This Sunday's meeting of the Jobbik Friends of Hungary (UK), in London, being a case in point.

Ask any political scientist what the most pervasive European political theme of the last generation has been, and they will answer you in one word: apathy. While governments both national and trans-national claim pyrrhic victories and avow the possession of mandates, when only a dwindling fraction of their electorates concur with them. And as the common people seem to, by and large, be rejecting politics: staying at home, disinterested and mistrustful that even were they to express their wishes the powers-that-be would never stomach a decision that flew against their own self-interest: as the whole Lisbon Treaty affair, having been implemented this week, indubitably proves. Few could question such a political analysis.

Yet by exponentially moving from a party of a few percentage points several years ago, to one of 15% in June 2009, and eventually, to being at the very least the party of parliamentary opposition in the Hungarian General Elections scheduled for next year: how has Jobbik so convincingly bucked this trend? By the application of a very simple recipe: of two component parts.

“Incitements in Europe by extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, racist, scare-mongering ultraright politicians who reign over common sense, wisdom and universal values,” was how the Organization of Islamic Conference chose this week to respond to the result of the Swiss minaret referendum. Any sober mind reading these words is immediately convinced that they are plain nonsense. But the crucial question is why the OIC chose to phrase their objection in this manner. Simply, because this is exactly how the International press in general, and the European press in particular, always reacts to any contemporary political development it is either unwilling to truthfully explain, or unable to understand. The OIC felt that taking this line would work: and that the press would concur. They were not to be disappointed.

The Hungarian populace in particular, are acutely sensitive and suspicious of those who use the words “far-Right,” and frequently much worse besides. And this is not only because they come from a country in which for decades any political view, no matter how sensible, which didn’t chime with the Communist “consensus” was immediately slandered with the exact same terminology. To say that it has to do with 20 years of being dismissed as paranoid simpletons for saying Communists were still running our country, by a Europe that was so busy ridiculing the idea that it now finds itself in precisely the same predicament (the dubious should look at Mr Barroso’s resumé); is to get nearer to the point.

The sentiment is in fact pan-European. It is the latent conviction that the people using this terminology are never, ever, ones from whom you hear the word “far-Left.” In fact, if you were to ask them why they don’t write of “ultra-Marxists,” or “neo-Leninists,” or the “extreme Left;” they would probably tell you to stop being silly: as we are living in the 21st Century. Yet the sensation that something much deeper is at work here is inescapable.

The reason why it takes people askance, is that they instinctively feel that anyone who truly believed in politics being a Left-Right axis, would have to use such opposing phrases as a matter of logic. Moreover, that the reason they do not do so is because they don’t truly believe in such a spectrum at all. They live rather in a worldview in which politics is not a line of Left to Right, but a circle in which Leftist views are at the centre: common-sensical, accepted, truths universally acknowledged. And, they believe, any political perspective can be plotted in terms of its distance from this centre.

If you oppose this later view: If you question the validity of multiculturalism and affirm your national identity. If you promote the family as the building block of society. If you dare say that people should be equally held responsible for their criminality: regardless of their race. If you refuse to shrug off your Christian heritage and worship at the temple of materialism. And most crucially, if you oppose the concerted disenfranchisement of your people to trans-national European bodies populated by unelected Leftist bureaucrats, then it is clear. You are an extremist. No matter how sober, rational, reasoned or well thought out your point-of-view may be.

In fact Jobbik agrees with the tacit views of such journalists, as we question the validity of the Left-Right axis too. We would also ask for an explanation of what validity where Feuillants and Montagnards sat in the Assemblée Nationale of 1791: has for the politics of today. Especially when the true forces at work are self-evident, for anyone who cares to take a look: and an increasing number of Europeans are doing precisely that.

As Jobbik’s chairman, Gábor Vona, has said right from the beginning: the true division in politics today exists between those who promote globalist values and those who promote national ones.

Those parties who would submerge the interests and fates of their people within the impersonal forces of globalisation, merely hoping for the best; and the others who would seek to protect their people from them. Despite the views of commentators who have an agenda to promote by making you believe otherwise: central to Jobbik’s success is the fact that it is not imprisoned by an ideology, of either side. And what Jobbik, the Better choice, represents is the ability to cherry-pick from policies of either the Right or the Left, on the basis of one sole criterion: the national interest. This has been the first ingredient of the Jobbik recipe for success. In taking this approach it has empowered, in exactly the degree, and for exactly the opposite reason, that the contemporary political establishment have rendered themselves so utterly impotent.

