Hungarian PM Orban Rejects Merkel’s “Moral Imperialism” in Refugee Crisis

Kevin MacDonald
Occidental Observer
September 24, 2015

hungary-immigration

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s most recent comments on the invasion are beautifully stated in terms of the “moral imperialism” of countries like Germany that are imposing their sense of morality on other EU member states. A theme at TOO is that the anti-White revolution that is displacing Whites from areas they have dominated for hundreds or thousands of years has been rationalized intellectually as a moral imperative. The most important moral imperative in the West today is the evil of any sense of ethnocentrism among Whites. A strong sense of racial identification and pride was common and even dominant in the early twentieth century, but became a victim of the rise of the left and the disaster of World War II. All of the Jewish intellectual movements discussed The Culture of Critique resulted in moral critiques of the West, particularly centered around the absolute evil and even psychopathology of identifying as Whites and having a sense of White interests. This ideology has occupied all the moral and intellectual high ground in the West for at least the last 50 years and is constantly disseminated throughout the media and educational system.

The anti-White revolution has appealed to deep trends within Western culture toward moral universalism, but these tendencies have been weaponized by our hostile elites with extraordinary success. For millions of White people, conforming to these moral imperatives is a very important aspect of their self-image, giving them a sense of moral rectitude but also confirming that they are an intelligent, educated person whose opinions mesh with the opinions of the elite media and academia.

And if there is a universal moral imperative to take in refugees, it is entirely reasonable that recalcitrant Europeans be forced to do the morally right thing. Within this world view, Angela Merkel’s moral imperialism is therefore completely justified. The suicide of the West as a moral imperative.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday rejected what he called German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “moral imperialism” in Europe’s migrant crisis. …

Orban accused Merkel of trying to impose her vision of an open EU on the rest of the bloc.

“The most important thing is that there should be no moral imperialism,” he said during a visit to the southern German state of Bavaria.

Orban, speaking ahead of an EU summit in Brussels later Wednesday, said his country had a “democratic right” to a different approach.

The summit takes place amid a growing east-west split within the bloc after ministers forced through a controversial deal Tuesday to share out 120,000 refugees.

“I don’t doubt Germany’s right to define its moral obligations for itself. They can decide if they accept every refugee or not… (but) that should only be compulsory for them,” Orban said.

“We are Hungarians however, we cannot think with German minds. Hungary should have the right to control the impact of a mass migration,” he said.

“The Hungarian people don’t want this, we ask that the wishes of Hungarians be respected.”

Orban revived recent proposals in what he called a six-point plan to resolve the crisis.

They included persuading Greece, one of the EU countries on the front lines of the migrant influx, to hand over control of its borders to EU countries willing to help police them, as well as separating asylum-seekers from “economic migrants” before they reach the passport-free Schengen zone.

Orban said he would also press fellow EU leaders to agree on a common list of safe countries of origin to which migrants can be returned, and to pitch in one percent of their EU income and their EU contributions to an emergency fund.

He urged the bloc to work closely with key non-EU countries playing a key role in the crisis such as Russia and Turkey, and the creation of a global system of migrant “contingents” for countries to take in.

Despite Orban’s plea that each EU country be able to establish its own policy, the EU interior ministers approved mandatory quotas for each EU country, but Orban is not backing down. The vote was opposed by Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (See Guillaume Durocher’s three-part series “Can the Ossis save the West?” on the very large cultural differences between East and West Europe; in the East, “a casual and open ethnocentrism is remarkably common.”)

Overriding opposition from eastern European states, including Hungary, interior ministers approved plans Tuesday that require all to take their share of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have overwhelmed states such as Greece and Italy.

The deal was widely seen as a victory for Berlin in the German media, just as Germany expects up to one million asylum-seekers this year and has been clamouring for “fair” distribution of migrants throughout the bloc.

In response to the influx, Hungary has closed its border with Serbia and introduced draconian laws to punish those crossing into the country illegally.

Orban said Wednesday that he would only consider voluntary measures to accept asylum-seekers.

“Quotas and contingents are two different things. We reject the former, but are ready to discuss the latter,” he said.

Orban was invited to Germany by one of the most vocal critics of Merkel’s migrant policies within her conservative bloc, Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer. (“Hungary PM rejects Merkel’s ‘moral imperialism’ in refugee crisis.“)

We’ll see how this plays out. Hungary and the other Eastern European countries opposing this moral imperialism may well realize that remaining in the EU is suicidal for them in the long run and that re-aligning themselves with Russia would be a far better alternative despite the brutal history of the Soviet era. It’s a different world now.