Balázs Németh: It’s Monday 29 September – 195 days before the expected date of the general election. This is Fight Hour, live on YouTube and Facebook, and now we’re on Spotify too – you can listen there as well, even while driving. We fight for our truth, we fight against lies, we expose fake news. Comments and questions are welcome: via Messenger on the Balázs Németh Facebook page, or by email to harcosokórája2026@gmail.com. And everyone should subscribe to the Fight Hour channel on YouTube. How much simpler it used to be! As a newscaster I’d just say “We’re starting”, without all this obligatory digital patter. But here I have to say all this. And now we welcome back our very first guest, because at the end of July we launched Fight Hour with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and now we’re beginning the tenth week. Thank you very much for coming here again.
Congratulations!
When we first started out, just two days earlier you’d announced the launch of the Digital Civic Circles, the “online conquest of the homeland”. This morning show appeared, Fight Club already existed, but we were just getting acquainted with the world of the internet and the world of social media. We look in better shape now.
We look in better shape now because many people realised that things just won’t work without it. On the Right there’s a certain suspicion about anything faceless. The Right, the national side, is characterised by qualities like seriousness, a sense of responsibility, standing up for things. And what we see on the internet, in this online space, is more like lurking, anonymity, sniping, sneakiness and fakery – it all seems like a murky world. But since it’s a world with great influence, and we don’t necessarily have to adopt that same character, if we enter it, we can also bring our own character with us, and then we can change the space itself. That’s the situation now – and this is what we call the “online conquest of the homeland”. We want characteristics that are typical of the Right to prevail on the internet, in the online sphere as well: taking a stand, straightforwardness, honesty, voicing our opinions openly with our names and faces, and so on. It’s going well.
The truth is that earlier I had a foot in the camp that said: “Let them clamour on Facebook, on the internet – in April the silent majority will know where to put their ‘x’ anyway.” But even so, I accepted the argument that online clamour has an impact on the real world. And now I see things from the other direction: our presence in the digital space has had an effect on real-world events – whether on the atmosphere at Kötcse or at the meeting of Digital Civic Circles in the Papp László Arena.
It works both ways. Modern politics does indeed face a problem, and it’s connected to the online space: the problem is that it’s become intertwined with the entertainment industry. Unlike personal conversations, reading newspapers, or following a televised debate, everything online is short, fast, immediate, reactive, and – as we say – sensationalist. And this has pushed politics into the entertainment industry, while the entertainment industry has also brought people up onto the political stage. This particularly favours the lunatic types. In the entertainment industry what’s exciting is always the unusual, the interesting, the deviation from the norm – and the online space suits this. So half-witted, airheaded politicians – or those who would otherwise have pursued artistic careers – end up coming together. It’s no coincidence that the opposition’s forces are largely made up of these types – over there airheaded characters are all you can find: one is talking to a cardboard cutout figure, another is blowing a trumpet, a third is climbing a ladder. This is the consequence of the internet: politics and the entertainment industry have merged. When we go online it requires great effort on our part to maintain our seriousness: to go online but not be theatrical, not to allow ourselves to fall victim to the entertainment world’s temptation of easy success. So yes, we might sometimes seem more boring than our opponents: we don’t climb ladders on someone else’s fence, we don’t blow a trumpet in János Lázár’s ear, we don’t make papier-mâché figures to talk to. We might be more boring, but politics is a dangerous craft: it’s serious, and what happens there has real-life consequences. And while engaging in the online space we must preserve this seriousness. This is a major task for the Right.
I have a photo of the cardboard figure, and I’ll show it later. The current plan is that we’ll be here for about half an hour, and, just like last time, I’ve brought some fake news that we’ll try to debunk. And I’ve also brought some opposition opinions. But let’s start with the Digital Civic Circles. There, as you know, they put a slogan on the lectern – and I even have a photo of it. This is one of my favorite photos from the meeting at the Papp László Arena. Behind it, behind you, was the lectern – it can’t be seen here now, but everyone knows that the slogan was “We’re Making Hungary Great!” And last week I was handing out flyers in District XV, and an opposition supporter came up to me and said, “What do you lot want? You’ve had fifteen years to make it great! What nonsense is this slogan, that you’re going to make Hungary great? What are you trying to do with this?”
