Bayer denies racism charge and predicts the demise of ‘white Christian Europe’
March 2nd, 2013Zsolt Bayer, known for his controversial statements, and often accused of racism and anti-Semitism, sums up his credo and defends himself against the charges.
Zsolt Bayer, a leading columnist at the right wing Magyar Hírlap, a founding Fidesz member as well as one of the organizers of the pro-government Peace Marches, was accused of racism after a January editorial in Magyar Hírlap, in which he wrote that some Roma are ‘unfit to live among human beings’ (see BudaPost, January 9th). He won an earlier defamation case against the left wing Klubradio, who accused him of making anti-Semitic remarks in another editorial. The editorial mentioned two MEPs and a Hungarian pianist by name and suggested that it was a shame that such people were not buried in ’the forest of Orgovány’ – the scene of a famous massacre in 1919 where white terror brigades killed several communists and other civilians involved in the short-lived 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. Terror brigades were known to select Jewish victims, even if they were not on friendly terms with communists. Bayer argued in his defence that he was referring to communists, not Jews. Former Economy Minister Tamás Fellegi recently told a US congressional committee that it would be difficult to deny that Bayer’s famous article was racist. The day after, when Bayer was celebrating his 50th birthday, the Speaker of Parliament, László Kövér told him “we have never turned our backs on each other, and nor will we.”)
Bayer writes in Magyar Hírlap that the charges against him are lies – he never said ’Gypsies are animals’ nor that ’Jews should be buried in Orgovány’. Rather, he wrote about murderers, people unwilling to accept the common moral code and people who ‘use their putative or actual Jewish origins to defend, cover up or explain away their mistakes and sins’. He claims he is speaking about ’the unspeakable truth’ – problems that in France are associated with immigration, such as the emergence of neighbourhoods ’where the police dare not enter.’ He quotes from an interview with the mayor of a French city who says that whoever mentions these problems is labelled a racist. Bayer attributes this labelling to ’sixty-eighters’, (people influenced by the student protests of 1968) and suggests that their world – ‘global markets, multiculturalism, and the insufferable freedoms of liberal democracies’ are approaching their end. He adds ominously that ’the white Christian ‘race’ (Bayer’s quotation marks) seems to be going to its own execution place willingly.’ Such liberals, he claims, are pushing Europe, inch-by-inch towards her fall. Yet, he prophesises, ’when the monster wakes, we, the designated victims will be the only ones you can turn to for help, and we will hide you, because we are good to the point of self-annihilation.’