LETTER FROM BUDAPEST
A few weeks before the Hungarian legislative elections on April 3, which promise to be the tightest in twelve years for nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, all low blows seem permitted. Since February 7, a vast operation of disinformation and destabilization of NGOs has been launched since Magyar Nemzet, the main Hungarian government daily. Conducted in an ultra-professional way, it is furiously reminiscent of the one that had already taken place just before the 2018 legislative elections, and which had been awarded by the website Politico to the Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube.
Almost every day, a new article is published in the Magyar Nemzet based on secret recordings of activists who would admit the existence of a so-called “Soros network”, named after the American billionaire and philanthropist of Hungarian origin George Soros, whom Viktor Orban has made enemy number one. This alleged network would be intended to weaken the image of Hungary and Viktor Orban in the major international media. Obviously made without the knowledge of their participants, all these recordings would have reached “to writing from an unknown e-mail address”affirms this former prestigious daily, which has become under the influence of Orban the main propaganda tool of power.
The first to open the ball of this “SorosLeaks” operation on February 7 was Andrej Nosko, a former executive of Mr. Soros’ Open Society Foundation. In a brief excerpt from a Skype conversation devoid of any context, he asserts that “media coverage” about Hungary “is biased”because “foreign journalists asked me for contacts”. In the aftermath appeared other videos with former journalists or association activists fighting for the rule of law. One of them says for example “to feel that in Western countries there is a strange narrative that leads to the idea that Hungary is a place where democracy is non-existent”.
In his articles translated into English, French and German, the Magyar Nemzet deduces that “Soros agents are getting caught one after the other: there is not a shadow of a dictatorship in Hungary” and “the image that the international press gives of the Hungarian reality is distorted”. A message taken up in the moments following the publication by the media close to power, and on the government blog in English.
You have 63.89% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.