By A.S.
A strange and unlikely political alliance has been formed within the Hungarian opposition. Jobbik, which started as a hard-right movement at the end of the last century, and was transformed into a political party in 2003, has formed an alliance with their former political enemies on the liberal left.
Jobbik started as a right-wing movement and soon became a relatively successful right-wing party in Hungary. As is still stated on their website, their main goal is “to remove the post-Communist party from power along with the extremist liberals that attached themselves to it”. In light of this it is even stranger that after their former leader Gábor Vona wanted to recreate the party´s “hard-line” image in 2014, transforming it into a more right-center party, Jobbik has been working with the Socialists and with the other leftist liberal oppositional parties, that after some years resulted in a new “rainbow alliance” of the united opposition against Orban and his ruling party Fidész.
In the past Jobbik was completely denounced as “fascists” by both the leftist parties and by the mainstream media. The Leftists, including the socialist MSZP, even wanted to legally ban Jobbik. But after Orban´s rise to power, the opposition parties have slowly forgotten about their ideological differences, which shows that the pragmatism of the Left borders on pure hypocrisy, as they are willing to work together with people whom they wanted to ban, and labeled them “fascists” and “racists” a few years ago.
On the other hand, Jobbik, whose current chairman is Péter Jakab, a former teacher of history in Roma minority school with a Jewish grandmother, are likewise ready to cooperate with their ideological foes, which implies that their leadership is opportunistic, ready to overthrow the government who is keeping mass migrations out of the country, and even help the liberal left to gain power if that would help their political interests.