According to Hungarian parliamentary vice-president and member of Jobbik Koloman Brenner, the other opposition parties also respect Péter Tóth, as he is a “good candidate at the local level,” writes Mandiner.
After László Bíró, far-right Jobbik has once again come to the defense of one of its candidates known for his antisemitic views, according to Magyar Nemzet. The paper quotes Koloman Brenner as saying that Péter Tóth’s past is only being brought up again „to disrupt the opposition cooperation.” The largest Jewish congregation in Hungary, Mazsihisz, and intellectual and Orbán-critic Gáspár Miklós Tamás have both protested against the candidate in Szeged
who has called Jews “bibsik” [ed. note: Hungarian for “kike”] and homosexuals as “genetic waste.”
But, according to Jobbik, Péter Tóth is a new man.
“Péter Tóth has changed over the years, as has Jobbik since 2013 during the process of partisanship,” said Koloman Brenner on ATV’s “Straight Talk.” According to the party’s vice-president, the candidate for Jobbik in Szeged “changed his position seven or eight years earlier, and his colleagues in Szeged […] know him, know how he works very fairly in the municipal body, and he enjoys local support.”
According to Brenner, the other opposition parties also respect Toth; as he put it, he is „a good candidate at the local level.” The ATV presenter then suggested that not everyone on the opposition side respects Tóth, for example, MSZP, and Momentum is also running its own candidate.
“These issues now come up to disrupt the opposition cooperation. That’s why they’ll pick up sentences and unfortunate Facebook posts from Jobbik politicians seven to eight to ten years ago,” the vice-president explained, saying that Péter Jakab had “already apologized to those offended by Jobbik’s previous politics.”
The Marxist philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás recently told Mérce.hu that he finds it unacceptable that anyone would vote for a politician with similar views to Jobbik’s Péter Tóth.
The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) also protested against the support for the Jobbik candidate. Tamás Róna, president of the Mazsihisz Rabbinical Corps and the Hungarian Jewish Prayer Association argued that “people who express antisemitic or exclusionary views should not play a role in Hungarian public life, regardless of which Hungarian political group they belong to or which party enjoys their support.”
„We are convinced that people preaching exclusionary ideas can only have a political past in Hungarian public life, but not a future,” Róna said.
Pope Francis will also meet Shlomo Köves and Róbert Deutsch – Neokohn