Lessons of the foiled international white nationalist congress
October 10th, 2014A moderate conservative blogger thinks the government was wrong to ban a racist conference in Budapest. She praises the US embassy for declining to comment on the detention of the main organiser, an American citizen, and believes the US should display such restrained manners more often.
On Mandiner, Bea Bakó believes that the U.S.-based white nationalist think tank National Policy Institute (NPI) should have been allowed to hold its scheduled Congress on the Future of Europe in Budapest, and that the authorities were wrong to deny entry permits to several international participants. These included NPI director Richard Spencer, who defied the ruling and came to Budapest, where he was briefly detained then banned from entering the Schengen area for three years. Markó agrees with other commentators who thought that the staging of a congress, however distasteful the speakers’ opinions, cannot be equated with the instigation of hatred and violence. Bakó also praises the American Embassy who declined to express an opinion on Spencer’s case, invoking the US Privacy Act which bars state and federal authorities from discussing the affairs of their citizens without their consent. She urges Hungarian officials to adopt a similarly elegant attitude and stop criticising court rulings, for instance. On the other hand, in an obvious hint at the recent critical remarks made by several US personalities, including President Obama himself about Hungary, she believes that the United States would be better advised to show a similar restraint, in cases not related to its own citizens and the Privacy Act.