Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London, 5 October 2024 (credit: SCREENSHOT/X)
Police in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, refused to arrest a man who sent Nazi swastikas to Jewish students, the Telegraph reported on Saturday.
The suspect sent an image of the Star of David mixed with the Nazi swastika on social media to the Union of Jewish Students with the caption “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”
The offender wrote there was “nothing endangering Jewish students” and claimed that the UJS was “exploiting them to push pro-genocide propaganda and deflect Israel’s responsibility for murdering 40,000 civilians”.
Still, the Cambridgeshire police force deemed the antisemitic act not offensive enough to be a crime.
The Telegraph reported that the incident was labeled as a non-crime hate incident (NCHI).
According to Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, this isn’t the first antisemitic incident against the UJS that was reported to the Cambridgeshire police. In October, a man used X/Twitter to send offensive messages to him and the Jewish students.
Similarly, this incident was labeled as non-criminal. An officer’s emailed response read that according to UK law, a digital message had to be “grossly offensive … a very high legal threshold to pass.”
Hearn responded, saying, “I fail to see how posting the image of race-hate swastika at Jews is not grossly offensive, particularly when the Met Police are arresting people for holding exactly that image,” the Telegraph quoted.
UK antisemitism
In April, a protester carrying a swastika sign was arrested at a Pro-Palestinian march in London on Saturday, but the outrage was sparked by a video in which a Metropolitan Police officer told a pro-Israel counter-protester that that the swastika sign had to be taken in context.
“The law is very clear – anyone displaying symbols, wording or otherwise indicating their support for a proscribed organization risks arrest,” the Metropolitan Police wrote.
The officer claimed he wasn’t sure how “everybody would feel about that sign.”
Additionally, on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre, tens of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters marched through London holding banners expressing support for Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as several signs depicting the star in the Israeli flag replaced with a Nazi swastika.
During the protest, officers made 17 arrests, according to the Met, including one person on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organization.
An asylum seeker has caused a riot in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. He is said to have burst into the church service in the parish chapel on Saturday and attacked the statue of the Virgin Mary, as reported by the Tagesanzeiger newspaper.
In the process, the Afghan allegedly hit the Black Madonna and stripped her of her clothes. According to reports, he completed his attack by placing the crown of the statue of the Virgin Mary on his head. Priests and police are said to have finally stopped the young migrant. The officers from the canton of Schwyz took the Afghan into custody, who is now in a psychiatric ward.
The monastery has since responded to the attack on its website. However, there is no information about the alleged perpetrator. Instead, there is talk of an ‘unfortunate incident’ by a ‘confused person’.
The monastery also said: ‘We deeply regret this incident and think of the many people who have had their religious feelings hurt on site. Our prayers and thoughts are with them, as well as with the person taken into custody by the police.’ The motive for the attack is still unclear.
In response to the attack, the monastery called for a rosary prayer on the following day. This would be in the spirit of ‘peace and reconciliation’.
Meanwhile, the Black Madonna is said to have suffered only minor damage. The late Gothic image of grace made of lime wood dates back to the 15th century and is also venerated by numerous pilgrims in the pilgrimage church.
A paedophile who sexually assaulted three young family members, including his stepdaughter, has been allowed to remain in Scotland after claiming deportation would breach his right to family life.
The man in his 50s, originally from central Africa, was set to be automatically deported following his conviction for sex attacks on the girls.
Despite a judge ruling he “continues to pose a risk,” his removal from the UK was blocked under European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provisions protecting family life.
The offender, identified only as “MD” in official documents, arrived in the UK in 2008 and initially had his asylum claim rejected.
Using publicly funded legal aid, he challenged the decision in court to remain in the country.
He subsequently married a British woman and had three children, also becoming stepfather to his wife’s daughter from a previous relationship.
In July 2014, a judge granted him leave to remain after accepting he had established a settled family life in the UK.
In December 2020, MD was convicted at Glasgow High Court of assault, sexual penetration and sexual assault on three young girls in his family.
The victims included his nine-year-old stepdaughter and two of her cousins.
The judge handed down a three-year prison sentence, describing it as a “particularly serious and appalling crime.”
