Christmas time is near, and some of the wealthier people in Europe may be thinking about planning their holiday vacation for the winter. For those people, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary has put forward an unusual, very ‘not woke’ pitch: come to Hungary this holiday season, there are no illegal migrants here, as we reported yesterday.
The Prime Minister’s post on X has received 17,000 likes since it was posted four days ago, as well as 3,000 retweets and 950 comments. The replies are overwhelmingly positive. One user from Ireland (thanks to X’s new feature, we can verify that they are actually based in that country) describes the €1 million daily fine for not complying with the EU’s migrant quotas as an ‘absolute bargain’, and wishes their government would take the same deal.
Another comment with a high number of likes writes: ‘As a native German, now living in Budapest, I am grateful to be able to live here and run my company in peace and security. I am thankful for this opportunity.’
PM Orbán’s unusual holiday tourism ad caught the attention of not just right-wing X users, but the British newspaper The Telegraph as well, which published a piece on the matter on their online outlet.
To be fair, it is written in a level-headed tone, and most of the article is just a description of Orbán’s video itself, and the explanation of the context of the €1 million fine per day. They also point out the fact that ‘In 2024, there were just 29 asylum claims in Hungary. The same year Portugal, which is a similar size to Hungary, had 2,680,’ which most likely helps the Prime Minister with his right-wing populist base.
The Telegraph also quotes a long-time and fervent critic of Prime Minister Orbán’s, German MEP Daniel Freund of the progressive-environmentalist Bündnis 90/Die Grünen party. He told the British paper: ‘Christmas is literally about people from the Middle East seeking shelter. I don’t think anyone has ever understood the Christmas story less than Victor [sic!] Orban’.
What MEP Freund fails to take into account here is that in the Nativity story, those ‘people from the Middle East’, Mary and Joseph, are seeking shelter within their home country of Judea. In fact, they are in the middle of complying with an order of relocation by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus for the census. What they are not doing is crossing a border to seek shelter or welfare without the consent of the local authority…
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