Fidesz invokes 1956 to cast opponents as new communists

The event began with a welcome address by Gábor Szűcs, the host of the occasion, followed by a collective singing of the national anthem.

The Fidesz MP, who spoke from behind a podium bearing the inscription “Free Hungary”, drew a parallel between the current situation and 1956, emphasising that 70 years ago the heroes of ’56 had fought against a regime that kept the population in fear through the ÁVH, and that today they once again find themselves facing such an organisation.

“It just runs under a different name now (…) that is roughly the only difference between the old and the new communists” — he said, adding that today “we must win back our freedom once again.”

Referring to the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office, which Fidesz has dubbed the new ÁVH, he said it has the same purpose as the “old ÁVH” — the elimination of political opponents and the consolidation of a one-party system.

He also said that on 12 April there had been a “representative opinion poll” according to which the Fidesz-KDNP camp numbers close to two and a half million people. “May God keep us at least at this number,” he declared. He added that courage is also needed — saying that “if 15-year-old Péter Mansfeld dared to stand up to Khrushchev’s tanks, then surely we must dare to resist these people”!

After this, Balázs Hankó’s wife stepped onto the stage accompanied by their children and read out a letter from her husband, who is in detention in connection with the National Cultural Fund (NKA) case.

The former minister of innovation and culture wrote that they had become “political prisoners” because they had stood up for national and Christian culture, but that even from prison they are fighting for freedom — “for you and with you.”

Balázs Hankó called for solidarity so that “the truth may reach as many people as possible — neither we nor you are guilty.” He asked that people wear the red-white-and-green bracelet as a symbol of unity and pray every evening at 9 o’clock.

János Áder, the former President of the Republic, also spoke at the event. Recalling the events that preceded the 1956 revolution, he spoke about how Hungarian society had grown tired of lies between 1948 and 1956.

He recalled in detail the events of the period between 23 October and 4 November, emphasising that 1956 had shaken the Soviet empire, shaken the world, and moved the freedom-loving peoples of the world.

“Honouring the heroes of the revolution is our shared responsibility — in plot 301, with a single flower, a silent bow of the head, a prayer said quietly to oneself,” he added.

János Bóka, the Fidesz parliamentary group leader, spoke about how the heroes of 1956 had triumphed even in defeat, and that “our freedom” grows from their victory. He stressed that they not only want to remember and remind others of the past, but also to send a message to the future: never forget that freedom is the greatest thing.

He told his audience not to let tyranny define what freedom means. “We know exactly who we are, and we want to remain who we are: Hungarians, the nation of freedom,” he said.

János Bóka described October 1956 as a historic moment, highlighting that those glorious two weeks had shown there is no freedom without independence, because we can only be free in an independent homeland. “It showed that the Hungarian nation is a strong bond, a sustaining community of shared fate, and that we can only be free as Hungarians,” he added.

He pointed out that our thousand-year history teaches us that we have always had to fight for our freedom, to win it and to preserve it, and that this remains true today, because freedom has had, has, and will have enemies.

In a free country, no political police force is established, those in power do not threaten anyone with arrest, people are not paraded in handcuffs and on a leash at the command of those in power, there are no political prisoners, there is no desire to dismantle the opposition, and no one seeks to build a one-party system again — he said.

In his view, the enemies of freedom have always hidden themselves, as was the case in 1956, when they fired faceless shots at the girls and boys of Pest, and the enemies of freedom today also conceal their faces and mock freedom just as they did then.

He emphasised: seventy years ago, they mocked freedom by naming their newspaper Szabad Nép — Free People — while the people were everything but free.

In his view, freedom is now mocked by claiming that it is better to live as a subject of an empire than as a citizen of Hungary, that the past is a burden, faith a shackle, and family a millstone, that property is a sin and that if you work hard, you should pay even more — “just like the communists” against whom Hungarians rose up seventy years ago.

János Bóka declared that freedom and Hungary’s independence must be defended today as well. No one else will do it for us — neither any other power nor Brussels — no matter how much the local lieutenants invited their superiors to the national holiday, he said.

The parliamentary group leader called the celebratory session held in Parliament a cheap comedy, adding that they had no business with them, and that they preferred to celebrate with their Polish and Italian friends, who know exactly what the freedom of proud European nations means.

János Bóka said that “brutally hard, gruelling years” lay ahead of them, but that they would succeed together, because “you can count on one another, and Hungary can count on us.” “Let us build the circles of freedom together, let us raise the flag of freedom high together,” he proclaimed.

At the Fidesz-KDNP commemoration, historian Mária Schmidt, the dismissed director of the House of Terror Museum, also spoke, calling for resistance against the closure and reorganisation of the museum.

She said that the heroes of 1956 are needed, because they are proof that the truth always prevails in the end.

In her view, however, there are people today who “want to steal from the Pest boys and girls the world-shaking, history-making deeds they performed,” and who “are trying once again to lie away our national revolution, which our heroes fought for Hungarian freedom and the independence of our nation, and want to close down and reorganise the House of Terror Museum.”

She added that they want to hold a debate about the victims of communism and the perpetrators, and want to convene committees to decide, on the basis of new criteria, who may remain on the wall of perpetrators.

“We must not allow it!” she urged, adding: “we will not allow Népszabadság to tell us again what the truth is.”

Mária Schmidt recalled that Mária Wittner, a freedom fighter of the 1956 revolution, donated to the House of Terror Museum a flag from ’56 with a hole in it, into the centre of which she had embroidered the face of Christ. “I hope they don’t throw it out,” she remarked.

She stressed that heroes are needed today as well, because “the homeland can call upon us any day. It is common heartbeats that connect us. Glory to the heroes, (…) where heroes are not forgotten, there will always be new ones,” she said.

Artificial intelligence was used for the translation of parts of the original Hungarian text.