Neo-Nazi MEP from Hungary discovers he is Jewish

A Hungarian neo-Nazi leader has had to retire from professional antisemitism because he discovered he was Jewish. Csanad Szegedi, who had decried "Jewishness" in Hungary's political class, and referred to Jews as "lice-infested, dirty murderers," was outed by a rival within the neo-Nazi movement, who revealed that Szegedi's maternal grandmother was a Jewish Auschwitz survivor, making him Jewish as well. From an AP story in the NYT:

The fallout of Szegedi's ancestry saga has extended to his business interests. Jobbik executive director Gabor Szabo is pulling out of an Internet site selling nationalist Hungarian merchandise that he owns with Szegedi. Szabo said his sister has resigned as Szegedi's personal assistant.
In the 2010 tape, former convict Zoltan Ambrus is heard telling Szegedi that he has documents proving Szegedi is Jewish. The right-wing politician seems genuinely surprised by the news — and offers EU funds and a possible EU job to Ambrus to hush it up.
Ambrus, who served time in prison on a weapons and explosives conviction, apparently rejected the bribes. He said he secretly taped the conversation as part of an internal Jobbik power struggle aimed at ousting Szegedi from a local party leadership post. The party's reaction was swift.

Hungary Far-Right Leader Discovers Jewish Roots

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: eu • hungary • nyt • politics • racism

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Brainspore

Classic. Reminds me of the Chapelle sketch about the blind Klansman who doesn’t realize he’s black.
- awjt
  
  whiiiiiiiiiite powahhhh! Chapelle’s awesome. Wish he’d come back and do more great stuff
  - http://twitter.com/hoffasaurusx Michael Hassall
    
    Chapelle pulled a ‘Richard Prior’, went to Africa, and came back realising running around saying the N-Word, isn’t particularly going to help anything
- http://twitter.com/Fat_Head_Carl Fat Head Carl
  
  Real world Clayton Biggsby.
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Ooh, kicked out of the neo-nazis and very unlikely to be welcome at the next meeting of the international zionist jew money cabal… Awkward.
- Gilbert Wham
  
  Hmmmm, doesn’t leave many options for World Domination does it? He sounds a bit infra-dig for the Bilderbergers as well. UN Black Helicopter Pilot maybe? ;)
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    Aren’t all the Black Helicopters piloted by Grey/abductee hybrids these days?
    - http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai
      
      THEY TAKE AR JERBS!
    - liquidstar
      
      They’re not piloted at all these days.
      - Gilbert Wham
        
        Aye, good point. ‘Killer Robots Took My Job’ is gonna look really shit on your CV…
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Dan-Foresman/100000127955987 Dan Foresman
      
      Actually, I think they’re looking for escaped Grey/abductee hybrids but are flown by clones of brainwashable recruits grown off the cells they scrape from the barbed wire in those “training scenarios.” Make ‘em smart and they run away, not towards conflict. Just sayin’.
  - hassan-i-sabbah
    
    I always thought Infra-dig would be a great name for a Punk band.
  - Ipo
    
    He could always go into the religion business.
    There’s hatred to be spewed aplenty.
thecleaninglady

I-ro-nic.
- http://www.eff.org/ deaduncledave
  
  Like rain on your wedding day…
  - Thad Boyd
    
    No, this is ACTUALLY ironic.
    - http://www.eff.org/ deaduncledave
      
      Sorry. I suffer a sick compulsion to remind people of Alanis Morissette whenever they use that word. And yes, I realize the examples in her song weren’t accurate depictions, which is itself rather ironic.
      
      Dontcha think?
      - Tynam
        
        Alanis also realises it, and is now thoroughly educated in the meaning of the word. And is, I think, justifiably annoyed that people still haven’t let this one go.
        
        Move on.
        
        (Flicks up, reviews article, pauses to bask in schadenfreude.)
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Alanis also realises it, and is now thoroughly educated in the meaning of the word.
        
        She’s Canadian. Who knows what goes on in their heads.
      - BombBlastLightingWaltz
        
        I heard a drop of gossip that Mrs. Reynolds is a shrewd stock holder in various venues. Good for her.
peterblue11

This came as a shock to Szegedi, who having been blind since birth, also had to learn on the same day that he was actually Black, as his maternal grand father was of Black African heritage.

