Counter-Currents
Video of the Day
Viktor Orbán: Say Goodbye to the Elite of ’68
Video of the Day
80 words / 42:33
This a complete video, with English subtitles, of Viktor Orbán’s recent speech in Transylvania, in which he highlighted his accomplishments and outlined a vision of a renewed Central Europe pursuing its own geopolitical interests, but also being a region based on illiberalism, national sovereignty, and Christian values, as well as the rejection of non-European immigration and the values of the ’68 generation. Orbán’s annual summer speeches in Transylvania are always his clearest statements of his ideological goals. The text is here.
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10 comments
Whilst I agree with the values he espouses, and wish deeply that we, romanians, had at least one politician to match his balls, I can’t help but feel that him holding the speech in Transylvania is an indirect jab at our autonomy and independence.
Transylvania, while always being ethnically romanian, was once a conquered part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (prior to the treaty of Trianon). Once they’ve lost it, some never stopped wanting back the territories.
Apparently you didn’t know this, but Fidesz has been holding the Summer Free University at Tusnádfürdő every summer since 1989, and Orbán always gives a speech at them. Surely your government wouldn’t have been allowing the camp to take place for nearly 30 years if they thought there was something aggressive in it. The camps are said, in part, to be held in the spirit of “Romanian-Hungarian Dialogue.”
You also seem to have forgotten that historically, Transylvania was as much ethnically Hungarian and German as it was Romanian.
I meant to cause no strife, but we have our reasons to be mistrustful of outsiders and government. The 89 revolution was a coup where the festering thieves under Ceacescu got rid of the only man who could keep them in check, then destroyed the industry, indebted the country (Ceacescu surprised the IMF , paying off the country’s debt beforehand) and sold it bit by bit. Ceacescu was misguided, but he was a patriot. That’s more than can be said than any who came after him, as reflected in our massive emigration and low trust in government. If they could get favors or support from the various minority blocks by selling us out, no doubt they would.
Anyway, I digress. I have great respect for Orbán, he does his people proud. They’re just not my people:
https://www.romaniajournal.ro/photo-stirs-discontent-viktor-orban-and-the-map-of-hungary-including-transylvania/
Maybe it’s a balkan thing to have our knives pointed at each others throats until some bigger enemy comes along. There’s no denying history here has been …different from the West. Against the common threat of muslims and globalists, we’ll fight together, as we always have.
Haven’t the Balkans yet taken to heart the Globalist mantra “Diversity is our strength”?
Everyone has reasons to be mistrustful. It works both ways. This incident from earlier this year didn’t exactly help the situation, either: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-romania-row/hungary-summons-romanian-ambassador-over-pms-remarks-threatening-ethnic-hungarians-idUSKBN1F11F9
Actually, the various ethnic groups in Transylvania got along quite well until the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, so history there doesn’t exactly confirm what you say about constantly having knives at each others’ throats. That’s a pretty modern phenomenon. You managed to get rid of us Saxons quite thoroughly, but based on what I’ve seen and heard when I’m there, it doesn’t seem that it improved the region much.
But rather than arguing from ancient history about whether Transylvania is Romanian, Hungarian, German, or whatever, why can’t we see it as an example – at least in previous eras – of several different European ethnicities living and working side-by-side and yet retaining their own identities and autonomy? It could be an example of the sort of Europe we want to see today. The way to save Europe isn’t by keeping alive long-simmering conflicts but by realizing that we have a lot to gain by emphasizing the commonalities and the positives. Since dwelling on the negatives is only going to keep us on the road to losing everything.
You managed to get rid of us Saxons quite thoroughly, but based on what I’ve seen and heard when I’m there, it doesn’t seem that it improved the region much.
That … was a tragedy. We have the first wave of communists to thank for that. Along with the destruction of the land owners. The animosity was never among the general population .We are hesitant of hungarians … well, not we as a whole, more those of us living in Transylvania, because they conquered the region in the past, and some still claim it. Some make us to be the invaders. Some don’t learn the language.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Ethnic-map-of-Romania-2011.png
It must not be easy for them, either. They ended up more or less surrounded, cut off from their mother country, a land within a land.
But apart from some hungarian animosity in Transilvania and russian animosity in Moldova, we’re not particularly xenofobic. When charlie hebdo made a gypsy-esque caricature of Simona Halep, our reaction towards the french was more like a hurt little brother, than anything else.
By far the greatest threat I see to us is gypsies. I’d rather see the country split up and repopulated in its entirety than have it turn into another India.
https://www.amren.com/features/2017/12/is-romania-part-of-the-west-gypsy/
Thank you, I’m glad some Romanians, at least, recognize that now.
I understand about the gypsies although, speaking as an outside observer, I’d say the biggest threats to Romania right now are America and the EU.
Zero:
Until recently- 1945, then after 1989-, a good part of the inhabitants of Transylvania were Germans who first came there in the early 13th century. Transylavania in German is Siebenbürgen. One well-known member of that community was Hermann Oberth, the space travel and rocket pioneer.The Germans are mostly gone now. There are, however still many Hungarians.
I consider the current situation of Transylvania another example of the inability of the authors of the Dictate of Versailles -in this case Trianon- to formulate an outcome of the First War which didn’t carry destructive potential in it. Unless Rumania assumes the model of France, Czecho-Slovakia or Poland to simply eradicate any German remnants-France by systematic institutional disrespect of the German culture and education in the provinces it took from Germany, Poland and Czecho-Slovakia by driving them away in the areas they incorporated into their territory (that’s also how most of the Germans left Siebenbürgen after 1945), there will remain the presence of a self-confident Hungarian segment in Transylavania with the consequent expectations of some autonomy and attachment to Hungary.
I thought the Wallachians originally migrated to Transylvania from Albania, Thracia, Macedonia in the Byzantium, only becoming Rumelians/Rumanians sometime after 1860.
The ethno-genisis of Romanians comes from the Roman invasion of the ancient kingdom of Dacia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dacia_82_BC.png (the borders encircle what is modern day Romania and Moldova) . As for Transylvania, the earliest know Hungarian history book , Gesta Hungarorum , (written cca. 1200) , which describes the Hungarian conquest of the carpathian Basin cca 900, attests to the existence of various rulers and alliances in the area that resisted the conquest, including Vlachs/Wallachians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelou . It took us a while to become a unified country again (usually we were broken up into smaller kingdoms, as much as we could maintain our autonomy from the ottomans, hungarians, or whomever else was invading), but we where always there.
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