During sentencing, the judge stated: “Not only was it sexually motivated for your own gratification, but also the offences were committed on victims in whom you had instilled trust.”
In August 2022, the Home Secretary ordered MD’s deportation under rules requiring automatic removal of foreign nationals who commit serious crimes.
However, MD appealed the order, claiming it would be “unduly harsh” for his biological children.
While a judge found MD had no legitimate claim to refugee status, deportation was blocked due to ECHR family life rights and potential negative impact on his children’s wellbeing.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Liam Kerr told the Sunday Post: “The public will be appalled that this dangerous criminal can remain in Scotland.”
“Common sense should mean that public safety is always prioritised rather than offenders,” Kerr added.
MD is now living freely in Glasgow and is permitted to see his biological children.
The Home Office said it is challenging the ruling.
A 56-year-old German man was murdered in broad daylight during a violent attack on Saturday in Hochdorf, a quiet village of 5,000 people located 20 kilometers southeast of Stuttgart.
The suspect, a 24-year-old Afghan migrant, was arrested shortly after the incident following a brief pursuit.
Police were dispatched to the scene on Kirchheimer Street at around 12:30 p.m. after receiving reports of a man having been attacked.
Emergency responders attempted to save the victim’s life but were unsuccessful. According to authorities, a sharp object is believed to have been used in the attack. Investigators stated that there was no known connection between the suspect and the victim.
Heavily armed police units, already in the area, responded quickly, supported by a police helicopter. The suspect was detained within hours after attempting to flee the scene.
An initial court hearing took place on Saturday and he remains in police custody.
A 36-member task force has been set up to investigate the case, led by the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Esslingen Criminal Directorate.
The investigation is ongoing and police are appealing for witnesses of the attack to come forward.
This incident has added to growing concerns about crime linked to migrants in Germany. Critics have highlighted issues with Germany’s migration policies, which they argue have led to an increase in violent crime.
Nouvelle dégradation de la plaque du square Samuel #Paty, au cœur du 5e arrondissement de Paris. À quelque centaines de mètres de la Cour d’assises où se déroule le procès des responsables de sa décapitation… Un incident qui en dit long sur l’influence de l’#islamisme en 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/b9nAKreRGK
Translation: The memorial plaque on Samuel Paty Square in the heart of the 5th arrondissement of Paris has been vandalized again. Just a few hundred meters from the jury court where the trial of those responsible for his beheading is taking place… An incident that says a lot about the influence of Islamism
Eldena Monastery Ruins near Greifswald (1824) – Caspar David Friedrich (Old National Gallery, Berlin).Wikimedia Commons , GalleriX, CC-PD-Mark
The latest act of senseless Western civilisational suicide comes from Nottingham University in the allegedly Christian country of England. Here, as previously reported on this website, a module upon its undergraduate English Literature course, “Chaucer and his Contemporaries,” has gained a vital new trigger-warning for the 2024/25 academic year, alerting students that the books on its reading-list may contain “incidences of violence, mental illness and [by far the worst!] expressions of Christian faith.”
As Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is famously about mediaeval Christians going on a long pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, this latter news should come as no surprise to most sensible students, who surely won’t be given similar trigger-warnings making them aware that “this book may contain expressions of Islamic faith” prior to reading The 1,001 Nights. As critics pointed out, The Canterbury Tales also features quite a lot of explicit sexual content and swearing, none of which students were cautioned about prior to their lectures. It also features a fair amount of antisemitism too, but no doubt the left-wing professors responsible for the warning considered that more a selling-point than a sticking-point.
Other texts on Nottingham’s reading-list were also labelled suspect. The classic Arthurian poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contained “Christian themes and beliefs”—woke-primed students were probably hoping it was all about environmental activism. Worse, the long narrative poem Piers Plowman, students have been warned, even goes so far as to recommend something called “Christian virtue”! Yet, for the course convenors, Christianity clearly contains precisely no virtues at all, so has to be expressly warned against.
As a University spokesman explained, the English Department’s trigger-warning “does not assume that all our students come from a Christian background,” a euphemistic admission that, given Britain’s shifting demographics, many of them these days will be Muslims: according to the 2021 census, around 12% of the city’s population is Islamic. If the Sheriff of Nottingham is increasingly now being substituted with the Sharif of Nottingham, then the traditional culture of the inhabitants must be systematically diluted and ‘problematised’ in this fashion, in a probable prelude to being replaced.
