Viktor Orbán: “There is no Such Thing as a Communist Regime With a Human Face”

On June 19 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke at the dedication of a memorial for the victims of the Soviet occupation. Below are excerpts from the prime minister’s remarks.

Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

4:00   Europe is the home of epoch-making ideas,
4:04   and also of destructive ideologies.
4:08   National Socialism, International Communism —
4:12   moreover modern Imperialism, which herded
4:16   nations into a colonial fate, bowed its head first
4:20   to the west of us. We should be proud
4:24   that Hungary is a country that
4:28   never produced oppressive ideologies and
4:32   never wanted to condemn anybody to a colonial existence.
4:36   Our nation is the commonsensical people’s country.
4:40   We know that placidity, freedom, independence,
4:44   important not only for us, and that is why we accept and respect
4:48   the right of other nations for the same thing. In Western Europe
4:52   the Left still celebrated Communism when
4:56   millions died in the clench of the red dictatorships.
5:00   Moreover, the European Left still
5:04   views the sins of Communism through a hazy lens
5:08   of peculiar refraction. The statues of Communist
5:12   leaders still stand in the
5:16   minds of number of European politicians.
5:20   They are not willing to acknowledge that the road to the unification
5:24   of Europe led through the toppling of
5:28   of the sculptures of Marx and Lenin. We know there is
5:32   no such thing as a Communist regime with a human face.
5:36   The real face of Communism is called: GULAG!
5:40   Respected ladies and gentleman: From time to time
5:44   the spirit of Marx, Lenin and the re-education camps still
5:48   emerges in Europe. The democratic Italian election
5:52   did not reflect Brussels’ preference,
5:56   and in response there were some who said that
6:00   the markets would teach the Italians how to vote.
6:04   There are some who want to hit us with all kind of proceedings,
6:08   only because we see the world differently and we
6:12   do not want to become an migrant-accepting country.
 

12 thoughts on “Viktor Orbán: “There is no Such Thing as a Communist Regime With a Human Face”

  1. I wonder if any of the liberal socialists in this country heard what Viktor said. And to think that Nixon bailed on them in 1956.

  2. “If you want a vision of the future [of any totalitarian regime], imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” George Orwell

  3. Correct, there’s no such thing as “communism with a human face”, and I remember that expression from my own experience with that ideology, in more than one communist country, I might add. To that, many leftists hurry to answer, that there certainly is such thing as “socialism with human face”, and if there is a “system with human face” at all, socialism is it. Socialism it’s when hardworking people are being robbed of their earnings, which then are being given to those who work less hard, or not at all. When the first group has nothing more to give, the communism starts: everyone becomes equally poor (except for the ruling elites, aka hyenas, or vultures) and this is the “equality of outcome”: the only possible outcome of socialism, if applied long enough, so that available resources have been used, depleted, wasted. We always called the spade the spade, and even when our Dear Leaders insisted that we lived in a socialist state, we all knew it was communism, because one leads to another, and anything else is just semantics. Victor Orban knows that and he is my hero.

    • What bears out your contention, interestingly enough, is the experience of the Pilgrims during the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The original form of government and economy was a socialist style commune. What they found rather hurriedly was that human nature was predisposed to laziness (Newton’s laws of motion and inertia I suppose). Those who were hard workers ended up feeding the slothful. Governor Bradford quickly realized the error and informed the colony that everyone was responsible for their own welfare. The result was the Puritan Work Ethic which said, “If I work hard I will be well off, (maybe).”

      • Both English colonies, Virginia and Massachusetts, tried a form of socialism. Each one failed in the way you describe, even though the punishments for failure to work was time spent in the stocks and public shaming.

        Washington’s first biographer, also the first Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Marshall, described the experiences of two vastly different cultures in his five-volume book on early American and the formation of Geo Washington:

        https://amzn.to/2yzP6vz

        So it wasn’t a “Puritan” ethic so much as it was an experience of immigrants who were determined to make their experiment work and whose existence depended on the work of everyone. Too bad we were led down the primrose path by 20th-century socialism.

        • One should not blame the poor protestant settlers. I remind of the fact that the ships were mainly manned with ” scoundrels and saints” as it was called then.
          The major part of the crew were paupers and orphans gathered in the slums from London to Leiden and Utrecht.
          The dissenters could be called ” Gutmenschen”, because they thought themselves able to educate and lead their human freight on the path of virtue. Under conditions of crudest survival in America this often worked. The english ‘ poor laws’ of the elizabethan period had harsher mesures ready( tread mills).

          • The form of economic governance chosen by either colony had little bearing on their religion. “Poor protestants” were they all. WASP is not a figure of speech after all.

            The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was Puritan in origin; Benjamin Franklin – among many others – fled the oppression to settle in a more benign atmosphere, e.g., the Quaker territory in Pennsylvania. But the Commonwealth of Virginia was from the beginning a commercial enterprise designed to show a profit for its investors; it was settled largely by second sons who had no hope of an inheritance in England. As such, it had more need of indentured servants than did the Bay Colony.

            However, you’re right: both places brought with them the rigid class structures of the old country and those didn’t fade until the Industrial Revolution began in the 19th century (in England, spreading here a bit later). It was this “Revolution” that put fatally changed the old class system in the new world. That, and the vastness of the new continent.

    • Socialism is like trying to draw a straight line with a curved ruler while someone stands over you watching that you don’t cheat.

      Communism is like trying to draw a curved line with a straight ruler because not to do so would be to cheat.

      • Dictatorship is where you must draw the kind of straight line you are told to.

        Democracy is where you have a choice of lines you can draw, they are all the same and you find out later if you picked the right one.

        Anarchism is where you are told to draw a straight line but you don’t.

        Fascism is where you have to draw lots of straight lines together till you can’t tell one from the other, and then draw an extra large one through them and call that the answer.

        Monarchism is where you have to draw a straight line while bowed.

        Classical liberalism is where you have to draw a straight line that makes sense.

        Neo liberalism is where you subcontract the drawing of a line by selling public property to the cheapest bidder.

        Unionism is where if you don’t like the condition of the ruler you throw the paper to the floor and block the doorway so no one else has to use it.

        Nazism, you vil draw ze line!

        Globalism is where you must draw a straight line that forms a circle.

        Consevatism is where you must draw the right kind of straight line.

        Multiculturism is where you must draw a multicoloured line that is happy.

        Nationalism is where you must draw a line where people will ask if they can cross it.

        Racism is where you must draw an invisible coloured line everywhere.

  4. When communism was about to fall in Albania, some fairly healthy men complained “where will I eat that I can’t work?” Now I admit that I am healthier than him and can work more. But he grossly exaggerates that he can’t work. And then again, where am I in the picture that he can’t work? He is poorer than most today, but who cares?

    • People don’t like change to routine even if that change may equally bring them more , and they don’t like feeling they are going to do less well in future, even if they are still going to be very well off compared to many others in the world.

      It is a question of security, and of not wanting to feel of less or no importance, of not wanting to lose the “tribal setting” you once enjoyed.

      In reality we would all do well to instead plan for and arrange a more independent approach to life, I think, it is really not good to be fully dependent on one source. So for me that means no debt and low outgoings, keeping a garden or knowing how to, own energy supply, learning different “trades ” ( e.g. learning to keep poultry, or I enjoy metal detecting so know I can literally find money anywhere if I have to) – won’t make a person rich, but will make them much more self confident, will take away much of the fear of “falling into the hands” of those they would prefer not to, etc.

  5. David Horowitz is a must-read for anyone harboring illusions about Communism and socialism and their poisoning of the Western (mostly American, because that’s what he had experiance with) left.

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