Trump White House

Far-Right Trump Adviser Tied to Anti-Semitic Paramilitary Group

In 2007, Sebastian Gorka openly supported the efforts of a Hungarian militia later condemned for trying to establish an “essentially racist” political order.
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By Alex Wong/Getty Images.

As if Donald Trump didn’t have enough to worry about with the F.B.I. investigating his campaign’s ties to the Russian government, the president now has to contend with fresh accusations that his deputy assistant, Sebastian Gorka, is not only an Islamophobe, but has ties to anti-Semitic groups as well. Past reporting by the Jewish Daily Forward has detailed Gorka’s lifetime membership in the Vitézi Rend, a far-right Hungarian military organization that supported the Nazis during World War II. Gorka, who wore a medal honoring the group to an inauguration party, has defended the group as historically anti-Communist. “First I am an Islamophobe, then I’m an anti-Semite, then I am a fascist. Next I am going to be a Martian, you know, subversive,” he said to The Telegraph, calling himself a political victim. (The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual says that members of the Vitézi Rend who apply for visas to the U.S. are “presumed to be inadmissible,” according to the Forward.)

The latest allegations against Gorka, however, appear harder to refute. On Monday, the Forward published an article reporting that Gorka had publicly supported another Hungarian military group with a dubious history, this time one that was specifically established by the anti-Semitic political party Jobbik and was later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to establish an “essentially racist” legal order.

In a 2007 interview obtained by the Forward, Gorka, then a political leader in Hungary, was asked if he supported Jobbik’s creation of the Hungarian Guard. “That is so,” Gorka replied, explaining that the militia was meant to supplement the official military, which he described as “sick and totally reflects the state of Hungarian society . . . this country cannot defend itself.” Throughout the interview, Gorka sought to downplay the connection between Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard, referring to it as “the Fidesz-Jobbik initiative” and claiming that Fidesz, another far-right political party, was more involved in the Guard’s creation. In a devastating exchange, however, Gorka dismissed concerns about anti-Semitism in the Hungarian Guard, which seemingly drew visual inspiration from the Holocaust-supporting Arrow Cross regime, as an unfair political attack:

During the 11-minute interview, which aired on Hungary’s Echo TV, Gorka dismissed concerns expressed by the Jewish community, and in particular fears that the Guard provoked among Hungarian Holocaust survivors. As is often the case in Hungary, the interviewer refers to Holocaust survivors obliquely, as “people who experienced 1944”—when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps—or as those who experienced “the Arrow Cross regime.”

Many such people, the interviewer noted, “are saying now is the time to leave Hungary. So in effect [the establishment of the Hungarian Guard] is facilitating the flaring-up of anti-Semitism?”

“This is a tool,” Gorka replied. “This type of accusation is the very useful tool of a certain political class.”

Roughly a year later, a high-ranking captain of the Hungarian Guard gave a speech calling Jews “Zionist rats,” “locusts,” and, in the case of Hungarian Jews, “nation-destroyers.” While there is no evidence that Gorka himself has ever supported anti-Semitism, his claims to have stood against bigotry are belied by his unqualified support for the paramilitary group. (Gorka did not respond to a request for comment.)