As the French prophet of demographic doom Renaud Camus has accurately warned, in order for a Great Replacement successfully to occur, an initial prior Great Deculturation must first take place, thereby manufacturing consent for this process amongst an ignorant and deracinated populace who no longer see anything in their own ancestral heritage worth defending.
The Battle of the Books
The Chief Executive of UK pressure group Christian Concern, Andrea Williams, responded to Nottingham University’s actions as follows:
The Bible is foundational to understanding the history of English literature. Without an understanding of the Christian faith there will be no way for students to access the world of Chaucer and his contemporaries … It’s ludicrous to issue such trigger warnings. From what point in history are we going to censor literary texts, given most [historical ones] are steeped in [a] Christian worldview? … To censor expressions of the Christian faith is to lose our literary heritage.
Williams is correct, but perhaps she fails to see that causing the young people of the West to “lose our literary heritage” is the whole point. Curricula in many contemporary English Literature courses on either side of the Atlantic appears increasingly designed to put people off reading what we once called ‘the classics’ by filling students’ heads with the idea that such books are nothing but worthless filth packed with racism, colonialism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and all the rest. And, by deliberately murdering Great Books in this way, today’s left-wing cultural gatekeepers thereby act ultimately to murder the Good Book too—namely, the Bible.
Everywhere we look, the West is killing its own fathers and grandfathers: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Nelson, Washington, and Churchill all are now revealed as having been worthless bigots. This strikes me as nothing so much as a form of purest civilisational euthanasia.
The story about Nottingham University broke at the same time as news about the UK’s new left-wing Labour Party Government making moves to ensure a parliamentary vote takes place on the issue of medically assisted dying. This measure is intended only to speed up the demise of the terminally ill, but one fear is that it will allow people to put pressure on their ‘burdensome’ aged relations to hurry up and die so they can squander the family inheritance as they see fit.
It strikes me that this is comparable to what professors like those at Nottingham University are seeking to do: to force the old West into hurrying up and dying, so the civilisational slate can be wiped wholly clean to Year Zero and an entirely new society then be built on its deliberately forgotten rubble. The chief long-lingering hospitalised patient in need of being put out of its misery, of course, is Christianity. In killing Christianity, we are truly killing our civilisation’s father; euthanising The Canterbury Tales is just one expression of this process.
Annihilation Nation
I thought of these issues recently whilst writing a review of the celebrated French novelist Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Annihilation. The book is about the Annihilation of old Catholic France in a worn-out 21st century secular West being rapidly invaded by Islam, and the personal Annihilation of one of the main characters, Paul, who effectively chooses suicide by refusing treatment for his cancer.
Having no will to live, France and the character Paul alike select death for themselves. Houellebecq’s wider oeuvre as a whole tries to demonstrate how all this has come about due to the slow, lingering after-effects of the nation losing its historic Catholic faith. This loss has left the French people with no obvious reason to go on living beyond short-term pleasures of personal satisfaction like sex and consumer gratification. For this, Houellebecq has sometimes been labelled as a secret ‘crypto-Catholic,’ but this is not so. For many years an atheist, he is today an agnostic, but one who can still clearly see that, by abandoning Christianity, the West has chosen a path towards euthanizing itself—a path our politicians foolishly and blindly mislabel as ‘progress.’
In his books, Houellebecq demonstrates clearly how this sad process occurred, demonstrating how free-market forces and the (ironically compulsory) idea of consumer choice in the modern, post-WWII world have divided Westerners from one another, thereby preventing them from so much as wishing to reproduce themselves.
As the post-war French countryside emptied itself through mass urbanisation, Houellebecq explains in his 1998 breakthrough novel Atomised, “the possible opportunities for a future spouse became almost infinite, just as the [free-market concept of consumer-] choice itself became of the utmost importance.” This especially became the case once equally free and easy access to cheap contraception appeared on the open market. Once people took advantage of these new, consumerism-modelled sexual opportunities, divorce-rates soared and the nuclear family promptly imploded.
