In the spring we already did it once, together we will succeed again in the autumn, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote regarding the fight against the coronavirus epidemic in an article published in the Monday issue of the newspaper Magyar Nemzet in which he stated his views on the struggle between liberalism and Christian democracy, the situation of Europe and the 2022 elections.

Regarding the coronavirus epidemic, the Prime Minister pointed out that we must put up a fight again, and “there will be some difficult moments, but everyone who needs it will have access to appropriate care”.

“We can and we will protect the health and lives of the people,” he stated, highlighting that in the national consultation almost two million people stated their views, and with this they decided how to fight against the virus. The will of the people is concordant: Hungary must remain up and running. We must defend ourselves against the virus in a way which enables us to protect the lives of the elderly who are most at risk, the operation of schools and nursery schools, and jobs all at once, the Prime Minister stressed.

He indicated that in the spring there was a need for a complete lockdown because we were up against an unknown enemy, we needed time to prepare health care which we have done since, and so “we won the first battle”. We have everything we need for the fight against the virus, we manufacture the necessary equipment, we are able to make as much of everything as we need, “we know which hospital receives coronavirus patients when, and we are able to send physicians and nurses to the places where they are required,” he said. He pointed out at the same time that the success of our containment effort depends on whether we all observe the rules.

“Well-prepared health care, conscientious experts, wide-ranging unity. In the spring we already did it once before, together we will succeed again in the autumn,” he stated.

“We know that in the spring of 2022 there will be elections. Until then we will continue our defence effort,” he wrote, observing that if a vaccine is released in 2021, we will have to obtain a few million doses, following which applicants will have to be vaccinated in a carefully planned fashion, and meanwhile health care will have to be strengthened continuously. He highlighted that in addition to the 70 per cent pay rise for nurses which is currently being implemented, there is also a need for a breakthrough pay rise for physicians.

Regarding the economic situation, he wrote that they do not only want to protect and preserve the level Hungary has reached in the past ten years, but they must equally ensure that everyone should be able to take a step forward also henceforth every year. Hungary cannot retire to its shell like a snail, it must keep moving forward, increase and rise in tempo like a Liszt Rhapsody, he said.

It is to be hoped that we will arrive at the 2022 elections with a successful fight against the virus, a bulked up health care, an economic growth propelled to previously unprecedented heights, full employment, a housing boom that will outsoar even earlier phases, and an additional 13th month pension which is currently being re-integrated.

“Meanwhile, we won’t have a moment’s respite from the Left either” upon whom we cannot rely even now, at the time of the gravest difficulties, at the time of a pandemic. “We can only expect subversion and undermining, the weakening of national forces and cohesion, sniping at the experts in charge of the country’s containment effort and at political leaders, betrayal in Brussels, trickery and deception. This is the Left we have. Now combined and thickened with Jobbik. They are being steamed together in the jam jar. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he said, stressing that the stakes are enormous, “in 2022, too, our freedom will be at stake”.

Mr Orbán took the view that today the greatest threat to national sovereignty is the global network professing open society which seeks to eliminate national structures. The goals of  George Soros’s network with unlimited financial and human resources are clear: with the acceleration of migration to create open societies of mixed ethnicity, to tear down national decision-making and to hand it over to the global elite.

The fight between the global elite and national resistance has not been decided yet; the global elite is not prepared to accept that a political leadership contrary to its interests should take root in Central Europe, he stressed.

He expects the global elite to use the same strategy in Hungary in the 2022 election struggle as they did in this year’s Polish presidential election campaign.

“Their means is the Left which has failed time and again, now led by Ferenc Gyurcsány, their youth organisation is Momentum, while George Soros is their billionaire sponsor. They are forces of the past who have already destroyed the country once before. While on the opposition side there are still different party logos, and sometimes one can even hear quarrelling in their ranks, in actual fact, there are no parties with a will of their own. Job done: everyone from Jobbik to LMP ground up and packed into one mass, sausage-style. Communities which once had identities of their own have been replaced with a left-wing people’s front that eagerly serves the Soros network,” he said, adding that in 2022 they are preparing for a decisive battle, “the Left will have the international media, Brussels bureaucrats and NGOs disguised as civil-society organisations behind them”.

“We should have no doubt that they will do everything they can for power and money. It’s time we ourselves mobilised and deployed our forces. After the difficult years of governance, we will have to return to the election battlefield. It’s time to get ready in order to ride out at the right moment. A great battle will await us in 2022. Prepare,” he said.

Regarding Europe, the Prime Minister wrote that the continent “can’t even see the backs” of the United States and China in the race for technological supremacy as these countries are fighting this fight on a military and economic basis. He observed that the US dollar had knocked out the euro, we were severing ourselves from the Russian market with sanctions, and we were purchasing important technologies from our competitors.