But do you hear of this central principle of Jobbik’s approach, no you do not. Why might that be?

Almost no-one else worldwide has profited so handsomely by promoting globalisation, than Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation. Making $20 billion in profits in the eleven years prior to 1999 alone, while not paying a single solitary penny in Corporation Tax, through the use of offshore havens; as was made clear by The Economist. The winners in globalisation like Mr Murdoch, whose business interests currently pay no more than 6% tax, according to the BBC, are starkly contrasted with the taxed-into-virtual-penury Hungarian farmer. Who despite knowing that their smallholdings grow the finest peppers in the world, are now compelled by unprofitability to buy foreign ones from multi-national supermarkets who refuse to stock their own.

It is axiomatic that Mr Murdoch would most definitely not like to live in a world in which Jobbik’s economic policy was widely known, let alone widely held. And yet publications like The Times of London would actually have people believe that it is not the Movement for a Better Hungary, but they themselves, who are the disinterested party with no agenda to advance. We beg to differ.

When the German press speak of “a refusal to face the past.” We completely agree! Why do they then insist on doing it so systematically? If they are not trying to shirk their own country’s historical responsibilities for the brutalities of the past: by pretending that some kind of separate from them (and tacitly implied: “truly” responsible) Central European dark heart exists; instead of acknowledging the evils their own nation imposed on a defeated continent. Then they are making Hungarians ask themselves, why it is that they write about some imagined link of one portion of Hungarian politics to a terrible government of four months, and not the actual, acknowledged and proudly boasted about succession of the incumbent Hungarian party of government to a foul dictatorship of forty years? As if contemporary Hungarian politics was being immediately effected by the twenty years from 1925-1945, but was entirely immune from the effects of the, actually responsible, twenty years from 1989 to the present day.

When they speak of symbolism, why do they impugn the oldest symbol of Hungarian National identity, the eight striped flag of the House of Árpád? Which they will not tell you emblazons the crests of countless towns, government departments and the left half of the Hungarian national Coat of Arms for that matter? Where is the talk of the massive phallic obelisk that sits in the middle of Budapest’s Freedom Square, the Red Army memorial, that does nothing other than remind those who pass by of the rapes their mothers and grandmothers suffered when that power occupied the city? Where is the vitriolic condemnation of the clear acknowledged fact that this monument is the philosophical touchstone of the Hungarian post-Communist Left: its means of making it clear to the nation that it remains in charge? Nowhere.

The reality, that the truth about Jobbik refuses to conform to the stereotype that has been allotted it, and that such reports so readily deny the evidence of their author's senses just to justify their logic, is perhaps understandable in a nation with Germany’s history. But there are those who should know better. Much better.

That the organisation “Nothing British” has chosen to malign Jobbik with the crassest of falsehoods, comes as no surprise to anyone given their naked political agenda to destroy the British National Party. But when their director James Bethell, spoke of his organization’s promotion of Britain’s “gentle values of tolerance and sticking up for the little guy,” he not only gave his own organization’s supposed mission statement, but the reason why throughout the last century and even today those who find themselves being arrested by the Hungarian state for what they wear, or for making the simple three word utterance of “Adjon az Isten” (May God grant) as is happening in Hungary: right this minute; have fled to the supposed haven of political freedom and free assembly that the United Kingdom once represented.

Events tomorrow will amply show how much some Socialists amongst his countrymen concur with his lofty sentiment.

But when Mr Bethell speaks for the British political establishment, as if he and they had some form of moral authority. He commits the most disgustingly distasteful pretence. When the head of the Slovak National Party (SNP), Ján Slota, calls the Hungarians who live in his country “disgusting mongloids” who are fit only for “extermination,” and compounds his chauvinist bigotry with naked bloodthirsty warmongering by saying that Slovak tanks should “raze Budapest to the ground.” One would assume that the British political establishment, would have condemned his, to use Mr Bethell’s phrase, “revolting extremism.”

Not a bit of it. Mr Slota’s party sits happily, as a comfortable ally of that establishment, as a partner in the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP), European Parliamentary Group: “Europe of Freedom and Democracy.” And UKIP is no body of fringe extremists, it lies at the heart of the British Establishment, it’s new leader one of the most respected peers of the realm: and on the basis of the 2009 European elections, it is the UK’s third largest party. Nothing British’s jarring, clumsy, and repugnant hypocrisy simply beggars belief. Where is their righteous indignation, their unequivocal denunciation of UKIP, the storm of controversy? Nowhere.

