October 7 & today · Hungary · 2023–present
Nationalist conspiracy about Soros and migration supplied older suspicions that could reappear in new hostility towards Israel.
Explore HungaryPublished by WTJPublication updated
2023–present
October 7 & today · October 7 & today
Nationalist conspiracy about Soros and migration supplied older suspicions that could reappear in new hostility towards Israel.
An old conspiracy finds a new subject
Hungarian antisemitism had long portrayed Jews as hidden forces behind political and economic change. Researchers had traced that suspicion in far-right movements and campaigns centred on George Soros before October 7.
After the attack, Israel became a much stronger focus of online hostility. Political Capital reported that Israel-related antisemitism multiplied on the platforms it studied. The subject had changed, but familiar claims of secret Jewish power were ready to explain it. The war gave an existing story a new occasion to be told.
The hidden controller changes shape
Hungarian anti-Jewish laws and persecution had made ancestry a test of national belonging. More recently, far-right narratives and campaigns centred on George Soros portrayed a Jewish financier as the hidden organizer of threatening change. Government support for Israel could coexist with that domestic conspiracy story.
After October 7, researchers found much more Israel-related antisemitism online, including older Jewish-control accusations under new political labels. Official rhetoric also used Hamas’s attack to oppose EU migration proposals. The mixture therefore includes nationalist identity, anti-globalist conspiracy and a foreign conflict that gives familiar suspicion a new subject. The available evidence follows these ideas across political settings; it does not establish the kind of named left–Islamist organizing coalition found in Britain or Germany. Hungary’s particular route lies in how conspiracy remains politically usable.
Following the words, rather than a ready-made ending
The research found a change in what online hostility was about. Israel-related antisemitism increased, even while one study’s selected sample showed a slight decline in the overall proportion of antisemitic content.
That is a more complicated story than a single national surge. It also points to how prejudice survives: a familiar conspiracy can move from arguments about money or migration into arguments about Israel. The vocabulary could change without making Jews any less central to the accusation. The result was a renewed public suspicion, even where the available evidence did not show a nationwide wave of physical attacks.