FROM ISRAEL TO HUNGRY AND BEYOND, THE WORLD STINKS OF "BLOOD AND SOIL"

There is a lot of scary stuff going on in the world these days, per usual, I guess.  Some of the most rotten is the racist violence and the racist rhetoric which has erupted in Israel toward African immigrants lately.  The country's Internal Affairs Minister said just the other day, “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”  Not scary enough.  His quote came out early Sunday in a Haaretz article about a new law that came into effect, regarding detention of migrants,

"A law granting Israeli authorities the power to detain illegal migrants for up to three years came into effect on Sunday, in the wake of widening public controversy over the influx of African migrants who cross into Israel along its border with Egypt.

The law makes illegal migrants and asylum seekers liable to jail, without trial or deportation, if caught staying in Israel for long periods. In addition, anyone helping migrants or providing them with shelter could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.

The law amended the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954, passed to prevent the entry of Palestinians as part of emergency legislation. The law is expanded to address migrant workers or asylum seekers who enter Israel without posing a threat to Israel’s security.

According to the law, migrant workers already here could be jailed for the most minor offense such as spraying graffiti or stealing a bicycle – infractions for which they would not have been detained before.

So far, all migrants who have been caught by the Israel Defense Forces on the Israel-Egypt border have been transferred to the Saharonim detention facility which holds 2,000 spaces."

This follows recent racist attacks and riots aimed at the African community within Israel.


Let's face it, when your country is pretty much established on a reactionary ideology like zionism and pretty much anchored in race, religion, and ethnicity, what can one expect?  When you have been treating the Palestinian population based on the South African model of apartheid, what can one expect? 


As a human being, I am disgusted.  As a long time foe of white supremacy, nationalism, racism, fascism, and nazism, I am angered.  As a Jew, I am embarrassed.


BUT, that is not what the post below is all about.  Instead, we head north to Hungary in a Europe rife with the same crap. 


It's a dangerous world out there.


The following comes from Searchlight.

Hungary experiences nationalism renaissance

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Written by Keno Verseck

Nationalism is on the rise in Hungary. The works of a far-right poet are to be taught in schools, while his remains are to be buried in his hometown in neighboring Romania - against the will of the Romanian government.

Jozsef Nyiro was born in 1889 in Szekler Land, a Romanian region of Transylvania, which at the time was a part of Hungary. He was not only a simple "blood-and-soil" poet, but one of the leading cultural ideologues during the rule of Hungary's national socialist Arrow Cross Party from October 1944 to March 1945, when tens of thousands of Jews were massacred or sent on death marches.

Nyiro served in the Arrow Cross Party's parliament, and he remained faithful to Ferenc Szalasi's fascist regime up to the end of the World War Two. After 1945, he was hunted as a war criminal by both Hungary and Romania, but he was able to flee to Germany and then to Franco's Spain in 1950. Today, his works are compulsory reading for Hungarian school children.

The Romanian government recently banned a re-burial ceremony in his honor. According to Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the decision was issued in order to prevent the poet's grave from becoming a pilgrimage spot for far-right extremists.

The Arrow Cross Party ruled Hungary from 1944 to 1945

In its place, an ecumenical service was held on Pentecost Sunday at the poet's birth place, attended by the Hungarian State Secretary for Culture Geza Scocs and Parliamentary President Laszlo Kover. The latter declared that the planned re-burial would take place sooner or later, even if was against the will of the "uncivilized, hysterical, paranoid, barbaric" Romanian government. He added that the people, "who had a son whose ashes were feared," would be "victorious."

Smuggled ashes

Szocs has since admitted, in online Hungarian publication index.hu, that the urn containing the fascist poet's ashes had been smuggled into Romania. He said that despite the conspiratorial operation, "nothing illegal had happened," but that he no longer knew the ashes' location.

The planned re-burial of Nyiro's remains is part of Hungary's recent nationalist renaissance, successfully driven by the country's far-right, and it now boasts the whole-hearted support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his conservative nationalist Fidesz party.

Kover called the Romanian government hysterical and barbaric

Orban is re-assessing relations with those neighboring countries that still have significant Hungarian minorities: Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania. After two decades of working to re-establish friendly relations while still attempting to gain better rights for minorities, Fidesz is now following a new revisionist policy. At least for now, the party is unlikely to risk the taboo of renegotiating borders - or revising the 1920 Treaty of Trianon where Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory - but it is significant that Fidesz, more than any other post-communist Hungarian government, is emphasizing the unity of all Hungarian people in the region.

Fascist ideology rehabilitated

Hungarians everywhere are being reminded of their "holy duty" to their nation - either through the "Day of National Solidarity" on June 4, meant to commemorate the "tragedy of Trianon," or through the new constitution - which came into force at the start of the year - or in the controversial media law.

At the same time, Orban is intervening in domestic politics in Slovakia and Romania by supporting the Hungarian minorities there - often by helping them to re-found parties. In some instances, like the aborted burial of Nyiro, Fidesz politicians indulge in more or less open electioneering in their neighboring country.

Romaniais holding municipal elections on June 10, when the Romanian-based Hungarian minority party MPP hopes to overtake the more moderate Democratic Union of Hungarians (RMDSZ). For many years, the centrist RMDSZ was the only political representation of Romania's Hungarian minority. It even took part in several government coalitions between 1996 and 2010.

Hungary is about to celebrate a day of national solidarity

Parallel to this political revisionism, Hungary is also in the process of rehabilitating Miklos Horthy, who governed the country from 1920 to 1944 with an authoritarian, ultra-conservative clerical regime. Horthy, a notorious anti-Semite, was responsible for the deportation of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews in the spring and summer of 1944 - they were eventually murdered in Auschwitz. Now new plaques and statues are to be unveiled in his honor.

Nationalism hurts Hungarian minorities

But the success of this new nationalist, revisionist line remains in doubt. Hungary has become isolated in the EU, where the country is considered a destabilizing force in central and southeastern Europe. On top of that, Orban and his party may have permanently weakened the representatives of Hungarian minorities in those neighboring countries.

The Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP), supported by Fidesz, failed to enter the Slovakian parliament in a recent election there. As a consequence, the Hungarian community's political representation in Slovakia sank from 14 percent to 9 percent.

Orban has isolated Hungary in the European Union

The Hungarian minority in Romania faces an even bigger disaster in November's parliamentary election. Around 400,000 Hungarians have left Transylvania in the past two decades. As a consequence, the community's political representation could diminish to the minimum of mandatory delegates that every minority in Romania is entitled to.

Not only that, but no fewer than three Hungarian parties are standing in the election, and the number of Hungarian votes will barely be enough to allow one of them to clear the 5 percent hurdle necessary to enter parliament.

But perhaps, viewed cynically, this is precisely Orban's plan - to encourage as many disenfranchised and disappointed Hungarians to return to Hungary as possible. That would secure Orban's party a stable and long-term voter base. It would also ease Hungary's chronic demographic problems, without relying on the immigration of non-Hungarians.

Credit: Deutsche Welle