Due to some kind of incitement, Fidesz activists may be subjected to attacks, claimed Judit Czunyiné Bertalan, leader of an initiative called Defense Line launched by Viktor Orbán, this morning on Kossuth Radio.
She specifically mentioned that vote counters are also at risk, which reminded me of my diary entries from after the “visible from the moon” Fidesz victory in 2022.
Friday, April 15, 2022: “Today, vote counters were identified as enemies on the party’s radio station (there was a hate-inciting segment about them). There are only 20,000 of us, including me, and they know all my details.”
Saturday, April 16, 2022: “By chance, I heard that today they repeated the incitement against vote counters on the radio. This is somewhat worrying, although that may be an exaggeration, since twenty thousand people is still too many to settle accounts with every one of them. Even during communism, people were not attacked for this many. Moreover, the party benefited greatly from us, because thanks to our work, the whole country accepts the election result as genuine, even though in the previous election half the country was certain that it had been rigged. Unfortunately, I can still see a chance that they are afraid of us too, and now, at the height of their power, they may consider this the best time to render powerless those in whom they have discovered the capacity for resistance. This is a very small chance; we are not moving to Austria or Slovakia because of it—it would be too difficult, and the potential danger is too small to take that on; it would not be reasonable. Besides, whatever they can do against us, they can do even if we are abroad, because financially everything we have is tied here. Becoming independent from the country is a longer process, and it can be started from here just as well as from abroad. So the only benefit of moving would be protection against possible physical attacks, but in the current situation, even with my paranoid mind, I see almost zero chance of that.”
Those were my thoughts at the time. What I refer to as “the party’s radio station” is Kossuth Radio, and the hate-inciting segment was about something like how they had found (or fabricated) a forum and claimed that those speaking there, who belonged to the 20K Vote Counters movement, had said ugly things about Fidesz voters, and that Gordon Bajnai and perhaps George Soros had trained us to influence the election, and similar things. I no longer remember it completely, only the realization that the collection of lies broadcast was precisely suitable for making people feel hatred toward me.
Fortunately, no such hate-inciting manipulation has been observed so far from the Tisza Party or the future new government, so this Defense Line thing is probably more about Viktor Orbán hiding behind voters’ skirts—just like when he was asked in Brussels not to steal, and in response he said that Hungary had been attacked.
She specifically mentioned that vote counters are also at risk, which reminded me of my diary entries from after the “visible from the moon” Fidesz victory in 2022.
Friday, April 15, 2022: “Today, vote counters were identified as enemies on the party’s radio station (there was a hate-inciting segment about them). There are only 20,000 of us, including me, and they know all my details.”
Saturday, April 16, 2022: “By chance, I heard that today they repeated the incitement against vote counters on the radio. This is somewhat worrying, although that may be an exaggeration, since twenty thousand people is still too many to settle accounts with every one of them. Even during communism, people were not attacked for this many. Moreover, the party benefited greatly from us, because thanks to our work, the whole country accepts the election result as genuine, even though in the previous election half the country was certain that it had been rigged. Unfortunately, I can still see a chance that they are afraid of us too, and now, at the height of their power, they may consider this the best time to render powerless those in whom they have discovered the capacity for resistance. This is a very small chance; we are not moving to Austria or Slovakia because of it—it would be too difficult, and the potential danger is too small to take that on; it would not be reasonable. Besides, whatever they can do against us, they can do even if we are abroad, because financially everything we have is tied here. Becoming independent from the country is a longer process, and it can be started from here just as well as from abroad. So the only benefit of moving would be protection against possible physical attacks, but in the current situation, even with my paranoid mind, I see almost zero chance of that.”
Those were my thoughts at the time. What I refer to as “the party’s radio station” is Kossuth Radio, and the hate-inciting segment was about something like how they had found (or fabricated) a forum and claimed that those speaking there, who belonged to the 20K Vote Counters movement, had said ugly things about Fidesz voters, and that Gordon Bajnai and perhaps George Soros had trained us to influence the election, and similar things. I no longer remember it completely, only the realization that the collection of lies broadcast was precisely suitable for making people feel hatred toward me.
Fortunately, no such hate-inciting manipulation has been observed so far from the Tisza Party or the future new government, so this Defense Line thing is probably more about Viktor Orbán hiding behind voters’ skirts—just like when he was asked in Brussels not to steal, and in response he said that Hungary had been attacked.