In his speech delivered at a ceremonial commemoration on Loyalty Day, the Prime Minister asked Sopron to remain also in the next one hundred years a town of loyalty which connects country and freedom together, “and by doing so render Hungary a firm and stable structure in which we Hungarians can feel at home”.
He said a hundred years ago, at the time of the Trianon peace treaty, a political storm raged in Hungary, a storm which Hungarians had not seen in living memory. At the time, Hungarians throughout the country saw a clear sky again thanks to the decision of the people living in Sopron, this is where in 1921 the heart of Hungary, locked in a state of lifelessness, started beating again, and has throbbed ever since, today faster and stronger than ever in the past 100 years, he stated.
He observed that this is why they had come here to celebrate “this proud heart that has beaten unfailingly for a thousand years”.
He said with the approach of a storm, one starts to panic, wondering whether one failed to take any action that could have helped to avoid the damage, and whether life could at all continue as it had before.
He took the view that this is also the case when the storm of history is raging. A hundred years ago we had every reason to panic: a lost war, social and economic collapse, a Spanish flu pandemic, they took two thirds of the country away from us, and annexed one third of Hungarians to other countries, he recalled.
Mr Orbán said we had been compelled to pay a higher price for the war than everyone else, “even though we didn’t want that war, and neither did we start it”. In fact, they even wanted to punish us for the mere fact that “we were Hungarians and wanted to remain so,” they wanted to force Hungarians in the millions to forget their past, country, language and culture, he said, adding that they wanted us “to become someone else, or if not to simply become nobodies and nothing”.
He stressed that a hundred years ago our country had been sentenced to death, knocked off its feet, dismembered and abandoned. However, Sopron and its neighbourhood told the world by means of a plebiscite that we do not want to attend our own funeral, he stated.
The Prime Minister said Hungary lying in a state of torpor survived the stab wound that was intended to kill, her heart started beating again and showed signs that she would recover. The strength necessary for survival came not from money, power, external support or the strength of weapons, but from the combined determination of patriots which the most loyal town lent the country, he pointed out.
He also highlighted that the situation is difficult today as well, we need the strengthening example of the people of Sopron. In our neighbourhood, people are facing the threat of a war again, millions are migrating from one continent to another, pandemics are taking their toll, several countries are suffering from an energy crisis, economies are going bankrupt overnight, and additionally Goliaths are again abusing their power, “they want to tell us again who we should be, with whom and how we should live together,” he explained.
According to Mr Orbán, they want us to forget our history and culture of a thousand years, they want us to cut ourselves off from our Christian roots. “They want us to surrender our identities, to become someone else, to become like everybody else,” he stated.
He said it was once called the Clemenceau Plan, today it is the Soros Plan; what was once called the peace treaty of Versailles is today called the United States of Europe. What was once called the Entente is today called open society, multiculturalism and gender ideology; “physical occupation back then, intellectual today,” he said.
He highlighted that we are preparing for a referendum again, “we want to say no again to the foreign plans posing a threat to Hungary’s future”. We want to protect our children from the LGBTQ propaganda and the like the same way as we protected Hungarian families from migrants, he stated.
He pointed out: the Constitutional Court ruled that we have a right to say no to “the Brussels human experiments,” we have a right to protect Hungary, to guarantee a Hungarian future. “If we’re strong and combine forces, then this time not only Sopron and its area, but the entire Hungarian community will vote together, and if we’re lucky, perhaps the heart of Europe, too, will start throbbing again”. Throughout Europe people will see that there are some who “dare to say no to Brussels’ brave new world,” they will be able to see that it is worth fighting and never giving up “because the way Sopron returned to the country so could Europe return to Christian civilisation,” he stressed.
The Prime Minister said that also a hundred years ago there were some who campaigned against Hungary and for Austria. Also today there are some who believe that the Treaty of Trianon was fair and just, who profess that we would be better off “if we became something different, anything but Hungarian,” he said, adding that for them those are the true Europeans who give up their faith, nation, language and values.
He stressed that we, however, had not yielded an inch so far, and neither would we. In the past decade, the nation has been reunited, everyone who wants to work has been given jobs, families have been strengthened, household utility bills have been reduced, people in the lowest income brackets have been taken care of, and the country has been protected from illegal immigrants.
Our prospects for the future are attractive, too: next year young people will not pay income tax, families will be reimbursed the taxes they paid this year, the minimum wage will further increase, and pensioners will again receive a 13th monthly pension, he listed, adding that members of the armed forces are duly rewarded for their work, a modern defence force is being built, we have businesses that are capable of exporting their goods, and we are connecting the entire Carpathian Basin together by road and rail.
The Prime Minister stressed: “we propose that Hungary should move forward, not backward”.
Hungary before everything, God above us all, Come on, Hungary, Come on, Hungarians, Mr Orbán said in conclusion.