The Hungarian government protests against a FB page supported by the US embassy

The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took diplomatic steps because of a Facebook page, which is one of the US embassy’s alternative communication channels. Even though diplomats say that never has the relationship between the two countries been better, the Nyugati Pályán page shares a lot of posts slamming the Hungarian government.

According to Index, leaders of the Hungarian government always highlight how good the two countries’ partnership is. Viktor Orbán even added in a paper written to Magyar Nemzet that

the victory of the Democrats would harm the Hungarian-American relationship.

However, it seems that Joe Biden and his supporters are not the only ones thinking that being friends with Eastern dictators is not the Western way of democracy. 

The administrator of the Nyugati Pályán Facebook page is Flow PR, a Budapest-based communication company, but the US embassy in Budapest pays them. The page’s posts actively attack Russia and China and highlight that only the United States can protect Hungary and that the standards of Western life are much better than those of the East, so Hungary should remain on the Western track.

What do Hungarians deserve: the wages of Germany or Russia?

There are a lot of posts about the negative effects of Paks 2 built from Russian loan and with Moscow’s technology. Interestingly, indirectly, they suggested that there is a fraud behind the project. After Index sent their questions to the US and Russian embassies and the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

the administrators deleted the post.

Later, the foreign ministry replied and stated that they had already sent their queries to the US embassy regarding the issue. The Russian embassy did not react while the American one said that they created the page in February to spread information about the deep and long-lasting relationship of Hungary and the USA, the NATO and the Western institutions.

Who helped Hungary during the coronavirus epidemic? Photo: https://www.facebook.com/nyugatipalyan

Interestingly, the total spending on advertisements on the page is more than HUF 14 million (EUR 40 thousand). Meanwhile, similar pages supported by Russia (Orosz Hírek – Russian News) and China (Kínai Nemzetközi Rádió – Chinese International Radio) spend much lower amounts on advertisements. According to Index, this shows that Hungary is much more important for the United States. However, experts say that Eastern superpowers

conduct their social media campaigns undercover in Central Europe,

so it is hard to track down the route of the money. Interestingly, nobody knows whether the USA does the same in the region or not.

Source: index.hu