He said in the eyes of Central Europe the West has lost its appeal, while our way of life does not appear to be desirable for people in the West. In the next few years, we will have to keep Europe together against the background that there appears to be no chance for changing this historical trend. We must find a form of cooperation also in this stalemate situation until Europe’s future is decided in Italy, whether we will be heading towards the right or the left, he highlighted.

“We must remain on a path of agreements and compromises, and we must implement the grandiose financial and budgetary plans we adopted in the summer, whatever the EP might have to say. This is possible if the Germans succeed in conducting the replacement of Chancellor Merkel below a magnitude of four on the Richter scale,” he said expressing his view.

Mr Orbán wrote that the struggle launched in Tusnádfürdő years ago for intellectual sovereignty and intellectual freedom is slowly beginning to bear fruit, “the channels of rebellion against political correctness, and against the dictates of liberal doctrine, the liberal mode of speech and the liberal style are becoming ever wider,” despite the fact that the risk of punishment is significant; expulsion from academic life, the loss of one’s job, stigma, the running of the gauntlet in university circles.

“But even if we manage to push past the well-paid liberal border guards patrolling the streets with clockwork precision, we are still compelled to fight against the deeply embedded reflexes of even ever so well-meaning audiences,” he added, observing that “no matter in what velvety terms we speak about illiberal democracy,” it sounds awful to German, British and American ears; at least today it does.

However, the rebellion against liberal intellectual oppression is also deepening, not only widening, he continued, “even if they refuse to admit it in the Brussels bubble, we can already see that the emperor has no clothes.”

In his writing, the Prime Minister pointed out that the doctrine that “democracy can only be liberal” has been torn down, it seems that conservative and Christian democratic parties can finally “escape from the deadly embrace of the liberals”. Statements such as that “there is no such thing as illiberal democracy” and the like are now recorded in the book of political follies, no matter how high the places they’re coming from are, he said, pointing out that claims that the separation of the branches of power, civil and political freedoms, the protection of private property and the rule of law can only be implemented with the means of liberal democracy are flawed.

Naturally, there are also Hungarians who have already solved this riddle, but have realised “how much more pleasant it is to gather pats on the back in Brussels, accompanied by the kindly smiles of lukewarm liberal salons than to sit around here at home in Budapest as black sheep,” he wrote, adding at the same time that the “sneaking back” will start soon, just like from Moscow at one time.

Mr Orbán stressed that the basic tenets of Christian democratic and liberal thinking are diametrically opposed, and in the crosshairs of the attacks of liberals are the very things that are dearest to our hearts such as nation, family and religious traditions.

He said Christian democrats reject the liberal foreign policy that every country must be forced to accept liberal democracy. According to Christian democrats, each society is held together and in peace in different ways. “This is why we’re also rooting for Donald Trump’s victory because we know only too well the foreign policy of US Democrat administrations built on moral imperialism. Even if we were forced to, we had a taste of it. We didn’t like it, we don’t want a second helping.”

Christian democratic and liberal policies are also opposed on the issue of subsidiarity, he continued, because while the liberals take the view that it is best to delegate as many powers of our national governments to international organisations as possible, Christian democrats can see that such organisations are inevitably prone to despotism, are helpless against the penetration attempts of Soros-like networks, and if they have to choose between the citizens of individual national communities and the big dogs of global capital, they eventually always choose the latter. The citizens of European nations soon realised that today’s European institutions serve not them, but the interests of George Soros and the likes of him. They are not prepared to swallow the Brussels “fiction” that a financial speculator making money hand over fist by ruining others is only “wandering” the Brussels corridors in order to offer his selfless help to Europe, he wrote.

The Prime Minister further highlighted that liberal and conservative politics clash on the issue of migration as well. According to the liberals, there is no reason to be afraid of mass immigration because terrorism, crime, anti-Semitism and the coming into being of parallel societies are only temporary irregularities. However, the conservative-Christian democratic camp rejects this social and human experiment with an uncertain outcome because they believe that the risks of chronic intercultural tensions and violence are unacceptably great.

In his view, there are also irreconcilable differences in education policy. According to the conservatives, we must focus on characteristic national traditions, and the purpose of education is to turn our children into patriots who are able to carry on our tried and tested traditions, to reinforce the gender identity that children receive upon birth – as determined by the Creator – to help girls to become fair and respectable women and boys to become men who are able to provide security and support for their families.

Schools should protect the ideal and values of family, and should keep minors away from gender ideology and rainbow propaganda, he added. The liberals see this as the dark Middle Ages at best, and at worst as clerical fascism.

Christian democrats, however, believe that in the interest of strengthening justice, public morals and the common good, not for centuries have we had a greater need for religion, biblical traditions and our churches than today.

According to the Prime Minister’s line of thought, the only chance Christian democracy has is if it stands up for itself and utters the four statements that are capable of changing the whole of European politics: “Our basic national and Christian principles are not liberal. They came into being before liberalism. They are opposed to liberalism. Liberalism is destroying them today.”

(The Prime Minister/MTI)