European Interest

Hungary’s Orban warns against ‘terror’ of immigration

Flickr/EU2017EE Estonian Presidency/CC BY 2.0
“We should reject the ideology of globalism and support instead the culture of patriotism,” Viktor Orban said on October 23.

Standing outside the House of Terror Museum in Budapest, Hungary’s prime minister could not have picked a better spot to warn against the “European empire”.

Viktor Orban, who was speaking during commemorations of a short-lived 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, called on voters to reject globalism and support “the culture of patriotism” in the May 2019 European Parliament elections.

“The European Parliament elections in May will decide in which direction Europe’s wagon will turn,” he said on October 23. “We should reject the ideology of globalism and support instead the culture of patriotism.”

Orban also said that if immigration continues, “autochthonous Europeans” would become a minority and “terror will become part of life in large cities.”

“Those who want to knead a European empire out of the European Union are all, without exception, pro-immigration,” he continued. “They deliberately failed to use their huge military and police might, they deliberately failed to defend Europe from the masses of migrants.”

Orban’s latest statements should not come as a surprise. As reported by The Washington Post, he has made increasingly strict anti-immigration policies his principal political focus, which helped his Fidesz party win a third consecutive two-thirds majority in April’s elections.

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