His fellow Nazi party members simply couldn’t bring themselves to break it to the Black
Jewish Neonazi.

More as the story develops.
- cdh1971
  
  I’ll just leave this here…
  
  (Pic is from Vonnegut’s Mother Night, great flick, and do read the book.)
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
    
    Loved the book first, then loved the movie. Nolte also did a film version of Breakfast of Champions, and I read somewhere that Vonnegut, when asked if Nolte was going to do any more adaptations of his books, replied, “No, I think I’ve ruined his career enough.”
http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

God is an iron.

Seriously though, that’s gotta make for some interesting family conversations…
- http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
  
  I can just hear him now. “I won’t be coming to your birthday, poppa. You’re all gonna just kvetch at me and I don’t need the tsouris.”
Lindsay Stirton

He presumably now believes he is is part of a great conspiracy, with access to inordinate wealth and power. He should be overjoyed.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Plus he’ll have inside access to Hollywood.
http://twitter.com/spleenal Spleenal

I think Nelson Muntz said it best when he said “Ha ha”
http://twitter.com/unexplodedscot Scott Rose

Look at bright-side, now he can work from home.
Mitchell Glaser

Why did he offer bribes to hush up the story when his family controls the media?
- liquidstar
  
  sssh! they gots ‘im onto Boing Boing didn’t they?
mcarlson

His bubbe is probably rolling in her grave.
- awjt
  
  meh
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Strictly speaking, that should be ‘feh’.
    - awjt
      
      it was a toss-up *shrug*
- Mitchell Glaser
  
  She probably tossed her gribines.
http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore

We need to get the LHC crew working on a tinier violin. *schadenfreude*
chgoliz

Hey….we don’t want him!
- cdh1971
  
  I agree, we, at least you and me, don’t want him.
  
  However, the feeling shadenfreude within me is somewhat greater than the feeling of not wanting him.
BarBarSeven

Nobody is asking the important question: How does this affect the nationalist Hungarian merchandise market?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1197774709 Jeb Adams

This kind of thing (foaming anti-Semite is Jewish, oops) has happened a couple of times and every time I have to wonder at how disappointed they are when they realize it’s not a huge conspiracy with the banks, media, &c. The cognitive dissonance must be profound–to go from rabid hatred of a cabal, to being in the cabal, to realizing /there is no cabal/. It’s operatic.
- http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai
  
  I suspect it is a lot like the foaming anti-gay activists who get caught having gay sex. They maybe knew the whole time they were huge liars, but their self loathing just fed the flames.
  - BombBlastLightingWaltz
    
    Jim Bakker PTL caught with his pants down… after it broke free from the closet.
http://twitter.com/trempls tré

So, is he going to treat his lice first or just turn himself in for murder?
http://twitter.com/Tish_Coronet Laetizia Coronet

When his classmates accused him of being Jewish, little Csanad usually beat them to a pulp with a menorah.
RJ

Oh look, scumbags fighting amongst themselves.
- http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai
  
  Right: “oh what, those Neo-Nazis sure sound like a lot of backstabbing jerks, I wouldn’t want to be friends with them.” Oh wait, I would never be friends with them ever!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Like orcs, if they spot you, they’ll forget their disagreements until they’ve taken care of you.
cdh1971

The Gabor Szabo mentioned in this post is _not_ the brilliant jazz musician of the same name (who died in 1982.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Szabo
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Szabo fan here too. That made me do a double take when I read about this yesterday.
  - cdh1971
    
    Yes, I did a double take too, but I knew it couldn’t be him ’cause he’s not that sort of guy. That, and the fact he passed in 1982.
ponzicar

This makes very little sense. Of course, Neo Nazis aren’t exactly the most rational people around. Since he’s obviously not a follower of the religion, nor is he culturally Jewish, and since it’s not a genetic trait, the only way he could be considered Jewish is if he believed Jewish law on the matter. So why would Neo Nazis respect Jewish law of any sort?
- http://twitter.com/Tish_Coronet Laetizia Coronet
  
  Nazis believe in bloodlines, in a Jewish “race”, in Jewishness as a genetic trait.
  - http://scavenger-ethic.blogspot.com/ scav
    
    Exactly. Stupid inbreeders are still obsessed with “racial purity” as if that was a thing. The nazi master plan seems to be:
    
    1) kill or exile all the brown people
    2) marry your cousin
    3) ?
    4) master race of pasty-faced blond retards
    - Navin_Johnson
      
      This racial purity talk reminds me of the classic Mr. Show sketch: “Racist in the Year 3000″
      
      “Oh Dougie, I don’t care about your 1/80th, I want the other 79 parts of ya”.
      
