BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Pro-Irving protest in Budapest

Some 2,000 people rallied in Budapest to protest the cancelation of a TV show after it hosted Holocaust denier David Irving.

Irving visited Hungary at the invitation of the far-right Justice and Life Party [MIÉP] for the Hungarian holiday commemorating the anniversary of the 1956 revolution.

The show, Night Shack, aired on Hungary's state-owned public station and caused great uproar among liberal media and the public. The station quickly cancelled the program.

During today's protest, speakers, among them the head of Hungarian State Radio, denounced the socialist government for suppressing free speech. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orban joined those who are protesting the show's cancellation, saying "This is not the first time that programs supporting Christian values are being attacked."

Hungarian Journalists' association protests as Irving TV programme scrapped | call for demonstration Saturday outside HQ of Hungarian TV on "Freedom Square"

Photo report on David Irving's Oct 2003 Hungarian tour: << [Book-launch] [Budapest] [Heroes Square] [University] [Debrecen, Miskolc] [Szeged] [Györ] >>

Mr Irving speaks Oct 23, 2003 to a crowd of thousands Mr Irving at Budapest rally commemorates the 1956 uprising

Radical's Diary: Mr Irving in Budapest

David Irving comments:

 

NOT much mention of this in today's British press; which provokes the question in my mind, why therefore does the estimable Jewish Telegraph Agency in New York, four thousand miles from Budapest, splash the story? What is their interest in the story, I wonder? -- Just kidding, we all know the answer to that one.

Note however that

• as a punishment for filming its interview, the Socialist government cancelled the program, not just the show;
• for the JTA, in this context I am a "Holocaust denier" -- not the author of a best-selling book on the anti-Jewish, anti-Bolshevik Budapest Uprising of 1956;
• and another minor correction: Although the left-wing and liberal journaille in Budapest has claimed the opposite, I did not visit Hungary at the invitation of the MIÉP party.

  The invitation was issued by my Budapest publisher, who met all the expenses of the tour. If the press says 2,000 demonstrated, of course, the real figure may well have been substantially higher.