The Monster at Our Door

[mgc1961]

The state authorities have their backs up against the wall in front of St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest. Three police officers, positioned in the shadow of an Art Nouveau palace, watch motionlessly as Hungary's National Front marches before their eyes.

Members of citizens' militias and neo-Nazi groups have taken over patrolling the streets on this day. In combat boots, camouflage or black military uniforms, they form human chains and divide the crowd.

Fifty thousand people have gathered in front of a speaker's platform. An easterly wind rattles the flags -- red and white striped, much like the armbands worn by members of Hungary's fascist Arrow Cross Party during World War II. The sound of speakers preaching nationalist beliefs reverberates from the loudspeakers.

"Hungary belongs to the Hungarians," the crowd hears, and that Israeli investors and their local agents are in the process of buying up the country with its 10 million inhabitants. They argue that the government doesn't care where the money comes from and that they're letting these people buy Hungary up. The currently governing Socialists, another speaker warns, will be "obliterated from the face of the Earth" and Roma will be encouraged to emigrate.

"They should leave," the crowd chants in unison, "They should leave."


More to read at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,687921,00.html

[COLGATE4]

1. The more things change... (NT)