We need to ask him how many years he thinks it would take to make our country great again from a Hungary like Gyurcsány’s. There’s a debate about how many years it would take. So, if you look at it from that perspective, he’s right: Was fifteen years enough for this? No. There’s a debate within Fidesz as well. I think we’re about 70 per cent of the way there; János Lázár thinks only 50 per cent. So a few more years are needed to make a country great starting from where we inherited it – after eight years under Gyurcsány.
So, it’s not a fake slogan, it’s not true that nothing has happened in the last fifteen years?
No, a huge amount has happened in the last fifteen years – it’s just not enough yet, and there’s still much to be done.
Okay. The Szőlő Street fake news scandal. I think by now everyone knows that the whole thing was a huge hoax: no children were involved; no politicians were involved; there’s no children’s home on Szőlő Street here in Budapest; and there isn’t a children’s home in Ózd either. That was all part of the story. Uncle Zsolti doesn’t exist either: that’s part of the whole tale, invented by Péter Juhász, the former politician from Együtt [Together – Party for a New Era]. There are accusations, smear attempts, and an attempted attack on the state. The goal was to bring down the Government. It didn’t succeed.
And indeed we’ve moved onto the counterattack. This is a major dilemma for all of us. What regularly happens is that they attack us with fake news, in ways that insult our honour; and then there’s always a reasoned debate about what to respond to and what to pay no attention to. I generally let things pass me by and focus on what I want to say. And there was such a debate this time too. I said we should let the whole thing go, but Zsolt Semjén stood his ground because he’d been attacked personally, and he put forward an argument that I also accepted: this isn’t just about people saying this or that about us, it’s about accusing members of the Government of the most serious crimes. Now, if members of a government really commit such crimes, then the Government must go! It’s impossible for ministers who have committed such crimes, and who might be protected by the authorities, to remain in office. So that’s impossible! So Zsolt was right: this was a blood libel. And you can’t let a blood libel pass you by; you have to confront it. And then we started to carefully unravel what had happened, how it began, in what way. I tasked the Minister of Justice with investigating it, and then it became clear that the whole thing was a carefully constructed attempt to topple the Government – even involving foreign intelligence connections. So this wasn’t just an attack on Zsolt Semjén or on individual members of the Government: the goal was to create a blood libel against us – one that could, if necessary, incite half the country into an uprising, weaken the Government or at the very least paralyze it, and perhaps even bring it down. So in this sense it was primarily an attack on the Government’s capacity to act and carry out its duties. In this sense it’s not purely a matter of defending honour. Of course it also touches on issues of honour; but here it’s not just honour that must be defended – it’s also the operational effectiveness of the Government and the state.
Within the ruling party – or within the Government – it seems that it took a little while to fully grasp how powerful such an attack could be. I don’t know if this is a secret or not, but when this person named Csaba Káncz first posted the names of Zsolt Semjén and Antal Rogán on Facebook the matter was already being discussed within the party – even among the very top leadership. But perhaps we underestimated the reach of this network or of social media.
Zsolt Semjén didn’t underestimate it…
Right.
…because in this he stood his ground, and he was right. He convinced me as well, and we stood our ground, and now there will be – or is – open conflict. So serious matters and serious consequences are to be expected here.
Obviously part of the liberal press is still on the attack. Since they can no longer use the “Uncle Zsolti case” because it’s turned out to be fake, [the web portal] 24.hu, for example, writes that “Fidesz is getting a taste of its own medicine” – claiming that Fidesz has a decades-long history of conducting smear campaigns. They say that Fidesz only has itself to blame for the “Zsolt Semjén case”, because we started it.
That’s a libby lie. We’ve never accused anyone of committing a crime. It may be that some politician said something about another politician or another party – maybe something not very nice, which of course isn’t right. But accusing someone of a specific crime – the most serious crime – is something I don’t recall us ever doing. It’s a different story if someone is one way or another – whether you like them or not, whether they have bad habits, or a peculiar lifestyle. Let’s not mix things together. This isn’t about what we think of one another – this is about the fact that members of the Government were accused of a most serious crime. That’s a different matter, a different kettle of fish; here the libbys are twisting the truth.
