It’s good to have demons. You need a Trump in Europe and it might as well be Orbán — says Jordan B. Peterson on why Hungary is portrayed so badly in the Western media. The world-renowned Canadian clinical psychologist who has recently visited Hungary talks about the lack of freedom of speech, the woke madness and the role of faith in our lives.
The Hungarian government has vetoed the 11th EU sanctions package against Russia after it was revealed that Volodymyr Zelenskyy allegedly urged the bombing of the Druzhba pipeline, a crucial route via which Russian oil is transferred to Hungary.
As a closing thought of his lecture, Dr Peterson explained that a central unifying spirit connects the biblical stories he had cited, and if we get into a proper relationship and alliance with this spirit, it will carry us through even the most horrible situations. He highlighted that the complete realisation and fulfilment of this can be seen in the New Testament.
The fate of a sum of 13.2 billion EUR is at stake in the political and legal debate between the European Commission and the government of Hungary. Parts of the regular EU cohesion and post-COVID recovery funds are being withheld, as the Commission has issues with the state of the rule of law in Hungary. The new law, to enter into force on 1 July, aims to resolve the deadlock.
The event featured, among others, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Croatian MP Stephen Bartulica, and Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga. Minister Varga called Hungary ‘an island where freedom still lives’; while referring to the Brussels bureaucracy and mainstream media as ‘an octopus with 100 tentacles that we have to fight’.
A major problem with the structure of the EU is that it is not fully based on representative democracy. A case in point, notwithstanding the fact that EU Parliament members are elected by the citizens of the member states, EU leaders picked Ursula von her Leyen to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as the leader of the European Union’s executive branch behind closed doors.
The prime minister talked about how Hungary has a vested interest in achieving peace in Ukraine, since the war diminishes the value of Hungary and endangers the ethnic Hungarians living in the area.
Hungary is not the only country in East-Central Europe that sees unwanted commentary and meddling by Russia with regard to interpretations of its history. The periods the evaluation of which is the most frequently contested by Russia are the Cold War era and World War II. While Russia glorifies the USSR’s effort to defeat Nazi Germany, CEE countries, including Hungary, highlight the 45 years the Red Army spent in Central Europe as an occupying force after the end of World War II.
While talking to reporters on his flight from Budapest to Vatican City, Pope Francis revealed that the Vatican is engaged in a ‘peace mission’, which he has discussed with Prime Minister Orbán and Bishop Hilarion in Budapest. The Kyiv government has made it clear that it does not approve of such an effort.
Answering the call of the representatives of Orthodox communities, Hungary recognised that the Russian Orthodox Church has some 100 million members worldwide, and the sanctioning of its leader would isolate religious people from their spiritual leader. The Patriarch is regularly prayed for and commemorated during church services in Hungary, too, as it is home to a Hungarian Orthodox community under the Moscow Patriarchate.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
