Interesting things can happen when working on a post. In the last few days I have been thinking about taking a better look at former intelligence officer László Földi, who poses as a national security expert. His wild ideas seem to meet with the approval of the Orbán government because he is the “authority” on matters of security on the M1 channel of Magyar Televízió. Moreover, lately he is also a regular contributor to the op-ed page of Magyar Idők.

Since the beginning of December he has published 18 pieces in which he assesses the world “with the eyes of an intelligence officer.” Today I spent a couple of hours taking notes on three or four of his not too exciting pieces when I got to an Abraham Lincoln quotation in an article titled “The Destruction of Democracy.” I don’t know exactly why, but I had the urge to find the original quotation, which was not the easiest task, considering that Földi’s text was in Hungarian. In the same article Földi also quoted a few lines from John F. Kennedy. Once I tracked down the first one I began on the second. The result was that the post that was half-written in my head was unceremoniously discarded.

László Földi’s mental rigor leaves something to be desired, so it is actually rather difficult to figure out just who is behind the destruction of democracy in our times. In general, maintains Földi, democracy can be undermined or threatened by either the appearance of a dictator or the tyranny of a minority. In today’s Europe there are people who “in the name of freedom abuse the benevolence of the majority.” Who are these people? Human rights activists, over-paid journalists, politicians who betray the trust of their constituents. These people ruin the lives of millions, devastate their homes, “artificially mix civilizations,” which in turn will lead to civil wars, and they also want to change our identities. These dreadful developments have been with us for 150 years, but lately the process has accelerated.

This is more or less the message of this less than remarkable piece of writing. So, it is time to return to the two quotations. Upon closer observation, Földi’s Hungarian rendition of the Lincoln quotation bears little resemblance to the original. I became suspicious when I found words like “dictatorship” and “bureaucracy” in the alleged Lincoln text. The original I eventually located reads: “As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.” There is nothing here about “money power is more tyrannical than a Monarchy” or “it is more audacious than a dictatorship” or “more selfish than a bureaucracy.” Out of the whole text only one sentence was translated accurately: “all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed.”

Actually, it is not worth quibbling over the translation because the whole quotation is a fake. It was originally born 20 years after Lincoln’s death and has resurfaced often since. The story is well told by the fact checkers of Snopes.

After locating the John F. Kennedy quotation, I found that it was most likely purposely truncated, but at least the translation was correct. The quote came from Kennedy’s speech delivered on April 27, 1961 at a gathering of American Newspaper Publishers. The passage reads:

It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions–by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

I assume that we don’t need a Sherlock Holmes to figure out whom President Kennedy was talking about. Keep in mind that the Bay of Pigs Invasion took place on April 17, 1961, ten days earlier. In fact, he recalled “the events of recent weeks [which] may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years.” His whole speech was about “our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger.” Obviously, he is talking about the Soviet threat, which is not merely military but all encompassing. Földi cleverly left out the last sentence in which Kennedy calls attention to “a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.” If he had included that sentence, he would have exposed the fact that Kennedy wasn’t talking about Földi’s favorite conspiracy of global capital.

What conclusions does Földi reach after presenting his readers with these two quotations, one fake and the other highly misleading? According to Földi, these two American presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy, were assassinated because “both of them tried to challenge this unnatural power.” The enemies of democracy are often invisible but “in their acts are merciless.” I assume he means that globalist plutocrats killed both Lincoln and Kennedy.

This is the kind of nonsense by which the Orbán propaganda machine deceives naïve and ill-informed Hungarians whose heads have been filled with disinformation for years. What Orbán and his minions are doing is a crime against the Hungarian people and human intelligence in general.

source: Hungarian Spectrum