And when it comes to smear campaigns, I’m always reminded of how, in my childhood in the early ‘90s, everyone on the Right was called a Nazi or a skinhead. The first time I covered a campaign in earnest as a journalist was in 2002, and there was this man called László Keller. He went out and kicked at the foundation of the M3 motorway, claiming everything had been stolen from it and it was in a life-threatening condition – when in fact between 1998 and 2002 the M7 was renovated and the M3 was widened and lengthened.
I could go on at length…
If we’re talking about smears, somehow those are the episodes that have stayed in my head.
I could give a long list of slander campaigns against me and my family, but I won’t – this time I’m letting that pass. But now this isn’t about that. I want to underline again: here very serious legal consequences will follow, and there will be no mercy. This is because it wasn’t just that someone said something ugly about someone else; two members of the current government were accused of the gravest crimes. That is different!
On what basis does the Government assert there’s a network behind this campaign? For example, [the web portal] 444 – if we look at the article on the lower left – concluded that this was a kind of smear campaign that wasn’t orchestrated by anyone, that it just sort of happened spontaneously. They say that the balloon inflated itself rather than being blown up by a network.
Let’s wait for the results of the investigation to see if that’s true, but so far it doesn’t look that way. It looks as if this was deliberate: you can trace who started the stories, how one media outlet picked them up, then a third and a fourth; and when they reached the point of naming people, how leading opposition politicians got involved – because if this had just remained within the world of journalists it would still be bad, but it would be a simpler case. But leading opposition politicians got involved – from Péter Magyar to Klára Dobrev; and they’re still claiming these things to this day. These are crimes. These politicians are committing crimes every day. It doesn’t look like no one was orchestrating this. The perpetrators are political leaders!
If we go back to that graphic, in the top left, for example, the same 444 that claims no one orchestrated this was already writing on 12 September – almost two weeks before the big explosion – that minors had been supplied to politicians. So the hoax was already being spread there on 12 September.
They were up to their necks in it too, up to their necks…
And what do you make of the retreat? I put up that HVG magazine headline on the right because the report made public by Bence Tuzson appeared on Wednesday – sometime in the early afternoon – and immediately they even tried to discredit that. The headline read, “Tuzson brandishes a report on the Szőlő Street affair”. A typically loaded, insinuative HVG headline. And they only began to beat a retreat, or only took it seriously, when parliamentary group leader Máté Kocsis sat in that chair and banged his fist on the table, saying that now there would be reprisals, because this cannot go on. And now they’re in retreat – for example, the left-wing media.
In terms of Hungarian history the word “reprisal” doesn’t sound friendly. There’s a softer version of it, although the substance is the same: it’s called “legal consequences”. So those who got involved in this were well aware that they were committing a crime. They can’t claim that they didn’t know, didn’t mean it, were joking, or didn’t take it seriously; they knew full well that accusing anyone – not just a government member – of such a thing is a criminal offence with legal consequences.
Here’s another criticism from the Left, and later I’ll turn to a criticism that came from within our own camp. Ákos Hadházy, for example, says, “The police reacted too quickly”. And here’s a comment from a Tisza Sziget [Tisza Party local group]: “If something harms Fidesz, they investigate it immediately; if children in the country are abused, they stay silent for years.” They say this with regard to how it turned out that this was a fake allegation – the police, for instance, questioned the man named Csaba Káncz, who was the first to name, or to mention Semjén Zsolt’s name…
The second half of that sentence is the truly sneaky bit: “if children are abused, they stay silent for years.”
That was very Tisza.
It’s not true! The Hungarian authorities take immediate action the moment any child abuse comes to light. We have an effective, well-functioning, strictly enforced child protection system. It’s a difficult world, and it doesn’t work flawlessly, but there are serious people working there, thousands of them, doing dedicated work, honest people taking on the most difficult jobs. Sometimes there’s a rotten apple in the barrel, but we throw it out immediately. It’s not true that we delay – we protect every child immediately. As for the first half of the sentence, I won’t argue with Mr. Hadházy – he’s a fool. I really don’t want to hurt him, but he’s a halfwit who can’t be taken seriously. He sticks a mobile phone like this on his chest and walks around the world with it – a wretched spectacle, horrific. The whole man is rather pitiful, and I don’t consider him to be a political figure. The other day in Parliament, he attacked me like this, with a phone pressed to his chest, and he was quizzing me on bathtubs or something like that. So it’s not worth considering him as a political figure. This is what I’m saying: this is where the entertainment industry and politics meet. On one side, you have actors who want to play politics, and on the other, you have politicians who have gone mad. And they meet in the middle. This is the opposition camp today.
