Speech by Prime Minister Victor Orbán at the “Peace March”
1 June 2024, Budapest
Ladies and Gentlemen, peace-loving Hungarians from all over the world – from within our borders and beyond them,
Greetings to you all. We send our greetings to the Hungarians of Transcarpathia, and ask God to bestow His blessings on them: on the Hungarians of Transcarpathia, who, for two years, have been waiting for the end of this war – in the shadow of the war’s horrors, vulnerable and deprived of their rights. We wish you the strength to persevere, we are with you, we are thinking of you, and we offer you this reassurance: the day is not far off when your fate will change for the better. And we also send our greetings to Robert Fico, the pro-peace Prime Minister of Slovakia. Robert Fico was shot because he stood for peace. He almost gave his life for peace. But he is made of sterner stuff than most: he is not the kind of man to let himself be taken down; he will return to be with us, and Slovakia will continue to fight alongside Hungary for peace. We look forward to your return Robert. Get well soon!
After two years, it is good to see one another again. The last time we met was at the height of an election campaign. What a victory we won, My Friends! The greatest victory ever, and the greatest defeat ever inflicted on the combined forces of the Left. How they had swaggered! They had roared like a lion, and then it turned out they had claws of papier-mâché: a paper tiger, soaked by the first spring shower. They had made themselves out to be a comet, but then they plunged into the ground. Our victory, Dear Friends, was not only seen from the Moon: our victory drove up the value of Hungary on the political stock market of every European capital. But there is no point in them wanting to buy it: it is not for sale. It is not for sale: it cannot be bought by Brussels, by Washington, or by George Soros.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Never before have we gathered in such huge numbers before a European election: if we were just to blow on our opponents, they would fly all the way to Brussels. But we will not do that, because there are already enough pro-war politicians in Brussels, and we are not shipping sand to the Sahara. Instead we are sending our candidates, led by Tamás Deutsch, to occupy Brussels. What we need there are precisely our kind of people, who do not believe in war and violence, but who believe in the power of love and unity.
My Friends,
We have come to Saint Margaret’s Island because this is the island of peace. Saint Margaret brought peace to the Hungarians. When the Tatars were laying waste to our country and our only hope was in prayer, the King offered his daughter to God in exchange for peace. And it came to pass: the Tatars decamped, peace arrived, and Saint Margaret withdrew to a monastery here. Before Margaret, this place was called the Island of Rabbits, but today we are not interested in rabbits. This is no place for timid bunnies, because what we need now is a great and courageous deed: we must win, and we must win the European elections in such a way that the bureaucrats in Brussels take fright, open the gates of their city before us, and hurriedly quit their offices.
My Friends,
We have won every election since the autumn of 2006: parliamentary, local, European. Since autumn 2006, only we have won elections in Hungary. We have won eleven in a row: an absolute record, KO, a knockout victory – there is no dispute. We are getting the hang of this pretty well. Our camp is the biggest and our unity is the strongest in the whole of Europe, we can campaign the best, and we have the biggest electoral army. Never before has anyone been able to rally so many people for peace; because the only aim of the Hungarians’ electoral army is to preserve peace. We are Europe’s largest peace army, we are Europe’s largest peacekeeping force. We are in every square, avenue, main street and side street in the country. We are in the villages, on the farms – and even in the granaries. Next week we will knock on millions of doors and speak to millions of Hungarians. We are the Fidesz-KDNP alliance, and next week we will set a world record for voter mobilisation.
Once again we stand on the threshold of a huge victory. Everything is in our favour: strength, ingenuity, perseverance, the good cause we serve; and also in our favour are the condition and abilities of our opponents. We have orderliness and strength; our opponents have bullying, electoral brawling and jostling mismanagement. They do not want to defeat war, but one another. They are none of our business: let them flail at one another; over there, every slap lands in the right place. We have forty-two days of campaigning behind us. Now we just need to get through next week at our own unyielding pace: this is the real campaign. It is true that everyone’s day is twenty-four hours long, but those who get up earlier will have a longer one. After all, we are the party of early-rising Hungarians, and whoever rises early wins elections. One more week of hard work, Fidesz’s legendary final minutes, and we will run the opposition off the field. We have a huge chance: an open goal. Now we just need to knock it in; we can scramble it over the line if we need to. But as simple as that is, it is also easy to slip up. If we get complacent, if we lack concentration, if we are too leisurely, we can end up missing. In government work, routine is an advantage: experienced hands grip the wheel more securely. But in a campaign, routine is like poison; in a campaign, routine kills. Familiarity with victory breeds laziness. And those who have grown too comfortable will want to cheer on from the sofa, not push for victory on the field.
