Hungary’s Viktor Orban each year goes to Romania's Transylvania to deliver nationalist speeches designed to galvanise the considerable local ethnic Hungarian minority. Few governments would allow such an open appeal to irredentism, but the Romanians have tolerated this. A 🧵 1/12
This year’s speech was more unhinged than usual. He claimed that what is happening in Ukraine is “not our war”. He repeated Putin’s propaganda that the blame for the war lies with the West, for refusing to accept Russia’s “clear security demands” 2/12 
“Russians speak such an old language”, Orban admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that what they say doesn’t make sense,” he added 3/12
Orban dismissed Ukraine’s determination to continue fighting as a doomed strategy, akin to “sitting in a car with flat tires on all four wheels”. “The Ukrainians will never win a war,” he claimed, with the backing of the “Anglo-Saxons”. 4/12
The EU’s job, said Orban, is not to side with the Ukrainians or Russians “but to stand between Ukraine and Russia”. But if you think that all this is outrageous, prepare yourself for the crescendo of the speech 5/12
According to Orbán, Western governments have tried to break up the V4 alliance of Central and Eastern European countries “for years” and are now seizing on the opportunity of the war in Ukraine to accomplish their destruction 6/12
The present political divisions inside #Visegrad, according to Orban, “are a matter of the heart, since, from the Hungarian point of view, the war is a conflict between two Slavic peoples, which we want to stay out of, while the Poles feel that they are involved” 7/12
Orban then went on to dismiss the choice of the Slovaks and Czechs who “are now with the post-Westerners” as a foolish choice, akin to “a person who ties up his horses in a burning stable” 8/12
And, for good measure, Mr Orban also repeated his already famous “racial purity” theories. “We’re not mixed race,” he told the ethnic Hungarians of Romania, “and we don’t want to be” 9/12
Still, Hungary is facing grave danger from George Soros and those plotting Elders of Brussels: “György Soros and the forces in Brussels still want to force migration on us” by dragging Hungary through the courts, he said. Naturally, only Orban can foil such knavish plots. 10/12
Throughout, Orban’s tone was dismissive of a West allegedly in terminal decline. Only Hungarians, he told his audience, “are better, more diligent and talented”. And, yes: “the world belongs to us” 11/12
Listening to this nonsense, one has to wonder whether the place of the current Hungarian government is really inside the EU and NATO and whether our claim that these two key institutions are based on values makes any so long as present Hungary is a member 12/12
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