But you see, even at the weekend Hadházy was still looking for zebras. I didn’t even bring it up here among the topics, because no one was really interested anymore. So I don’t know how many people were there with their ladders and phones, but he was still looking for zebras...
Lunatic. Lunatics...
Okay, then, internal criticism, or at least advice. This is a Messenger message. I always ask viewers to send me messages on Messenger. I received this on Friday. It says that after such a false accusation, such a coup attempt, such an attempt against the state, it would be good if there were visible accountability. “Now is the time to use the full force of the law against these hateful, slanderous people who are ruining the lives of others!” From a Fight Hour viewer, who continues in the same vein.
I agree with your viewer, and to be honest I’m not satisfied either. I often discuss this with the Minister of the Interior, and I have the feeling that sometimes – in certain cases, with certain types of cases – the police spend more time arguing about the law than taking action. I don’t think this is good. To this the Minister of the Interior replies, and he may be right, that unfortunately the legislation isn’t clear enough. But then let’s make it clear! So I think we need to help the police so that the laws are clearer in certain types of case which are sensitive and difficult to judge legally. Those who say that they expect more from us in this area are right.
Well, this is my response to the Fight Hour viewer who sent the Messenger message. The madness is escalating. I can say that in the political arena too the madness is escalating – to such an extent that one of the main madmen, or at least the leader of the opposition, is warning you not to stage an attack on yourself.
I say they’re airheads. Well...
Balázs Németh: I’ll show you the video.
Péter Magyar: “They’ll be in such trouble before the election, and we know what they’re planning. Don’t do it! Don’t do it, because it’s a serious crime. Prime Minister, you shouldn’t stage an attack on yourself, no external false flags.”
Balázs Németh: Staged attack on yourself, external false flags – all this during a period of war.
Okay, but we’re talking about a man who argues with a papier-mâché figure. So who are we talking about? He eavesdrops on his wife, then reports his own wife. Then he talks to a papier-mâché figure. So what can we expect? We have to be careful, because we have to take them seriously – there have been times when such halfwits have been unleashed on the country, and it’s caused problems. So on the one hand we need to take them seriously, but on the other hand we mustn’t give what they do any weight. They’re dangerous, but at the same time they’re halfwits. I’d like to remind everyone that this isn’t a new phenomenon in Hungarian politics. Mihály Károlyi, who was also a halfwit and ruined the country, was sent to us by the French. Szálasi was brought to power by the Germans. Rákosi, who was also a fool, was brought to power by the Russians – or rather the Soviets. It’s the Brusselites who want Péter Magyar in power. It’s the same story. Somehow, most of the people here under external direction are fools. They may seem serious, but then they bring enormous trouble to the country. A very nice list of names: Károlyi, Szálasi, Rákosi. And now the Brusselites. Look at these characters – not just their boss, but everyone. There’s a candidate for minister of culture who wrote a book called “Csipke Józsika” [an LGBTQ-themed children’s story] or something like that. Now I ask: is this a normal person? Because there are situations in life in which men live with men and women live with women in adulthood, but to write a book about it – Csipke Józsika – and give it to our children to read. Is that normal? Or the other one, the one named Tarr, who says that “after the election we’ll tell you what we want to do”. Or this insanely vain general who carries a firearm at public meetings. So there are no normal people there. There’s András Kármán, who happens to be a good technocratic banker. I kicked him out of the Government around 2011 because he said that his involvement in such unorthodox economic policies and in sending the IMF home would ruin his international reputation. So these guys are swept together by the wind. Let’s be sensible, we shouldn’t take them seriously, but at the same time we do have to take them very seriously. It’s not easy for the ruling parties to know how to respond to this phenomenon. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but really, you can’t believe your eyes.
Let’s look at their economic policy plans. We’ll put this photo up for a moment, because I promised to show you how Péter Magyar is currently touring the country with a cardboard cutout of Viktor Orbán. I was with János Pócs in Jászság over the weekend, among sensible people. When this came up they laughed very, very hard. János Pócs also has a dummy. He says that Péter Magyar throws out a statement, he catches it and turns it round on him. and János Pócs will also travel around the constituency with a dummy, and of course he’s making fun of anyone who holds a forum touring the country with a cutout of the Prime Minister.
