Row over Hungarians leaving their country

Right-wing commentators lambast left-liberals who see emigration as the only solution to what they see as the unbearable conditions in Hungary.

DK shadow Prime Minister Klára Dobrev, says in a Facebook post that Hungarians are fleeing their country by the tens of thousands as public services crumble and salaries are low. She publishes a chart showing that over 70 thousand people left Hungary in 2021. According to official statistics, 26,000 Hungarians left in 2022, the highest number since 2017, while 21,900 returned home from abroad.

On his Bádog blog, Zsolt Bayer vituperates against a liberal intellectual couple who told Telex about their decision to leave their expensive home and the surrounding large botanical garden because of the divisiveness of public discourse in Hungary and settle in Spain. He calls them ‘abject, mendacious creeps’ and recommends an interesting article about them on Mandiner.

In that Mandiner commentary, Ádám Forisek compares the fate of the well-to-do couple to Ukrainians bombed out of their homes or the Turks whose homes were destroyed by a recent earthquake. In a sarcastic vein, he writes that he realises those Ukrainians and Turks are not real refugees. Instead, he discovers, it is towards the liberal Hungarian couple that he is supposed to feel compassion.

Tags: emigration