Liberalism in the context of Eastern European conservative politicians means not being a hateful bigot. It’s COMPLETELY divorced from the concept of economic liberalism. A “liberast” is anyone who isn’t a xenophobe.
The narrative being sold is that liberals want to force everyone to be exactly what the Fox News stereotype of a liberal was in 2016. Blue haired LGBT. Orban et al fight against minorities and LGBT and say they’re fighting against liberals trying to destroy your country.
This is what illiberalism means in this context. Bigotry.
He’s already said that he’d uphold the people’s right to assembly (context being the Pride being banned by Orban).
What his actual stance on LGBT people is, remains to be seen. But Orban was outwardly hateful against them. Same with immigrants. Magyar however wants the EU money and the EU doesn’t like repressive governments.
Magyar is hopefully a stepping stone to something better. He’s honestly not great. But I don’t get why everyone seems to think this isn’t worth celebrating. Orban was essentially a dictator, but he lost. Despite having all the legacy media and most social media behind him, despite having gerrymandered the hell out of the electoral maps, he and his party were reduced to irrelevance in a single election. Replaced by an Orban-Lite, maybe, but at least he’s out and Magyar’s campaign promise has been to unfuck the electoral system of Hungary. Whether he’ll do it or not remains to be seen, but he can’t be Orban 2.0 if he wants the EU funds back that Orban lost.
I’m not even 100% sure if he’s racist at this point. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Look, I’m just hopeful that life will improve for Hungarians and that Magyar goes through with his promises of electoral reform to undo some of Orban’s changes.
Anyway, he’s widely been quoted as saying that the Filipino employees at Samsung’s factory have been eating cats and dogs and ducks or whatever. And as such he’s been shown to be racist.
BUT his actual quote:
“All the employees at the Samsung plant in Göd live in a workers’ hostel in Budapest. They have been brought here from the Philippines without food or money. When hundreds of Filipino workers were brought here and allocated to these Budapest hostels without money or provisions, then the next day, a lot of ducks had disappeared from the Budapest Zoo. So have the goldfish.”
This to me sounds like he’s against companies importing workers and keeping them in slavery-like conditions? This I could get behind.
He then continues,
“Because these people were starving, and that’s what they did. Don’t get me wrong, this is not about anti-foreigner prejudice; there is nothing wrong with these labourers. The problem is that it is not the citizens of our country who get to be prioritised when a company generously funded with our money, our taxes, does not employ Hungarians.”
This part does show that he’d clearly prefer for the plant to hire more Hungarians, but not that he necessarily hates the foreigners. If the Filipinos are low-skill laborers whose jobs could easily be done by Hungarians, I can quite understand his opinion - Samsung is cutting costs by importing workers. If these are highly specialized jobs and they couldn’t find qualified Hungarians, then I’d be more inclined to disagree with him. But something tells me that a lot of Filipinos being kept in horrible conditions aren’t super specialized engineers and this is just a gigacorporation trying to save a few bucks. After the Hungarian government gave them a bunch of money.
Liberalism in the context of Eastern European conservative politicians means not being a hateful bigot. It’s COMPLETELY divorced from the concept of economic liberalism. A “liberast” is anyone who isn’t a xenophobe.
The narrative being sold is that liberals want to force everyone to be exactly what the Fox News stereotype of a liberal was in 2016. Blue haired LGBT. Orban et al fight against minorities and LGBT and say they’re fighting against liberals trying to destroy your country.
This is what illiberalism means in this context. Bigotry.
But Magyar is also a bigot.
He’s already said that he’d uphold the people’s right to assembly (context being the Pride being banned by Orban).
What his actual stance on LGBT people is, remains to be seen. But Orban was outwardly hateful against them. Same with immigrants. Magyar however wants the EU money and the EU doesn’t like repressive governments.
Magyar is hopefully a stepping stone to something better. He’s honestly not great. But I don’t get why everyone seems to think this isn’t worth celebrating. Orban was essentially a dictator, but he lost. Despite having all the legacy media and most social media behind him, despite having gerrymandered the hell out of the electoral maps, he and his party were reduced to irrelevance in a single election. Replaced by an Orban-Lite, maybe, but at least he’s out and Magyar’s campaign promise has been to unfuck the electoral system of Hungary. Whether he’ll do it or not remains to be seen, but he can’t be Orban 2.0 if he wants the EU funds back that Orban lost.
Are you just going to completely ignore his racism and I honestly have little knowledge of his lgbt stance but he isn’t quiet about his racism.
I’m not even 100% sure if he’s racist at this point. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Look, I’m just hopeful that life will improve for Hungarians and that Magyar goes through with his promises of electoral reform to undo some of Orban’s changes.
Anyway, he’s widely been quoted as saying that the Filipino employees at Samsung’s factory have been eating cats and dogs and ducks or whatever. And as such he’s been shown to be racist.
BUT his actual quote:
This to me sounds like he’s against companies importing workers and keeping them in slavery-like conditions? This I could get behind.
This part does show that he’d clearly prefer for the plant to hire more Hungarians, but not that he necessarily hates the foreigners. If the Filipinos are low-skill laborers whose jobs could easily be done by Hungarians, I can quite understand his opinion - Samsung is cutting costs by importing workers. If these are highly specialized jobs and they couldn’t find qualified Hungarians, then I’d be more inclined to disagree with him. But something tells me that a lot of Filipinos being kept in horrible conditions aren’t super specialized engineers and this is just a gigacorporation trying to save a few bucks. After the Hungarian government gave them a bunch of money.
Also, he did say Lazar had crossed all lines when Lazar said the Roma should clean toilets on trains. But since they’re political opponents, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. There’s articles saying he’s promised to help Roma communities, but I couldn’t find anything concrete right now.
Done talking to someone taking any attempt and using arguments to attempt to excuse nativist racism.