinatorial math.
On TopCoder Hungary is ranked #39. On the ACM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_P... they are not in the top.
On IMO http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx the numbers are also not good.
You would not believe how excellent math education is here, and how important education is in the culture in general. Very stark difference from the United States.
For an American, the weirdest thing about Hungarian racism is the fact that they widely discriminate against people who are visually exactly identical to one another. There are many people who don't know they're Jewish here - that Jobbik guy being a case in point (sorry, I don't remember his name, but it was pretty funny).
I just heard a joke the other day. There are three women at a hospital giving birth on the same day - a Magyar, a Roma, and a African woman. Unfortunately, all the paperwork is misplaced, and nobody is sure which baby is which. So the Magyar woman grabs the black baby and screams, "I'm keeping this one until we can figure out which of the other ones is a gypsy!"
This was told to me by a Hungarian - an older guy who always says hi when we walk the dog past his workshop - laughing about the racist element who discriminates based on nothing. Food for thought.
I've heard people talk openly about how there should be another holocaust.
I find it depressing, or even scary that I live in a county with people like this. While I'm not aware of any recent attacks against Jews, so technically you should be safe, but I still can't wholeheartedly recommend you to come here.
Although I suppose that's what most antisemitism always is, when you boil it down. But (for example) Hit Gyülekezet is a large, powerful, pro-Israel church here.
> Simon Peres said they are buying up Manhattan, Hungary etc.
Umm ...
"So if I dare to repeat a possibly threatening sentence said by a Jewish person I am instantly antisemitic?"
or
"So if I dare to repeat a possibly threatening sentence said by a Christian person I am instantly anti-Christian?"
And friendly_chap? I hate to break this to you, but we have bought your country. Who do you think owns Gyõri Keksz now? Wholly owned subsidiary of Kraft Foods - I just noticed that label last week. Sorry, man. I've stopped buying Gyõri Keksz in protest, but I don't think it's going to help.
Also, they're made in Slovakia now. I'm sure they work cheaper.