Szilárd Demeter - TROLL OF THE MONTH

The Troll of the Month is an incident we choose every month to expose racist and anti-religious haters and to show positive outcomes in the fight against intolerance in Europe.

A Hungarian ministerial cultural commissioner has retracted an opinion article where he likened the US-Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros to Adolf Hitler.

The retraction came after strong condemnation and calls for his immediate dismissal, including from Jewish and Holocaust memorial groups in the country.

Szilárd Demeter, who is also the head of one of Hungary's premier cultural institutions, the Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest, published his opinion piece in the pro-government Origo media outlet on 29th  November.

Following the backlash, Demeter said in a statement that he would retract the article "independently of what I think" and that he would also delete his Facebook account.

"I will grant that those criticising me are correct in saying that to call someone a Nazi is to relativise, and that making parallels with Nazis can inadvertently cause harm to the memory of the victims," he said in the statement.

In the opinion article on Origo, Demeter addressed a dispute with Brussels over the EU budget, calling Hungary and Poland "the new Jews." Soros is described as “the liberal Fuhrer, and his liber-Aryan army deifies him more than did Hitler’s own”.

“Europe is George Soros’s gas chamber” he said, referring to the method used by the Nazis to kill millions of people.

“Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the European way of life, and we, the nations of Europe, are doomed to try to fight for the last sip of air by climbing on each other,” he continued.

George Soros, who was born in Hungary and is a Holocaust survivor, has been relentlessly attacked by Viktor Orban’s government for funding liberal organisations and institutions in the country.

In 2017, the Orban government launched a national consultation survey requesting all Hungarian households to express their opinions about a so-called “Soros Plan”. Through this propaganda campaign, the government party Fidesz turned Soros into an enemy. The campaign alleged that Soros was planning to open the borders of the EU, including Hungary, to millions of immigrants that would destroy the country’s welfare, security and culture.

In 2019, the Central European University, which was founded by Soros, was forced to relocate outside of Hungary due to pressure from the nationalist government. Most of its activities now take place in Vienna.

In November, an investigation by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty revealed the extent of government interference in the Hungarian public broadcaster MTVA. The government’s stance against Soros was reflected in the reporting guidelines of the editors. They told their reporters to find countries where people were protesting against George Soros, even if these organisations had been created just a few weeks before and had few members.

In 2016, Origo, the newspaper that published Demeter’s article, was acquired by investors with ties to the government. Since then, the once high-quality news portal has increasingly turned into a pro-government propaganda outlet, publishing articles that spread hatred against migrants.

Demeter’s opinion piece prompted strong reactions.

The Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation called the article “unforgivable”. “(It’s) a textbook case of the relativisation of the Holocaust, and is therefore incompatible with the government’s claim of zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.”

The American Jewish Committee in Central Europe described the article as "horrendous". The U.S. and Israel embassies in Budapest have also strongly condemned Demeter’s article.

Hungary's main leftist opposition party, the Democratic Coalition, and Budapest mayor Gergely Karacsony, demanded Viktor Orban to dismiss the commissioner immediately.

The Hungarian government has resisted these calls, with the deputy prime minister, Mihaly Varga, stating that Demeter would retain his position, as he had admitted his mistake.