Houellebecq himself came from a broken home, raised by his Communist grandmother after his feckless hippie mum had swanned off to Brazil with her latest toyboy. In Atomised, he provided a fictionalised portrait of her general inadequacy, culminating with her imaginary equivalent dying, wholly unlamented, whilst her son sits by her sickbed impatiently playing Tetris until Game Over. Once he had become famous, the author’s real mother then published an egotistical 400-page roman à clef trying unsuccessfully to justify her previous actions, before embarking on a book-tour in which, to drum up further custom, she called her child “a sorry little pr*ck.”
The cycle of emotional familial deprivation then inevitably continued, with Houellebecq becoming remote from his own son. Asked in an interview whether he loved him, Houellebecq Sr replied “I suppose so,” but added that instead of having any more kids “I’d rather have a dog, they’re easier to satisfy.”
Merci Killing
I suppose what Houellebecq really means here is that, if you just have a dog as a ‘pet-child’ substitute for a human one, it will be easier to satisfy your own personal desires in life, rather than having to make any meaningful sacrifices for the next generation. And yet, ultimately, if this kind of attitude spreads too far across society and becomes the norm, then the simple laws of demographics mean your parent society becomes doomed in the long run. Already, falling native French birth-rates leave politicians importing young workers from other cultures en masse to fill jobs, ironically often as care-workers and nurses looking after the (frequently childless) elderly. The end result is that the nation is already around 10% Muslim, which may even become a majority a century from now.
Is this not also a kind of euthanasia? Yes, but it is simultaneously something much worse: the self-centred murder of others around you who do not necessarily themselves also want to die.
Houellebecq still retains enough of his old ancestral morality to be a public opponent of euthanasia, and makes one of his characters, Cecile, into a Catholic who chides her brother Paul when she realises he has refused cancer treatment: “You might imagine that your life belongs to you but that’s wrong. Your life belongs to the people who love you … you belong to other people, even if you don’t know it.” But, it seems many people of a left-wing bent these days don’t know it, and so are forcing shared collective civilisational suicide upon their peers, who actually wish both themselves and their wider historic way of culture to go on existing.
In Houellebecq’s pessimistic view, even France’s priests will probably ultimately knuckle down and go along with the future introduction of easy legalised medical euthanasia into society:
[Catholics will do their best to resist, but, sad to say, we have more or less got used to the idea that the Catholics always lose … I do not have a lot of illusions … faiths will end up by giving way and submitting to the yoke of ‘Republican law.’ Their priests, rabbis, or imams will in future visit euthanasia candidates to tell them that yes, it is an ugly business, but tomorrow will be better, and that even if people have abandoned them, God will take care of them. Let us be honest about that.
In an essay about Vincent Lambert, a semi-comatose Frenchman euthanised in 2019 following a road-accident, Houellebecq quoted G.K. Chesterton’s (reputed) old assessment of Sparta, where the frail and disabled were left exposed to the elements alone to die, to the effect that this now extinct nation prided itself on efficiency, “and, for this reason, disappeared without a trace.” As Houellebecq says: “Our society, too, likes to boast of its efficiency; it will disappear, like Sparta, and maybe all that will remain is the uncertain memory of a shame, the shadow of a certain disgust.”
That “certain disgust” today is for Christianity, the aged, hospital-bed-ridden parent of us all, as demonstrated conclusively by the recent treatment of Geoffrey Chaucer and his dangerous and upsetting references to “Christian faith.” Here is a good, far more honest, trigger-warning which Nottingham University should put on their English Literature course for their students to read instead: “Your professors want to groom you to murder your own parents.”
Will we really just lie back quietly and let such Doctors of Death go on handing out the civilisational morphine? For when some patients don’t actually want to receive it, that isn’t ‘assisted dying’ at all: it’s murder.
On today’s #NCFWhittle we are joined by journalist and author James Bartholomew of the Museum of Communist Terror and the Foundation for the History of Totalitarianism. Book discussed: “At Dawn they Came: Soviet Terror & Repression 1917-1953” by Giles Udy. Order here: Contact or support the Foundation for the History of Totalitarianism here: https://historyoftotalitarianism.com/…
A man was fatally shot and neutralised by police on Sunday morning in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (Val-de-Marne) during a police operation over a neighbourhood dispute. The suspect is said to have targeted the law enforcement officers with a handgun. According to Actu17, the suspect was well known to the police for drug offences and glorification of terrorism.
