BUDAPEST (JTA) – Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary ordered the banning of a right-wing extremist conference in Budapest.
Orban on Sunday “instructed Minister of Interior Sandor Pinter to use every legal means at his disposal to prevent an extremist and racist conference from taking place” between Oct. 3 and 5, according to a statement posted Monday on the government website.
The National Policy Institute, a white supremacist, nationalist organization based in the United States, organized the conference titled “The Future of Europe — Perspectives on Geopolitics, Identity and Nationalism.”
“They will fail. We will persevere. The conference will take place,” the institute tweeted Sunday night.
Planned speakers at the conference include Marton Gyongyosi of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party and Russian political scientist and ideologist Alexander Dugin, whom Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has described as “known for his radical, racist, Russian nationalist and anti-Ukrainian views.”
It is “unacceptable that an extremist American racist organization should hold a conference with Russian radicals here in Hungary,” the foreign affairs ministry said in a statement issued last week. “The extremists want to use the planned conference to damage Hungary’s international reputation, which the Ministry regards as unacceptable.”
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