Mr David Bencsik the manager of Magyar Demokrata on August 28 gave a speech at the 2024 Media Cooperation Forum on Belt and Road in Chengdu, China, which drew a lot of attention and debate at the forum. NewsVoice got permission to publish the speech. The speech was mostly appreciated, but also questioned by some forum participants.
”In recent years, China has become Hungary’s most important trading partner outside Europe. In addition to trade relations, our bilateral cooperation is also flourishing in the field of investments.
Hungary has become the number one destination for Chinese investors in the region, and to the delight of the Hungarian people, Chinese culture and gastronomy are also flourishing in our country.
There is only one area that needs continuous attention and even a new strategy: the area of cooperation in communication, as well as public diplomacy.
The now iconic and most important units of our media group, the weekly Magyar Demokrata and its online edition with over 1 million visitors per month are indispensable players in the history of the Central European press, the beacon of the patriotic camp of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Our newspaper was launched in the summer of 1994 and is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. The weekly Magyar Demokrata is the legal successor of the first moderate conservative daily paper after the change of regime in 1990.
The units of our Media Group, as well as editor-in-chief András Bencsik’s television program, which has been extremely popular for decades, and our political workshop, are among the most significant and important tools in the effort to preserve our national sovereignty against the pressure of the Western liberal mainstream.
In this struggle, we also ensure the uncensored presentation of news from the East, mainly from China and Russia, and the thoughts of recognized opinion-makers and leading intellectuals from these countries on our own channels. This is almost unique in the European Union. In Europe, the cradle of press freedom, dissent from Washington is not allowed.
The real exercise of freedom of expression in the West leads to a lack of well-paid advertising by multinationals, existential retaliation, loss of jobs, and, ultimately, marginalization. That’s how democratic our system is in the EU. Western capital advertises in collaborative, mainly left-wing European media, which unconditionally accept and transmit American liberal globalist doctrines.
In January 2012, on the call of my father András Bencsik, editor-in-chief of the weekly Magyar Demokrata, and his friends, icons of the Hungarian press, almost half a million Hungarian citizens took to the streets in support of the government of Viktor Orbán, in response to the European Union’s increasingly serious attacks on Hungary’s sovereignty.
This is how we, the editorial team of the weekly Magyar Demokrata, launched the largest Hungarian mass movement of the 21st century, the Peace March, which has been active ever since.
Since 2012, more than 10 pro-government peace marches have taken place, each with hundreds of thousands of participants, the last one just this year, in 2024. We understand the spirit of Central Europe.
I have come to the city of Chengdu to tell you how Europe – including my own region, Central Europe, and Hungary – can get to know the new world you are building here, in China, of which the Belt and Road Initiative is an extremely important part.
We have arrived at a multi-centered world order, and one of the pillars of this new world order is the People’s Republic of China, which now determines the course of world economic and political processes. This poses a threat to the sphere of interests that controls the European Union from Washington DC.
In the first step, we must use the tools of public diplomacy to promote the smooth development of acceptance and mutual respect, the process of which follows a logical sequence: getting to know, understanding, liking, and then following each other. This is what our media, which opposes Western liberal pressure and dominance, can methodically build in Europe and the world.
If, on the other hand, the media obstruct this process and recognition with bans and fake news, then the process will inevitably become impossible, meaning that the obstacle to mutual acceptance will not be the cultural difference itself, but the distortion of the cognitive process.
Today, the average European citizen knows little or nothing about China, so the amount of information is of strategic importance, because deeper knowledge leads to understanding, and understanding leads to sympathy and curiosity about the other. From here the process becomes self-sustaining.
Don’t be in any doubt, that the loyal servants and hired pen-pushers of Washington and Brussels, will not support this process because it would harm the interests of the globalist elites of Washington and Brussels.
In recent decades, the European left-liberals, including the Hungarian left-liberals, have become very fond of the money the West pays them through all sorts of tricks and untraceable networks of NGOs to disrupt the aspirations of sovereign nation-states and the development of views and alliances that differ from the Western globalist doctrine. But there is hope!
A new power, the patriotic camp, standing up for sovereignty in Europe is growing stronger by the day, and common sense is slowly returning to everyday life.
Cast your eyes to Hungary: we are banning LGBTQ and gender propaganda from schools and kindergartens; we are regulating the activities of international NGOs; we are choosing a work-based society and full employment over society on social aid; we are supporting industrialization and industrial development over the dominance of the service industry.
Our media group has become one of the most important tools and channels in fighting for more sovereignty and strategic autonomy in Central Europe.
I would like to clarify something. In Transylvania this summer, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made a very important statement:
”Today it is meaningless to distinguish between the left and the right.
The main contrast is between the globalists and the sovereignists, the former, led by America, wants to force the whole earth into a world empire, while the sovereignists say that everyone should go their own way according to their own laws and customs.
What unites us, regardless of geographical distance, is that we believe in the sovereign development of individual cultures, and that is why we believe in the multipolar world order and want to support and protect it.”
Here, before this audience, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to this important event, and I would like to thank the People’s Republic of China for the steps it is taking to build peace, stability, and friendship in Europe and the world.
Our media group is open to expanding media and communication cooperation in Central Europe, and I believe that as an authentic and opinion-leading channel that reaches large masses, we can effectively support Sino-European, but even East-West dialogue, mutual knowledge, and understanding as we, Hungary are the gateway between East and West.”
Related
- Magyar Democrata
- NewsVoice: Belt and Road, BRI
- #David Bencsik
