Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, has faced international condemnation after claiming Ukrainians can only fight the ongoing Russian invasion as long as the US continues to provide financial support and weapons.
Some people hoped Orban would defend the nation-state but he can’t because he has no idea what it is. As Ukrainians say, we will fight as long as at least one of us remains alive. And if nobody survives, the grass will rise out of the fields and strangle the Russian bastards. Orban clearly has no understanding of nationalism or patriotism. Not even a distant memory of it remains in his life. This is why he doesn’t get something so simple.
I feel sorry for him because such people miss a really powerful, important experience in life.
Clarissa's Blog 
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Have you considered that Orban’s comment may have nothing to do with his opinion about the nation state? He’s a Putin ally, so he’s criticizing Putin’s enemy.
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There’s a million ways to criticize an enemy but he chose this particular one.
And I’m not talking about Orban’s opinions. I’m talking about the concepts he operates with.
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“Orban clearly has no understanding of nationalism”
Getting here a bit late, but….
Hungarians have a… complicated understanding of nationalism which has its good side (a contributing factor of 1989 was Hungary granting asylum to ethnic Hungarians fleeing the repression of Ceausescu) and its bad side (see current government).
Keys to understanding Hungarian politics and policies….
one – they still dream of empire…. the Austro-Hungarian Empire wasn’t as big as some but Hungarians by and large still regret its passing (in as much that resulted in a loss of status for them)
two – they are still obsessed with Trianon – The borders were not…. ideal…. Probably some places close to the current borders should have been Hungarian rather than Slovak, Romanian, or Serbian which would have made transportation infrastructure easier but most of the “lost” areas were not Hungarian majority and Hungary did not do any special wonderful job of governing them… still they obsess about it in an unhealthy way
three – they care a lot more for ethnicity and language than citizenship… this was part of the granting asylum for Hungarians from Romania and they came up with a kind of Hungarian pseudo-passport for the diaspora as well (Poland mimicked this a bit with it’s ‘karta Polaka’ though that wasn’t much of a success). At the same time treatment of gypsies (the largest minority) is not very good as they are not considered to be ‘real’ Hungarians.
four – they are really obsessed with the superiority of their language…. not in the ‘look at our great lierature’ way that russians talk about but in a “we are so unique and our language is so unique and it’s grammar is so logical and different and unique and it must be preserved forever” way…
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