The direction we’re going
The BBC reports on Hungary’s (or Orban’s) disgusting campaign against George Soros:
Giant posters vilifying the financier George Soros have gone up all over Hungary – the crudest step in the latest campaign by the rightwing Fidesz government against the 86-year-old Hungarian-born philanthropist.
Many Hungarian Jews fear that open or concealed anti-Semitism lies behind the campaign. The government strenuously denies this.
The posters show a grinning Mr Soros beside the words, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh”.
In smaller letters at the top of the poster is the message, “99% reject illegal immigration.”
AKOS STILLER
That scrawl on his forehead says “Dirty Jew.”
Last year, Hungary granted protection to just 550 people, one of the lowest rates in Europe, and has refused to accept a single person from the 1,294 quota allocated by the European Commission in September 2015. With Slovakia, the Fidesz government has also taken the Commission to the European Court of Justice over the quota allocations.
The Fidesz government is also trying to close the Central European University, founded by Mr Soros in Budapest in 1992, and has passed legislation forcing non-governmental organisations to declare themselves “foreign-funded” – and therefore suspect, in the increasingly xenophobic atmosphere in Hungary.
That legislation targets Soros-funded NGOs in particular.
A few days ago George Szirtes, no doubt in response to this kind of thing, wrote a post about Soros’s “foreign funding” on Facebook:
SO WHO IS SOROS AND WHAT HAS HE EVER DONE FOR US?
Nine facts about Hungary and the ‘evil’ George Soros’s Open Society Foundation:
1.
Between 1985 and 1996 the Hungarian Soros Foundation gifted more than 4 million dollars worth of photocopiers to libraries, hospitals, and other public institutions so that, despite state control. there should be free access to ideas and information2
Between 1991-1996 the Foundation gave over 5 million dollars so that over ten thousand schoolchildren should have free breakfasts at a time when countless families were suffering the problems of the transitional period after communism.3
In the 1990s the Foundation supported the large-scale modernisation of health services whereby ultrasound scanners and other important diagnostic equipment was provided for many Hungarian hospitals.4
Between 1997 and 2004 when the incidence of TB leapt among the homeless the Foundation, together with Hungarian Maltese Cross charity ensured that 40,000 people could be given proper medical checks.5
Thanks to the Open Society Foundation over 3200 Hungarians – Viktor Orbán among them – were given the opportunity to study abroad.
Wicked stuff, huh?
6
George Soros donated over 250 million dollars towards the establishing of the Central European University. Open Society scholarships have enabled more than 2100 Hungarians to study there.7
In 2010 the Open Society Foundation gave 1 million dollars in aid when the slurry reservoir of the aluminium works at Ajka burst its dam and andthe surrounding countryside was flooded with poisonous waste causing the death of ten people.8
In 2008 following the world financial crisis, the Open Society Foundation gave 8.6 million dollars of emergency aid to over 150 local civic organisations helping the local population to overcome the ensuing social problems. As one of its projects, in Tarnabod, together with the Hungarian Maltese Cross, it offered those in difficult circumstances 1.6 million dollars in aid as a development fund9
60 out of 100 of its employees in one of its regional centres, the Budapest office of the Open Society Foundation, is Hungarian.———————————————
George Soros has, in effect, been the major 20th and 21st century benefactor to his birthplace
** Translated from the Hungarian. Figures from Open Society Website.
Sometimes it feels as if we’re living in a sinister fairy tale, in which the Forces of Evil have taken over everything.
It is worth remembering that Hungary was a full-fledged member of the Axis Powers in good standing from the outbreak of the war; they were not invaded or coerced, but rather to to rapine in Poland and Slovakia and Romania all too willingly.
I’m assuming that the scrawl on the forehead is graffiti and not printed on the government’s poster.
I’m aware that the answer is most probably the former, and I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for clarification a year or so ago, but nowadays the gloves are coming off and masks are slipping everywhere one looks, so the latter option is more than possible nowadays.
Yes, it’s graffiti. I said that originally but then had the usual qualms about calling a single instance by a collective noun so changed it. There are many photos of the poster without the scrawl.