Zsóti, you don’t need to give back your citizenship! You, on the other hand, might want to think about it

I watched it, because Facebook put Zsolt Veress’s latest video on my timeline. Yes, the one from the turtle troublemaker, the authentic purveyor of everyday idiocy. In the video he demands that the handful of Transylvanian Hungarians who, as Hungarian citizens, voted for Tisza, give back their Hungarian citizenship. Because if they don’t, says the turtle, the expert in gutting and foot-washing, it would be like spitting in someone’s face and then standing under it. Transylvania’s most idiotic influencer reaches this conclusion from the fact that the Tisza government cut funding to the RMDSZ-linked Eurotrans Foundation. What follows is Anna Karczag’s personal opinion:

Well, Zsóti, let me help you out.

No, nobody needs to give up anything. Because the problem isn’t that the Tisza government withdrew funding from a foundation tied to another country’s political party. What wasn’t normal was the way things had been going until now.

Let’s start with the facts, since you clearly have trouble with those. Eurotrans was founded by the RMDSZ in 2004. Since 2015, under an agreement with the Prime Minister’s Office in Budapest, it has taken part in the simplified naturalization process for Hungarian citizenship, and over eleven years it received a total of roughly 3.16 billion forints for this. That’s Hungarian taxpayers’ money, Zsóti. Not the RMDSZ’s, and not yours.

But now comes the main point. Think it through (okay, I know, I’m asking the impossible of you) what this actually means: an organization registered in Romania was handling the personal data of Hungarian citizens and of people applying for Hungarian citizenship. Birth certificates, family records, documents of ancestors, Romanian and Hungarian identification data. That’s an enormous national security risk for any country, and Hungary is no exception, because no sane state hands over the preparation of citizenship grants to outside hands, least of all to a foreign organization. You cannot have assistance with obtaining Hungarian citizenship documents — that is, handling personal data from Romania and Hungary — carried out by a foundation belonging to a political party operating in another country. Especially not when that same network also plays a role in elections — Eurotrans took part in collecting postal ballots ahead of the April election, and Hunor Kelemen himself said that the RMDSZ provided “technical assistance” for postal voting. This is the same RMDSZ that is a player in Romanian domestic politics, runs in elections, sits in the Romanian parliament — and has even supplied a member to Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT). Do you get it now, Zsóti? The same political organization that handled voters’ data also went on to collect their votes. If that’s not a problem, then nothing is.

One more thing, little Zsóti. Yes, it may be that dealing with the paperwork becomes harder from now on. But the solution to that is not to keep Eurotrans and keep spending Hungarian taxpayers’ money. The solution is for the consulates and consulates general to travel out to the towns and villages for a day at a time, take in the documents, help fill out the application, and handle everything the foundation used to handle. What’s the difference? In that case, it’s a Hungarian citizen, a diplomat accountable under Hungarian law, who works with your data. Not an employee of some foundation operating in a gray zone, answerable to no one under Hungarian law.

If you can’t even understand this risk that the old system carried, then you really are the one who should be thinking about giving back your Hungarian citizenship. Because there are already far too many worthless characters around here who get called idiotic, stupid, inciting, lying influencers.