The total silence across Europe which tends to greet, amongst others Mr Slota’s characteristic remarks against the Magyars in his country, was examined very perceptively by the Brussels Journal in 2006, who remarked:

“The Magyars are the kind of large minority that is a majority along the border... They are also a weak enemy as European opinion is unaware of them. Meanwhile opportunistically official Europe is disinterested by what it cannot help knowing. The Magyars are not a cause célèbre (as are Jews provided they are already dead) and focusing on them is not “easy”. It so happens that besides Slovakia, the Hungarians are, just by being where the last 1100 years put them, a problem case for Serbia and Romania... ...Brussels seems to feel that Magyar collective rights are more a hindrance to achieve the mirage of “brotherhood” in Europe than a criterion of democracy. No wonder that the anti-Magyarism of Slota, Meciar and their mutations in the Voivodina (Serbia) and Transylvania (Romania) create political capital at home while encouragingly not costing much abroad.”

It is for this reason that, again refusing to fit the stereotype – not that it matters, the Movement for a Better Hungary is the most staunch advocate of minority rights in the entire region! It is for precisely this reason, though you would never dare to hear the truth of it spoken in the media, that as soon as Jobbik’s programme becomes actually known amongst them, it is many Romani who become the staunchest supporters of our party. Not because they too travel on trains that must go slow at night to keep a careful look out for track that has been stolen, or on roads whose remaining road signs must have stickers on saying they have no aluminium content, or that they suffer repeated rural blackouts because copper has been pinched from the electricity sub-station once again.

It is because the naked truth, is that – all – Hungarian political parties recognize the reality of Roma criminological phenomena (such as metallurgical theft), but whereas the parliamentary parties merely use the socio-economic circumstances of the Roma as an excuse for this behaviour, after which point no more action is then required. Jobbik in contrast, proposes that tackling this issue must be the first step in solving the socio-economic problems that the Gypsy people face. Not by yet more billion Forint “integration” programmes that just serve as embezzlement funds for the Roma’s corrupt (a universal Hungarian political crime, everywhere except Jobbik) political leadership. But actual practical measures and reforms that will help. It is what we call radicalism: and it contrasts so sharply with the inaction and corruption of the past: that it often appeals to Roma most of all.

Particularly when for many, aside from a welfare cheque, the only time they can actually recall being helped by Hungarians is when their villages have, for example, been saved from flooding by the efforts of the Hungarian Guard.

But the point is, that you can be a promoter of hypocrisy: like Nothing British; or downright dishonestly: like UKIP (as proved over the past week, and convincing everyone that their Euroscepticim is entirely bogus); or out-and-out hatred: like Slota’s SNP. Provided of course you sign up to the European project. If you do, all is permissible. If you do not, take note that everything will be done to crush you. The past decades offer incontrovertible proof that the EU permits no opposition to its intentions. To the extent where now member European states have less legislative freedom than the contingent states of the US. And since the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, the only thing that stands in the way of its federalist objectives is national identity...

How can Jobbik be thriving in such circumstances? In no small measure we have the press to thank.

On the international stage it has been a positive boon. All the deliberately sensationalist hysterical nonsense that has been written has done nothing but drive both representatives of investors, and now diplomatic missions, to Jobbik’s door to confirm to their satisfaction the legitimacy, acceptability and level-headedness of Jobbik’s manifesto (due for publication January 16th). The whopping great lies told by those in the press, the verification of which as such has been a mere mouse-click away, has done an enormous amount to convince decision makers of the prudence of coming to confirm for themselves the facts as they actually are.

In the Hungarian diaspora too, a huge amount of people daily come across stories which differ so compellingly from the realities conveyed to them by relatives back home week-in week-out: that they just have to find out more. Spontaneous societies such as the one established in the United Kingdom exist as rally points from which information can actually get out of the Hungary. The Jobbik Friends of Hungary (UK) is internationally, far from unique. So completely has the journalistic mechanism failed, been tainted by partisanship, or deliberately abused by those who have used the language difference for their own ends.

On the national level, where the press is evenly split between the privately-owned Fidesz supporting Right, and the publicly-funded MSZP supporting Left: the situation has once again promoted Jobbik’s objectives. In either slandering us, or more often remaining silent, they have given ample proof of how scared both establishment parties are. The MSZP, terrified that its 62 year reign is coming to an end has once again made Hungary a country of arbitrary arrest, show trials, and detention for expression of political opinion or utterance. Fidesz, worried grey by the prospect of losing its Supermajority (enabling unhindered constitutional alteration) is doing exactly what it has always done best: absolutely nothing while staying silent into the bargain.

