In a recently emerged video, the vice president of one of the Hungarian leftist alliance’s parties, who is also prominent on the joint list led by the Left’s prime ministerial hopeful Peter Marki-Zay, defends the criminal organisation Aryan Army, comprising neo-Nazi prison inmates.

The anti-Semitic scandal of Jobbik, a party of the Hungarian leftist coalition, continues to make waves. Conservative US weekly The Jewish Voice claims that Gyorgy Szilagyi, a prominent member of the joint list of the leftist prime ministerial candidate Peter Marki-Zay, is proven to have neo-Nazi views. The paper’s on-line edition reports that Mr Szilagyi has given a long speech defending the notorious US neo-Nazi gang Aryan Army, a gang of inmates suspected of committing a slew of murders and other crimes.

According to a video published on the portal of The Jewish Voice, Mr Szilagyi defended the group led by criminals with skinhead haircuts and swastika tattoos by saying that

“The Aryan Army, everyone should know, has never been a Nazi symbol, they are actually a grouping of whites in prison and it’s equally for blacks and is actually an advocacy group,” the US portal writes.

Szilagyi goes even further, arguing that the term white power – one of the organisation’s mottos – is also on the crests of 80 per cent of American basketball teams, just like „black power” is on those of black basketball teams’, which, according to the MEP, proves that the Aryan Army’s views are completely legitimate.

Mr Szilagyi, who joined Jobbik in 2008, is now its vice president and spokesman of the party, which back then described itself as a “radically patriotic Christian party.”

The US portal recalls that the former leader of the far-right party, now a member of the leftist coalition, responded to criticisms by the Jewish community in Hungary by saying that

he would be happy if the so called proud Hungarian Jews would go back to playing with their tiny little circumcised cocks.

„This man claims to defend the Hungarian nation, and Hungarian values, but he is doing neither, instead resorting to antisemitism and racism, placing blame for imagined injuries on the backs of Jews and Roma,” the author notes.

“A familiar tactic,” he continues. „Contrary to Russia’s ludicrous claims that Ukraine should be ‘de-Nazified’ maybe the focus should actually be on true and bona fide Neo-Nazis who are seeking power in democratic countries. Such men should not be allowed to gain power, even by democratic means, for history tells us that, once in power, these same men not respect democratic means for long,” the US portal’s article reads.

The current deputy leader of Jobbik also argued on Hir Tv that the government should ban the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Holocaust memorial agency, because it poses a serious national security risk to Hungary. He said: „we call on the Hungarian government to protect the Hungarian people, to protect Hungarian sport, to protect Hungarian culture from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and to ban its operation in Hungary. The government should also expel its non-Hungarian staff as the government is responsible for protecting the reputation of Hungary (…) and it is mandatory to take measures against organisations whose goal is to destabilise Hungary.”

Daniel Z. Karpat turned out to have similar views

For a week now, Daniel Z. Karpat’s scandal has been making headlines in Hungarian and international press. Peter Marki-Zay, the PM candidate of the rainbow coalition, has defended Jobbik’s vice president, but other leading politicians of the left have been mostly silent since then.

The video shows Daniel Z. Karpat unmistakably swinging his right arm in the air to perform a Nazi salute and then flashing a satisfied smile.

The footage was probably taken before a press conference, as the politician is standing behind a lectern with a banner of Jobbik behind him.

Commenting on the incident, Rabbi Slomo Koves, head of the United Hungarian Jewish Community, told the Hungarian news outlet Mandiner that the anti-Semitic and racist statements, hand sign with a smile and similar acts by the current leaders of Jobbik are not „individual mishaps”, but the signs of an openly adopted ideology.

The Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet has inquired the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities on Mr Z. Karpat’s hand sign, but they have not received any answer to their questions for days. However, Tamas Rona, president of the Hungarian Jewish Prayer Association, had previously told Magyar Nemzet that he is concerned and disturbed that racist, anti-Semitic and exclusionary voices are coming from leftist circles. He said it is also possible that anti-Semitism could gain representation in the National Assembly on the liberal side.

