Ludicrous conspiracy theories are swirling across Europe one week after staunch Hungarian anti-LGBTQ lawmaker Jozef Szajer was caught—quite literally—with his pants down at a lockdown-breaking sex party in Brussels.
In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s far-right Fidesz faces an uncertain future after the Brussels orgy organizer, David Manzheley, claimed that as many as nine party faithful have attended his sex parties over the years. Orban holds considerable control over the press’ ability to report the details of the sex party, where 25 men were in attendance before cops broke it up. But Hungarians are reading about it elsewhere and asking questions about how Fidesz members, who purport to be anti-LGBTQ and have severely hampered the rights of the LGBTQ community in Hungary, could be such hypocrites.
A spokesman for the Orban government told Hungarian news website Hirado that the Szajer affair was part of a larger conspiracy against the Hungarian government. Orban’s administration claims there is a secret-service operation to extract revenge against Hungary because of its threats to veto certain European Commission initiatives.
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Gabor Vona, the former leader of Hungary’s far-right party Jobbik, suggested in an extensive Facebook post that the bust was a plot to stop the Polish-Hungary alliance in the EU that is planning to veto a budget item on the COVID-19 recovery package, going so far as to blame German secret-service agents in Brussels for “hunting down” Szajer, whose veto vote would be crucial.
An essay by investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi outlines how Orban used the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic to stifle LGBTQ rights in his country, first by ending the legal recognition of trans people in Hungary and then by proposing to end adoption rights for same-sex couples. “These strange and contradictory accusations only further fuel the damage done to the credibility of Orban’s government,” Panyi says. “Cabinet members are now being cordoned off from journalists to avoid embarrassing questions on Szajer, while Orban himself has been forced to throw one of his closest friends under the bus and distance himself from Szajer’s ‘unacceptable’ behaviour.” But Panyi says this scandal is different from previous ones in part because “the entire family-oriented, conservative image that has been carefully constructed around an increasingly oppressive and corrupt government is at stake.”
Several other Hungarian journalists have suggested that Szajer’s double life was no secret, but one that had been hard to report because he was such a close ally of Orban and, as such, a dangerous target for media outlets under increasingly stiff regulations in Hungary.
Meanwhile, the orgy organizer, who said Hungarians and lawmakers from Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party were his most common attendees, is facing an arrest warrant in Poland over claims of fraudulent invoices. The notice on Poland’s state website lists Manzheley’s date of birth as 1984, making him 36, not 29, as he says he is. The arrest warrant also lists him as Polish, not Belgian. Manzheley has not responded to multiple emails and phone calls by The Daily Beast, but has told other news outlets that the arrest warrant is a plot to discredit him in the event he has to testify should any charges arise from his sex parties.
In Poland, PiS party officials have questioned whether Manzheley’s sex party was in fact a sting operation “set up to entrap politicians of the political right.” Several Polish lawmakers have suggested to the Polish press that the fact that the invited guests were primarily from the far-right was no coincidence. Manzheley has denied any political affiliation even as his own credibility is increasingly being called into question.
