Fighting Fascism in Hungary

As Brecht wrote of Fascism in 1945: "The beast is dead but the whore that bore him still lives." Now with increasing globalisation and the austerity programme being imposed on the people of Europe, with resulting poverty and unemployment, we are witnessing its rebirth. Terrible photos here of Fascists, in this case the Magyar Garda (paramilitary wing of the Jobbik party) marching through a village with a Roma community and deliberately taunting them. Echoes here of the Hungary of Admiral Horthy and later the Arrow Cross (the Fascist Hungarians allied to the Nazis) who deported thousands of Hungarian Jews and Roma to the death camps.

So it is really heartening to see that the young Green Party of Hungary (LMP) are standing shoulder to shoulder with the Roma communities and trying to protect them. Here is an account of what is happening, and an explanation of how the European Green Party Council meeting in Budapest last weekend was surrounded by a cordon sanitaire. Pictures here of the Fascist thugs and of a Roma activist addressing the Roma community protected by members of Amnesty International and the Hungarian Greens.

The history of this part of Europe must never be forgotten nor the fact that Roma across Central and Eastern Europe continue to suffer harassment and intimidation - which has been copied by the right wing regimes in Italy and France, the former including many of the political descendants of Mussolini, with both countries now parading their defence of human rights in Libya, while turning back both North African refugees and Roma EU citizens.

I send my total support to the LMP and to all those political forces fighting racism and Fascism in Hungary. There is no place for this in the Europe of the 21st century and the beast must be crushed.