And I haven’t even mentioned [Róbert] Puzsér yet. Sorry, I just remembered, there are even more of them. So the camp is growing day by day. Seriously, politics is something that has this public aspect, whereby you have to attract attention, draw attention to yourself. I understand that, because in order for what you do and say to have weight you need attention, you need an audience. But at the same time politics is a deadly serious business – if you make one bad decision hundreds of thousands of people can be ruined, or you can get dragged into a war, or migrants can come in. How can I put it? We joke about the fact that such figures have appeared in politics, but on the other hand we have to be aware that what we’re talking about – the life of the community, the state and the nation – can suffer terrible damage with a single decision if people like Károlyi or Szálasi, or these Brusselites now, get their hands on the reins of government.
Well, in this atmosphere, we should talk about meaningful things and deal with meaningful issues. For example, I think taxation is a meaningful issue. How much the state, the National Tax and Customs Administration, takes out of the pockets of 4.5 million working people is an important issue – whether that burden decreases or increases, how much they have to leave there. And when it comes to taxation issues, the experts behind the Tisza Party are speaking up – for example, Zita Mária Petschnig. I’ll show you a short video, in which she says that the upcoming tax exemption for mothers of two children is a crazy idea...
Zita Mária Petschnig: “Would you have thought that someone who’s given birth at some time to two children and is now, I don’t know, 55–60 years old, shouldn’t have to pay personal income tax? The children are already grown up, so these are crazy things. Or what they did in 2022: returning all the personal income tax deducted in the previous year. So they come up with things that are so crazy that they don’t even occur to us – they really don’t occur to us.”
Balázs Németh: It’s crazy to leave more money with people.
She doesn’t like people. All I understood from this short video is that this lady doesn’t like people. She doesn’t like it when they have money, she doesn’t like it when mothers who have children don’t pay taxes. For some reason she doesn’t like it. And so, having no argument, she labels it crazy. But why shouldn’t it be normal? When someone raises a child, they take on a financial burden – and not a small one at that. Why would it be a crazy idea to help them bear the economic burden of raising children more easily? And why would it be crazy to say that children are important not only to the family but also to the community? Because if we die out, if there are too few children, the nation will be weak, and if there are many children, the nation will be strong. It’s not that complicated. So children being born is also important for the community. Why would it be a problem if the community organised its life in such a way? Those who don’t have children bear less of a financial burden. Those who have children bear a greater burden, and we should help them by giving them tax exemptions so that, in the end, those who raise children aren’t at a financial disadvantage compared to those who don’t. Why would this be a crazy idea?
The Tisza-ites say it’s because the Hungarian state doesn’t have that much money.
But it does.
They say the economy is creaking and cracking...
But they’re wrong.
GDP growth is below what the Minister for National Economy predicted, and there’s no money for this.
But they’re wrong. There is money! We have a budget, these items are included in the budget, this budget is debated and approved by Parliament, and we implement it. This is a rational economic plan.
Drones. I don’t understand...
Excuse me, let me say one more thing about taxes, because there’s a more complicated issue here: the question of a wealth tax. This is always an attractive proposition, but they don’t usually tell you what it means in reality. There was something like this during Gyurcsány’s time. And, of course, in order to impose a wealth tax, you first need to know how much wealth people have – whether or not they’ll be subject to the tax. That has to be assessed. To do that, the state needs to keep records of your bank accounts, your real estate, of your land if you own it, your assets, your car, depending on what it wants to include, and if you have a company, the value of the company. So some kind of asset register is needed. Then it has to be checked. The asset inspector knocks on your door and asks, “How much is this? Is this yours? Isn’t this yours? Where did you go on vacation, and how much did you spend? Is your lifestyle in line with your income?” The tax authority will come. Hungary has already done this once, and everyone hated it. So I’d recommend caution with any new tax. It’s worth thinking not only about whether a particular rate is going up or down, but what that entails. And tax is a sensitive issue, because it’s where the state can intrude into people’s private lives. The communists did this. That’s why I recommend caution. Our philosophy is this: low tax rates, but we collect taxes from everyone. There are no excuses, we collect from everyone, and then we let people live their own way, according to their own ideas and plans. Let’s not interfere. What the Tisza-ites are talking about is a new bureaucracy of tax authorities and asset controls that will intrude into people’s lives. Not only the rich – the rich will laugh at the whole thing, because they have their accountants and lawyers and they move their assets between countries. This is about the middle class, once again the middle class. I recommend caution.
