Far-right ‘Our Homeland’ Party becomes third-largest party in Hungarian Parliament

A far-right political party has won seven seats in Hungary’s general election.

Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) won 6.7% of the vote in the election, which means that it is now not only in Parliament for the first time, but it has also become Hungary’s third-largest party.

Our Homeland was founded in 2018 after a split with the nationalist Jobbik party, which first came to Europe-wide attention in the 2009 European Parliament elections. The President of the European Jewish Congress has described Jobbik as an “unashamedly neo-Nazi party” and, elsewhere, the Party has been referred to as an “antisemitic organisation”. Jobbik’s use of well-known antisemitic canards about Jewish financial control has been called “overt antisemitism” and antisemitic rhetoric has even been described as Jobbik’s “trademark”.

The Party has, however, spent the last seven years recasting itself as a moderate conservative party. Our Homeland was formed by former Jobbik members unhappy with this rebranding exercise.

Though Rabbi Shlomó Köves, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox EMIH-Association of Hungarian Jewish Communities, has described Hungary as one of the safest places for Jews to live in Europe, the emergence of Our Homeland as an electoral force has drawn concern from Hungary’s 100,000-strong Jewish community. 

However, Rabbi Köves also made a point of saying that in the past, both Jobbik and Our Homeland “openly had racism and antisemitism on their agenda.”

“Both at this point are not openly making antisemitic statements, but they’re very dangerous. And the real problem that I see is that since the left joined Jobbik [to oppose Fidesz], if in the future anyone else in the government would want to cooperate with Mi Hazank — not that it seems necessary for any reason — but it would be very hard to argue why they shouldn’t do it.

“Throughout this whole [opposition building] process there’s been a legitimisation of these extreme-right neo-Nazi groups.” 

Our Homeland’s criticisms of globalisation have been described as being “spiced up” with antisemitic conspiracy theories, including references to a “global elite”, the Jewish Hungarian financier George Soros, and the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Hungary’s controversial long-time Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, and his national-conservative Fidesz Party, won Sunday’s election, increasing its vote by about twenty points and gaining two parliamentary seats. This marks Mr Orbán’s fourth successive term as Prime Minister, his fifth in total.

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