Suddenly Jewish

Csanad Szegedi was a conflicted man.

Szegedi, at 28, was a rising star in Hungarian and European politics. The Jobbik (Yo-bick) Party he had founded as a university student eight years earlier, in October 2003, now held 47 seats in Hungary’s parliament — about a 12-percent share — and three of Hungary’s allotted 22 seats, including his own, in the European Parliament.

Szegedi was telegenic, brash, articulate, and convincing in expounding the extreme right-wing views that were his mother’s milk. The Jobbik Party, like most of Europe’s neofascist parties, is fertile breeding ground for anti-Semites and Holocaust doubters, and Szegedi fit right in.

Politics being the sordid business that it is means that some rival is always trying to undermine the top banana and knock him off of his perch. Szegedi would soon fall victim to this game.

An old party foe met with Szegedi and threatened him. “You are a Jew,” said the foe, “and there are documents that can prove this.”