Hungary Resists EU Assault on Sovereignty, Christian Civilization

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BUDAPEST — With the European Union’s leadership becoming increasingly aggressive in trying to dismantle nation-states and Christian civilization using mass Islamic migration as a battering ram, the Hungarian government says it is defending its people and European values from the assault. In an interview with The New American at the cabinet office in Budapest, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács blasted the EU’s bullying, noting that centralized control was already tried in Europe under communism — and it failed miserably. However, despite the threat of sanctions and other attacks from Brussels, authorities in Hungary vowed to continue resisting and upholding the will of the people as expressed at the voting booth. The EU, obviously, is not pleased. And the battle is likely to get more intense before it gets better.

The latest shoe to drop in the ongoing spat between Brussels bureaucrats and Hungary’s conservative-leaning government led by firebrand Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came last week. After months of threats and fist shaking, the European “Parliament,” which is not a lawmaking parliament in the traditional Western sense, voted to trigger sanctions against Hungary under Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty. If the unprecedented move is supported by the European Council — something that appears highly unlikely since Budapest’s allies can veto — it could lead to Hungary losing its voting rights within the EU. The ostensible charge was breaching the alleged “democratic values” of the EU. Ironically, Orbán’s government is more popular among its people than practically any other on the continent, and the Lisbon Treaty under which the process is occurring was foisted on Europeans even after they voted no on it — repeatedly.

In July, The New American reported on how far-left billionaire internationalist George Soros was using the front groups he lavishly funds to demand sanctions and other punitive measures against Hungary. In particular, Soros and his front groups were outraged about Hungary’s “Stop Soros” law, which aims to reduce the influence he has been surreptitiously buying with his billions — in brazen defiance of what the Hungarian people voted for. “We face a problem here,” said Kovács, noting that Soros has expressed a desire to become Hungary’s political opposition. “Nobody ever elected Mr. Soros. Nobody ever elected those NGOs [non-governmental organizations] he’s very abundantly financing that work in an international framework and are very loud.”

One especially radical Soros ally in Brussels, leader of left-wing forces in the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt — dubbed a “lunatic” by Kovács — went so far as to call for U.S. government intervention in Hungary in an op-ed. But on the ground among everyday Hungarians, who backed Orbán and his coalition with some two thirds of the vote, the Soros-backed NGOs and the establishment voices in Brussels have virtually no support. This is easily proven by the fact that Hungarians could, if they wanted to, allocate some of their taxes to the NGO groups — and almost none do. Still, with its latest vote and the ongoing demonization campaign against Hungary, lead figures in the EU appear to be more than happy to comply with the demands of Soros and other establishment power-brokers.

Kovács, the secretary of state for public diplomacy and relations, slammed the vote as a “fraud.” Calling it a “shame on the European Parliament,” the government spokesman told The New American that the EU was trying to take “political revenge” not against the Hungarian government, but against the nation itself, which recently voted overwhelmingly to keep Orbán in power. Kovács also accused the European Parliament of failing to obey its own rules by ignoring the abstentions. “We all know that legally, it’s very questionable what happened,” he said. “They wanted to camouflage the political revenge into a legal process…. We’ve been through many such political attacks, and a witch hunt against Hungary for the past 8 years, because they don’t like us. And we all know that the real reasons behind what happened in the European Parliament, aside from the political revenge, is our position on illegal migration.”

Even polls by the establishment-controlled Chatham House, the sister organization of the globalist U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, reveal that Europeans all across the bloc are overwhelmingly opposed to the mass migration swamping Europe. Just 20 percent of those surveyed disagreed with ending all further migration from “mainly Muslim” nations. And yet, the EU insists that the mass migration must go on regardless of what the people want — and that one of the few governments submitting to the will of the people is somehow being “undemocratic.” Ironically, Hungary was among the very few EU member governments that respected the democratically expressed will of the British people when they voted for secession in Brexit. When asked, then, what the EU means by “democracy” and “democratic values” if not serving the people and respecting their wishes, Kovács said: “This is the biggest question.”

But it is even broader than a question of “democracy” or migration. “As a matter of fact, what we see developing is not simply a quarrel over illegal migration, its a quarrel over the future of Europe, it’s a quarrel over values,” the Hungarian government’s spokesman explained. “We strongly believe that European values are based on law and legality.… Politics and political opinion does not belong to the value system, especially if it’s coming from the political far-left; the liberals and the socialists in Europe. It is as if one political side wants to monopolize.” Hungary, he said, rejects the view that the only approach to democracy is “liberal,” especially when the term is undefined. Plus, Kovács added, “we are Christian Democrats,” and Christian Democrats did more for European democracy than any other political idea or group.

