By Alexandre Árpád Szigethy.
Update of February 22, 2017: Budapest officially renounced to its candidacy for the Olympic Games of 2024, following the action described in the article and some elements indicating that it would have rerached the third place, behind Los Angeles and Paris.
Hungary, Budapest – Like Paris and Los Angeles, Budapest is – for now – an officially candidate city to host the Olympic Games of 2024. The initiative is supported by an Orbán government which still thinks to rule by the time of the opening ceremony. However, for several weeks, the movement “Momentum” collected signatures to launch a referendum in order to oppose the holding of the games in Hungary. On February 17, 2017, this movement exceeded the 200,000 signatures required to initiate this procedure. The opposition is gleeful.
Certainly, but what opposition are we talking about? From the very beginning of the first mandate – if we do not take in consideration his mandate from 1998 to 2002 – of Viktor Orbán, in 2010, the Hungarian PM and his government got more patriotic, and less in line with the expectations of Brussels and the liberal paradigms. As was to be expected, the government is not pleasing to many – mainly foreigners – interest groups, and both domestic and external Hungarian policies therefore became the theaters of a starting war that would eventually be played in a multitude of battles and on so many fronts.
The liberal opposition in the traditional form and purely political (to make it clear, the parties of oppositions : MSZP, DK, Együtt, Liberálisok …) is progressively reduced to nothing, so it is to a new type of political fight that the government must get used. The time for battles in the Chamber of Deputies in the Parliament is gone and now is the time for virtual guerrilla war on social networks and sometimes more “concrete” in the form of posters and demonstrations in Budapest.
For even though they are supported by the liberal left-wing opposition parties, it is nevertheless the famous “Soros NGOs” who shape the fight.
Indeed, they are all actors of the same theater company, from the same liberal-libertarian network, and which systematically portrays itself as the monopolistic holder of a moral monopoly, in a democracy with variable geometry.
Whether it is for the new constitution, defending the rights of homosexuals (never endangered, by the way), fighting for the “rights of minorities” (a joker expression used for allied minorities), fighting “corruption” (a joker term to counter what they see as disturbing processes), supporting illegal and massive immigration, opposing the referendum on the refusal of Brussels’ mandatory quotas of migrant, and now the Olympic Games, there is always the same aftertaste of Soros sauce and of Open Society networks.
Take for example the satirical party of the “Two-tailed Dog Party”. A few years ago, when they were still funny, it was a group of friends who enjoyed sticking small black and white A5 posters in the city during the election period. The messages were “Free beer and eternal life for all! “,” Vote for us! We promise you we will not steal anything, look how cute we are!”, “Let us move Margaret Island between Margaret Bridge and the Chain Bridge; It will be much more gorgeous! “… Basically, satirical humor, but nothing more than humor. But at the referendum mentioned above about the mandatory quotas of migrants, this band of comedians had a revelation: they had democratic mission and suddenly the means to display in 3×4 meters and color posters all around the city. The tone is always satirical, but openly anti-government and especially insulting towards the millions of right-wing voters charged with ignorance and xenophobia.
Over the last few weeks they have been improvised experts in urban budget management and sports infrastructure, but still playing the white knights of democracy. Their slogan: “Before organizing the Olympic Games, it would be better to organize a democracy!”
The case of the Olympics is part of a longer-term logic of permanent confrontation, a cat-and-mouse game between a conservative government and liberal groups, most of which are financed and remotely controlled by foreign entities, and whose interests rarely coincide with the patriotic claim of Viktor Orbán.