My Friends, a good campaign demands shared will, a successful campaign demands heart, a victorious election demands passion. In politics there is no such thing as a routine victory. Passion and victory, or routine and defeat. There is no other way. It is just like marriage: the body is not enough; love is also needed. The fastest car cannot win the race if it has no fuel. The fuel of the Right is passion. And we have a great shared love: it is called Hungary. And the reason we are here today is to refill our tank. We need every drop of energy. We will need every drop of energy, because the task ahead of us is as big as any we have ever seen: we must prevent Europe from rushing into war, from rushing to its own destruction.
My Friends,
Today Europe is preparing for war. Every day another section of the road to hell is handed over. Every day we are besieged with the demand for hundreds of billions of euros for Ukraine, the deployment of nuclear weapons in the middle of Europe, and the conscription of our sons into a foreign army: into a NATO mission in Ukraine, into European military units sent to Ukraine. My Friends, it seems that the pro-war train has no brakes and the driver has gone mad. In the European elections what we are committing to is nothing less than stopping this train. We must pull the emergency cord, so that at least those who want to get off can do so, and stay out of the war. The Hungarian government knows how to do this. We know how to stay out of deadly situations. In good time we disconnected the Hungarian railway carriage from the pro-migration train, as it hurtled towards the abandonment of nations. Stop migration! And we also rescued Hungarian children from the hands of dangerous, repugnant gender activists. Stop gender! Nor will we allow our children and grandchildren to be wagoned to the Ukrainian front. Stop war! For those looking for how to get to hell, try the second door on the left. Just so that Brussels, too, can understand: No migration! No gender! No war!
My Friends,
We are the only pro-peace government in the EU. The Vatican is also on the side of peace, but it represents a kingdom that is not of this world – and in an apostate Europe, that alone will not be enough to put the brakes on the speeding pro-war train. We need the weight and influence of pro-peace political forces. This is why today every vote for Fidesz-KDNP is doubly valuable: it increases the weight of the pro-peace forces in Europe, and it strengthens Hungary’s decision to stay out of the war. Let us speak plainly: today a vote for Fidesz-KDNP will save lives. We can only stay out of the war if Hungarian voters throw their weight behind the government. No other political force can do this. And without the people, we cannot stand against such overwhelming forces. Our country can only stay out of the war if we win the biggest election victory in Europe.
We must face up to reality: if the Left wins, it will only be a matter of time before the war catches up with us. Those who support the war have placed themselves outside the bounds of common sense. Supporters of the war have become intoxicated. They want to defeat Russia, as was attempted in the First and Second World Wars. They are even ready to clash with the whole of the East. They think that they will win this war. But the intoxication of war is like a drug: those who are in its grip accept no personal responsibility for anything. They listen to no one. They step over you. They feel no remorse. They care nothing for us, or for you, your life, your family, the house you have worked for, or the future that you work for every day. They care nothing for the future of your children. They cannot be convinced. And so what we must do is not convince them, but defeat them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,
The founding fathers of the European Union were right: Europe cannot endure another war. This was why the European Union was created. Before the First World War, Europe was master of the world. After the Second World War, it was no longer master of itself, occupied by foreign empires in the West and the East. Now we play second fiddle. As things stand, after another war Europe will not even be in the orchestra setting the rhythm of the world – if there is any orchestra at all. This is even truer for Hungary: in war, we have nothing to gain and everything to lose. In the past we were dragged into wars against our will, and we lost. And thus would it be now, in 2024. In the First World War we lost two-thirds of our country. In the Second World War, the Hungarian army’s battle-ready forces were destroyed on foreign soil. No one was left to defend the homeland, our land, our women and children. We did not even have enough strength left to negotiate with the prospective victors. In the two world wars we Hungarians lost one and a half million lives – and with them, the future children and grandchildren they would have had. What a strong country we would have if they were among us! And now we are again receiving demands to take part in a new war. I shall say this slowly, so that Brussels, too, understands: we shall not go to war. We shall not go east for a third time, we shall not go to the Russian front again. We have been there before, and we have no business being there. We shall not sacrifice young Hungarians so that the war speculators can make a financial killing. We reject the war plan that has been devised for money, for the acquisition of assets in Ukraine, and for the interests of great powers. It is an old plan and we know it well. Already thirty years ago, George Soros wrote his own script for subversion, according to which Russia could be defeated by Western technology and the deployment of Eastern European manpower. And those whose lives are lost can be replaced by migrants.
