The TransformerSeptember/October 2019 53food and denied legal representation.
What is more, as The New York Times
wrote o the
ndings, “Civic organiza-
tions that have tried to help [refugees]
have been harassed and censored. And
courts meant to protect the rights o
these people are under immense pressure
to do the bidding o the country’s
increasingly authoritarian government.”
Meanwhile, Orban has taken aim at
the cosmopolitan elites who, in the
demagogic fantasy he peddles, are con-
spiring with migrants to despoil Hungary
o its Christian purity. In a stomach-
turning twist, the main target o these
attacks has been his former patron, Soros.
In recent years, Fidesz has blitzed the
Hungarian public with anti-Semitic
attacks on Soros, painting him as a
behind-the-scenes manipulator bent on
seeing his homeland overrun by migrants
and refugees. In 2017, parliament
passed a law intended to force the
closure o the Central European Univer-
sity, which was founded in 1991 with an
endowment from Soros. C is techni-
cally an American institution. But it was
by far Hungary’s most prestigious
institute o higher education, led by the
respected Canadian human rights
scholar Michael Ignatie and boasting
a distinguished faculty and 1,440
students from over 100 countries
(including 400 students from Hungary).
Despite the condemnation o academ-
ics around the world and a series o
protests, the largest o which drew
80,000 to the streets o Budapest, the
government went ahead with the plan,
and in 2018, announced that it was
moving to Vienna. “It’s a warning,”
Ignatie told The Washington Post.
“Once the rule o law is tampered with,
no institution is safe.... You can’t havemiles o razor wire to keep them out,
labeling them a threat to Hungary and
Europe’s Christian values. “We
shouldn’t forget that the people who are
coming here grew up in a dierent
religion and represent a completely
dierent culture,” he wrote in an op-ed
published by a German newspaper that
year. “Most are not Christian, but Mus-
lim.” Around the same time, he warned in
a radio interview that “now we talk about
hundreds o thousands [o refugees], but
next year we will talk about millions, and
there is no end to this. All o a sudden,
we will see that we are in a minority on
our own continent.”
Again and again, Orban has presented
himsel and his government as “the last
defenders o a Europe based on the
nation, family, and Christianity.” In the
time-honored tradition o populist
demagogues, he cast the migrant in¡ux
as the product o a conspiracy among
hostile foreigners and corrupt elites:
“The most bizarre coalition in world
history has arisen,” he declared, “one
concluded among people smugglers,
human rights activists, and Europe’s top
politicians, in order to deliver here
many millions o migrants. Brussels must
be stopped!”
In the years since, Orban’s govern-
ment has made life for migrants in
Hungary extremely di¥cult. In 2017,
parliament passed a law forcing all
asylum seekers into detention camps,
with some o them housed in converted
shipping containers. Amnesty Interna-
tional condemned the measures as
“illegal and deeply inhuman” and “a
¡agrant violation o international law.”
A report issued earlier this year by the
Council o Europe charged that refugees
in Hungary were being deprived o 08_Lendvai_pp_Blues.indd 53 7/22/19 5:50 PM