The attack took place shortly after 6 a.m. on Place Pierre-Semard, near the commune’s RER station and about one kilometre from the police station. According to initial findings, the suspect pointed a handgun at the police officers when they arrived in the common areas of the building and shouted ‘Allah Akbar’. One of the three officers then opened fire and injured the suspect, who was seriously wounded. The emergency services treated him quickly but were unable to resuscitate him. The suspect was in an ‘agitated’ state at the time of the attack, according to a source familiar with the case. Shortly before the police arrived, the 30-year-old is said to have knocked on a neighbour’s door for reasons yet to be clarified. The neighbour then alerted the police. An autopsy will be carried out to determine whether the suspect had been consuming alcohol or drugs at the time of the offence.
Professor Kathryn Yusoff argues in her work ‘Geologic Life’ that the study of earth’s rocks and natural resources is fundamentally connected to colonial practices and racism Queen Mary University of London
A professor at Queen Mary University of London has claimed that geology is “riven by systemic racism” and linked to white supremacy in a new book.
Professor Kathryn Yusoff argues in her work ‘Geologic Life’ that the study of earth’s rocks and natural resources is fundamentally connected to colonial practices and racism.
A professor at Queen Mary University of London has claimed that geology is “riven by systemic racism” and linked to white supremacy in a new book.
Professor Kathryn Yusoff argues in her work ‘Geologic Life’ that the study of earth’s rocks and natural resources is fundamentally connected to colonial practices and racism.
She also labels palaeontology as “pale-ontology”, suggesting the study of fossils has enabled racism.
In her book, Professor Yusoff contends that geology began as a “colonial practice” that led “toward the white supremacy of the planet”.
She argues that the theft of land, mining and other geological aspects of colonialism resulted in what she terms “geotrauma”.
“Geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis”, she claims in the book, which focuses on geological practices from the 17th to 19th centuries.
The academic also suggests that the study of rocks is “racialised”, writing that “to tell a story of rocks is to account for a eugenic materialism in which white supremacy made surfaces built on racialised undergrounds”.
Professor Yusoff, who describes herself as a professor of “inhuman geography” at Queen Mary University, makes striking claims about racial relationships with the earth.
“Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,” she wrote in her book.
This perspective forms part of her broader argument about the relationship between geology and racial hierarchies.
Her work examines how geological practices have shaped racial dynamics and environmental exploitation over three centuries.
This comes amid broader demands to decolonise university courses across the UK, backed by official bodies including the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education.
This movement, which began in social sciences and humanities, is now spreading to hard science and mathematics subjects.
It draws on critical race theory to argue that knowledge taught in universities is predominantly male and white.
Activists claim this knowledge has been used to attain and perpetuate Western global domination through racism and injustice.
The push for decolonisation has gained traction among activist students and lecturers at various institutions.
However, the claims have faced strong criticism from other academics who view them as undermining scientific principles.
Dr John Armstrong, a reader in financial mathematics at King’s College London, said: “The programme of decolonisation is politically contentious, anti-scientific and consistently associated with calls to lower academic standards.”
Chris McGovan, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, dismissed the assertions entirely.
He said: “Geology is no more racist than ‘fish ‘n chips’! It is an entirely neutral term. Those seeking to decolonise the curriculum are, in fact, building their own sinister empire of thought-control and intolerance.”
McGovan added that practices like mining are “almost as old as mankind and not race-dependent”.
“Thank you for the honor! We are building a strong Europe, proud of its traditions and based on sovereign nations. It is in vain for the left to try to stop us by any means if the majority of the people are with us. We will bring the change they voted for and make Europe great again! I will undertake the lion’s share of this work,” she wrote on Facebook.
“The first important lesson from President Trump’s campaign and victory is the following. We must take bold positions and be able to speak about them loudly and clearly. And may I say that there is no need to shift to the center because the center has already shifted toward us,” he said.
