Viktor Orbán: ‘2017 will be a year of rebellion’

The popular anti-immigration leader, has long expressed a kinship with nationalist leaders and movements across Europe and the United States.

Orbán congratulated the winners of the Italian referendum – the Five Star Movement – and praised the election of Donald Trump in the United States, saying these events signalled the start of the “rebellion”, Breitbart reported.

Citing the victory of the Italian opposition in the recent referendum, he predicted that despite the defeat of anti-mass migration candidate Norbert Hofer in the Austrian presidential elections, the rebellion would not be put down.

“Next year will be elections in Germany, the Netherlands, France. A lot of things can happen,” he noted. Orbán explained that there were actually two concurrent rebellions, one which was a revolt of the working and middle class which led to Brexit. The other was the victory of Donald Trump, “a kind of national rebellion”.

According to the Hungarian prime minister, a voter uprising against globalism and the elites would continue to gain momentum. Asked if he thought the anti-globalist sentiment would spread he said, “I am convinced that 2017 will be a year of rebellion. Whether they [the globalists] put down the rebellion or not, that’s another story.”

He has recognised the same qualities in President-Elect Donald J. Trump, he says. that Trump had what he called a “self-made man mentality.” He went on to add, “Self-made figures are people who themselves are successful, who do not begin a sentence with ‘I know people,’ but say, ‘I’ve done that’.”

He riled against “the ‘United States of Europe’ advocates, who used the refugee excuse to chip away at national sovereignty. “All of this is surrounded by political correctness, containment, intellectual stigma. The rebellion that started in 2016, will gather speed in the future. Therefore, I say that 2017 will be a year of rebellion,” he declared.

When asked if he thought it was not contradictory for a ruling government to declare themselves rebels, he said: “The real freedom fighters are the people.”

He said nationalism was the only way forward. “If we believe in both Hungary and the Hungarian people, then we are facing a bright future,” adding that children should be taught “not to seek the easy way, but go their own way even when it seems difficult, in order to make the country great again.”

Fidesz, Orbán’s party, was a “self-made success story … about ten to twenty, or thirty men from nowhere who stood up, fed up with the world around them,” and who wanted to change it.