Christianity, he said, is actually the foundation of European identity and civilization. Of course, the Hungarian government is not interested in enforcing religious views on people, Kovács explained. But nevertheless, it is important to “reawaken Europeans” to that fact that their way of life — their freedoms, their institutions, their values, their families, and their civilization — is based on Christianity and Christian values. He spoke also of the “Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman inheritance and legacy” that make up the foundation of what is today known as Europe. “If somebody wants to substitute this with something different in the name of tolerance and neutrality, it means that it’s going to be something different,” he said. “Our perspective is not simply influenced, but is determined by, and based on, what Christianity has told us, as a religion, and as a culture. And we are not ready to give it up in the face of something that we don’t know what it is.”

Orbán famously blasted what he described as “treasonous” forces in Brussels engaged in a “conspiracy” to sideline nation-states and undermine the Christian foundations of European civilization. Kovács echoed concerns about the agenda. “We don’t believe in conspiracy theories, because we see how the conspiracy is evolving,” he said, noting that pro-mass migration forces within the EU were marketing the influx of migrants as something to “rejuvenate” and “refresh the blood” of Europe. Some of it is based on the ostensible need for more labor, “but definitely there is a political agenda which is trying to change the very nature, the very face, of Europe.” He pointed to the ongoing effort to impose a “United States of Europe” on the diverse peoples of Europe — a shadowy globalist project that The New American has been warning about since at least the 1980s, decades before the movement came out in the open and revealed its true agenda.

As part of that, the forces seeking to impose a full-blown central government on Europe are seeking to “homogenize Europe and get rid of the very foundations of Europe,” Kovács said. Those foundations now under assault include Christianity as both a religion and a culture, as well as diverse, self-governing nations and nation-states for the various peoples of Europe, he continued. “Homogenizing Europe is a dangerous project because it goes against the very nature of Europe,” said Budapest’s spokesman. “We know a lot about cultural diversity and multiculturalism, because Europe has always been multicultural, full-stop, for thousands of years. That is the very nature of Europe. But that multiculturalism is based on Christianity and the common value system that is coming from it.”

That inherent multiculturalism and diversity of Europe, however, does not mean that the continent can “mingle or integrate with a different cultural entity, which is Islam,” Kovács continued. “You know, Europe, back in the Middle Ages and earlier, has been fighting Islam for centuries, for an obvious reason. We don’t want to fight anyone today, but we are not stupid and we would not like to forget the teaching of history, and that is you cannot mingle things that cannot be put into each other, because there is not going to be a good outcome of it. You have to recognize that cultures are different at times, and that any attempt to amalgamate them and develop something of them is going to fail. That is the lesson of history.” Indeed, North Africa, Turkey, Syria, and much of today’s Muslim world was once Christian, too.

Among other concerns surrounding this mass-migration agenda, Kovács cited the threat of terrorism as a key problem. Perhaps even more importantly, though, he pointed to the ongoing religious and cultural transformation of European societies taking place as a result of the waves of illegal immigration washing over the continent. “In Western Europe, most of those who arrive from Islamic countries are not integrating,” he observed. “We name that problem because we believe it is important, not because we don’t like Muslims.” The situation has become so extreme that in Germany and Sweden, the natives are being told in tax-funded ads that they must integrate into the “new country” that has been foisted on them by their governments.

At issue is the fact that the rules and values of the migrants and the societies they come from are not compatible with those of European civilization, Kovács explained. In some countries, the number of Islamic migrants has reached as high as 10 percent of the population, and in some regions, it is far higher than that — with the numbers still growing. “The rules of the game are now changing,” he said, pointing to the widely divergent value systems between traditional Judeo-Christian civilization and the Islamic world. “As a result, parallel societies are developing.” He highlighted German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warnings about so-called no-go zones in Germany to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, saying that “is something we would like to avoid here in Central Europe.”

And Hungary intends to fully resist any EU effort to force such policies on nation states — both by speaking out and by using the veto when needed. Having a European community of nations “does not mean that there should only be one rule,” Kovács said. “We’ve seen that actually happening under communism. Especially the Central European countries have another historical experience and legacy, and that is, living in an empire which is trying to impose things on you instead of asking your opinion and listening to you. This is not going to last long. And this is the direction the European Union has taken. The political center in Brussels in many respects is not simply stealing sovereignty of the member states which have never been given up by the treaty, but is increasingly [promoting the notion that] they know better what is good for the member states. We reject that.”

Kovács said that U.S.-Hungarian relations have improved greatly since the departure of President Barack Obama. “We truly believe that the coming of Mr. Trump has opened up a new chapter in that relationship, especially helping to get rid of the burden that the Democrats put on bilateral relations,” he said. “That burden was an ideological burden much related to Mr. Soros and his circles, and much related to the so-called liberal agenda which was trying to take the moral high ground.… We believe that that chapter is closed. The new ambassador is following a different pattern, very rightly.” Concluding the interview, Kovács said the Trump administration should see Hungary as a friend. “We have always been the friends of the United States,” he added. Hungary and its allies in Central Europe represent the “real Europe, the Europe you knew, the Europe you probably would like to continue to exist.” Stay tuned.

Watch the full interview below:

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.