Hungary’s Orbán: EU ‘Still Making Excuses for Crimes of Communism’, by Jack Montgomery.

“Many in the West today are still making excuses for the crimes of communism; even the European Union itself is reluctant to unequivocally condemn them,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said. …

The populist leader noted the left wing ideology “emerged in the 20th century as an intellectual product of the West [but] in the end it was we Central Europeans who were forced to live under this originally Western idea”.

Orbán underlined that, in the West, communism remained nothing more than a theory, providing “tingling intellectual excitement [for] meddlesome global utopians” such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, prominent figures in Fabian socialism accused of acting as apologists for the Soviet Union.

He recalled how “many members of the Western intelligentsia, artists, writers and politicians – self-proclaimed ‘progressives’ – praised the genocidal communist dictatorship”.

“It is difficult to believe that it was not obvious to them that those whom the Soviets regarded as class enemies – or as dangerous for any other reason – were being deported to slave labour camps.” …

The number of people killed by communist regimes in the 20th century is estimated at 94 million. Surviving communist regimes such as China and North Korea continue to be noted for their use of censorship, political repression, and arbitrary detention – often in Soviet-style labour camps – to quash dissent.

hat-tip Stephen Neil