Z Word contributor Karl Pfeifer draws my attention to this important article by Yale Professor Eva S. Balogh. It’s about a demonstration organized by neo-fascist Jobbik Party at the Budapest statue of Count Mihály Károlyi, the democratically-elected leader of Hungary after World War One, and a much-detested figure on the far right.

Professor Balogh reports: “Előd Novák, a Jobbik member of parliament, put a sign around Károlyi’s neck that read ‘I am responsible for Trianon’ (the 1920 peace treaty with the Allied powers that shrunk Hungary’s territory - BC). Someone put a yarmulke on his head and finally came a rope around his neck.”

Professor Balogh goes on to say:

It was today that those people who are worried about the rise of nazism in Hungary organized a demonstration in defense of Mihály Károlyi, against the rising anti-semitism, and against the falsification of history. What the yarmulke has to do with the aristocratic Károlyi is hard to figure. But the Jobbik European parliamentary member Csanád Szegedi had an antisemitic outburst on MTV’s Ma Reggel in which he somehow managed to connect Károlyi to Israel and Jobbik’s very negative feelings toward the Jewish state.

Thus does antisemitism come full circle. And here in the murky depths of shrill far-right paranoia, there is little time for the niceties of distinguishing between Jew-hatred and opposition to Israel’s existence. Hence the addition of “Zionism” to Károlyi’s supposedly demonic character.

It is a mortifying situation, all the more so when one recalls that, for a large part of the European left, what should be straightforward case of opposing the fascists is, shall we say, complicated by the imperatives of anti-Zionism.

Karl ended his note to me with a reminder that Hungary takes over the EU Presidency in January 2011. I thought I would pass that reminder on.