And since you’ve mentioned a wealth tax, did you see that the proposal started at the 5 billion mark? Now we’re at one billion. This is a real communist, leftist, SZDSZ trick. We’ll nicely go down to 100–150 million, and every apartment and house will be included, even vacation homes...
The communists did this after 1945. They lured people in by saying it would only affect the bourgeoisie, and then it turned out that they took away small workshops, then private taxis, then bakeries. So we know how it goes. There’s nothing new under the sun! Hungary is a thousand-year-old country, and we’ve tried almost everything. I don’t recommend bringing back anything that’s already been tried and found to be bad.
So having discussed the tax issues, let’s talk about drones. To be honest, on Friday and Saturday I didn’t understand whether or not Hungarian drones had flown into Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy says so, obviously supported by the liberal press here in Hungary. And the Ukrainians showed on a map where the drone coming from Hungary was. From here the refutation and statement that there were no Hungarian drones in Ukrainian airspace has come partly from Péter Szijjártó, the Minister of Defense, and partly from you. Since the graphic is already up on the screen, let’s look at the article on the right: “The Hungarian Armed Forces prove it with their own diagram”, writes 444. So, of course, they believe Zelenskyy and don’t believe the Government. Who should we believe?
I tend to believe my own ministers. But I’d put the whole thing in parentheses. Ukraine isn’t at war with Hungary, but with Russia. So it should be dealing with the drones on its eastern border. Here there are NATO member countries. Ukraine’s rear is secure – no one is attacking it from here. I’m not aware of any desire on the part of the Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks or Bulgarians to attack it. So this whole thing is a hoax – it’s of no significance. I believe my ministers. But let’s say it had flown a few metres into their territory. So what? Ukraine isn’t an independent country, Ukraine isn’t a sovereign country. We support Ukraine, the West supports Ukraine, and we give them their weapons. Ukraine shouldn’t be behaving as if it were a sovereign state. Ukraine’s lost a fifth of its territory in the war with Russia; the Russians have taken it from them. That’s where sovereignty ended. We support the remaining territory. If we decide – that is, if the West decides – that tomorrow morning we won’t give a single penny more, Ukraine will shut up shop, and that will be the end of it. We need to take this a little more seriously. Now, I don’t think the Ukrainians should be concerned with whether two, three or four Hungarian drones crossed the border or not. This isn’t where their enemies are! We disagree with the Ukrainians on quite a few things: minority issues, what the security agreement between Europe and Russia should be, Ukraine’s EU membership. We may disagree on these issues, but we’re not enemies. I repeat: we’re maintaining them, they’re not a sovereign country.
Zelenskyy is implying that these were surveillance drones, which – according to his way of thinking – would obviously be to help the Russians. But with all this he wants to increase tension and pressure on the Government…
Yes, I understand – but what are we observing for the Russians? Transcarpathia? The front isn’t in Transcarpathia, but in Donetsk, so Mr. Zelenskyy is looking from the wrong angle – look over there, to the east.
Speaking of drones, this is particularly gripping and has an impact on everyday life here in the European Union. There’s a drone panic in Western Europe, airports have had to be closed in Denmark and Norway, and life has been paralysed because someone is flying drones. According to the Danish prime minister, this is being done by Moscow, by the Russians, who want chaos in the European Union. Moscow obviously denies this. We can’t decide from here, but the fact that there’s tension in the European Union and that the war is affecting our daily lives is now clear every second of the day.
Yes, but I’ll be honest – I don’t really understand the attitude of the Western Europeans. Now they’re acting as if they’re in danger.
They’re really acting like it.
Okay, but – how can I put this? – let’s not lose our common sense. The Russians are 131 million people, let’s say 140 million. The European Union has more than 400 million people. The Russians’ GDP is tiny, ours is huge, and so the overall economic performance isn’t comparable. What the Russians spend on military expenditure is a fraction of what we spend in Western Europe – collectively, the 27 countries. So we’re stronger in every dimension. I’ve never understood why, if we’re the stronger ones, we talk as if we were the weaker ones. Russia can’t harm us. How could it? Compared to us Russia is weak – weak militarily, weak economically, weak in terms of population. We’re the strong ones. We should behave like a strong community. Instead, they’re acting as if we’re the weak ones. I can’t understand it...
