Extreme right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban strongly criticized the "mixing" of European and non-European races. His speech immediately sparked outrage from European politicians.
This is reported by The Guardian.
"We (Hungarians) are not a mixed race ... and we do not want to become a mixed race," Orban said. He added that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans mix are "no longer nations."
Orban has made similar statements over the years, but these comments have been phrased in a stridently far-right manner.
Katalin Cech, a member of the European Parliament from the Hungarian opposition party Impuls, said she was shocked by the prime minister's speech. "His statements remind us of a time that I think we would all like to forget. They really show the true face of the regime," she said.
Romanian MEP Alin Mituta also reacted angrily to Orban's comments. "Talking about racial or ethnic 'purity,' especially in a region as mixed as Central and Eastern Europe, is delusional and dangerous," he said.
Note that Orban made this statement during a revealing annual speech in Baile Tusnad, Romania, where he had previously expressed major political ideas or ideological directions. It was there, in 2014, that he first said he wanted to build an "illiberal democracy" in Hungary.
This year, Orban gave an apocalyptic speech in which he predicted the decline of the West and prophesied "a decade of danger, uncertainty, and war. He also sharply criticized Western military support for Ukraine, positioning himself as Moscow's main ally in the European Union.
"The more advanced weapons NATO provides to the Ukrainians, the more the Russians will push the front lines ... What we are doing is prolonging the war," Orban said during a speech on Saturday, July 23.
Hungary is a member of NATO, but the far-right Orban has long enjoyed warm relations with Putin and spent five hours in Moscow talking to the Russian leader in February, shortly before the Russian invasion. The speech came two days after his foreign minister unexpectedly arrived in Moscow for talks, and puts him well beyond the European consensus on the war.
Orban said the West's job should not be to hope Ukraine wins, but to mediate a peace agreement. "We should not be on the side of Russia or Ukraine, but between them," he said, adding that the policy of imposing sanctions on Russia has not worked.
In his speech, he often alluded to the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which claims there is a conspiracy to dilute the white population of the United States and European countries at the expense of immigration. He said it was "an ideological ploy by left-wing internationalists who claim that the European population is already a mixed race."
Recall that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has already stated that statements by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that sanctions against Russia imposed for the war in Ukraine do not work are a classic example of Russian propaganda.
