The prime minister, after delivering a speech at the Hungarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, was talking about threats to Hungary’s strong economic performance and stability. One of those threats is illegal migration, and he said that preserving the European cultural identity of Hungary is a priority for the well-being of the country. For those more interested in the facts, here’s what he actually said:
“It is very important to preserve ethnic homogeneity...Of course, we Hungarians are heterogeneous in the sense that we are a European nation, even if you read the names [in this room], you’d have everything from Bunjevci to Swabian [a reference to ethnic groups in the region], but even if this is a colorfulness within certain limits, we are all from one civilization. The preservation of this is a key issue. Of course, as we learned from [King] St. Stephen. We welcome everyone, but we shouldn’t risk changing the basic ethnic character of the country.”
If you’re having trouble seeing why that’s racist, that’s because it’s not. He was talking about preserving the ethnic identity we have, and that’s associated with culture, language, sometimes religion, and so on.
Remember Chancellor Merkel’s ‘multi-kulti has failed’ remark? Back in 2010, the chancellor said that the attempt to build a multi-cultural society has “failed, utterly failed.” Germany had taken in many guest workers, she said at the time, but the idea that people of very different cultures could live together “side by side” did not work. On Tuesday, when Prime Minister Orbán talked about the importance of preserving ethnic homogeneity according to certain European historical traditions, he was saying the same thing. But you won’t find that in any of this week’s liberal press accounts.
When people in the media business talk about quoting out of context, they refer to the practice of cutting important details out of the story to twist the meaning and manipulate the reader. Make no mistake: what you see in the vast majority of reports yesterday about Prime Minister Orbán’s comments on multi-ethnicity is a perfect example of quoting out of context to deliberately twist the meaning and swindle the reader. Many of the journalists who ran with that distorted version of events never heard or read the speech.
When photographers talk about the art of cropping, they refer to the practice of cutting off important details of the picture in order to manipulate the reader. We see this all the time, too. In 2015, a picture depicting an “family seeking asylum being thrown on the railroad tracks by policemen in Hungary” went viral. It turned out, when the video surfaced days later, that it was a random, illegal migrant man, who pushed a pregnant woman and her child, who were not his family members, on the tracks and the policemen were reaching towards the woman and child in the picture to help them up. Alas, the damage was already done. The editors had suckered the world into believing the picture showed those inhuman Hungarian policemen and their brutal treatment of migrants.
The loud, ideologically-driven press simply don’t have ears to hear the real meaning of a statement and refuse to report the full picture. Instead, these journalists with an agenda quote out of context and crop the photo.
Here’s exhibit A: Lili Bayer, a journalist who writes regularly for POLITICO Europe, tweeted the following: “Today Orban called for ethnic homogeneity in Hungary. 73 years ago my grandma was taken to concentration camp by others making same argument.”
Set aside the manipulative editing on the part of the journalist and you know that PM Orbán called for the preservation of ethnic homogeneity according to our “colorful” European tradition and history. That’s because, the government “cannot risk changing the fundamental ethnic character of the country.”
That’s a big difference. Too bad the rigged media is so blinded by their own bias that they can’t see the difference or don’t want to.