Because, say, twenty Russian drones fly into Polish airspace, and three of them are shot down. And NATO panics that the defence alliance doesn’t have the strength on its eastern flank to intercept these drones, which aren’t equipped with explosives. If Russian drones accidentally or deliberately fly into Hungarian airspace, would we be able to defend our airspace?
We believe we would. We’re not afraid of that. We’ll shoot them down, of course.
After the drone incident in Poland, was invocation of Article 5 discussed at all? Because war psychosis in the European Union is indeed becoming increasingly severe every day, as you’ve said.
Rather Article 4. There’s also an Article 4, which requires a milder community response. The Poles have made statements about this, but officially they’ve said that they’re not requesting that it be invoked.
Do you have to deal with the question of what Hungary would do if Article 5 were invoked? Meaning that NATO member countries would have to rush to the aid of another – the one under attack.
I spend long hours every day dealing with the issue of war: partly what’s happening on the eastern front, partly what the Ukrainians are saying, what they’re preparing for, what NATO’s doing, what the military topic of the next European Union prime ministers’ summit will be. So this takes up a lot of working hours in my life. Of course.
But is there an answer to this?
If the situation arises, there will be.
The oil issue. At home, gloaters were rubbing their hands together, saying that now the Hungarian government would definitely have to give up buying Russian crude oil and natural gas, because Donald Trump said that the Russian economy was being kept alive by EU Member States importing energy from Russia, and that this had to be stopped. An expert named Péter Tarjányi wrote this on Index: “Viktor Orbán has been able to buy time so far, but this is the endgame.” This was followed by many other articles. This from Magyar Hang: “The emperor has no clothes, the coffee is slowly boiling over”, and “Orbán cannot veto America.” Then, in contrast, we hear Donald Trump say that he understands the situation here. How did that phone conversation go?
Before we talk about the Americans, let’s talk about the Hungarians. This is another thing that I find difficult to understand – or perhaps I can’t understand it at all. Why are Hungarians happy that there will allegedly be measures that will be bad for Hungary? What is there to be happy about? What is good about this? What is enjoyable about this? Shouldn’t we be working to ensure that everywhere measures are taken that are good for Hungarians – and that if such measures aren’t taken, then Hungary should be able to adapt well to a changed situation? Shouldn’t they be cheering on the Hungarians? They’re watching a match, we’re wearing Hungarian shirts, and the opponents are wearing foreign shirts. And then the fans, the Hungarians, come out and cheer for the opponents. What’s that all about? There are the fools there I mentioned, and there are the traitors. When we take the field to play football, or we compete, what do you call it if the Hungarians don’t cheer for the Hungarian team, but for its opponents? What’s that? Now, back to the American conversation...
But wait, let me show you an article related to that. Here, on the right. This is a Telex article right now. They want to convince us that it would be much better if we finally broke away from Russian energy sources. And they’re pulling out all the stops to try to convince the Hungarian people that it’s stupid to buy the cheaper option.
So there are two things here. First, gas and oil will definitely come from Russia. If gas and oil don’t come from there, then they’ll have to be obtained from somewhere else. All other sources of supply are less reliable than the long-term contract with Russia. So Hungary’s security is guaranteed by Russia, while on the market the situation is unpredictable. No normal person would give up security for uncertainty. The other thing is that there’s an agreed price for energy from Russia, which is cheaper than buying from elsewhere. So why should we buy at a higher price? If you buy at a higher price, then you sell at a higher price. If we Hungarians pay more for oil and gas, then we sell it to people at a higher price, and they’ll pay more. So why is it good if Hungarian families pay more? It’s not that complicated! I think these people are malicious. I don’t know where their hearts are. What team are they playing for? It’s difficult. And how long have they been with us? Well, these newspapers and journalists have been here with us for years or decades, and they’re rooting against Hungary.
Absolutely!
And with impunity – and somehow the country tolerates it. Sometimes I’m surprised at ourselves.
Well, then there’s Trump and his phone call.