While the case was covered by an American Jewish newspaper and the conservative French weekly Les Valeurs Actuelles,

no member of the Hungarian leftist rainbow coalition considers the incident unacceptable.

This was also the case in 2019, when Marton Gyongyosi suggested that Jewish MPs should be listed in parliament. Gergely Karacsony, the leftist liberal mayor of Budapest, said at the time that he did not consider listing Jewish MPs an expression of Nazism and in the autumn of 2020, he campaigned for Laszlo Biro, a right-wing politician, who had repeatedly insulted the Jewish community, calling the capital “Jewdapest” and Israeli tourists “earlocked Jews.” Mr Karacsony is now shrouded in silence.

The rainbow coalition says there is no problem with all this

Former Socialist politician Janos Zuschlag in 2004 joked about the victims of Nazis on the anniversary of the power grab of the Hungarian far-right Arrow Cross Party in 1944. Mr Zuschlag then resigned. Jobbik’s vice president, however, is 9th on the election list of the leftist coalition, right behind former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, and is likely to be elected as MP. According to the blog Obuda Hirek, Mr Z. Karpat only got this high on the list in order to avoid making him a direct opponent of Timea Szabo, the co-president of the Dialogue (Parbeszed) Party during last year’s leftist primaries.

Although Leandrosz Rafael Balazs, a representative of the Roma Nationality Municipality of Hodmezovasarhely, with a law degree, called on Peter Marki-Zay to have Daniel Z. Karpat step back from his candidacy, but the prime minister candidate of the six-party coalition has not taken any action in the case so far.

Mr Marki-Zay explained it by saying that the footage had not been made „in a real environment.” His behaviour come as little surprise given the fact that he had earlier said that he represented communists and fascists alike. The Roma organisation is nevertheless starting a series of protest, with its first event held on 27 March in Hodmezovasarhely, where Mr Marki-Zay is mayor.

Jobbik’s President Peter Jakab said on the ATV television channel that everyone who signed the party’s statement of principles in 2020 made their own past clear. He added that Mr Z. Karpat had done something usually seen on football matches. Responding to a question whether he requested Mr Z. Karpat to resign, Jakab said that he did not care about the matter and Hungary had larger problems that that. Jobbik’s leader also said that everyone on the left knew Mr Z. Karpat, as he was among the chief architects of the alliance’s programme. He described Z. Karpat as a true people’s party politician, who did not have any anti-Semitic views.

Mediaworks New Centre (Hircentrum) asked several leftist politicians to comment on the case. Miklos Hajnal, a member of the board of the Momentum party said that the ruling party Fidesz is using smear tactics to discredit its opponents in the run-up to the elections. Bence Tordai, the parliamentary group leader of the Dialogue (Parbeszed) Party said that he agreed with Jobbik’s statement.

White supremacy behind the bars

According to BBC, the Aryan Brotherhood, held in such a high esteem by Gyorgy Szilagyi, is the world’s largest and most famous American prison gang, also operating as a street gang. Aryan Brotherhood emerged during the late 1960s in California’s San Quentin State Prison, where the state’s every execution is carried out. The Brotherhood was originally created to protect white-skinned prisoners from blacks and Latinos. Neo-Nazi ideology soon became widespread in the group, later mixed with the symbolism of the Viking and Irish mythology.

The gang proclaims white supremacy and it does not accept members of others ethnicities into its ranks, but is willing to co-operate with Mexicans and blacks in drug deals.

The US organisation gained notoriety when they murdered a district attorney and his deputy in spring 2013 in Texas. The cases focused attention on the increasingly dangerous white supremacist networks formed in prison. According to some estimates the Aryan Brotherhood has some 20,000 members both in and out of custody.

According to the FBI, some 1 per cent of all inmates in US prisons belong to the Aryan Brotherhood, but they are responsible for 18 per cent of the killings committed in America’s penitentiaries. One can gain admission to the gang by killing a target designated by Brotherhood members in the given prison, and the members are obliged to support those behind bars even after leaving the prison.