Hungarian Guards
August 8th, 2007 by robertnemeth
Hungarian Guards / Magyar Gárda. This is the name of a new organization of young men in Hungary. Some say that this is purely an extreme rightist paramilitary organization. According to themselves, they just offer opportunity to young people to promote tradition. Without judging, let’s see the facts.
The group was founded by the Jobbik, a right-wing political party with good connections to the extreme right as well. Gábor Vona, the president of the party said to the Hungarian news agency (MTI) that it is an organization for “national self-defense”. Some of their aims are: taking care of soldiers’ graves, promoting national tradition and “psychical, mental and physical training of the Hungarian youth to an opportunity when there will a need for mobilizing people”. For this, there will be trainings in self-defense sports and they plan to learn how to use weapons.
Furthermore, their uniform will be black with a label that is a shield with nine lions and an Árpád-striped flag. The color of the uniform reminds to the one of the Hungarian Nazis in World War II. Vona said: they liked the color that’s why they chose this one. The Árpád-striped-flag have already caused ongoing debates, since this was one of the symbols of the protesters last fall. They said that this was an ancient Hungarian flag, which is true, but this (decorated with the Arrow-Cross) was the flag of the Hungarian Nazis that ruled the country in 1944-45. Some say that it is unlikely that protesters (and extreme rightist movements since the transition) chose this particular one among the many ancient flags by chance.
The first 56 members of the Hungarian Guards will be inaugurated in a few weeks. Vona said that by the end of the year they would like to have 1000 members. And this is not the only similar organization that was formed recently…
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