Hungarian Diplomacy in the Fast Lane

Despite the fact that Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó could be a prime subject for the study of the effects of jet-lag on the human body for his break-neck pace in visiting foreign countries, Western media and liberal politicians use Hungary as a byword for political isolation. This woeful campaign aiming to depict the country as a lonely pariah that no one wants to be seen with is becoming increasingly hard to maintain.

“Orbán is lonelier than ever on the European stage”, writes the British Labour Party’s newspaper, The Guardian in its headline. The George Soros supported progressive blog, Balkan Insight claims that Orbán is only building bridges towards the Turkic states because he is isolated in Europe. The French left-wing newspaper, Le Mond is also convinced that the Hungarian Prime Minister is more isolated than ever, and that is the only reason why he vetoes some EU proposals. Politicians do not want to be left out of the “isolation narrative” either. The German Green Party politician, known for his near-hysterical Hungarophobic outbursts, Daniel Freund, also wrote proudly on his social media account that “Viktor Orban keeps driving his country into further isolation”. And to quote just one of the NGO-type supporters of this claim, one could bring up the German Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the institution that has been at the core of dismantling German identity. They also claim on their website with bold letters: “Visegrad shaken to its core, Hungary in isolation”.

After a few weeks when the Hungarian Prime Minister had met with the Chinese and Russian leaders in the east, held talks with the Spanish and French leaders in the west, and a dozen world-leaders in between, it is fair to say that in its modern history Hungary has never been less isolated than this. Parts of the Hungarian media even claimed that President Volodymyr Zelensky had accepted Javier Milei’s invitation to attend his inauguration in Buenos Aires only to confront Viktor Orbán about his stance on Ukraine’s EU accession. These claims are hard to substantiate but are not entirely implausible either, as photos of a very emphatic Zelensky, and a very nonplussed Orbán suggested after their meeting.

Western activist media’s continued efforts to depict Hungarian diplomacy as isolated and on the fringes increasingly resembles a scene from the legendary comedy, Monty Python. Apart from Spain, France, Argentina, Russia, Brazil, China, Ukraine and the EU, who is talking to the Hungarian government? Absolutely no one!

The myth of isolation, as implausible as it is, remains one of the main whips used to try to push Hungary into the corner for its refusal to cow-tow to the European institutions’ power grab efforts and to open its borders to mass migrations, its society to multiculturalism. Interpretations, however, differ on what this campaign to project an image of an isolated Hungary really wants to achieve. It is most likely an instrument of deterrent towards other governments who would also contemplate formulating an independent, national sovereignty-, and national interest-centered policy opposing the will of supra-national institutions and players.

In less than a week’s time the Turkish President is visiting Budapest and will dilute Hungary’s “splendid isolation” even further, as the British used to call it in the past when they still had control over their own borders. Nevertheless, headlines warning the rest of the democratic world of not falling into the trap of isolationist policy like Hungary will no doubt continue into the future. All facts considered though, this desperate disinformation campaign cannot be considered as anything else but a feeble attempt to distract from the increasingly untenable anarchy that the global left had sunk its own societies into from Western Europe to the U.S.

Featured Image: Facebook Viktor Orbán