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msrkRdqLCr8
      - BombBlastLightingWaltz
        
        Laughs! Thanks that made my afternoon.
- Ipo
  
  They care deeply.
  It’s a thing they have.
- Mitch_M
  
  Under Jewish law he would have to have a Jewish mother. Israeli law considers anyone with one Jewish grandparent Jewish for the purposes of immigration and as such he would have more rights in Palestine than a Palestinian.
Mister44

Reminds me of Dave Chapple’s character of a blind black man who was part of a white power group.

Here is what I find as sweet irony. Purity of bloodline is sooooo important to these NeoNazis. But every white man has Neanderthal DNA – while Africans do not. So blacks are more “pure” human wise than any neo nazi.
- jerwin
  
  http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/08/neanderthal-and-human-matings-get-a-date/
BlackPanda

They found out recently that one of the candidates for the British Nazi… sorry, British Nationalist Party had fought on the Argentine side in the Falklands War. I thought that was pretty funny, also. :D
- Peppermint
  
  Somehow I find this far more delightful, ironic and Schadenfreude-tastic than the classic Jewish-neonazi one. (although the latter rarely gets old either.)
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Because Daily Mail readers regard the Falklands War as practically as important as WWI and WWII combined?
http://www.facebook.com/roytruax Roy Edward Truax

Boy! Was his face red!
SomeGuyNamedMark

I understand the “rule” but I never believed that just having a Jewish grandmother makes you Jewish any more than having a vegetarian mom makes you a vegetarian. If he went to temple, followed the faith etc that would be different.

Still, classic irony.
- Michael Rosefield
  
  Are you actually hoping for anything connected to racial prejudices and religious tradition to make consistent sense?
- Bevatron Repairman
  
  @Michael – Whatever your view of the theological underpinnings, this rule makes an enormous amount of sense as a cultural matter. If you are Jewish through your mother, the population cannot be forced out of existence through forced marriage, rape, or any other of that sort of awfulness.
  - Michael Rosefield
    
    It would work even better if everyone who ever saw a jew became Jewish.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      You mean it could be contagious like The Gay?
    - Ipo
      
      Everybody becomes Mormon eventually.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Not if you don’t die. Some day, it’s just going to be Mormons and vampires.
- chgoliz
  
  There are two aspects to being Jewish: religious and genetic. You can be one (either one) without the other. You can also be both, obviously.
  
  He has Jewish markers in his genome even if he never sets foot inside a synagogue. Hence the revulsion his former pals have for him, now that they know: Ewwww…cooties.
  - Peppermint
    
    There are Jewish markers in the human genome? You mean babies are *born* with yarmulkes on?
    - Ipo
      
      Missing foreskin gene?
    - Tynam
      
      Actually, yes, there kinda are. Ashkenaz in particular are a surprisingly tightly related genetic group, with an unusually low rate of male genetic admixture in particular. One recent study suggests that we’re almost all, effectively, ‘cousins’ as far as genetic similarity goes.
      
      (This has some notable downsides, such as the famously high prevalence of Tay-Sachs disease in the population.)
      
      There’s still a lot of research being done on this; most of the relevant papers are from the last decade or so.
      
