Government ends anti-Soros billboard campaign

As the government announces the end of its ad campaign on migration featuring George Soros, debates about Mr Soros’s role roll on.

On Wednesday, the government announced that the billboard campaign on migration issues would end on July 15, ‘as scheduled’. Quoting unnamed sources Magyar Nemzet writes that the decision was taken so that all the visitors to the FINA water sports championship starting this weekend would not see the posters. In September, the daily adds, the government will restart its anti-immigration campaign.

On Mozgástér blog, Tamás Lánczi finds it absurd that the government’s criticism of George Soros’s migration politics is interpreted as anti-Semitic by the Left. The pro-government political analyst recalls that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (see BudaPost July 12) as well as Jewish organizations in and outside Hungary including the EMIH Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau have dismissed allegations that the government’s campaign is anti-Semitic. “It seems that some intellectuals in Budapest know better than the Israeli Prime Minister and leading rabbis what amounts to anti-Semitism and what does not,” Lánczi writes.

Népszava’s György Sebes suspects that the government’s anti-Soros campaign will be continued even if the billboards are removed. He corroborates his opinion with quotations from an appeal by the youth organization of the Christian Democratic Party to withdraw George Soros’s honorary Budapest citizenship. (He was awarded that title in 2002 by the left-wing Budapest council of that era.) The left-wing commentator thinks that the government will keep George Soros on the agenda in an attempt to divert attention from other political, social and economic issues.

Tags: anti-Semitism, migration, Soros