BUDAPEST — Escaping through a window seemed the easiest way to avoid a scandal, József Szájer, the Hungarian ex-MEP who fled a 2020 party described by the Belgian press as a lockdown-busting orgy of naked men and drugs, told POLITICO.
As everyone in Brussels knows, his efforts proved in vain.
The politician, a co-founder of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party and a longtime ally of the Hungarian prime minister, disappeared from the spotlight for four years after the scandal.
Now he’s back — and wants to set a few things straight.
A book on his political career entitled “On the Front Line” was published recently, while Szájer is taking on a new role leading a new think tank, the Institute for a Free Europe, part of Orbán’s right-wing soft-power network.
Szájer has been a key figure in Orbán’s political community for decades. Like the party leadership he was deeply involved in the 1980s underground student activism that gave rise to one of the first independent social movements in Hungary: the Alliance of Young Democrats, or Fidesz for short.
The acronym is a play on the Latin word fides, meaning loyalty. The core of the group has remained devoted to each other, even as they turned from radical activists into liberal politicians in the 1990s, and then saw an opportunity to take over the Hungarian right-wing political scene.
Although Fidesz is now allied with far-right forces in Europe, Szájer said his political community is based on the same values they held at the end of the communist era: “hard work, the law and freedom.”
But Orbán also made clear what is not in line with his community: The Brussels “private party,” as Szájer described it, was deemed “indefensible” by the Hungarian prime minister, who has targeted LGBTQ+ rights for years.
Szájer resigned and left Fidesz, refusing to comment on the case. He did, however, tell POLITICO why he left the party through a window and climbed down the infamous drainpipe.
“Well, if you can leave the party this way, there is nothing after and there is no big scandal,” the former MEP said. Asked whether it would have been easier to wait for the police at the scene, he said: “Nothing of a criminal nature happened.”
Although the police found some psychoactive drugs in the former MEP’s backpack, Szájer stressed he was acquitted by a court of drug possession and only paid a €250 fine for violating lockdown rules.
Several reports pointed out that Szájer’s attendance of the party smacked of hypocrisy, as Orbán’s government has cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights and has been accused of stigmatizing LGBTQ+ people. But Szájer denied the charge of hypocrisy, insisting he himself has never made any hateful or homophobic remarks.
Szájer admitted the existence of are homophobic sentiments in his political community, but insisted that “everyone is responsible for their own words.” The ex-MEP also said that “there are many positions” on which he disagrees with Fidesz,” but that on key issues — such as Hungary’s stance on the war in Ukraine or the split with the European People’s Party — he still stands behind Orbán.
That’s the case with the “Child Protection Act,” which critics say is anti-LGBTQ+ because it restricts rights by censoring comprehensive sex education, equating LGBTQ+ lifestyles with pedophilia, blocking adoption for LGBTQ+ couples, and restricting content in media and advertising.
Szájer has said on several occasions that he would not comment on LGBTQ+ issues “because of his personal involvement,” but told POLITICO that “in Hungary, no one’s private life is restricted by any law that does not allow them to enjoy that freedom.”
“If the biggest problem for press freedom is the packaging of books” or putting all movies with a gay kiss after a 10 p.m. curfew, “then we are doing very well,” the politician said.
He added that he believes several media outlets violated his own privacy in their coverage of the incident four years ago (though he called POLITICO’s coverage “surprisingly objective”).
But he didn’t press charges in those cases, saying: “This is the express train that you can stand in front of, but your fragile little creature is not going to be able to stop it from hitting you.”
Thus it was that the affair swept away Szájer’s 30-year political career. He says he gambled away the trust of his voters with the orgy scandal: “There was very little I could do in this situation, except not to do any more damage to my own party. Fortunately, I didn’t do that, because in the next elections Fidesz not only didn’t lose any votes, it even gained more.”
Fidesz against federalism
During his four years of silence, however, Szájer has continued to advise his political community and maintained good relations with Fidesz leaders. “We’ve been playing the game together for a long time, because it goes back 30-40 years,” he said.
After 30 years in the spotlight, he described his four-year “forced break” as “purgatory,” even somewhat “strange.”
But just as Orbán is happy to see Szájer back, Szájer himself is in the mood to talk again, to reveal himself as a talking head on the future of Europe.
With his new think tank he wants to adumbrate an “autonomous” concept of Europe, develop a complex index of sovereignty for EU countries, and draft a charter of the rights of nations. “The federalists can’t reserve the right to call themselves pro-European. At the moment, federalism is the only position of the Brussels mainstream, but it’s possible to create a new Europe based on nations, and we want to be part of the intellectual buzz around it,” he said.
They also want to conquer Brussels with their ideas, but Szájer says he doesn’t return to the city often, although his contacts haven’t disappeared.
Szájer says his reactivation is intended to reassure those who have doubts about him, including conservative voters who were outraged by his scandal — although he has experienced acceptance rather than resentment in Fidesz circles, he says.
In returning, Szájer also hopes that his name will not be “remembered only by the inglorious end,” even if the “orgy” scandal has turned him into a meme and has become a stain on his reputation he will never get rid of.
“I want to prove that I am more than the caricature that has been made of me and that has made me famous, even around the world.”
The post Orbán’s lockdown orgy acolyte returns in bid to save face appeared first on Politico.
