Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban says his country
will open its arms to west Europeans fleeing mass immigration and “the lords of
globalist politics”.
“We shall let in true
refugees”, Mr Orban told a cheering
audience: “Germans, Dutch, French and Italians, terrified politicians and
journalists who here in Hungary want to find the Europe they have lost in their
homelands.”
The populist leader has
served as the de facto leader of the central and eastern European countries
which have resisted the
open borders policies of the European Union (EU) and leading member-states in
the west of the continent.
Globalist
politicians, Mr Orban contended, are seeking to “sweep away a democracy of
debate and replace it with a democracy of [political] correctness”, where “true
power, decisions and influence [are] not held by elected governments, but [by]
unelected global networks, media gurus and international organisations.”
He cited Britain’s vote to
leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s election in the United
States as episodes in a wider popular revolt against
the “arrogance and condescension” of global elites by ordinary people whose
“mouths had been gagged” for too long.
He claimed that
history’s departure from
“the course marked out for it” in 2016 “mocked the prophets of liberal
politics”, who have responded as
though “the people are a danger to democracy”.
“This is
how the world’s most bizarre coalition of people smugglers, human rights
activists and elite European politicians came into existence, specifically to
deliberately bring millions of migrants into Europe,” he said.
The Fidesz
leader predicted that 2017 would be another year of conflict with the EU, as
“Brussels [attempts] to seize further powers” over migration and taxation,
among other things.
He also warned against the
activities of non-governmental organisations funded from abroad and
seeking to exert influence on local politics: “Here there are large predators swimming
in the water, and this is the transnational empire of
George Soros.”