My Friends,
The Hungarian Left are in the pay of George Soros. He finances their media, and their electoral lists are full of his people. Anyone there who marches out of line will not be in line for their dollars. And the Hungarian Left are willingly marching, even betraying their own pro-peace voters, just to get into power. But we on the national side have no intention of obeying the Soros Plan’s generals in Brussels. Instead of obedience, let us send them off with a flea in their ear. Godspeed!
They promised much and delivered nothing. They promised a booming agricultural sector, but brought together the world’s biggest farmers’ protest against them. They promised to stop migrants, but instead they sent them an invitation letter. They promised to limit the war with sanctions, but now the situation is more appalling than it was earlier. Enough of Brussels shilling for Soros. They have to go! Today the pro-war leaders are in the majority. But this is not the first time we Hungarians have been threateningly outnumbered. We have learned that battles must be won not in space, but in time. Time itself must always be won. Those who win time, win peace. Since the conquest of our homeland we have had to survive many wars, and we are still here. And it is still we who are here.
My Friends,
Many people believe that evil does not exist. But evil is behind the world wars. We must not give in to it! The time for exorcism has come. Either we win or they win. There is no third way – only a third world war. Let us show Soros where the God of Hungarians lives!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today Hungary is stronger than at any time in the last hundred years. A calm and strong island in the middle of Europe. Inwards cooperation, and outwards unity. This is the secret of success. This is why we still live in peace today. But the crucial question is already banging on our door: Will we give up our peace? To renounce peace is to die for Ukraine. Do we want to shed Hungarian blood for Ukraine? We do not! We shall not go to war, and we shall not die for others on foreign soil. This is the truth of the Hungarians. And now it is our task, if God allows it, to turn the truth of the Hungarians into the truth of Europe.
Dear Friends, Dear Peace March,
Europe has never seen an election like this one. On election day, guns will be blazing in a neighbouring country. Great wars do not come out of nowhere. Economic crisis, shortage of raw materials, arms competition, pandemics, false prophets, assassination attempts, sinister shadows all around us. This is how it starts. There have been generations on this earth – our grandparents and great-grandparents – whose worst nightmares became reality. We observe the signs. We see the writing on the wall. Hungarians know the nature of war. They know that a war always ends differently from the way it was first imagined. This is why today millions of young Europeans lie in mass graves. This is why there are not enough Europeans, why there are not enough European children. War kills. Someone dies with a gun in his hands. Someone dies while fleeing. Someone dies under bombardment. Someone dies in an enemy’s prison. Someone dies in a pandemic. Someone dies of starvation. Someone is tortured. Someone is raped. Someone is taken into slavery. The lines of graves are endless. Mothers weep for their sons. Women weep for their husbands. So many lives lost. One thing we know: wherever war sets its foot, there is no escape. War will catch up with you: you cannot dodge it, you cannot hide from it.
The only antidote to war is peace: to stay out of the war and maintain Hungary as an island of peace. This is our mission. And if we do not want war not to catch up with us, we must stop it: now! This peace cannot be won with weapons. This war cannot be resolved on the battlefield, where you only find corpses and destruction. There must be a ceasefire and there must be negotiations. But first of all, the election must be won. The election must be won next week. And in one week from now, we will receive reinforcements from all the countries of Europe, and we can build a pro-peace European coalition in Brussels. In the autumn the Americans can elect a pro-peace president, and with them we can bring together a pan-Western, transatlantic peace coalition. At the beginning of the year we were in the minority, but by the end of the year we could be in the majority throughout the Western world.
My Friends,
God created the world in six days, and He decreed the seventh to be a day of rest. Unfortunately, we cannot rest on the seventh day. We have to push all the gas that can come out through the pipe. There will only be victory if we all go out and vote. Only for peace! Only for Fidesz!
God above us all, Hungary before all else! Go Hungary, go Hungarians!