Anti-Roma campaign helps ultra-right party boost its popularity

The weekly HVG comments on the fact that the extreme right-wing Movement for a Better Hungary, or Jobbik party, has overtaken the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) [a former ruling party] in the opinion polls. "It was mainly a smear campaign against the Roma that has enabled Jobbik to heighten its profile. ... With the Nazis in Germany ... it was the Jews, after World War II it was the Sudeten Germans and, particularly in Slovakia, the Hungarians, while under the Stalinist system it was the aristocrats and the entrepreneurs, and later on the kulaks [prosperous farmers]. In the eyes of the Hungarian neo-Nazis [Jobbik] the Roma have assumed the role of the 'guilty race'. They relentlessly propound their radical and deeply prejudiced judgements. ... Particularly tragic is that these exaggerated prejudices contain a grain of truth. Decades have passed yet not only the politicians, but also civil society - including the Roma elite - have failed to find a solution to the accumulated problems of the Roma."

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