      (The Jewish custom of tracing descent matrilineally helps here, as it makes the family genetic record much more reliable than for comparable cultures.)
- hymenopterid
  
  Judaism is a Relegion. Jewish is a heritage. One practices Judaism, but one does not practice being Jewish. Consider all the people who identify themselves as Jews but who are staunch atheists.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Parliment/100000014947469 Andrew Parliment

That would have been awful for his grandmother, but they must not have been in contact if he didn’t know he was Jewish. I hope she never found out that her grandson was a Neo-Nazi.
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Apparently, when he was told, he immediately replied, “What is this mishugas?” That’s when he realized.
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

“When I come for me, there will be no me to speak up for me.”
BlackPanda

I met a white guy at the gym a few weeks back who apparently failed to realise that the tattoos on his arms were all symbols of the “5% Nation of Gods And Earths”, which last time I checked was a heretical Islamic black supremacist cult.
- Brainspore
  
  I bet this guy is in for an even more awkward experience at the tattoo parlor. It’s not easy to turn a swastika into a Star of David.
  - nnnoaa
    
    Actually, it _is_ quite easy. I do it all the time with the swastikas scratched on walls of elevators, or drawn on walls. :)
    Btw, afterwards, Szegedi contacted one of Hungary’s most famous rabbis, to find out what’s this whole Judaism shit is all about. Needless to say, rabbi was surprised.
    - Brainspore
      
      I confess I never actually tried that. You must share your technique!
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Ananda Marga has it all.
    - Brainspore
      
      Come to think of it, the Raelians used to combine both symbols too. But that was deemed “controversial” by small-minded humans, so the cult leader asked special permission from the alien overlords to change it to a magical swirly instead and the aliens said OK.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        The original might have worked if they had done an overlap instead of a merge in the center.
      - Brainspore
        
        @Antinous_Moderator:disqus : Maybe so… but who are we to Art-Direct a race of omnipotent interstellar beings?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        We’re only creating metaphorical representations of the archetypes that they send us, so no problem.
- http://www.openbuddha.com/ Al Billings
  
  The Gods don’t consider themselves to be Muslim, normally, with a few exceptions. There have been a few white members, such as Azrael Wisdom, but, yeah, irony.
niktemadur

The neo-nazis began to suspect something when, after a dinner party consisting of pork goulash with rice, Szegedi complained in his best Woody Allen’s mother’s accent, “Oh, the food was horrible! And the portions were so small…”

When your name is a punchline, you are living in hell.
Szegedi is living in a hell-on-Earth of his own creation right now, with an added twist – because of his utterly forgettable name, the jokes are coming out with “he” or utilizing the copy-paste function.

BTW, do you know what other nazi had a Jewish grandparent? *ducks*
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1177098042 Erik Denning

Sometimes these things are amusing to me and other times they filter through to real feelings and a profound sadness. I’m Jewish. I know a lot of people hate me without knowing anything about me or the religion. Lately, I found myself watching some heart-breaking Holocaust documentaries, followed by a browse through a handful of Holocaust denial websites. So much unnecessary destruction and suffering. I struggle with my own prejudices too, of course. What the hell’s wrong with us that we can’t grow out of this Us and Them mentality? I don’t mean to sound overly groovy, but shouldn’t the race we care about be the human race? fuck it.
- Peppermint
  
  Hugs?
toyg

And to think I was watching The Infidel just the other day…
Plot: middle-aged British Muslim (intepreted by British-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili) finds out he was actually adopted, and that his biological parents were Jewish. At the same time, he’s forced to deal with Islamist extremists gate-crashing his family life. There’s Richard Schiff (“Toby Ziegler” in The West Wing) in a supporting role cracking killer jokes, and the whole movie is a feelgood, intelligent take on modern Britain, much sweeter than the hugely overrated “Four Lions”.
- dragonfrog
  
  ‘Leon the pig farmer” is another good one. Jewish man in London discovers there was a clerical error at the sperm bank, and his biological father is a pig farmer in Yorkshire. Charming awkwardness ensues.
BombBlastLightingWaltz

This smacks of Arthur Miller’s novel ‘Focus’ (the only novel ever published by Miller) where we read Mr.Newman vs Mr.Filkenstein. Great read.
jahxman

OK, not the same situation exactly but an entertaining movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424003/
about a Muslim man who discovers he was adopted, and is actually Jewish. Saw it on Netflix recently and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Edit: oops toyg beat me to it…
Ipo

Y’all think it’s funny.
What if he had been a Jew, finding out one day he was really a Neo-Nazi?
- Brainspore
  
  Related dilemma: http://www.theonion.com/articles/gay-teen-worried-he-might-be-christian,2888/
TheMudshark

Ha ha!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
Lodewijk Gonggrijp

Well this certainly brightened up my day :)