Leader rebuked for opposing ‘mixed race’ society
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY » One of Viktor Orban’s closest associates has resigned in protest over what she called a “pure Nazi” speech given by the Hungarian prime minister in which he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed race” society.
It was a rare rebuke from within the governing ranks of the Hungarian leader, who has long been accused by the European Union of eroding democratic institutions and norms.
In her resignation letter, published Tuesday by Hungarian media, longstanding adviser Zsuzsa
Hegedus compared Orban’s rhetoric to the language used in Nazi Germany.
“I am sincerely sorry that I have to end a relationship due to such a shameful position,” said Hegedus, who worked with Orban for 20 years. “I was left with no other choice.”
While Orban’s anti-migration stance and criticism of Western liberal values have long prompted backlash, Saturday’s speech sparked a fresh wave of outrage throughout Europe and from the opposition in Hungary.
In it, Orban declared that countries with largescale migration from outside of Europe “are no longer nations.”
“There is a world in which European peoples are mixed together with those arriving from outside Europe,” he said in the speech in Baile Tusnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian city in Romania. “Now, that is a mixed-race world.”
In what he described as “our world,” Orban said “people from within Europe mix with one another.”
“We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” he said, adding: “Migration has split Europe in two — or I could say that it has split the West in two.”