Using migration as an example, he highlighted that Trump committed to deporting 100 percent of illegals, and this is what Americans voted for. “This is the kind of brave leadership we need: Clear, decisive, and confident,” Orbán added, emphasizing that the Patriots for Europe group will stand strong against gender ideology, war, and migration.
In their press release from October, the Patriots reminded people that “protecting the external borders of the EU is a duty, not a crime.” It also condemned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her attacks on Orbán in the European Parliament over his stance on migration and European competitiveness but most pointedly regarding Orbán’s peace mission to Moscow and criticism of the EU’s response to the war; during the session, the EC president directly insinuated he was bringing shame to the Hungarian freedom fighters of 1956.
Orbán replied bluntly at the time about the EC, “Rather than being a guardian of the treaties, it’s a political body, a political weapon.”
However, much has changed since then. After Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S., Hungary hosted a successful EPC gathering, its largest diplomatic event ever, followed by an informal meeting of the European Council. Von der Leyen issued a statement afterward thanking “dear Viktor” for his “outstanding hospitality and organisation,” further detailing a roadmap for Europe to move forward and regain its competitiveness according to the adopted Budapest Declaration. The change in tone was real.
“Hungarian diplomacy has not been this strong in a hundred years,” Orbán said at the time, predicting that Hungary is now in a position to “inspire necessary reforms.” Such action will be the focal point of all members of the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament.
Yesterday in the French capital, the Patriots for Europe group, the third strongest faction in the European Parliament, elected its leaders. The group was formed last June by Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO), and Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl, whose party recently won elections in Austria, although legacy parties controversially then refused to name him chancellor and allow him to form a government.
Other parties in the grouping now include France’s National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, and the Dutch Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders.
Santiago Abascal, chairman of the Spanish Vox party, was elected president of the Patriots, with Hungarian PM Orbán congratulating him on X.
“The Brussels elite wants to silence us, but we will not give in! We don’t represent Brussels bureaucrats, we represent the European people. Our mandate is clear: protecting European families, stopping migration and restoring Europe’s competitiveness,” he posted with the hashtags #MEGA and #Patriots
Congratulations to @Santi_ABASCAL on his election as President of the @PatriotsEU Party. The Brussels elite wants to silence us, but we will not give in! We don’t represent Brussels bureaucrats, we represent the European people. Our mandate is clear: protecting European families,… pic.twitter.com/BHpE63QLSZ
“Thank you for the honor! We are building a strong Europe, proud of its traditions and based on sovereign nations. It is in vain for the left to try to stop us by any means if the majority of the people are with us. We will bring the change they voted for and make Europe great again! I will undertake the lion’s share of this work,” she wrote on Facebook.
“The first important lesson from President Trump’s campaign and victory is the following. We must take bold positions and be able to speak about them loudly and clearly. And may I say that there is no need to shift to the center because the center has already shifted toward us,” he said.
Using migration as an example, he highlighted that Trump committed to deporting 100 percent of illegals, and this is what Americans voted for. “This is the kind of brave leadership we need: Clear, decisive, and confident,” Orbán added, emphasizing that the Patriots for Europe group will stand strong against gender ideology, war, and migration.
In their press release from October, the Patriots reminded people that “protecting the external borders of the EU is a duty, not a crime.” It also condemned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her attacks on Orbán in the European Parliament over his stance on migration and European competitiveness but most pointedly regarding Orbán’s peace mission to Moscow and criticism of the EU’s response to the war; during the session, the EC president directly insinuated he was bringing shame to the Hungarian freedom fighters of 1956.
Orbán replied bluntly at the time about the EC, “Rather than being a guardian of the treaties, it’s a political body, a political weapon.”
However, much has changed since then. After Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S., Hungary hosted a successful EPC gathering, its largest diplomatic event ever, followed by an informal meeting of the European Council. Von der Leyen issued a statement afterward thanking “dear Viktor” for his “outstanding hospitality and organisation,” further detailing a roadmap for Europe to move forward and regain its competitiveness according to the adopted Budapest Declaration. The change in tone was real.
“Hungarian diplomacy has not been this strong in a hundred years,” Orbán said at the time, predicting that Hungary is now in a position to “inspire necessary reforms.” Such action will be the focal point of all members of the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament.
