Orbán: West has lost sight of its mission

Noting that Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford University, had criticised the Hungarian government for ideas he called dangerous for the EU, Orbán insisted there were indeed cultural, spiritual and political differences mounting between central Europe and western Europeans.

In a speech at Budapest’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Orbán said the West had bestrode the globe for 400 years with a sense of exceptionalism and a mission which gave it inspiration and self-confidence. But at the start of the 21st century Western civilisation had started to confront serious challenges.

A “woke” neo-Marxism, he said, was taking hold in America, while Europe was beset by a Muslim demographic, political and economic tide, creating a new state of affairs in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Austria. The West, said Orbán, was not up to the task of providing adequate political solutions to such problems.

In the English-language post available at https://primeminister.hu/vikstories/samizdat-no-12, Orbán wrote: “In my view, there is a Central European cultural, intellectual and political entity that is growing more and more different from Western Europe; but this is not hazardous, it is not a threat. It is, in fact, a blessing for the European Union and even Western Europe.”