It was simply a matter of him asking why we buy gas and oil from Russia. I told him – just as I’ve told you here. And he said he understood, exactly. But – how can I put it? – we’re not subordinate to each other. So it’s not as if Washington tells us what to do and then we do it, or vice versa – which is of course not very likely. But instead it’s a situation in which there are two sovereign states, each with sovereign leaders, and if there’s something we’re interested in regarding each other’s affairs, then we ask each other about it. So the American president sometimes asks me about all kinds of issues, and I also ask him about all kinds of issues that are important to Hungary. That’s how we live. I don’t know what the American president will decide after talking to me – that’s up to him. And what I decide after our conversation is up to me. Sovereign countries, sovereign leaders. Neither is a servant to the other. Hungary isn’t a servant nation. I understand that in Europe these colonial attitudes have intensified in connection with Ukraine, because superpower politics is back. This is also behind the war in Ukraine. So the West doesn’t want to be left out of the division of Ukraine. They see this as the division of Ukraine. So let there be no misunderstanding – they’re not fighting against the Russians. The Russians have taken 20 per cent of Ukraine, and the Westerners think they have the right to take the rest. It’s a regular imperialist war – except they don’t call it that. They don’t want to be left out of the division of Ukraine. The Americans are doing it in the most intelligent way, because they’ve created an economic basis, agreeing with the Ukrainians on rare earth metals and investments, and concluding a financial agreement. The West simply doesn’t want to miss out on a slice of a country that can be divided up. This is why there’s a war. They want territory, Ukraine, agriculture, mineral resources and money. Behind it all is the plundering of the unfortunate Ukrainians, while it’s being presented as if they’re protecting Ukraine. That’s not the case.
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard your opinion on the situation in the war. And here at home the liberal press – and the liberal section of the international press – interpreted this as a U-turn by Donald Trump, because on his social media page he wrote that he didn’t consider it impossible for the Ukrainians to win this fight and regain the territories that are currently not in their hands. Over the past three and a half years you’ve said many times that Ukraine can’t win this war on the battlefield.
The American president often asks my opinion on this matter. I told him that this war has been decided, the Russians have won, it’s game over. The question is when we’ll reach an agreement with the Russians, and who will do so. Will he reach an agreement with the Russians, will there be an American–Russian agreement? Or will the Europeans finally be willing to negotiate, will there be European–Russian negotiations, and will we reach an agreement in the end? So this war can’t be won on the battlefield. All military experts – including the best American military experts – say that Ukraine can only win this war if hundreds of thousands of troops from Western Europe or America arrive on the front lines. Then it can be won. But that would mean a world war, and no one wants that. Therefore, the war cannot be won – or rather, the Russians have already won the war.
In closing, one of the important battles of the Patriots for Europe is here, in the Union. In three or four days the Czech parliamentary elections will begin. Andrej Babiš is a strong contender, but the real question is whether he’ll be able to form a government.
It was like this last time, too. Perhaps he was the strongest, his party was the strongest, but he couldn’t form a government. I know what that’s like – we were in the same situation ourselves. After all, in 2002 we won the election – nobody remembers that anymore, but in 2002 we won the election. But the second- and third-placed parties joined forces against us, and – after MIÉP failed to get into Parliament – together they made up the majority. So we needed to form a majority on our own, but we didn’t have enough. In European politics, therefore, it’s not unprecedented for someone to win, but not to form the government. This is what happened in the Czech Republic, and we hope it won’t happen again there.
But did you follow the campaign, or are you following it?
I’m fully engaged, because I like to learn. Every campaign is a great lesson – especially now, when the world is changing so much, and so quickly. I pay attention to what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, and in some respects how they’re better than we are. In some places they campaign more effectively, more skillfully – and Babiš is a better candidate than I am, that’s the truth. From a campaign perspective, he’s a much more colourful figure than I am.
In what sense? Does he perform better on Facebook?
He’s a more colourful personality – somehow a more colourful personality. It’s worth following his videos – they hold even my attention, keeping me glued to the screen.
The name of his party is ANO. Prime Minister, thank you very much for coming to Fight Hour. I look forward to having you back again. There are still 195 days until the expected date of the election.
I’ll gladly come back. Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much. We’ll continue tomorrow, focusing on many EU issues, because Minister János Bóka will be joining us. And this week there will also be an EU summit, so we’re preparing for that as well.