TRUMP DIPLOMACY - Meeting With Hungarian Prime Minister

"Why Trump’s meeting Hungary’s Orban is a ‘bit controversial’" PBS NewsHour 5/13/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump welcomed controversial Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the White House Monday, breaking with recent presidents who shunned the right-wing nationalist.  Like Trump, Orban has made restricting immigration a cornerstone of his agenda.  William Brangham talks to Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations and Georgetown University about the significance of the alliance.

William Brangham (NewsHour):  For people who have not been following Viktor Orban's career or really appreciate where he sits in the orbit of European politics, tell us a little bit more about him.

Charles Kupchan, Georgetown University:  Well, as your piece said, he starts off as a disheveled liberal post-communist progressive.

He has one bite at the apple as prime minister from '98 to 2002.  And then he comes back in 2010.  And he's been there ever since.  And he essentially tracks from the left to the right to the further right over the course of his political career, and, in many respects, is a person that's ahead of his time, in the sense that he became anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, close down the borders, take over the media, compromise the independence of the judiciary, well before it became mainstream.

You now see it happening in Poland, in Italy.  The far right is gaining ground in Germany.  It's a widespread phenomenon.  He was in many respects the person who blazed that path.

William Brangham:  Former Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon once referred to Viktor Orban as Trump before for Trump.  Is that an accurate characterization of him?

Charles Kupchan:  There's no question that there is an ideological affinity between Trump and Orban.

There is, I think, an effort to create what you might call an illiberal alliance, in which Trump sides with Orban, Salvini the head of the League in Italy, Kaczynski the head of what's called Law and Justice Party in Poland, Alternatives for Germany in Germany, the National Rally in France.

They're trying to create a political movement that pushes democratic politics to the right and in the anti-immigrant direction.  I don't think it's any accident that this meeting today occurred less than two weeks before votes for the European Parliament.

It's a bellwether election.  No question that the far right, the anti-E.U., the anti-immigrant forces will gain ground.  The question is, how much ground will they gain?  How much influence will they wield in the new [EU] Parliament?

HUNGARY - New 'Iron Curtain'

"Why Hungary is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’" PBS NewsHour 8/4/2015

Man's comment is an example of the consequences of NOT having religious freedom.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In Hungary, government leaders say they can't cope with the flood of migrants entering their country:  80,000 so far this year.  So the government is racing to complete a 110 mile-long fence -- what opponents are calling a “new Iron Curtain” -- along its border with Serbia.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour):  This family is more than 3,000 miles away from home in Congo.  After months on the road, they have just slipped across the frontier from Serbia and have been stopped by the Hungarian police.

The adults don’t want to be filmed, for fear of jeopardizing their chances of reaching France another thousand miles away.  In this porous border region, the country lane is teeming with migrants on a relentless march to Northern Europe.

You’re in Hungary.

MAN:  No, you are in Hungary.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  You are in Hungary.

Where have you come from?

MAN:  I’m from Serbia.  OK.  Enough.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  Nearby, a member of a right-wing vigilante group which claims to protect a local village stands guard over a group of Pakistanis who also just entered Hungary.  Some fled for economic reasons, others because of persecution.

MAN:  I wanted to marry some girl.  The Muslim religion, we don’t have permission for it, so they kill her.  So they don’t — they want to kill me, and now I’m running.  Even my family want to kill me, my relatives, everybody, because we cross a religion.  So, this is me running from there.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  The migrants fear a repeat of violence they say was inflicted by police in Bulgaria.

MAN:  They hit us here and here, here.  And they take all money, SIM cards, mobile. Everything, they take from us.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  But the vigilante lets them go.  The authorities estimate as many as 2,000 people are crossing illegally into Hungary every day.  Although most have no intention of remaining in the country, their sheer numbers intimidate some on isolated farms.