By attempting so hard to suppress the growth of the tree’s branches, all they have done is stimulate its growth at the roots. This being the second ingredient of Jobbik’s success: engagement.

With approachability, residential meetings, nationwide tours, internet contact, an international presence, and national conferences intended to find solutions to issues as diverse as education and crime. The Movement for a Better Hungary is, simply, much much closer to the political will and more conscious of the problems, wishes, and motives of the Hungarian people, than any other party.

This is not by accident but by design. As a promoter of the national interest it behoves Jobbik to be as close to that interest as possible. Simply, our objective is to serve the public, not tell it what to do. And when we say it: we mean it. We deliberately act in stark contrast to nearly all European political parties, by making the party an organism in which the party leadership is the mouthpiece of the party’s opinions, not a structure in which that leadership tells the membership what it should think. It is our supporters who are our only paymasters so it is only their interests that we serve.

When political commentators or establishment politicians scratch their heads in wonder, and concoct absurdist explanations for our success; we remain more mystified than annoyed. All we are doing is applying the exact same business model that they once did, and rejected in favour of centralisation. Going out to the people instead of turning inwards. There is a word for this phenomenon, it is called: democracy.

The reaction has been phenomenal. There is no apathy here. There is enthusiasm and pleasure about being presented with the opportunity of the people’s will actually making a difference for once. That in democracies it is not international conventions assigned to without their consent that should take precedent: but their best interests. Or that unelected trans-national political elites, who consider democracy a fine system were it only for the inconvenience of the demos, are not the righteous possessor of the people’s power: but the people themselves. The peoples of Europe are in short: sick and tired of oligarchy. Commercial oligarchy in the East of Europe and Political oligarchy in the West. Their message could not be more clear:

The people want their power back. And Jobbik gives it to them.

Such ideas are infectious ones. And they are the only solution to Europe’s apathy crisis in general, and the EU’s democracy deficit in particular. But to say that the Swiss referendum result this week, has had a palpable and detectable effect in Brussels is to make the understatement of the year. The political bureaucracies and cosy conformity that rules our lives has been stunned first into a state of virtual catatonia, which then transformed into ill-disguised rage. You can almost hear them say it, “How dare they!”

How dare they think they had a right to govern their own lives. In a way the topic was almost an irrelevance, the Swiss vote simply represented the first time a European people has been honestly asked its opinion on one of the great many massive changes that have been an authoritarian imposition from above, without even the pretence of consent. It has also resoundingly given the lie to all those doom-mongers who have so often and so convincingly been telling us that a more direct democracy was prohibitively expensive or simply impossible. To say nothing, Jobbik thinks as a Christian Nationalist party, of the idea of trans-national bodies holding dear to the idea of international reciprocity.

But the point is, that you can be a promoter of hypocrisy: like Nothing British; or downright dishonestly: like UKIP (as proved over the past week, and convincing everyone that their Euroscepticim is entirely bogus); or out-and-out hatred: like Slota’s SNP. Provided of course you sign up to the European project. If you do, all is permissible. If you do not, take note that everything will be done to crush you. The past decades offer incontrovertible proof that the EU permits no opposition to its intentions. To the extent where now member European states have less legislative freedom than the contingent states of the US. And since the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, the only thing that stands in the way of its federalist objectives is national identity...

How can Jobbik be thriving in such circumstances? In no small measure we have the press to thank.

On the international stage it has been a positive boon. All the deliberately sensationalist hysterical nonsense that has been written has done nothing but drive both representatives of investors, and now diplomatic missions, to Jobbik’s door to confirm to their satisfaction the legitimacy, acceptability and level-headedness of Jobbik’s manifesto (due for publication January 16th). The whopping great lies told by those in the press, the verification of which as such has been a mere mouse-click away, has done an enormous amount to convince decision makers of the prudence of coming to confirm for themselves the facts as they actually are.

In the Hungarian diaspora too, a huge amount of people daily come across stories which differ so compellingly from the realities conveyed to them by relatives back home week-in week-out: that they just have to find out more. Spontaneous societies such as the one established in the United Kingdom exist as rally points from which information can actually get out of the Hungary. The Jobbik Friends of Hungary (UK) is internationally, far from unique. So completely has the journalistic mechanism failed, been tainted by partisanship, or deliberately abused by those who have used the language difference for their own ends.

