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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
A Hungarian
correspondent
reports Saturday, November 1, 2003 on press coverage of
Mr Irving's Hungarian speaking
tour
Hungarian TV cancels program which invited Mr Irving - permanently
THANKS for the nice evening in Gyõr. You made a storm in the Hungarian media. They have cancelled my favorite programme called +1 Éjjeli menedék because of you. Have you heard about it? You should talk about this. See you again in Hungary!
David Irving comments:
I DO know that several Budapest newspaper articles repeated the "fact" that I was invited to Hungary by Csurka's MIÉP party; untrue, I was invited by my publisher, who alone paid all the expenses.
But the press write what pleases them. In Magyar Hirlap on October 27, 2003 the left-wing liberal Romanian Jewish journalist Tamás Gáspár Miklós (below) called me a "fascist" in his article: "A jobboldal újabb gyözelme." [text below]. I have highlighted the relevant paragraph: it reads in translation,
"There was also the disgrace that two especially contemptible characters of European Fascism, Jean-Marie Le Pen and David Irving, gave speeches at Hero's Square on October 23 at the invitation of Csurka. Irving, who in the 60's was actively helped in his unprecedented archival research by one of the heads of one of the main security departments of the Kádár apparatus, became world famous via his slandering of 1956. He dirtied the revolution as anti- Semitic, like the old Stalinist guard. He had nothing to fear on the streets of Budapest. The fascists are rampaging, and the left wing democrats are scared. That's where Hungary is today."The story that Csurka invited me is simply untrue; I do not know who the "security head" referred to is either. The komcsik (as the old-guard communists like Tamás Gáspár Miklós are called) are trying to accuse me of defaming the 1956 uprising as "anti-Semitic" in character. As one Hungarian correspondent confirms to me however, "The revolutionaries had had enough with the Judeocratia, but they did not attack Jewish people simply because they were Jews."
I am encouraged at the news that András Mink, writing in the communist Party newspaper Nepszabadsag October 29, 2003 has reported the controversial decision by Hungarian TV to put the boot, terminally, into the popular program "Night Refuge" [Éjjeli menedék] which had invited me to appear on Sunday, November 2, 2003 for a lengthy interview: "However, certain analysts feel that the reasons cited by the heads of Hungarian Television are not the true reason at all. They speculate that the real reason for the axing of the program is that at the end of the October 26 episode the presenter announced that the following week's program will contain excerpts from David Irving's speech about the Holocaust. However, there is no proof of this. It is merely speculation." Needless to say, I did not speak in Hungary on that incredibly boring topic. Mink however also accused me of pandering to the discredited communist regime of Janós Kádár. Fascist? Communist? Go figure.
Mink furthermore accused me of inviting Kádár's regime to subsidise my research for the book. I have no recollection of that, and it may well be true; but I do recall having written to CIA chief Bill Casey inviting him to put in a word with some suitable publisher -- I had in mind the CIA-front, Praeger Publishing Inc., -- to put the book out in the USA, after Peter Israel, chief editor of GP Putnam Inc., wrote to me, unaccountably (since they had paid a lot for the book) cancelling publication plans. Go figure, again.
See too Andras Mink's article on The inside Budapest story on David Irving's Book Uprising
Magyar Hirlap, October 27, 2003
Csák
Máté földjén: A
kádári MSZMP jogutódainak,
hiába, rosszul áll ötvenhat - ha a
fejük tetejére állnak, akkor is. Az
új rendszer szimbolikájába nem
[…]
Mindez persze nem a jobboldal vezetöjének nem létezö zsenialitásából fakad (bár ügyessége és energiája tagadhatatlan), hanem valódi, mély és megoldatlan problémából: az 1989 elötti, bukott rendszer változatlan történelmi súlyából. Az államkapitalista diktatúra uralkodó osztálya csakugyan "átmentette magát", a növekvö egyenlötlenség, a szegénység miatt egyre népszeru�tlenebb. Pozícióira sok a jelentkezö. Akármi a tárgyi igazság, a régi uralkodó osztály képviseletének a szocialista párt látszik, bármennyi régi apparatcsik nyüzsög is a jobboldalon. A kádári MSZMP jogutódainak, hiába, rosszul áll ötvenhat - ha a fejük tetejére állnak, akkor is. Az új rendszer szimbolikájába nem lehet beilleszteni a régi rendszer kariatidáit. Nem bírják a súlyt.
A jobboldal avval kecsegteti a magyar dolgozókat, hogy az új kizsákmányolók jobbak lesznek a régi elnyomóknál. Erre semmi sem utal - ráadásul nem is újak, aminek Matolcsy, a pártállami föprivatizátor a megmondhatója.
Az a szégyen is megesett, hogy október 23-án az európai fasizmus két különösen megvetendö alakja, Jean-Marie Le Pen és David Irving szónokolt - Csurka meghívására - a Hösök terén. Irving, akit annak idején tevölegesen segített a hatvanas években példátlan levéltári kutatásaiban a kádári apparátus valahányadik ügyosztályának valahányadik föcsoportfönöksége, 1956 megrágalmazásával lett világhíru�. Antiszemitának piszkolta a forradalmat, mint az ósztálinisták. Neki nem volt Budapest utcáin félnivalója. A fasiszták grasszálnak, a baloldali demokraták félnek. Itt tartunk ma.
David Irving