On the national level, where the press is evenly split between the privately-owned Fidesz supporting Right, and the publicly-funded MSZP supporting Left: the situation has once again promoted Jobbik’s objectives. In either slandering us, or more often remaining silent, they have given ample proof of how scared both establishment parties are. The MSZP, terrified that its 62 year reign is coming to an end has once again made Hungary a country of arbitrary arrest, show trials, and detention for expression of political opinion or utterance. Fidesz, worried grey by the prospect of losing its Supermajority (enabling unhindered constitutional alteration) is doing exactly what it has always done best: absolutely nothing while staying silent into the bargain.

By attempting so hard to suppress the growth of the tree’s branches, all they have done is stimulate its growth at the roots. This being the second ingredient of Jobbik’s success: engagement.

With approachability, residential meetings, nationwide tours, internet contact, an international presence, and national conferences intended to find solutions to issues as diverse as education and crime. The Movement for a Better Hungary is, simply, much much closer to the political will and more conscious of the problems, wishes, and motives of the Hungarian people, than any other party.

This is not by accident but by design. As a promoter of the national interest it behoves Jobbik to be as close to that interest as possible. Simply, our objective is to serve the public, not tell it what to do. And when we say it: we mean it. We deliberately act in stark contrast to nearly all European political parties, by making the party an organism in which the party leadership is the mouthpiece of the party’s opinions, not a structure in which that leadership tells the membership what it should think. It is our supporters who are our only paymasters so it is only their interests that we serve.

When political commentators or establishment politicians scratch their heads in wonder, and concoct absurdist explanations for our success; we remain more mystified than annoyed. All we are doing is applying the exact same business model that they once did, and rejected in favour of centralisation. Going out to the people instead of turning inwards. There is a word for this phenomenon, it is called: democracy.

The reaction has been phenomenal. There is no apathy here. There is enthusiasm and pleasure about being presented with the opportunity of the people’s will actually making a difference for once. That in democracies it is not international conventions assigned to without their consent that should take precedent: but their best interests. Or that unelected trans-national political elites, who consider democracy a fine system were it only for the inconvenience of the demos, are not the righteous possessor of the people’s power: but the people themselves. The peoples of Europe are in short: sick and tired of oligarchy. Commercial oligarchy in the East of Europe and Political oligarchy in the West. Their message could not be more clear:

The people want their power back. And Jobbik gives it to them.

Such ideas are infectious ones. And they are the only solution to Europe’s apathy crisis in general, and the EU’s democracy deficit in particular. But to say that the Swiss referendum result this week, has had a palpable and detectable effect in Brussels is to make the understatement of the year. The political bureaucracies and cosy conformity that rules our lives has been stunned first into a state of virtual catatonia, which then transformed into ill-disguised rage. You can almost hear them say it, “How dare they!”

How dare they think they had a right to govern their own lives. In a way the topic was almost an irrelevance, the Swiss vote simply represented the first time a European people has been honestly asked its opinion on one of the great many massive changes that have been an authoritarian imposition from above, without even the pretence of consent. It has also resoundingly given the lie to all those doom-mongers who have so often and so convincingly been telling us that a more direct democracy was prohibitively expensive or simply impossible. To say nothing, Jobbik thinks as a Christian Nationalist party, of the idea of trans-national bodies holding dear to the idea of international reciprocity.This latest manifestation of National interests being at odds with Global ones will not be the last. And in this debate it is the Nationalist that is clearly the David to the Globalist Goliath. Despite the obvious will of our political “Masters,” our cause will only grow and grow. The Globalist steamroller has dominated Europe for decades, and in its political manifestation it is very simply the opposition of democracy against its antithesis.

Consequently, the European press is at a crossroads like never before. It too has a choice to make. The press can chose to play its historic European role. Or it can abandon the sincere pursuit of this role, as it has effectively done until now.

No doubt many journalists think they actually can mislead their readership, through flawed (known all too well) political shorthand, indifference to accuracy, or laziness of research; and then complain the very next week about the “apathy” that has been caused, they say, by parties or the people. But the electorate is no longer convinced. Whose reporting will history consult and recall? The journalist who files most of their copy before ever witnessing the event? Or perhaps the one who knows too well when only a deeply-critical article is expected by an editor?

Some clearly believe that their task, indeed politically assigned duty, is not to look at the realities fuelling Europe’s political present, not to research, not to comprehend the forces at play, or the people affected; not in the slightest. They feel that despite how ridiculous, absurd, mendacious and fraudulent they know such an exercise to be, their job is basically to act as a photocopier of whatever “relevant” chapters of history books they at that moment happen to have to hand concerning the Great Depression. Having made their crude facsimile, and as they go home for the day early, they also no doubt feel a sense of moral satisfaction at a job well done.

We cannot for the life of us think why.

Szebb jövőt!